A-Changin' Times (ACT)
Born in the aftermath of 9/11, ACT has become as political as the times.
Now a blog for alternative news, views and rants offered with a twist, a song and a smile. Fair and balanced.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize [sic] with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.
 — Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan Copyright 1963
(1991 Special Rider)

"A-Changin' Times: taking the best from the past to make the most of the present and to create a better future."

"What marching through the streets was to the Sixties, walking through the halls of Congress is now."

 — Marianne Williamson

You're visiting a website that incorporates a blogging feature, not "just" a blog.

Blog entries follow, most recent entries at the top

Saturday, August 23, 2003

	:: DUG853		8/23/2003 11:15:00 PM

From the Sudan Embassy: Time for the United States to Take Responsibility for the 1998 American Attack on the Al-Shifa Medicine Factory


The U.S. Administration has to date failed to compensate the victim, apologize to the Sudanese people or rebuild the plant, an act which would have shown a sense of morality in international relations.

CONTINUE

[This is one of those cases where the Republican Congress forced its hand during the Clinton administration. -v]

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	:: DUG853		8/23/2003 11:15:00 PM

Ashcroft Speech Interrupted by Protester

[This is GREAT! Too bad that it wasn't a live telecast! --DUG]

Thu Aug 21, 3:35 PM ET

DETROIT (Reuters) - A room packed with police officers failed to shield Attorney General John Ashcroft on Thursday from a protester who accused him of lying about the Sept. 11 attacks on America and Washington's declared war on terror.

Ashcroft was in Detroit as part of a nationwide tour he kicked off on Wednesday, aimed at defending provisions of the controversial anti-terrorism law passed soon after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

He was about midway through a 25-minute speech, at an event closed to the public but attended by more than 150 top policemen from across Michigan, when a self-described follower of perennial presidential campaigner Lyndon LaRouche interrupted him.

"Mr. Ashcroft, I'm with Lyndon LaRouche.

"We would like to know which of your terrorists are going to be used for a new 9/11, you and (Vice President) Dick Cheney (news -- web sites)," said the heckler, who got into the room in a downtown Detroit convention center by posing as a TV reporter.

"Tell them how you lie to the American people," he added.

Ashcroft and more than one red-faced police officer were visibly angered by the outburst from the man, who then left the convention center unescorted and joined dozens of anti-government demonstrators outside.

SOURCE

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	:: DUG853		8/23/2003 09:58:00 PM

Deal Between Musharraf And U.S. On Bin Laden?

Indo-Asian News Service
London, August 23

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has struck a deal with the US not to capture Osama bin Laden, fearing this could lead to unrest in Pakistan, according to a special investigation by The Guardian.

The paper reported on Saturday that bin Laden was being protected by three elaborate security rings manned by tribesmen stretching 192 km in diameter in northern Pakistan.

The paper's information is based on comments made by Mansoor Ijaz, an American of Pakistan origin who, the papers said, knows Al-Qaida better than most people and has had close contacts in Pakistan's intelligence agencies.

Ijaz believed an agreement was reached between Musharraf and US authorities shortly after bin Laden's flight from his stronghold Tora Bora in Afghanistan in December 2001.

The Pakistanis feared that to capture or kill bin Laden so soon after a deeply unpopular war in Afghanistan would incite civil unrest in Pakistan and trigger a spate of revenge Al Qaida attacks on Western targets across the world.

"There was a judgment made that it would be more destabilising in the longer term.

There would still be the ability to get him at a later date when it was more appropriate", Ijaz told The Guardian.

The Americans, according to Ijaz, accepted the argument, not least because of the shift in focus to the impending war in Iraq.

So the months that followed were centred on taking down not bin Laden but the "retaliation infrastructure" of Al-Qaida.

It meant that Musharraf frequently put out conflicting accounts of the status of bin Laden, while the US administration barely mentioned his name

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	:: DUG853		8/23/2003 06:39:00 PM

US Forces' Use of Depleted Uranium Weapons is "Illegal"
by Neil Mackay


BRITISH and American coalition forces are using depleted uranium (DU) shells in the war against Iraq and deliberately flouting a United Nations resolution which classifies the munitions as illegal weapons of mass destruction.

DU contaminates land, causes ill-health and cancers among the soldiers using the weapons, the armies they target and civilians, leading to birth defects in children.

Professor Doug Rokke, ex-director of the Pentagon's depleted uranium project -- a former professor of environmental science at Jacksonville University and onetime US army colonel who was tasked by the US department of defense with the post-first Gulf war depleted uranium desert clean-up -- said use of DU was a "war crime".

Rokke said: "There is a moral point to be made here.

"This war was about Iraq possessing illegal weapons of mass destruction -- yet we are using weapons of mass destruction ourselves."

He added: "Such double-standards are repellent."

The latest use of DU in the current conflict came on Friday when an American A10 tankbuster plane fired a DU shell, killing one British soldier and injuring three others in a "friendly fire" incident.

According to a August 2002 report by the UN subcommission, laws which are breached by the use of DU shells include: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the Charter of the United Nations; the Genocide Convention; the Convention Against Torture; the four Geneva Conventions of 1949; the Conventional Weapons Convention of 1980; and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, which expressly forbid employing
"poison or poisoned weapons" and "arms, projectiles or materials calculated to cause unnecessary suffering".

All of these laws are designed to spare civilians from unwarranted suffering in armed conflicts.

DU has been blamed for the effects of Gulf war syndrome -- typified by chronic muscle and joint pain, fatigue and memory loss -- among 200,000 US soldiers after the 1991 conflict.

It is also cited as the most likely cause of the "increased number of birth deformities and cancer in Iraq" following the first Gulf war.

"Cancer appears to have increased between seven and 10 times and deformities between four and six times," according to the UN subcommission.

The Pentagon has admitted that 320 metric tons of DU were left on the battlefield after the first Gulf war, although Russian military experts say 1000 metric tons is a more accurate figure.

In 1991, the Allies fired 944,000 DU rounds or some 2700 tons of DU tipped bombs.

A UK Atomic Energy Authority report said that some 500,000 people would die before the end of this century, due to radioactive debris left in the desert.

The use of DU has also led to birth defects in the children of Allied veterans and is believed to be the cause of the "worrying number of anophthalmos cases -- babies born without eyes" in Iraq.

Only one in 50 million births should be anophthalmic, yet one Baghdad hospital had eight cases in just two years.

Seven of the fathers had been exposed to American DU anti-tank rounds in 1991.

There have also been cases of Iraqi babies born without the crowns of their skulls, a deformity also linked to DU shelling.

A study of Gulf war veterans showed that 67% had children with severe illnesses, missing eyes, blood infections, respiratory problems and fused fingers.

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	:: DUG853		8/23/2003 04:33:00 PM

Congressional complicity in WMD duplicity
by Jacob G. Hornberger


Under our system of government, one branch of government is precluded from delegating its powers to another branch.

Thus, Congress cannot delegate its power to declare war to the president.

Yet that's exactly what the Congress did last fall when it voted to give the president power to decide whether to go to war against Iraq.

By authorizing the president to make that determination, the members of Congress abrogated their constitutional duty to make it.

In so doing, they ensured that there would be no independent screening process by which the president's justifications for war could be tested. (08/22/03)

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	:: DUG853		8/23/2003 04:05:00 PM

Fox loses bid to stop sale of Franken book
By Gail Appleson


NEW YORK (Reuters) -- A federal judge on Friday slammed Fox News' trademark infringement lawsuit against Al Franken and his publisher Penguin Group and refused to stop the sale of the liberal satirist's new book that pokes fun at the network and host Bill O'Reilly.

Fox charged that Franken had violated its trademarked phrase "fair and balanced" by including it on the cover of his book entitled "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them."

Fox is owned by News Corp. and Penguin is a unit of Pearson.

The book went on sale on Thursday.

"There are hard cases and there are easy cases.

"This is an easy case," said U.S. District Judge Denny Chin. "This case is wholly without merit both factually and legally." (08/22/03)

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Friday, August 22, 2003

	:: DUG853		8/22/2003 10:45:00 PM

Death By Slow Burn -- How America Nukes Its Own Troops
What 'Support Our Troops' Really Means
By Amy Worthington - The Idaho Observer


On March 30, an AP photo featured an American pro-war activist holding a sign: "Nuke the evil scum, it worked in 1945!"

That's exactly what George Bush has done.

America's mega-billion dollar war in Iraq has been indeed a NUCLEAR WAR.

Bush-Cheney have delivered upon 17 million Iraqis tons of depleted uranium (DU) weapons, a "liberation" gift that will keep on giving.

Depleted uranium is a component of toxic nuclear waste, usually stored at secure sites.

Handlers need radiation protection gear.

Over a decade ago, war-makers decided to incorporate this lethal waste into much of the Pentagon's weaponry. Navy ships carrying Phalanx rapid fire guns are capable of firing thousands of DU rounds per minute.

(1) Tomahawk missiles launched from U.S. ships and subs are DU-tipped.
[I understand that "DU-tipped" is a euphemism for solid-core DU--many pounds of DU is equivalent to a small amount of non-diluted uranium. -v]

(2) The M1 Abrams tanks are armored with DU.

(3) These and British Challenger II tanks are tightly packed with DU shells, which continually irradiate troops in or near them.

(4) The A-10 "tank buster" aircraft fires DU shells at machines and people on the battlefield.

(5) DU munitions are classified by a United Nations resolution as illegal weapons of mass destruction.

Their use breaches all international laws, treaties and conventions forbidding poisoned weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering.

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Thursday, August 21, 2003

	:: DUG853		8/21/2003 11:32:00 PM

Patriot II resurrected in VICTORY Act

"The Vital Interdiction of Criminal Terrorist Organizations Act of 2003" or "The VICTORY
Act" includes significant portions of ... Patriot Act II, which faced broad opposition from conservatives and liberals alike ....

The VICTORY Act also seems to be an attempt to merge the war on terrorism and the war on drugs into a single campaign." (8/21/03)

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	:: DUG853		8/21/2003 10:55:00 PM

Veterans plan to exact action at polls
GOP-led House reneges on pledge
to pass $3.2 billion for VA medical care

--Veterans are condemning House Republicans' failure to deliver a $3.2 billion boost for the Veterans Affairs Department that would have shrunk the agency's waiting list for medical care.

"A shameless betrayal" is how AMVETS sums it up.

"A moral outrage," the American Legion said.

"Abominable" is the word from the Non Commissioned Officers Association.

[This is the way that America is treating its OWN troops? -DUG]

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	:: DUG853		8/21/2003 08:47:00 PM

THINGS DUG UP BY DUG -- News and views from here and there

Hero Sandwiches

[A must-read. -DUG]

Not since the days of Marie Antoinette, or at least Nancy Reagan, has there been such a disconnect between the ruling elite and what Marie and Nancy might call the "unwashed masses."

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Secrets Of History: The CIA in Iran

This Tuesday marks the 50th anniversary of the CIA-backed coup in Iran which replaced Iran's first democratically elected Prime Minister with the dictatorial regime of Mohammad Reza Shah.

"The only thing new in this world is the history you do not know." -- Harriet Truman

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The spectre of Operation Ajax

Britain and the US crushed Iran's first democratic government. They didn't learn from that mistake.

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Kelly's talk of death in the woods

Dr. David Kelly told a UK diplomat he would probably be "found dead in the woods" if the UK invaded Iraq, the Hutton inquiry has heard.

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Wednesday, August 20, 2003

	:: DUG853		8/20/2003 11:24:00 PM

THINGS DUG UP BY DUG -- News and views from here and there

More common names that earn
special treatment from TSA

Many MIA travelers face identity crises
Names matching those of suspects can lead to detention by authorities
By Elinor J. Brecher, Miami Herald

Jose Alvarez gets detained every single time he re-enters the United States from
foreign business trips, because he has the same name as an international fugitve.

When 700,000 -- or 641,000 or 457,000 or even 358,000 -- people in America alone share your last name, you shouldn't be surprised if Department of Homeland Security personnel at airport international arrivals terminals want to talk to you.

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ALEA wiretaps threat to national security

Shooting Ourselves in the Foot
Grandiose Schemes for Electronic Eavesdropping
May Hurt More Than They Help
By Robert X. Cringely


Whom do you trust? If you are a policeman, you trust the police. How much information is enough? When it comes to the electronic gathering of intelligence information, it appears that no amount of information is enough. These two concepts have collided in America with the result that creating the very capability of gathering electronic intelligence is putting all of us in greater danger. The supposed cure may be worse than the disease. Maybe -- and only maybe -- we know a little more about what the bad guys in our society are doing, but it is coming at what might be a horrible cost. And a big part of the problem is that if you are a policeman, you trust the police.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation administers the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which was passed by Congress in 1994. CALEA was a response to advances in digital communications. It was a way for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to go beyond old-fashioned phone taps and listen in on mobile phone calls, pagers, the Internet and any other form of electronic messaging that might be used by enemies of the state.

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Businesses swamped with USA PATRIOT
subpoenas for consumer data


Demand for data by feds on rise
Patriot Act: Businesses feel burden of subpoenas, court orders about patrons.
Eunice Moscoso - Cox Washington Bureau

Washington --- Private businesses such as phone companies, banks and retail stores are facing more requests from law enforcement agencies for information about their customers, forcing many to deploy staff and upgrade equipment to meet the demand.

The subpoenas and court orders, many stemming from new government powers to search for terrorists, have alarmed civil rights groups and privacy advocates, who say that the government is secretly snooping on innocent citizens.

"It's very scary," said Oren Teicher, chief operating officer of the American Booksellers Association, a nonprofit group that represents 2,000 businesses.

Law enforcement subpoenas to bookstores have increased in recent years, including requests for titles of books purchased by customers, he said.

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Opposition to USA PATRIOT gaining momentum (8/16)

Momentum growing against Patriot Act,
government tries to shore up support

By Jesse J. Holland, Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Sept. 11 attacks convinced Congress that the federal government needed enhanced legal and investigative powers to pursue terrorists.

Yet in the two years since passing the Patriot Act, lawmakers have grown uneasy over Attorney General John Ashcroft's use of the expanded surveillance and detention powers. Not only are they leery of his requests for even greater authority, they are moving to curtail some of the tools they granted in the law.

The House voted last month to prohibit the use of federal funds on "sneak and peek" searches that the law says the government can conduct in criminal investigations without the property owner's or resident's knowledge and with warrants delivered afterward.

"This is the first of a whole group of assaults that we're going to make on the Patriot Act," said Rep. Butch Otter of Idaho, one of the few Republicans who voted against it two years ago. "It was built in one day, but we're going to have to tear it down piece by piece."

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Beware of VICTORY Act, Privacy Group warns

By Susan Jones, CNSNews.com
August 18, 2003

(CNSNews.com) -- A consumer watchdog group is sounding an alarm over legislation that hasn't even been introduced yet.

The National Consumer Coalition's [NCC] Privacy Group recently read a draft copy of the VICTORY Act, which "has some chilling implications for consumer privacy," the group said.

VICTORY stands for Vital Interdiction of Criminal Terrorist Organizations Act of 2003.

Attorney General John Ashcroft plans to promote both the VICTORY Act and the USA PATRIOT Act on his ten-day, 20-stop tour of America, which begins on Tuesday, Aug. 19.

According to the NCC's Privacy Group, the VICTORY legislation is "a grab-bag of enhanced police-state powers."

For example, the group says, one section of the bill gives the Attorney General the power to issue "administrative subpoenas" in investigations stemming from an extremely broad definition of "terrorism." (According to NCC, an "administrative subpoena" is like a search warrant automatically issued by the clerk of court, except there's no need to have a judge sign off on it.)

The NCC Privacy Group says that under the VICTORY Act, the Justice Department would have the power to subpoena consumer data from a business.

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VICTORY (over privacy) Act
Privacy Villain of the Week

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	:: DUG853		8/20/2003 07:43:00 PM

Ex-Prisoners Allege Rights Abuses by U.S. Military
By Tania Branigan
Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, August 19, 2003; Page A02

Prisoners released from the military camps at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Bagram air base in Afghanistan have said in a series of interviews with Amnesty International that they were subjected to human rights abuses.

The accounts, which provide some of the most detailed information so far on alleged violations, include claims that people were forcibly injected, denied sleep and forced to stand or kneel for hours in painful positions.

These charges are included in a new report from the human rights organization, which is reviewing 23 months of U.S. actions in the war on terror.

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	:: DUG853		8/20/2003 05:37:00 PM

LAW OF THE LAND
10 Commandments showdown tonight
Alabama chief justice must remove Decalogue display by end of day


The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-minute appeal by "Ten Commandment's judge" Roy Moore to avoid a federal judge's midnight deadline to remove his display of the Decalogue from an Alabama judicial building.

The justices said late this afternoon they would not be drawn into the dispute, at least for now, which centers on whether the monument violates the Constitution's First Amendment ban on establishment of religion, the Associated Press reported.

Defenders of Moore held a candlelight vigil just after midnight, launching a round-the-clock protest as the deadline loomed for the federal court order.

CONTINUE

[I'd imagine that the various 'Religion Controlled' goverments of the Middle East have no intention of removing their respective Holy-book 'slogans' from their public buildings!
Devoutly religious governments have been instrumental in doing wonders throughout history for that region so far! Where would they be without them?

"Power to the Pulpit"? or "Separation of Church and State"? You make the call. -DUG]

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	:: DUG853		8/20/2003 03:53:00 PM

Electricity Blackout Resource Center
Reason Public Policy Institute

"To help clarify many of the issues and to provide an easy reference site for a wide range of users, this Web site brings together commentaries from Reason Public Policy Institute experts, selected media references, and a broad array of related links and resources." (08/15/03)

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	:: DUG853		8/20/2003 02:17:00 PM

Former NATO commander bashes Bush

WASHINGTON, Aug. 17 (UPI) -- Former NATO commander Wesley Clark Sunday bashed the Bush Administration for launching a war against Iraq under what he called "false pretenses."

"You'd be taking them to the Better Business Bureau if you bought a washing machine the way we went into the war in Iraq," Clark told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer."

The retired Army general said more than half the Army's deployable strength is over in Iraq and if that "is the centerpiece of the war on terror, it shouldn't be."

Clark also said he will decide whether to run for president in two to three weeks.

Clark has not declared his party yet but has been quoted as saying he had not considered challenging Bush as a Republican.

Supporters of a presidential draft Clark campaign have been airing television spots, CNN said.

Clark called the effort "an authentic expression of political feeling."

SOURCE

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	:: DUG853		8/20/2003 01:40:00 PM

Smoking Gun: The CIA's Interest in Peak Oil
By Richard Heinberg

[A "must-read" from Information Clearing House. -DUG]

A recently declassified CIA document casts new light on some of the most significant geopolitical events of the past quarter century.

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Uncurious George
By Dom Stasi

[My country appears guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of what I cannot help but consider at the very least irresponsible, at the very most criminal conduct both at home and abroad. A "must-read" from Information Clearing House. --DUG]


"The first and simplest emotion of the human mind is curiosity."
-- Edmond Burke

Despite what is unfolding before us, the majority of this country's honest, freedom-loving people seem ever less interested in knowing, and ever more inclined toward believing that what we're being shown and what we're being told and what is being carried out in our name, is truth.


August, 14, 2003: I'd rather know than believe. Five words, penned by a paragon of thought, they have stayed in my memory and my own humble thoughts since I first encountered them several years ago. For me, the words leapt from the pages of Carl Sagan's masterpiece of reason entitled, The Demon Haunted World.

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	:: DUG853		8/20/2003 12:15:00 PM

Citizens' Indictment Of Bush, Cheney, Et Al:

This is to invite you to join us in a citizens' movement to indict members of the Bush administration now and George W. Bush when he leaves office.

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Tuesday, August 19, 2003

	:: DUG853		8/19/2003 07:03:00 PM

Bush lists 7 nations as potential Nuclear targets

The secret report, which was provided to Congress Jan. 8, says the Pentagon needs to be prepared to use nuclear weapons against China, Russia, Iraq, North Korea, Syria, Iran and Libya.

It says the weapons could be used "in the event of surprising military developments."

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	:: DUG853		8/19/2003 06:50:00 PM

How Did We Become So Hateful?

By James Brooks

Aug 16, 2003:

America's long festering animus toward Arabs and Islam has finally arrived.

From black tie affairs to your local barbecue, you can see it in the U..S.A.

You can hear it, too, whispering in the White House and booming from Capitol Hill.

Language that would get people fired if applied to blacks or Jews now passes without comment when used against Arabs and Muslims.

It can be found somewhere, every day, in almost every newspaper and TV news show in the land.

We tend to view this disturbing trend as the result of two, or twenty, or fifty years of politics and events.

But we are children of a history we do not know.

The roots of our "new" bigotry stretch through our racist American past to a thousand-year old blind spot, one big enough to drive half the world through.

It's time to learn where we came from.

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	:: DUG853		8/19/2003 05:09:00 PM

The Americans look ugly not only to Iraqis:

By Zvi Bar'el

Saddam is being replaced by the American soldier, who is viewed by a large segment of the population as being to blame for the evolving chaos.

While Iraqi citizens pay the price for this renewed tragedy, America's Middle East strategy now faces its greatest test.

SOURCE

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	:: DUG853		8/19/2003 01:21:00 PM

THINGS DUG UP BY DUG -- News and views from here and there

Al Qaida claims responsibility for blackout


"Al Qaida's Abu Hafs Brigades has claimed responsibility for the blackout last week in the Northeast and Midwest United States. A communiqué by the Abu Hafs Brigades made reference to Operation Quick Lightning in the Land of the Tyrant of this Generation."

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[Not sure how true this is. I guess we'll see, sooner or later. -DUG]


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Power Swings Caused Shutdown at Suburban Cleveland
Power Plant, Congressman Says

AP (OHIO) --

[Ed. Note: We don't exactly buy this explanation.]

"Unexplained surges in power demand"  

"Reporters were not permitted inside"

"Midwest power network recorded numerous voltage swings that stressed its system as early as midday Thursday, hours before high-voltage lines failed south of Cleveland."

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El Paso Electric Customers: Watch For Imposters

(KFOXtv.com) TEXAS

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	:: DUG853		8/19/2003 12:31:00 AM

America's apartheid detention program
by Flavia Alaya
CounterPunch


"[F]ew Americans are aware of this further irony: how inexorably 'Gateway New Jersey' has become 'Dungeon' or better, 'Bastille New Jersey' for those the government has deemed politically undesireable or threatening.

For nearly two years now, this is where it has 'detained,' or more precisely, dumped, thousands of them -- almost regardless of reason or the need to produce any -- into two immigration detention centers and five County jails, the memory holes we and the INS have complacently and complicitly created out of a mindless fear that extends beyond 'terrorists' to the strangers in our own neighborhoods." (08/16/03)

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Monday, August 18, 2003

	:: DUG853		8/18/2003 09:43:00 PM

Free State Project hits crucial 5,000 member mark  
Liberty For All

"One year ahead of schedule, America's fastest-growing liberty movement has just crossed its own Rubicon.

On August 8th, Colorado author and privacy activist Boston T. Party became the 5,000th person to join the Free State Project, an organization working to concentrate 20,000 liberty-minded activists in one state.

Their aim is to help reduce the size and scope of government there, making it a beachhead for individual liberty -- The Free State." (08/18/03)

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	:: DUG853		8/18/2003 01:01:00 AM

Taliban has recaptured Zabul province in southeastern Afghanistan

From Calpundit.com:

The Taliban has wrested control of most of Zabul province in southeastern Afghanistan — for the first time recapturing a province since being ousted from power by the US military in November 2001 — geopolitical analytical firm Stratfor reported.

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	:: DUG853		8/18/2003 12:27:00 AM

Rogues Have No Right To Self-defense
By Edward Herman, Information Clearing House

The view that U.S. targets have no right to defend themselves from a U.S. threat or actual attack goes back a long way.

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Sunday, August 17, 2003

	:: DUG853		8/17/2003 11:41:00 PM

Bush Hides A Terrorist
By Jack Balkwill

“Crazy people walkin’ ‘round with blood in their eye
And all she wants to do is dance, dance--
Wild-eyed pistol wavers who ain't afraid to die
And all she wants to do is dance”

-- Don Henley, “All She Wants to do is Dance.”


08/15/03: It is amazing that there are people who actually believe George II is waging a war on terrorism. It’s time for a little review.

Before 9/11, Bush was about as popular as Saddam Hussein. True, both had their supporters, but neither had actually won a fair and free election. Even Republican strategists admitted there was no way he had a shot at two-terms.

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Friends of terrorism
Bush's decision to bring back Otto Reich exposes
the hypocrisy of the war against terror
By Duncan Campbell


(The Guardian) -- His name may sound like that of a character from a Mel Brooks musical but Otto Reich is real enough. He has just been appointed by President Bush as assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs -- and both the manner of his appointment and the role he will now play have profound implications for a part of the world often disregarded since September 11.

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Pattern Of Aggression

Iraq was not the first illegal US-led attack on a sovereign state in recent times.
The precedent was set in 1999 in Yugoslavia, writes Kate Hudson.
Thursday August 14, 2003
The Guardian


The legality of the war against Iraq remains the focus of intense debate -- as is the challenge it poses to the post-second-world-war order, based on the inviolability of sovereign states. That challenge, however, is not a new one. The precursor is without doubt Nato's 1999 attack on Yugoslavia, also carried out without UN support. Look again at how the US and its allies behaved then, and the pattern is unmistakable.

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Stark Message of the Mutiny
Is the Philippine government bombing its own people for dollars?
By Naomi Klein
Friday August 15, 2003
The Guardian


Maybe it just seemed too outlandish: an out-of-control government fanning the flames of terrorism to pump up its military budget, hold on to power and violate civil liberties.

Why would Americans be interested in something like that?

What does it take to become a major news story in the summer of Arnie and Kobe, Ben and Jen? A lot, as a group of young Philippine soldiers discovered recently. On July 27, 300 soldiers rigged a giant Manila shopping mall with C-4 explosives, accused one of Washington's closest allies of blowing up its own buildings to attract US military dollars - and still barely managed to make the international news.

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	:: DUG853		8/17/2003 07:38:00 PM

U.S. Clamps Secrecy on Warnings Before 9/11

Marie Cocco
August 7, 2003

It's not just the Saudi secret that's being kept.

The recent report of the joint congressional committee that probed intelligence failures before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon reveals what the Bush administration doesn't want Americans to know about the American government.

You would not know this from media accounts about this report.

They have dwelled on what the Bush administration doesn't want us to know about the Saudi government.

This is the famous 28-page chapter, a series of blank lines across page after page, that the president refuses to declassify despite the pleadings of the bipartisan group of lawmakers and the Saudi government itself.

The dustup over Saudi secrets is exquisitely convenient.

It obscures George W. Bush's relentless hold on U.S. secrets and on information he maintains should be secret, though it has not necessarily been before now.

The report's appendix hints at what these secrets are, and why they are kept. "Access Limitations Encountered by the Joint Inquiry," the section is titled.

The White House refused to provide contents of the president's daily brief. This would clear up questions about how much specific information President Bush received about an impending attack during the spring and summer of 2001 - a period in which the intelligence community was reporting with alarm that a "spectacular" attack against the United States involving "mass casualties" was in the works.

CONTINUE

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	:: DUG853		8/17/2003 03:04:00 PM

Dubya's World -- Humorous Pictures of President George Dubya Bush

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