Thank God for Dahr

At long last, the culminating session of the World Tribunal on Iraq is upon us. As a witness providing testimony, like the other witnesses I'm being interviewed by many outlets. Today, one of them was by reporters for one of the larger newspapers in Turkey, the Yeni Safak Newspaper.

I'll leave the reporters nameless, for reasons you'll soon see.

The newspaper has been translating various articles of mine into Turkish and running them, particularly those concerning the most recent Fallujah massacre. The report who was interviewing me today told me that the former American consulate here, Eric Edelman, asked the Prime Minister of Turkey to pressure his paper to not run so many of my stories.

"Why did he do this," I asked him.

"Edelman said it was the wrong news," he told me with a smile.

Turns out Edelman also asked that articles by Robert Fisk and Naomi Klein not be run so often in Yeni Safak either.

He smiled at me while he watched the wheels turning in my head before I smiled back and said, "That makes me very happy, it means I'm doing my job as a journalist."

We laughed heartily together at this, as did everyone else at the table.

Reminds me of the obtuse hate mails I sometimes receive-confirmation that I am doing my job-they always make me smile.

So the American government is pressuring foreign countries to censor their news. Aside from the fact that this act is the height of arrogance by the United States, it makes it exceedingly clear why so many Americans who rely on the corporate media for their news continue to be so misinformed/un-informed about the goings on in Iraq. If the American government is attempting to censor the news in foreign countries, you can imagine what they are doing at home.

Because people like Edelman don't want citizens of the United States to know that events like the massacre of Fallujah or the atrocities in Abu Ghraib are not isolated incidents.

People like Edelman don't want people to know what one of my sources in Baquba just told me today.

His email reads:

"Near the city of Buhrez, 5 kilometers south of Baquba, two Humvess of American soldiers were destroyed recently. American and Iraqi soldiers came to the city afterwards and cut all the phones, cut the water, cut medicine from arriving in the city and told them that until the people of the city bring the "terrorists" to them, the embargo will continue."

The embargo has been in place now for one week now, and he continued:

"The Americans still won't anyone or any medicines and supplies into Buhrez, nor will they allow any people in or out. Even the Al-Sadr followers who organized some help for the people in the city (water, food, medicine) are not being allowed into the city. Even journalists cannot enter to publish the news, and the situation there is so bad. The Americans keep asking for the people in the city to bring them the persons who were in charge of destroying the two Humvees on the other side of the city, but of course the people in the city don't know who carried out the attack."

People like Edelman don't want people to know about the recent US attacks in Al-Qa'im and Haditha either. Attacks that Iraqis are describing as just as bad as the massacre of Fallujah.

On Haditha and Al-Qa'im, an Iraqi doctor sent me this email yesterday:

"Listen...we witnessed crimes in the west area of the country of what the bastards did in Haditha and Al-Qa'im. It was a crime, a really big crime we have witnessed and filmed in those places and recently also in Fallujah. We need big help in the western area of the country. Our doctors need urgent help there. Please, this is an URGENT humanitarian request from the hospitals in the west of the country. We have big proof on how the American troops destroyed one of our hospitals, how they burned the whole store of medication of the west area of Iraq and how they killed a patient in the ward...how they prevented us from helping the people in al-Qa'im. This is an URGENT Humanitarian request. The hospitals in the west of Iraq ask for urgent help...we are in a big humanitarian medical disaster..."

People like Edelman don't want the public to know that the same tactics used in Fallujah by the US military-posting snipers around the city to shoot anyone who moves, targeting ambulances, impeding medical care, or the detaining of innocent civilians en masse.

After all, Fallujah is the model. Fallujah is our Guernica. And now, Haditha, Al-Qa'im can be added to the list, with Baquba and Buhrez under deconstruction.

More Bushit

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democrats said Thursday that White House adviser Karl Rove should either apologize or resign for accusing liberals of wanting "therapy and understanding" for the September 11 attackers, escalating partisan rancor that threatens to consume Washington.

Rove's comments -- and the response from the political opposition -- mirrored earlier flaps over Democratic chairman Howard Dean's criticism of Republicans, a House Republican's statement that Democrats demonize Christians and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin's comparison of the Guantanamo prison to Nazi camps and Soviet gulags.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan came to Rove's defense, saying the president's chief political adviser was "simply pointing out the different philosophies and different approaches when it comes to winning the war on terrorism."

"Of course not," McClellan said when asked by reporters whether President Bush will ask Rove to apologize.

Rove, in a speech Wednesday evening to the New York state Conservative Party just a few miles north of Ground Zero, said, "Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." Conservatives, he said, "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war."

He added that the Democratic Party made the mistake of calling for "moderation and restraint" after the terrorist attacks.

During the 2004 campaign, Bush dismissed the notion of negotiating with terrorists and said, "You can't sit back and hope that somehow therapy will work and they will change their ways."

Bitter divide

Rove's comments quickly escalated the bitter divide between the parties that could get worse as Congress prepares for what may be a drawn-out political fight, possibly this summer, over a Supreme Court nominee.

New York Sen. Charles Schumer said Rove "took something that is virtually sacred to New Yorkers" -- the tragedy of the September 11 attacks -- "and politicized it for political, opportunistic purposes."

"Karl Rove is not just another political operative," added New York's other Democratic senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton. "He sits in the White House, a few doors down from the president."

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday, Clinton urged Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to repudiate the "insulting comment."

Rumsfeld replied that it "is unfortunate when things become so polarized or so politicized."

Schumer and Clinton joined the four Democratic senators from Connecticut and New Jersey in a letter to Rove requesting that he immediately retract his comments. "To try to score partisan, political points at the expense of the 3,000 victims and their families was unacceptable and opportunistic," they wrote.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-New York, wrote a similar letter to Rove from House Democrats.

Calls for apology

Schumer said Rove's comments might have been made in the heat of the moment and he was willing to accept an apology. But "if they try to stonewall," he said, "then I think resignation would be called for."

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, also said Rove, the political mastermind behind Bush's election victories, should fully apologize for his remarks or resign. Dean said Bush should "condemn Karl Rove's desperate and divisive attempt to help the Republicans regain their political footing."

Republicans, meanwhile, have recently condemned House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, for calling the Iraq War a "grotesque mistake," and demanded and finally got an apology from Durbin for his linking detainee abuse and Nazis.

And they were unapologetic about Rove's comments.

"The Republican leadership priority is to have our troops hunt down, kill or capture terrorists before they try to attack us again at home," said Ron Bonjean, spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois.

"The Democratic leadership priority is to actively engage in the politics of division and distraction that can undermine our national security in favor of a left-wing agenda," he said.

Increasing public doubts about the Iraq war have emboldened Democrats to challenge the president's policies. Republicans, in turn, contend that criticism undermines the war on terror.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Republican running for re-election in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, issued a statement urging both sides to keep politics out of the war on terrorism.

"We owe it to those we lost to keep partisan politics out of the discussion and keep alive the united spirit that came out of 9/11," he said.

but remember we're free-er and happier-er

High risk' of WMD attack in decade

U.S. survey finds more nations will acquire nuclear weapons

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The chance of an attack with a weapon of mass destruction somewhere in the world in the next 10 years runs as high as 70 percent, arms experts have predicted in a U.S. survey.

Most of the more than 80 experts surveyed in the report released on Tuesday believed one or two new countries will acquire nuclear weapons in the next five years, with two to five countries joining the nuclear club during the next decade.

The survey, commissioned by U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, also showed that four out of five people said their country was not spending enough on non-proliferation efforts.

The most likely scenario for a nuclear attack would be for terrorists to use a weapon they made themselves with material acquired on the black market, the survey said.

"The results underscore the need to improve security around tactical nuclear weapons and nuclear material in Russia and expand our ability to detect transfer of weapons or materials from rogue states to terrorist organizations," said a summary of a report outlining the survey results.

Weapons of mass destruction (WMD) are designed to kill large number of people, using either nuclear, biological, chemical or radiological means.

In 1991, in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, Republican Lugar and former Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn initiated a program to combat the proliferation threat posed by former Soviet states.

In an introduction to the report he commissioned, Lugar said the success of that program proves the spread of WMD can be stopped by building "extraordinary international relationships."

He said establishing a "worldwide system of accountability" for WMD could prevent terrorists from acquiring such weapons.

"Even if we succeed spectacularly at building democracy around the world, bringing stability to failed states and spreading economic opportunity broadly, we will not be secure from the actions of small, disaffected groups that acquire weapons of mass destruction," Lugar said.

"Everything is at risk if we fail in this one area."

Rogue states

Following the September 11 attacks on America, U.S. President George W. Bush made a bid to crack down on regimes who sponsor terrorists.

In 2002 Bush labeled pre-war Iraq, Iran and North Korea as part of an "axis of evil."

"By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger," he said at the time.

The United States went to war against Iraq in 2003, claiming leader Saddam Hussein was maintaining clandestine stockpiles of nerve gas, biological weapons and secret nuclear weapons and missile programs.

Washington has also been trying to get North Korea to come to the table to curb its nuclear ambitions. In February this year, Pyongyang said it possessed nuclear weapons.

Bush has also said that Iran must not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons. Tehran says its program is purely for the production of energy.

'Dirty bomb'

The survey found that the most significant risk of a WMD attack was from a radiological weapon, or a so-called "dirty bomb," in which radioactive material is put into a conventional explosive device.

The next highest risk was of an attack with a chemical or biological weapon, with a nuclear attack judged least likely.

However, when the risks were combined to determine the probably of an attack with any form of WMD, the survey put the chances as high as 50 percent over the next five years, with the probability increasing to as high as 70 percent over the next decade.

Among the experts who participated in the survey were Nunn; retired Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf; former defense secretaries William Cohen and Frank Carlucci; former CIA Director James Woolsey; former National Security Adviser Richard Allen; former Iraq chief weapons inspector Richard Butler; former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott; and David Kay, who led the hunt for WMD in Iraq after the fall of Saddam.

More laws to burden your brain

Rotten.com: our gapingmaw.com and other sites shut in anticipation of 2257
Amended Section 2257 recordkeeping regulations go into effect at midnight tonight. The federal law requires website owners to keep records documenting, among other things, that "every performer portrayed in a visual depiction of actual sexually explicit conduct" is over the age of 18.

In anticipation, porn sites and others that offer adult content are preparing to make their sites compliant -- or taking them offline. Today, several sites in the Rotten.com family are going dark for that reason, including ratemyboner.com (like amihotornot for amateur snapshots of a particular male anatomical part in a particular state) and gapingmaw.com (which you could call an industrial-strength grossout blog).

Section 2257 is ostensibly aimed at preventing the exploitation of minors in pornography. However, some free speech advocates argue it provides the conservative Bush administration with the power to silence other websites deemed offensive. Here's the full text of the law: Link to U.S. Code : Title 18 : Section 2257.

And here is the full text of the enabling regulations which are more widely contested than the US code itself: Link. The amendment was signed into law last month by US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

A message on gapingmaw.com -- which wasn't a porn site, per se, but did include some sexually explicit images -- says:

CENSORED BY US GOVERNMENT 18 USC 2257

Yes, that is correct. The things that used to be here, the very funny things that you want to read, have been made retroactively illegal by the US government, in a side-handed attack on the pornography industry.

We might mention that the material here isn't even pornography as you normally think of it -- this site is just adult humor, in essay format, with some illustrations. The government is mandating that we meet certain bookkeeping requirements, ones impossible to meet for this site. Never mind that those requirements do not actually gain the public anything. This is the strongest attack on free speech since the passage of the CDA, and oddly, the media seems to have hardly noticed. The penalty for not abiding by these bookkeeping requirements is five years prison.

The regulations were promulgated by Alberto Gonzales, US Attorney General appointed by George Bush. If you voted for Bush, this is your fault. If you think this country is free, you are sadly mistaken. No nation has freedom when it is run by religious zealots.

The adult biz advocacy group Free Speech Coalition (FSC) filed a lawsuit last week challenging 2257, and AVN has more on that: Link. Here's an article on adult news site XBiz about last-minute compliance preparations in the porn world

Say it with me ...... conspiracy

Washington, DC, Jun. 13 (UPI) -- Insider notes from United Press International for June 8

A former Bush team member during his first administration is now voicing serious doubts about the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9-11. Former chief economist for the Department of Labor during President George W. Bush's first term Morgan Reynolds comments that the official story about the collapse of the WTC is "bogus" and that it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7. Reynolds, who also served as director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas and is now professor emeritus at Texas A&M University said, "If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an 'inside job' and a government attack on America would be compelling." Reynolds commented from his Texas A&M office, "It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the cause of the collapse of the twin towers and building 7. If the official wisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believe it is, then policy based on such erroneous engineering analysis is not likely to be correct either. The government's collapse theory is highly vulnerable on its own terms. Only professional demolition appears to account for the full range of facts associated with the collapse of the three buildings."

Starting somewhere new.

Greetings and welcome,

Ok so I've moved to Blogspot but if you're here, more than likely you're here because I told you I was here. I hope that I can get a bit more responses and reactions here than I did on modblog. I loved Modblogs layout but I just seemed to be inundated with 12 year olds who really didnt understand nor want to understand most of the stuff I was writing about. We'll see what happens.