tagged w/ Bush Agenda
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Dialogue call is worthless: Taliban
ISLAMABAD: The Taliban swiftly rejected a Pakistan-Afghanistan mini-jirga’s call for dialogue on Tuesday, with a spokesman saying it was ‘worthless’. “This jirga was founded by the Americans. It has no power, no respect,” Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location. “We will not hold any dialogue while foreign troops commanded by the Americans are in our country,” he said. Afghanistan took a first step towards opening talks with the Taliban with a meeting in Saudi Arabia last month between a group of pro-government Afghan officials and former Taliban officials. But the Taliban dismissed those talks too. reuters
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US considering talks with Taliban
WASHINGTON: The United States is actively considering talks with Taliban in a major policy shift that would have been unthinkable a few months ago, discloses a report in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. According to ‘senior White House and military officials’, engaging some levels of the Taliban, while excluding top leaders, could help reverse a downward spiral in Afghanistan and Pakistan. AFP reported a US official as saying talks could take place if the Taliban “give up their arms, renounce violence, pledge allegiance to the Afghanistan constitution and become part of the political process instead of getting in the way of the political process”. khalid hasan/afpDialogue call is worthless: Taliban
ISLAMABAD: The Taliban swiftly rejected a... more
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TEHRAN: Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman says judiciary is investigating a detained Iranian-American graduate student.
Hasan Qashqavi confirms on Monday the investigation of Los Angeles-born 28-year-old California State University student Esha Momeni, arrested Oct. 15 for an alleged driving violation. Momeni’s lawyer Mohammad Ali Dadkhah says no charges have yet been brought but that Revolutionary Court officials told parents the arrest was related to her involvement in the “Change for Equality” campaign collecting one million signatures to change laws denying women equal rights.
TEHRAN: Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman says judiciary is investigating a... more
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McCain Team Seizes On Syria Strike
John McCain's campaign said Monday that the successful U.S. strike against a terrorist target in Syria would not have happened if Barack Obama had been president.
In a sharply worded e-mail, McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb said: "If Barack Obama had his way, U.S. forces would not have been in a position to launch this strike. So does Barack Obama support this action -- an action that would not even have been possible if his policies had been implemented?"
The U.S. military reported killing or wounding a terrorist leader and killing several other men near Syria's border with Iraq on Sunday.
McCain's statement also raised again Obama's willingness to meet with adversarial foreign leaders and the decision of one of Obama's foreign policy advisers to travel to Syria for meetings with its government.
In the statement, Goldfarb said: "Barack Obama has pledged to meet personally and unconditionally with Syria's leaders during his first year in office. While John McCain has been demanding that Syria do more to crack down on terrorists moving from its territory into Iraq, Barack Obama allowed one of his closest foreign policy advisers to travel to Syria for discussions with the leaders of that rogue regime."
The Obama campaign said that adviser, Daniel Kurtzer, President Bush's former ambassador to Israel, did not represent the Democrat on that trip. It also noted that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met in New York last month with Syria's foreign minister, a meeting that, according to Syrian state media, was requested by Rice.
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However, the media in Syria claim that only innocent people were killed in this attack? That does not stop the conflict of our interring into Syria without permission. Yet, it does cause great problems for Syria geopolitically . If this is the case, I would hope Under Obama that would not have occurred..
http://current.com/items/89460370_the_strike_that_shattered_us_syria_ties_the_american_massacreMcCain Team Seizes On Syria Strike
John McCain's campaign said Monday that the... more
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Sen. John McCain, the GOP presidential nominee, is calling for Ted Stevens to resign from the U.S. Senate following his conviction on federal criminal charges, the Associated Press says.
Stevens, a Republican from Alaska, was found guilty yesterday of failing to report gifts worth $250,000.
Update at 9:51 a.m. ET: Here's the statement that McCain just issued through his campaign:
Yesterday, Senator Ted Stevens was found guilty of corruption. It is a sign of the health of our democracy that the people continue to hold their representatives to account for improper or illegal conduct, but this verdict is also a sign of the corruption and insider-dealing that has become so pervasive in our nation's capital.
It is clear that Senator Stevens has broken his trust with the people and that he should now step down. I hope that my colleagues in the Senate will be spurred by these events to redouble their efforts to end this kind of corruption once and for all.
...........................................................Sen. John McCain, the GOP presidential nominee, is calling for Ted Stevens to resign... more
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The strike that shattered US-Syria ties
By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - Strained relations between Washington and Damascus shifted from bad to worse on Sunday when a United States commando raid on a Syrian border compound near the Iraq border reportedly left eight civilians dead - including one woman. Syrian television has called the attack an "American massacre", but details continue to emerge.
The US broke its silence on the incident on Tuesday, claiming that top al-Qaeda operative Abu Ghadiyah was targeted and killed during what is being described in Western media as a pre-emptive strike. The Associated Press, quoting an unnamed US military official, reported that Ghadiyah was about to carry out an attack in Iraq. Ghadiyah, whose real name is Badran Turki Hishan Al
Mazidih, is the leader a prolific network that moves foreign al-Qaeda fighters into underground resistance factions in war-torn Iraq.
The attack came days after a top US commander in Iraq told reporters that US troops bolstering their presence on the Syrian border, which he called an "uncontrolled" gateway for fighters entering Iraq.
The unconfirmed details and unquestionable tragedy of the raid have left once-promising US-Syria ties in tatters. Top officials in Damascus have blasted the "cowboy" tactics of US forces, and Syrian public opinion has become vociferously anti-American.
The so-called "massacre" won't lead to war between the US and Syria, but it marks an important turning point in a turbulent and unpredictable relationship that stretches back some 60 years.
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Shortly after 4 pm on October 26, four US helicopters violated Syrian airspace en route from Iraq. Two of the choppers landed in the village of Sukariyya in the township of Abu Kamal near the border with Iraq. US soldiers disembarked and opened fire on civilians - killing eight (including one woman), in a battle that lasted for 40-minutes. A short time later, a Syrian TV crew first broke the news of the attack, calling it an "American massacre in Syria".
The Foreign Ministry quickly summoned the US and Iraqi attaches in Syria to condemn the attack. Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem spoke from London, criticizing the American "cowboy" behavior and lashing out heavily on Arab states that remained silent - likely in strong reference to Saudi Arabia - waiting to see how Washington would respond.
One theory says that the entire ordeal was part of the internal US politics in the final lap of the presidential campaign, aimed at boosting the chances of Republican Senator John McCain by giving him more reason to pursue Bush's "war on terror" - this time with Syria.
Twenty-four hours after the attack, an American "source" confirmed the attack, claiming that the US Army was tracking jihadi elements that had crossed the border into Syria. Yet the State Department, Pentagon and White House remained silent suggesting that something was very amiss in Washington.
Had the Americans struck at a terrorist stronghold, the Bush team would have been the first to brag about it on all available media. The fact that the traditional US chorus remained silent seems proof that the Americans were not too proud of what they did, and that perhaps human error had come into play.
....cont....The strike that shattered US-Syria ties
By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - Strained... more
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SPEAKING FREELY
The oil factor in Bush's 'war on tyranny'
By F William Engdahl
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.
In recent public speeches, President George W Bush and others in the US administration, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have begun to make a significant shift in the rhetoric of war. A new "war on tyranny" is being groomed to replace the outmoded "war on terror". Far from being a semantic nuance, the shift is highly revealing of the next phase of Washington's global agenda.
In his January 20 inaugural speech, Bush declared, "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world" (author's emphasis). Bush repeated the last formulation, "ending tyranny in our world", in the State of the Union address. In 1917 it was a "war to make the world safe for democracy", and in 1941 it was a "war to end all wars".
The use of tyranny as justification for US military intervention marks a dramatic new step in Washington's quest for global domination. "Washington", of course, today is shorthand for the policy domination by a private group of military and energy conglomerates, from Halliburton to McDonnell Douglas, from Bechtel to ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco, not unlike that foreseen in president Dwight Eisenhower's 1961 speech warning of excessive control of government by a military-industrial complex.
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Historically Washington has had no problem befriending some of the world's all-time tyrants, as long as they were "pro-Washington" tyrants, such as the military dictatorship of President General Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan, a paragon of oppression. We might name other befriended tyrants - Ilham Aliyev's Azerbaijan, or Islam Karimov's Uzbekistan, or the al-Sabahs' Kuwait, or Oman. Maybe Morocco, or Alvaro Uribe's Colombia. There is a long list of pro-Washington tyrants.
For obvious reasons, Washington is unlikely to turn against its "friends". The new anti-tyranny crusade would seem, then, to be directed against "anti-American" tyrants. The question is, which tyrants are on the radar screen for the Pentagon's awesome arsenal of smart bombs and covert-operations commandos? Rice dropped a hint in her Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony two days prior to the Bush inauguration. The White House, of course, cleared her speech first.
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Target some tyrannies, nurture others
Rice hinted at Washington's target list of tyrants amid an otherwise bland statement in her Senate testimony. She declared, "in our world there remain outposts of tyranny ... in Cuba, and Burma and North Korea, and Iran and Belarus, and Zimbabwe". Aside from the fact that the designated secretary of state did not bother to refer to "Burma" under its present name, Myanmar, the list is an indication of the next phase in Washington's strategy of preemptive wars for its global domination strategy.
As reckless as this seems given the Iraq quagmire, the fact that little open debate on such a broadened war has yet taken place indicates how extensive the consensus is within the Washington establishment for the war policy. According to the January 24 New Yorker report from Seymour Hersh, Washington already approved a war plan for the coming four years of Bush II, which targets 10 countries from the Middle East to East Asia. The Rice statement gives a clue to six of the 10. She also suggested Venezuela is high on the non-public target list.
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cont
SPEAKING FREELY
The oil factor in Bush's 'war on tyranny'
By F... more
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1674 of 100000 people have signed – see totals by state and Congressional District.
Paris Says: No Pardons!
Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of Rep. Dennis Kucinich, President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney stand accused of 39 grave and impeachable offenses.
Most of these offenses, including war crimes, are felonies for which Bush and Cheney can be criminally prosecuted after they leave office, even if they are not impeached by Congress.
Obviously Bush and Cheney do not want to be prosecuted. So to protect themselves, George Bush's last official act will likely be pardons for himself, Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, and everyone else who committed crimes as part of the Bush Administration.
While most lawyers assume pardons cannot precede convictions, Gerald Ford set a powerful precedent by pardoning Richard Nixon in 1972 before he was even indicted, let alone convicted. If Ford could legally pardon Nixon, then George Bush can legally pardon himself.
So there is only one way to stop George Bush from pre-emptively pardoning himself, Cheney, and everyone else in his administration: Congress must impeach Bush and Cheney before Bush can issue such pardons.
The Founding Fathers clearly anticipated a corrupt President might pardon his co-conspirators, and specified impeachment as the remedy.
George Mason, the father of the Bill of Rights (1791-2002), argued at the Constitutional Convention that the President might use his pardoning power to "pardon crimes which were advised by himself" or, before indictment or conviction, "to stop inquiry and prevent detection."
James Madison, the father of the U.S. Constitution (1788-2007), added that "if the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter [pardon] him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty."
As your constituent, I urge you to impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney before they pardon themselves.1674 of 100000 people have signed – see totals by state and Congressional... more
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Truthout gives a detailed explanation of military spending and why!
Over the past eight years, the Pentagon has developed a pattern of requesting war spending through supplemental bills, which are not included in the general defense budget, making the defense budget look much smaller than it is, even as it grows. This is why the $611 billion authorization bill looks so huge: it includes both war and nonwar defense costs, which aren't grouped together in any other single bill.
Moreover, Sharp noted that the Pentagon regularly inserts war-related funding into its general defense budget, and tacks general defense costs, like new equipment, onto the supplemental bills that are used to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This type of messy budgeting can conceal skyrocketing military expenditures, many of which are unnecessary, according to Sharp.
"If the defense budget is indeed going to decline, the Pentagon will have to do something it hasn't done in years," Sharp said. "It will have to choose what to spend money on instead of just buying everything it wants."
Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information, points out in a recent report in Armed Forces Journal that, in contrast with their price tag, our military forces are smaller than they have been since the end of World War II, and major military equipment is older than it has ever been. Wheeler attributes this strange disparity to gross misappropriation of funding, with more money now being used to buy fewer weapons - some of which will not even be used in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Additionally, Sharp noted the high price tag of "high-risk missile defense programs," as well as Cold-War-era weapons systems that are not only costly, but also out of date.
"There's lots of low-hanging fruit, if ever there were a Congress or a Secretary of Defense willing to make cuts," Wheeler told Truthout.
Rethinking military spending right now is trickier than it might look, according to Craig Jennings, federal fiscal policy analyst at the government watchdog group OMB Watch. In a time of deep economic crisis, Jennings told Truthout, it doesn't make sense to cut government funding. Yet, a shifting of funds from the military to other priorities could work well.
"Defense spending is largely a white-collar jobs program...conti.. Truthout gives a detailed explanation of military spending and why!
Over the... more
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From his second-floor office inside San Francisco City Hall, Mayor Gavin Newsom heard the commotion every few minutes just below his window: yet another newly married same-sex couple laughing their way down the structure’s ornate stone front steps.
“All of them,” he said, “are cheers of joy.”
In 2004, Newsom kicked off the so-called “Winter of Love” when he oversaw the marriage of thousands of gay and lesbian couples at City Hall, only to see them overturned by the courts. Four years later, in light of the recent state Supreme Court ruling lifting the ban on same-sex unions, Newsom says he hopes the marriages this time will be recognized by the nation and the world.
But along with the joy has come the jeering: Those against same-sex unions have picketed outside City Hall. Newsom said he was particularly offended at one sign that referred to gays as “fags.”
“That is such a schoolyard slang term,” he said. “It’s understandable with a 6-year-old who knows no better, but to have an adult use that word in this day and age is unbelievable.”
He urged state voters not to be duped by what he called a conservative agenda put forth by President Bush.
“Defeating gay marriage is literally the Bush agenda -- being carried out by his surrogates in California,” Newsom said. “I don’t want to see Bush’s legacy carried out in our state. Voters are smarter than that in California." For Newsom, Tuesday was an emotional as well as a political day. While performing the wedding of two women, one with advanced breast cancer, Newsom said he choked back so much emotion he could barely speak.
“These are the moments that put life into perspective,” said the mayor, who lost his own mother to the disease. But Newsom said he didn’t have time to celebrate after officiating at one of the state’s first gay marriages on Monday night.
“I had to work on the budget,” he said. "Just my luck -- the hearings started this week. So I was multi-tasking. I call it a reality check.”From his second-floor office inside San Francisco City Hall, Mayor Gavin Newsom heard... more
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