A Little Good News

This is long overdue. I just hope the practice isn't continued by non-professionals.

The Indonesian government announced this week that it is prohibiting doctors and nurses from performing female genital cutting. According to Reuters, some Indonesian groups encourage families to perform female genital mutiliation, possibly to maintain chastity and virginity before marriage and to ensure faithfulness in the women’s marriage.

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As If There Aren't Enough Things To Piss US Off

I'm not a happy camper.

Dick Artley retired from the Forest Service (FS) on the very first day he became eligible for retirement, September 3, 2003. (The significance of that date will soon become clear.) For the last 12 years of his career, he worked as a forest planner at the Nez Perce National Forest in central Idaho where he still lives.

...

"Something very tragic is happening to our public land," Artley proclaims. "This policy (RSFMP) was cooked up in secret by the Forest Service in 2002 with absolutely no public involvement or congressional review. By law, every RSFMP project must go through the National Environmental Policy Act process and have a public input period, but the Forest Service has chosen to ignore NEPA."

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Another One Bites The Dust

Don't know about you, but I'm thinking this is really getting to be fun.

A key aide to presidential political strategist Karl Rove resigned Friday in the wake of congressional report that listed hundreds of contacts between disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the White House.

Susan Ralston, special assistant to President Bush, submitted a resignation letter to him less than five weeks before the midterm elections.

Ok, it isn't really fun. This is Busco, the ruling administration, going down in flames and that isn't funny at all. But I do love schädenfreude.

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Shit!

Stolen from Dennis Perrin:

"Those Amish people, everyone is sitting around talking about those poor little girls — blah, blah, blah — they brought the wrath upon themselves. [The Amish] don't serve God, they serve themselves."

So said Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of Fred "God Hates Fags" Phelps, pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church, Topeka's pride. Phelps-Roper was defending her church's original decision to picket the funerals of those Amish girls slaughtered earlier this week, now canceled in favor of some air-time on Mike Gallagher's radio show.

Don't you feel God's love resonating from this woman?

Lucky for her, the Amish are pacifists. I don't know about you, but if any of these Nazi assholes came near the funeral of one of my kids, I'm afraid we'd have to dispense with the New Testament in favor of the Old -- y'know, fire, brimstone, wrath, and related concepts. God would want it that way.

Are Wingers Afraid Of Their Own Shadows?

Prolly. They are certainly afraid of progressives and maybe their own.



It's rare for a lefty blogger to prohibit comments. It is equally rare for a winger blogger to allow them. They're so thin skinned they can't take criticism?

Speaking of comments, why can't I comment on Typepad sites? I've some excellent points to make, but can't. The blog world is the worse off.

The Nanny State

This is a topic I may take up from time to time because I hate the government messing with my decisions.

That said, gambling addiction hurts many people. Many people beyond the gambler are victims. But we have free will and don't need government intervention.

Last Saturday the United States Congress passed a port security bill that carried an amendment banning Internet gambling. This was a huge mistake, not because Internet gambling is a good thing (it was already illegal, in fact), but because the new law is either unenforceable or -- if it can be enforced -- will tear away the last shreds of financial privacy enjoyed by U.S. citizens. The stocks of Internet gambling companies, primarily traded in the UK, went into free-fall as their largest market was effectively taken away. I don't own any of those shares, but I guarantee you they will fully recover, which is part of what makes this situation so pathetically stupid.

...

Here's a law that purports to end Internet gambling but will instead enable it, a law that is intended to make certain types of financial transactions harder to do but will ultimately make them easier, a law that says nothing about terrorism but will ultimately abet it, making us all less secure in the process.

So you're welcome al-Qaeda. Glad the US Congress could be of help.

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Photographing Lightning

"It was like a crack. The next thing I was about two metres in the air - it scared the hell out of me."

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Cat Blogging

Yep. Still don't have a cat and probably never will.

The US-Mexico Border Fence

Something's very fishy about the numbers. And it appears Boeing Co is in line to be the next Haliburton.

No sooner did Congress authorize construction of a 698-mile fence on the U.S.-Mexican border last week than lawmakers rushed to approve separate legislation that ensures it will never be built, at least not as advertised, according to Republican lawmakers and immigration experts.

GOP leaders have singled out the fence as one of the primary accomplishments of the recently completed session. Many lawmakers plan to highlight their $1.2 billion down payment on its construction as they campaign in the weeks before the midterm elections.

...

President Bush signed the $34.8 billion homeland-security budget bill Wednesday without referring to the barrier. Instead, he highlighted the $1.2 billion that Congress provided for an unspecified blend of fencing, vehicle barriers, lighting and technology such as ground-based radar, cameras and sensors. [emphasis mine]

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That $1.2 billion figure is reported everywhere. But, they've already spent that much.

Sept. 21 [2006] (Bloomberg) -- Boeing Co. won an order worth an estimated $2.5 billion to install sensors and radar to secure the U.S. border, capturing the Homeland Security Department's second- largest contract.

The work will cover northern and southern borders, starting with a model to be deployed in the southwest in the next eight months, the department said in a statement today. The contract doesn't have a set value. Payments will be announced as parts of the system are ordered, department spokesman Jarrod Agen said.

The order, known as the Secure Border Initiative Net, gives Boeing Chief Executive Officer James McNerney a new avenue for growth. Sales from weapons such as fighter and cargo jets may stall as the war in Iraq winds down, and the border contract may ultimately be valued at as much as $8 billion as the U.S. moves to secure maritime borders as well, Boeing said last month.

It looks a lot like what the bean counters call double dipping. This borders protection work is gonna make more big businesses a fortune, far beyond the "measly" $1.2 billion. Well, at least they acknowledge its only a down payment.

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I'm Pretty Sure This Isn't What Bushco Wants

From a recent (September 1-October 4) Pew Research Center poll:

Iraq has become the central issue of the midterm elections. There is more dismay about how the U.S. military effort in Iraq is going than at any point since the war began more than three years ago. And the war is the dominant concern among the majority of voters who say they will be thinking about national issues, rather than local issues, when they cast their ballot for Congress this fall.

Pew's latest nationwide survey finds 58% of the public saying that the U.S. military effort in Iraq is not going well, and a 47% plurality believes the war in Iraq is hurting, not helping, the war on terrorism. The poll finds extensive public awareness of a leaked intelligence estimate suggesting that the war is spawning more terrorism. More than third of Americans (35%) say they have heard a lot about the intelligence report, and these people are much more likely than others to say the war in Iraq is hurting the war on terror. [emphasis mine]

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Nuremberg For Bushco? Why Not?

This article makes a very succinct and compelling case for just such a thing.

Perhaps it was by some quirk of Intelligent Design that Congress passed the law legitimizing the Bush administration's right to do whatever it chooses to detainees (short of rape and mutilation) almost 60 years to the day of the verdicts at Nuremberg.

Two of the Nuremberg trial defendants, Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel and Gen. Alfred Jodl, were sentenced to death on Oct. 1, 1946, in part, for delegating Hitler's infamous "commando order." Hitler ranted that allied commandos who attacked German troops by stealth were not soldiers but common criminals. Gangsters, he added, were not covered by the Geneva Convention.

Substitute the word "enemy combatants" for "gangsters," and the Bush administration's approach is certainly rooted in precedent. Moreover, the law doesn't abandon the Geneva Convention. It merely allows leeway in interpreting old-fashioned notions about what constitutes torture.

A second strike against Keitel dealt with his role in carrying out Hitler's "Night and Fog" decree. Under this directive, suspected resistance sympathizers were whisked away by night to places where no one would ever learn of their fates.

Substitute the word "insurgents" for "resistance" and this, too, has a familiar ring. In the wake of Abu Ghraib, the U.S. Army estimated that between 70 percent and 90 percent of those rounded up had done nothing.

Worse, Republicans in Congress maintain that any objections to these breaches of international law and basic decency "coddle" terrorists. For obvious political reasons, advance word is that trials in some cases could begin in synch with next month's elections.

The Nuremberg Charter enumerated four crimes. In highlighted form, these were:

1. Conspiracy to wage war of aggression;

2. Actual launching of aggressive war;

3. Killing, plundering and destroying in a war not justified by militarily necessity; and

4. Crimes against humanity.

Arguably, the invasion of Iraq fails to rise to the level of crimes against humanity revealed at Nuremberg. As long as the world draws a moral distinction between shoving children into gas chambers versus chalking up their unintended deaths in an unnecessary war to "collateral damage," that debate will continue. But the first three counts speak for themselves. And I submit that at least some who were hanged at Nuremburg were less guilty of war crimes than the people who brought us Iraq.

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Signing Statements

Dim son is now at 800+.

Bush has used signing statements to challenge more than 800 laws that place limits or requirements on the executive branch, saying they intrude on his constitutional powers. By contrast, all previous presidents challenged a combined total of about 600 laws.

So it took the American public 42 tries before finding the one man for president who knows more than all his predecessors about how government should work? Founding fathers be damned.

And while I have you here. What's up with that "unitary executive" shit mentioned in the link? Doesn't the US Constitution start off with the word WE. America was not created by one person and it was not the intent that one person rule it.

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Wrong Is Wrong, Right?

This from Media Matters.

CNN, NBC, AP continued to advance GOP conspiracy theory that Dems orchestrated Foley scandal[.]

Summary: Media outlets that uncritically reported House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's (R-IL) recent claims -- that Democratic operatives knew "all along" of Rep. Mark Foley's (R-FL) alleged behavior toward underage congressional pages and have orchestrated the ongoing scandal -- ignored media reports that the source for Foley's emails was a Republican.

So the police "orchestrate" an arrest of a burgler. But the burgler is innocent because the police are at fault?

The fact is Foley was wrong and so was Hastert and any other GOP leaders who could have done something to stop Foley.

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Get Your Pedophant T-shirt

The new look of the GOP.



Shirt available here.

This Can't Be Good News Unless You're In Oil Business

To quote trouthout:

Editor's Note: Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research

We bring to the attention of our readers, this carefully documented review of the ongoing naval build-up and deployment of coalition forces in the Middle East.

The article examines the geopolitics behind this military deployment and its relationship to the Battle for Oil.

The structure of military alliances is crucial to an understanding of these war preparations.

The naval deployment is taking place in two distinct theaters: the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean.

Both Israel and NATO are slated to play a major role in the US-led war.

The militarization of the Eastern Mediterranean is broadly under the jurisdiction of NATO in liaison with Israel. Directed against Syria, it is conducted under the façade of a UN peace-keeping mission pursuant to UN Security Council Resolution 1701. In this context, the war on Lebanon must be viewed as a stage of a the broader US sponsored military road-map.

The naval armada in the Persian Gulf is largely under US command, with the participation of Canada.

The naval buildup is coordinated with the planned air attacks. The planning of the aerial bombings of Iran started in mid-2004, pursuant to the formulation of CONPLAN 8022 in early 2004. In May 2004, National Security Presidential Directive NSPD 35 entitled Nuclear Weapons Deployment Authorization was issued. While its contents remains classified, the presumption is that NSPD 35 pertains to the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in the Middle East war theater in compliance with CONPLAN 8022. [emphasis mine]

(read more) And there's much more. Its a long article.

Iran Isn't Arming Terrorists In Iraq?

Kinda makes you say hmmm.

Since late August, British commandos in the deserts of far southeastern Iraq have been testing one of the most serious charges leveled by the United States against Iran: that Iran is secretly supplying weapons, parts, funding and training for attacks on U.S.-led forces in Iraq.

A few hundred British troops living out of nothing more than their cut-down Land Rovers and light armored vehicles have taken to the desert in the start of what British officers said would be months of patrols aimed at finding the illicit weapons trafficking from Iran, or any sign of it.

There's just one thing.

"I suspect there's nothing out there," the commander, Lt. Col. David Labouchere, said last month, speaking at an overnight camp near the border. "And I intend to prove it."

Other senior British military leaders spoke as explicitly in interviews over the previous two months. Britain, whose forces have had responsibility for security in southeastern Iraq since the war began, has found nothing to support the Americans' contention that Iran is providing weapons and training in Iraq, several senior military officials said.

"I have not myself seen any evidence -- and I don't think any evidence exists -- of government-supported or instigated" armed support on Iran's part in Iraq, British Defense Secretary Des Browne said in an interview in Baghdad in late August.

Now how can that be? Bushco has repeatedly told US Iran is sending arms to Iraq. That link is to an article from August 21, 2005.

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Maybe An Urban Myth

ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?

WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?

Must Read IMHO

This will make you think.

Ya Gotta Read This

From Huffpo.

English Is Easy...Right!

1. The bandage was wound around the wound.

2. The farm was used to produce produce.

3. The dump was so full it had to refuse more refuse.

4. We must polish the Polish furniture.

5. He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6. The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7. Since there was no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

8. A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9. When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10. I did not object to the object.

11. The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12. There was a row among the oarsmen on how to row.

13. They were too close to the door to close it.

14. The buck does funny things when does are present.

15. A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16. To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17. The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18. After a number of injections my jaw got number.

19. Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

20. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

21. How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

via

Stop It Or Warn Us

Many of us don't have enough bandwidth for video. So stop posting videos or linking to them with no warning. Your fucking up my computer.

Nuff said.

So Horribly True

Iran Is Next

On the list of countries Bushco intends to attack, Iran is at the top.

"This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous... Having said that, all options are on the table." George W. Bush, February 2005

If his lips are moving, he's lying.

Witnessing the Bush administration's drive for an attack on Iran is like being a passenger in a car with a raving drunk at the wheel. Reports of impending doom surfaced a year ago, but now it's official: under orders from Vice President Cheney's office, the Pentagon has developed "last resort" aerial-assault plans using long-distance B2 bombers and submarine-launched ballistic missiles with both conventional and nuclear weapons.

How ironic that the Pentagon proposes using nuclear weapons on the pretext of protecting the world from nuclear weapons. Ironic also that Iran has complied with its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, allowing inspectors to "go anywhere and see anything," yet those pushing for an attack, the USA and Israel, have not.

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I've Arrived?

If someone does a Google search on "Michelle Malkin Anchor Baby", my site is number 3!

I'll accept that.

Good News For Ireland

Thank gawd this chapter in history is over.

An independent report published today is expected to conclude that the IRA has been effectively wound-down as a terrorist organisation.

The 12th report by the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) will say that the Provisionals have closed their bomb-making divisions and are no longer accepting new members. Applicants are being directed to join Sinn Fein.

It will also show that intelligence-gathering on security force members has stopped, training and the procurement of weapons has ended, and the organisation has resisted approaches from the community for it to punish anti-social elements.

And while it will acknowledge the continued involvement of individual IRA members in crime, the Commission is expected to highlight the resolute line of the IRA leadership in discouraging criminal activity.

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Call Me Some Money Later

You may have heard of phone banks, but this is the real deal.

It was 10:33 p.m. when Dulce Amor Bandoy's cellphone beeped with her favorite kind of message.

"You have received 1,321.00 of G-Cash," read the text on her phone's glowing screen.

That meant her uncle in London had just deposited 1,321 Philippine pesos — about $26 — into her Globe Telecom cellphone account, which Bandoy uses like a bank. "My phone is now my wallet," said Bandoy, 29.

The cellphone-based system that conveys cash between Bandoy and her uncle has the potential to revolutionize the way hundreds of billions of dollars are moved around the world, according to experts who study global cash flows.It was 10:33 p.m. when Dulce Amor Bandoy's cellphone beeped with her favorite kind of message.

"You have received 1,321.00 of G-Cash," read the text on her phone's glowing screen.

That meant her uncle in London had just deposited 1,321 Philippine pesos — about $26 — into her Globe Telecom cellphone account, which Bandoy uses like a bank. "My phone is now my wallet," said Bandoy, 29.

The cellphone-based system that conveys cash between Bandoy and her uncle has the potential to revolutionize the way hundreds of billions of dollars are moved around the world, according to experts who study global cash flows.

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This Is Rich

Now dim son has been inconvenienced by airport security. I love it.

Despite sprinting through the Andrews Air Force Base south terminal, President Bush narrowly missed his Air Force One flight to Boise earlier today after arriving just moments after the plane's doors had closed.

The 12-person crew was not able to accommodate the president due to strict federal guidelines requiring all passengers to arrive at their departure gate 15 minutes prior to takeoff—guidelines flight officials say are especially important considering heightened security around the president.

(link) Although this is whole article less the picture.)

DPRK Moves Up The List

You know the list, the list of countries Bushco may next invade.

The international community is showing great concerns over a planned nuclear test announced Tuesday by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said through his spokesman that if the DPRK carries out the proposed test, it "would bring universal condemnation, and will not help DPRK achieve the goals expressed in its statement, particularly with regard to strengthening its security."

...

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is in Egypt on a visit, called the DPRK statement "very provocative."

A nuclear test by the DPRK will hugely transform the existing situation in the Korean Peninsula, she told a press conference in Cairo, noting that it was not an issue for America alone, but "quite a serious issue" for the entire neighborhood.

As for a possible U.S. military operation against the DPRK, if and when it conducts a nuclear test, Rice said Washington would need to assess the options.

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All This Is Just Sickening

These Bushco people really are afraid of the objective MSM.

It was time for Hastert to take action to put down the mutiny. So he called Rush Limbaugh. And Sean Hannity. And Hugh Hewitt. And Lars Larson. And Roger Hedgecock. Even Neal Boortz, who said Hastert should find a "better excuse" for his inaction on Foley. "We're going to do them all," said Hastert aide Ron Bonjean.

But they have their own media and here's how they are treated.

Limbaugh, taking Hastert's call early in the afternoon, got right down to business. "The Washington Times' admittedly conservative editorial page has asked for you to step down," he pointed out.

"Well, yeah, I'm not going to do that," Hastert said casually, as if the Washington Times had suggested he order grapefruit for breakfast.

Limbaugh set about making the case for Hastert. Democrats and the media, he said, are making the speaker look more "interested in holding the House rather than protecting children."

"Yeah" was the entirety of Hastert's reply.

"I like what you said yesterday," Limbaugh continued, when Hastert "asked for an investigation into who knew what when."

"I don't think you could ask anybody better than the FBI," Hastert concurred. Limbaugh encouraged Hastert to change the subject to the economy and national security. Hastert dutifully responded with a few remarks about the economy and national security.

Eventually, Limbaugh closed with the warning that Democrats and the media would press the issue "even though you've dealt with it, even though he's gone, even though the mistake has been corrected. (emphasis mine)"

Oh yeah. Move on. Nothing to see here.

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Is An Attack On Iran Imminent?

Bushco has to do something to scare the hell out of the voters.

As reports circulate of a sharp debate within the White House over possible US military action against Iran and its nuclear enrichment facilities, The Nation has learned that the Bush Administration and the Pentagon have moved up the deployment of a major "strike group" of ships, including the nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship, to head for the Persian Gulf, just off Iran's western coast. This information follows a report in the current issue of Time magazine, both online and in print, that a group of ships capable of mining harbors has received orders to be ready to sail for the Persian Gulf by October 1.

As Time writes in its cover story, "What Would War Look Like?," evidence of the forward deployment of minesweepers and word that the chief of naval operations had asked for a reworking of old plans for mining Iranian harbors "suggest that a much discussed--but until now largely theoretical--prospect has become real: that the U.S. may be preparing for war with Iran."

This might explain the unusual "put" activity on the markets as reported by Simbaud who also mentions the possible impending invasion.

From King of Zembla:

A put option, as explained to us many years ago by Distinguished Professor of Economics John Steed, gives a stockholder the right to unload his shares at a specified price within a specified time; it is, in cruder terms, a bet that the value of the stock is about to plummet.

So basically, this post is parroting Simbaud, but may reach different readers.

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And So It Starts

Net Neutrality begins to die.

In June 2006 NextGenTel, one of the biggest broadband providers in Norway decided to deliberately limit the bandwidth from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK). Meaning that customers of NextGenTel in Norway will experience a lower quality of service on content from the NRK compared to content from the providers that want to pay NextGenTel for distribution.

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Oops...

Hands Off!

Humanitarian war isn't humanitarian at all.

The Iraq war, consistent with experience, suggests that humanitarian wars will rarely yield humanitarian results. Why, then, is there a so-called "responsibility to protect" movement to make humanitarian intervention obligatory as a matter of international law? And why was this idea endorsed by the United Nations during its millennium summit?

The best humanitarians of our day recognize that we face a painful dilemma: to tolerate atrocities in foreign states or to risk committing worse atrocities in the course of ending them. From Rwanda, many people drew the lesson that failure to intervene is the worse option. The Iraq war may be the first step in unlearning this lesson. If not, an intervention in Darfur surely will be.

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Pay To Play Politics

A very interesting report. Here are some excerpts.

Staff Report
U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on Government Reform
109th Congress
Tom Davis, Chairman
Henry A. Waxman, Ranking Member
September 29, 2006

...

In effect, Abramoff was selling information and entrée that shouldn’t need to be bought while making his clients pay inflated fees for access and influence that shouldn’t be for sale.

...

The documents on which the report is based are drawn from the records of Abramoff’s former firm, Greenberg Traurig, and thus for the most part can tell only one side of the story. In many instances, there is little or no corroboration of the events described in the documents. In other instances, the documents are vague about who was lobbied and what was said. While the documents described in this report are authentic, that does not mean that the events actually transpired or that Abramoff and his associates did not exaggerate or misrepresent their actions. [italics mine]

...

In the case of the e-mails, however, the Committee requested only e-mails relating to “contacts between Mr. Abramoff, or individuals working with Mr. Abramoff, … and officials in the White House.”131 To facilitate searches of Greenberg database of Abramoff e-mails, the Committee staff provided Greenberg with specific terms to search for, which included the names of multiple White House officials.

Most of the e-mails received by the Committee are internal e-mails sent by Abramoff or an Abramoff associate to someone else on the Abramoff team at Greenberg. The e-mails include, however, over two hundred e-mail exchanges between Abramoff and his associates and White House officials.

...

According to the billing records and e-mails, Abramoff and his Greenberg associates had 485 lobbying contacts with White House officials between January 2001 and March 2004. Of these instances of lobbying, 405 are described in the billing records and were billed to Abramoff clients. An additional 80 are described in the e-mail records produced by the firm.
Of the 485 instances of lobbying, 345 (71 percent) are described in the documents as meetings or other in-person interactions; 71 (15 percent) are described as phone conversations, and 69 (14 percent) are e-mail exchanges. In counting e-mail exchanges as instances of lobbying, a series of back-and-forth e-mail exchanges addressing a single subject is counted as a single contact.133

...

The documents also reflect that the Abramoff team urged White House officials, including Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman, to intervene to remove from office a State Department employee, Allen Stayman, who opposed their efforts in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Todd Boulanger wrote, “It will be a great day when stayman is whacked.”291 Stayman was let go from his State Department post.

131 Letter from Chairman Tom Davis and Ranking Minority Member Henry A. Waxman to Kevin M. Downey, Williams and Connolly L.L.P. (Mar. 2, 2006).

133 In counting instances of lobbying over e-mail with White House officials, a number of contacts identified in the Greenberg documents were excluded. Excluded were (1) e-mails that appear to involve purely social events such as happy hours or birthday parties, (2) phone calls described in the e-mails as being placed to White House officials that may not have been returned, (3) e-mails to White House officials that did not appear to garner a response, and (4) e-mails on subjects unrelated to client issues, such as White House tours for family and friends. The e-mails contain over 200 contacts that were excluded for these reasons.

291 E-mail from Todd Boulanger to Kevin Ring, Jack Abramoff, et al. (June 14, 2001) (GTG-R006369).

The report goes on like this seemingly forever. Actually it is only 93 (PDF) pages.

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Maybe Its True

Five or six years ago I might have thought this nonsense, but no more.

Venezuela President Hugo Chavez said Sunday he has received warnings from within the White House that the Bush administration is plotting to assassinate him or topple his left-leaning government.

Citing what he said were warnings from an alleged White House informant, Chavez told thousands of supporters at a campaign rally that
President Bush has ordered him to be killed before he leaves office in 2008.

Bush "has said that before he goes, Hugo Chavez shouldn't be the president of Venezuela," Chavez told the crowd. "The president of the United States has said it, especially in recent days. What he doesn't know is that I have friends in the White House."

The Venezuelan leader has claimed before that the U.S. government is out to kill him — allegations that U.S. officials deny.

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The Allied Forces Sure Make A Difference In Iraq

This is the latest report from Baghdad.

At least 50 corpses were discovered scattered around Baghdad overnight, police have said.

The bodies all bore bullet wounds and are most likely the victims of the sectarian dirty war raging in the capital between rival Sunni and Shiite armed groups, a police official said.

The daily count of corpses showed a brief lull during a total curfew imposed on Baghdad on Saturday, but since it was lifted early Sunday levels of violence, including bombings, have returned to their previous levels.

On Sunday, police reported a mass kidnapping when armed men, some of them wearing security-style uniforms, stormed a food processing plant and kidnapped 26 people, four of whom subsequently escaped.

It is not known if some of those kidnapped were among the corpses found dumped in the streets.

(read more)

Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em

This is long overdue. I lost a sister and mother-in-law to lung cancer that was caught too late.

A blood test to identify lung cancer in its early stages could potentially save millions of lives if initial results can be confirmed, researchers say.

French scientists today announced preliminary results from a new lung cancer test at the annual congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology, a meeting of some 10,500 doctors, scientists, pharmaceutical representatives and non-governmental organisations.

The test distinguishes lung cancer from other lung diseases, such as emphysema.

(read more)

Who Didn't See This Coming?

And next will be the much higher prices of fruit and produce in grocery stores.

Tougher US-Mexico border controls are having an acute impact on American produce growers, farmers groups say, with tonnes of fruit and vegetables left rotting amid crippling labor shortages.

Farms across the United States are reporting shortfalls in the number of available workers, which in many cases has caused crops to go unpicked.

Blame for the lack of labour is laid squarely at the door of a crackdown on illegal workers crossing the US-Mexico border and the absence of flexible legislation that would allow farmers to hire workers on a seasonal basis.

(read more)

More October Surprises Than I Ever Expected

And they aren't the good-for-Bushco type.

The 9/11 panel members never heard of a visit to Condi Rice by George J Tenant warning about the danger posed by bin Laden.

And there's that little matter of Representative Mark Foley, the Florida Republican who had resigned after it came to light he sent sexually explicit Instant Messages (IMs) to teenage (as young as 16yo) pages.

And it comes out that Colin Powell was "fired" and didn't "resign".

It'll be interesting to see where all these stories lead.

More Amo

Check it out.

Via /Dependable Rrenagade.

You Giving Up?

DONT!!!1!!

You Know The Middle East?

Courtesy of Big Shot Bob in Texas.

Zzzzzzz!!!1!!

Create your own cassette.

Not Gross...Really

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