32-3-January 8-1

As Shrub the Select enters the second half of his reign, numerous pundits predict he'll use his "political capital" from last November's elections to "reform Social Security." Never mind the thousands of 401ks and state pension funds lacerated from the stock market carnage- the Bushies are adamant about putting Social Security at risk as well. Expect in the coming months to be pumped senseless by the corporate-dominated media, trumpeting all the wondrous things privatization will accomplish. How it'll miraculously transform many seniors into affluent and happy retirees, and oh, by the way..."save Social Security" for future generations too. And - if you believe that - I have a piece of oceanfront land off Barbados east coast to sell you. At cut rate prices. smirkingchimp.com

Charting the hidden force at street corners January 6, 2003 There's a steadily growing conviction among some researchers that electromagnetic fields can promote bad things — cancer, miscarriages, depression, Lou Gehrig's disease and, possibly, Alzheimer's disease. But there's all-too-scanty knowledge of how much exposure people get in the course of a day. To help bridge this knowledge gap, Magda Havas, who teaches in the Faculty of Environmental and Resource Studies at Trent University in Peterborough, has taken readings on the main streets of 60 Ontario communities ranging in size from Toronto (2.3 million people) to Burk's Falls (1,000). She found that 49 of the communities (82 per cent) had readings above the level that is associated with childhood leukemia. The worst of all the communities, by far, was Kingston, followed by Oshawa, London, Peterborough, and Toronto. thestar.com

Thousands of US nuns abused by priests: study January 6 2003 Up to 40 per cent of nuns in the United States have been sexually abused, often at the hands of a priest or another nun, according to an independent study. The survey - conducted by researchers at St Louis University and partly paid for by several orders of Catholic nuns - was completed in 1996 but kept under wraps because some Catholic officials feared the information would create a scandal. It was reported yesterday in the St Louis Post-Dispatch. smh.com.au

Bush rallies nervous troops: President makes his case for war with Iraq as some soldiers express doubts January 5, 2003 By SCOTT LINDLAW FORT HOOD, Texas - Fired-up soldiers cheered President Bush on Friday as he told them they may be called into combat ``to secure our country and to keep the peace.'' Privately, they showed more anxiety about the prospect of being sent to fight Iraq. If it comes to war, ``this generation of Americans is ready,'' Bush said. ``We accept the burden of leadership. We act in the cause of peace and freedom. And in that cause we will prevail.'' Fort Hood is home to some 42,000 soldiers - the most at any U.S. military base. More than 25,000 fought in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and soldiers here would almost certainly be deployed in another war with Iraq. While the soldiers Bush met here Friday brimmed with confidence, others speaking privately, expressed doubts about the need for war with Iraq. Bush delivered his rationale while emphasizing war is a last resort. As he laid out his case, the boisterous crowd of 4,000 camouflage-clad soldiers fell silent. Iraq, he said, is a ``great threat to the United States,'' and Saddam Hussein has ``publicly proclaimed his hatred for our country.'' registerguard.com

Totalitarianism nears Without protest, Americans are giving up freedom January 05, 2003 By GLEN T. MARTIN In Nazi Germany at this time of year, people freely shopped in large department stores for gifts for family and friends. The streets were full of traffic. It was "business as usual" for most of the citizens. While in the colonial states conquered by the Nazis, and in the concentrations camps for Jews, gays and communists, life was a living nightmare of dehumanization and human-rights violations. In the United States today, people freely shop in large department stores for gifts, and the streets are full of traffic. While in our most recent victim states of Afghanistan, Iraq under murderous sanctions, Argentina after engineering its economic collapse, and Colombia under U.S. military aid for repression, life is a living nightmare of dehumanization and human-rights violations. roanoke.com

Bush accused of civil rights clampdown January 5, 2003 Ed Vulliamy President George Bush is presiding over the most secretive administration in 'living memory', according to American civil rights groups and congressmen. Critics accuse him of orchestrating an unprecedented clampdown on freedom of information and the press. This has resulted in a dramatic increase in documents and proceedings being classified secret and an overall shutdown of the free flow of information over the government's political and legal conduct. They are also concerned over what they see as alarming restrictions on the Freedom of Information Act. Democrat Senator Patrick Leahy, first elected in 1974, said: 'Since I have been here, I have never known an administration that it has been more difficult to get information from.' The administration, under the aegis of Vice-President Dick Cheney, has outlined a new philosophy of emphasis on executive privileges and power. Cheney was at the center of one of the most controversial clashes over secrecy, when he refused to hand over records of the consultations behind the government energy plan, which involved and benefited many of his personal connections in the business and featured the disgraced Enron corporation. observer.co.uk

Bush's Master Plan For The Internet January 5, 2003 By Kurt Nimmo Bush and his Machiavellian minions will no longer put up with you roaming free into dangerous territory on the internet. You need to be corralled, electronically tethered, kept away from sites promoting conspiracy theories -- in other words, information the corporate media, the official US Ministry of Disinformation, does not want you to read or see. It's now increasingly obvious the Bushites want to lock us up in a hermetically sealed informational box and throw away the key. All the information they consider worthwhile will be pumped in through a one-way hole. During war, as they say, the first causality is truth. And war -- all the time and everywhere people resist -- is what Bush will deliver. It will be easier for him to accomplish this if you can't read the truth, if you remain ignorant, or if you are obstructed from organizing and speaking out on the internet against war and madness. Bush knows this -- or, at least, those around him know this. The internet, regardless of its trashy and lame commercial characteristics, is a nearly perfect medium for organizing. It's a thorn in the side of neo-cons and fascists everywhere. rense.com

HOMELAND INSECURITY Terror alerts manufactured? FBI agents say White House scripting 'hysterics' for political effect January 5, 2003 By Jon Dougherty Intelligence pros say the White House is manufacturing terrorist alerts to keep the issue alive in the minds of voters and to keep President Bush's approval ratings high, Capitol Hill Blue reports. The Thursday report said that the administration is engaging in "hysterics" in issuing numerous terror alerts that have little to no basis in fact. worldnetdaily.com

UN inspectors fear Bush will ignore them January 5, 2003 Peter Beaumont, and Ed Vulliamy UN weapons inspectors in Iraq fear their work - which has failed to turn up any evidence thus far of weapons of mass destruction - will still be used as an excuse to trigger a US-led invasion of Iraq. Leaks from the inspections teams - and the two agencies in charge of them, Unmovic and the International Atomic Energy Agency - have fuelled an increasingly frenetic diplomatic effort among opponents of the war. The weapons inspection teams in Iraq have visited breweries and former nuclear plants, and raided missile factories and pharmaceutical production lines. They have examined former weapons factories and interviewed scientists and university technicians. As of yesterday they had checked 230 sites in all. If one is to believe the few inspectors who have been prepared to be interviewed anonymously, they have found absolutely nothing. observer.co.uk

Preemptive impeachment Law professor stands ready to draft articles for any member of the House January 5, 2002—"We sentenced Nazi leaders to death for waging a war of aggression," says International Law Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. By contrast, Prof. Boyle wants merely to impeach George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft for their plans to invade Iraq and create a police state in America. onlinejournal.com

Bush to propose bigger-than-expected tax cut January 5, 2003 By Edmund L. Andrews President Bush will propose as much as $600 billion in tax cuts and new spending measures over the next 10 years, an economic stimulus package nearly twice as big as even Republican lawmakers had been expecting, administration officials said Friday. Bush may also push for an even bigger cut in dividend taxes than the 50 percent reduction administration officials were considering in late December refuting speculation that he might slow down on reductions for people in the top tax bracket. timesstar.com

Making a Killing: The Business of War January 5, 2003 Gone is the superpower ideological divide that once gave a strange sort of order to the world’s wars. In its place are entrepreneurs, selling arms or military expertise and support, and companies, whose drilling and mining in some of the hottest spots often prolong conflict and instability. A nearly two-year investigation by the Center for Public Integrity’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists into the business of war has found that these non-state actors – despite their appearance of being freelancers – have copious connections to intelligence services, multinational corporations, political figures and criminal syndicates in the United States, Western and Eastern Europe, Russia, Africa and the Middle East. Often, they work as proxies for national or corporate interests whose involvement is buried under layers of secrecy. "Private military companies, or PMCs as the new world order’s mercenaries have come to be known, allow governments to pursue policies in tough corners of the world with the distance and comfort of plausible deniability. publicintegrity.org

The Religious Self-Obsession of George Bush January 5, 2003 by Lakshmi While liberals have spilled plenty of ink excoriating Dubya and his bomb-Saddam policy, few can match the eloquence of conservative columnist Georgie Anne Geyer. Under the guise of reviewing Bob Woodward's latest tome in the American Conservative, she launches a scathing attack on Bush and the rest of the War Party -- "the radical, macho, neocon, Likudnik, former Cold Warriors who are not .. at all conservatives in any traditional sense. She writes, "It is these “warriors,” or the “War Party,” or the “cabal,” as different elements in the press have dubbed them, who would soon weave their own obsession with Iraq over a Texas president first totally inexperienced in foreign affairs and finally obsessed himself that he and he alone -- through his instinct rather than his intellect -- has been called to a religious duty in the Middle East to rid the world of Saddam Hussein!" But why stop at Saddam! Dutiful Bush is just as happy to, in his words, "export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of our great nation." alternet.org

US stores have blue Christmas January 5, 2003 David Teather and Richard Wray Asda may be powering ahead but its parent Wal-Mart and fellow US retailers have had a tough Christmas season. On Boxing Day, Wal-Mart cut its estimates for sales growth in December from 3%-5% to 2%-3%. Even though sales had taken off in the weekend before Christmas and into Christmas Eve - with sales of more than $1bn on two of those days - it was not enough to offset a slump earlier in December. This bad news was underlined yesterday when Home Depot, the world's second largest retailer behind Wal-Mart, saw its shares fall to six-year lows on Wall Street. The DIY chain disclosed late on Thursday that December sales were 10% lower than 2001. It warned that full-year earnings would be lower than expected and said it had little hope for improvement in 2003. Radioshack, the largest retailer of mobile phones in the US, also cited sluggish holiday sales as it cut forecasts for fourth quarter profits yesterday. The warning hit the main mobile phone networks in the US with Sprint PCS shares falling 7%. The bad news from retailers put the brakes on a rally from the Dow Jones. At mid-day, the index was 30 points lower at 8577. guardian.co.uk

Layoffs report falls victim to cuts January 5, 2003 By AMBER VEVERKA A federal program that tracks large corporate layoffs nationwide has ended, the victim of budget cuts. The "mass layoffs statistics" program, run by the U.S. Department of Labor, will no longer report the number of U.S. companies laying off 50 or more workers at a time. States use the information to know which industries are bleeding and to get help to layoff victims. The program's death comes at an especially bad time for the Carolinas, which are hard hit by manufacturing layoffs and textile mill closings. Ted Gladden of the S.C. Employment Security Commission said of the mass layoffs program. "We use this information to try to find out what happens to people after layoffs. ... This is the information you've got to have to make good decisions, for people deciding the careers and job market they should be training for." miami.com

Los Alamos Directors Resign - 4Lab Had Ties To 911?January 5, 2003 By Nico Haupt 2 directors at Los Alamos resigned- Alamos has also Sep11th and Iraq ties! January 3rd, 2002 Globalfreepress.com ewing 2001Today the NY Times revealed, that last year's mini scandal at Los Alamos finally led to some new results. Both directors resigned: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/03/national/03ALAM.html "...The director of the nation's pre-eminent nuclear weapons laboratory has resigned amid investigations of corruption and missing equipment, officials said yesterday. John C. Browne, director of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico since November 1997, submitted his resignation on Dec. 23, according to the University of California, which manages the laboratory for the Department of Energy. Joseph Salgado, the laboratory's principal deputy director, also resigned. The resignations will take effect on Monday..." Ignored however in the US Media, are also some disturbing ties of Los Alamos to the Sep11th-story -and Iraq! On February 28th, 2001, Los Alamos entered into a support contract with Nuclear Solutions, who merged last year with RTS. As learned, secretly hidden in some business news, 911-Insider trader suspect, former FBI agent Derrick M Cleveland, sold some stocks of Nuclear Solutions Inc. shortly after the Sep11th- attack, a company which is connected with Los Alamos. http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/fbi/uselgindy502ind.pdf http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/25/business/25FRAU.html In May 2002, Cleveland was arrested together with other 2 FBI agents Jeffrey A. Royer and Lynn Wingate, who had been accused of having prior knowledge on the Sep11th attack. rense.com

Dollar stands on a precipice January 5, 2003 As the late Herbert Stein, former chairman of the US council of economic advisers, once said: "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." The combination of an ever-rising US current account deficit with a strong dollar must cease. Indeed, it already is doing so. The currency weakened in 2002. It is rather likely to weaken further in 2003. The present course of the US economy is unsustainable. Net US liabilities to the rest of the world are some 25 per cent of gross domestic product - in the neighbourhood of $2,500bn (Ł1,562bn). In the first three quarters of 2002, the current account deficit ran at close to five per cent of GDP. As recently as 1997, however, the deficit was only 1.5 per cent of GDP. It is bigger this year than two years ago, despite last year's economic slowdown. news.ft.com

Fall in dollar undermines manufacturing January 5, 2003 Charlotte Denny Manufacturers in Britain and Europe entered the new year in a dismal state, after the fall in the dollar undermined exports to the American market last month, new surveys showed yesterday. The Chartered Institute for Purchasing and Supply blamed the dollar's slide for the first fall below 50 in its key activity indicator for UK manufacturing since July. Readings below 50 signal that the sector is contracting. "Total order books were reported to have been undermined by the uncompetitive nature of UK manufacturers abroad. US dollar markets were reported to have been particularly tight, owing to the weakness of the American currency," CIPS said. guardian.co.uk

White House Silent on Racial Controversy GOP Official Expresses Regret Over Distributing Article Critical of Civil War Outcome January 5, 2003 By Thomas B. Edsall The White House and the Republican National Committee declined to comment yesterday on a racial controversy involving a Bush administration ally who is campaigning to become chairman of the California Republican Party. Bill Back, the California party's vice chairman running for the top job, sent out an e-mail newsletter in 1999 that reproduced an essay that said "history might have taken a better turn" if the South had won the Civil War and that "the real damage to race relations in the South came not from slavery, but from Reconstruction, which would not have occurred if the South had won." washingtonpost.com

The Bush Vision and the Culture of Power January 5, 2003 by SAUL LANDAU "Why do they hate us?" George W. Bush asked. I waited for his answer as did millions of others after the 9/11 events. We had lost our collective virginity when we had to acknowledge that some serious characters did not have our best interests at heart. W went on to say that they hate Americans because we re free, referring, I presumed, to the great institutions our founding fathers left us. He implied that the mass murdering fanatics of Al Qaeda loved a non-free system. And while he assured us of our safety, Attorney General Ashcroft and Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge, periodically warned us about the imminent threat of another terrorist assault. Well, one learns to live with contradictions, but where, I ask myself, does George W. Bush intend to lead us? The head of a large empire needs a world vision, some sense that he knows that his policies coincide with the future, a road map that takes us beyond they hate us and we love freedom. President Bush s speeches, remarks at infrequent press conferences and occasional off the cuff quips, however, don t offer much clarity about how he sees the coincidence between his policies and say, the future of the environment or the fate of the more than half the world s desperately poor people, factors one must consider when thinking about the future in any reasonable form. counterpunch.org

The Easy Way Out January 5, 2003 By: Mike Schiller Some lawmakers are taking the tactics of holding the lives of innocent children hostage as a bargaining chip to "avoid war". Yet it strikes me as predictable that these lawmakers would sooner sacrifice the lives of innocent people to prove a point, than they would sacrifice their own political careers to prove a point. Only one Democrat thus far has made such a sacrifice, and that was Cynthia McKinney. I admire her and respect her, and to this day I maintain she may have been the last respectable Democrat, for she willingly subjected herself to ridicule and political defeat in order to make the point that an independent investigation of the events of September 11th was necessary. The lawmakers who now propose to sacrifice other people's lives in the name of avoiding war continue to refuse to carry Cynthia McKinney's message. McKinney's message was a much more potent tool in helping the public understand why a war with Iraq would only serve business interests while such a war would undermine national security. Yet no lawmaker is willing to stand up and speak the truth. These lawmakers would rather threaten the lives of Generations X and Y than admit their own knowledge of information that could damage this administration. They would let America's youth die in vain in order to cover up their complicity in the ongoing destruction of everything America once was. They would sooner kill the American people than kill the system of campaign contributions and lobbying that has put the fate of America into the hands of the military-industrial complex. fp.enter.net

The credibility of Dictator Bush’s multibillion-dollar missile defence plans are being questioned January 5, 2003 by leading scientists after claims that the results of key tests were falsified. [Editor's note: Since the *entire* Bush mis-ministration was installed under false pretenses, it is no surprise that dictator Bush would falsify missile test results. --Lori Price] timesonline.co.uk