Wilsons Leather cutting 100 stores, 1,000 jobs
January
25, 2004 The
Associated Press Minn.
Wilsons The Leather Experts is closing about 100 stores, nearly 20
percent of its total, and is eliminating more than 1,000 jobs after a dismal
holiday season. On
Thursday, the leather apparel and accessories chain laid off 70 corporate
workers, including 60 at its Brooklyn Park headquarters and distribution center.
The store closings,
to be completed in the next four months, will cut 950 retail jobs. dfw.com
Left behind in the U.S.A.
With
jobs heading overseas, trade issues resonating with many
January
25, 2004 BY LORI ARATANI
The hand-lettered sign on Pat Odell's snow-covered
lawn in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is testament to a man who's trying to reinvent
himself. Snow shoveling, it reads. Light construction. Just call -- cellphone or
land line, it doesn't matter. Just call. Up
until two years ago, Odell had a good-paying job with full benefits making
printing presses at the Goss factory in town. Then one day, Goss padlocked the
gates of its factory and announced that its operations were moving to China. miami.com
America's Prison Habit
January
25, 2004 By Alan Elsner After 25 years of explosive growth
in the U.S. prison system, is this country finally ending its love affair with
incarceration? Perhaps, but as in any abusive relationship, breaking up will be
hard to do. Since 1980 the U.S. prison and jail population has quadrupled in
size to more than 2 million. In the process, prisons have embedded themselves
into the nation's economic and social fabric. A powerful lobby has grown up
around the prison system that will fight hard to protect the status quo. washingtonpost.com
Our Man in Baku
January 25, 2004 ILHAM ALIYEV was inaugurated as
president of the oil-rich Muslim country of Azerbaijan three months ago after an
election condemned by international observers as blatantly fraudulent. When
members of the opposition tried to protest, they were brutally beaten by police.
There followed a massive, nationwide crackdown in which more than 1,000 people
were arrested, including opposition leaders, activists from nongovernmental
organizations, journalists and election officials who objected to the fraud.
More than 100 remain in prison, including most of the senior opposition
activists. A new report by Human Rights Watch documents numerous cases of
torture, including severe beatings, electric shock, and threats of rape against
the opposition leaders. Mr. Aliyev, who succeeded his strongman father,
meanwhile has been consolidating dictatorial powers: Most recently he was named
director of Azerbaijani radio and television. Azerbaijan, in short, might look
like a good place for President Bush to start implementing his frequently
declared policy of "spreading freedom" to the world -- and in
particular the greater Middle East. Instead he is doing the opposite. The
president and his top aides have embraced Mr. Aliyev, excused his fraud and
ignored his human rights violations -- not to mention reliable reports of his
personal corruption. The administration waived congressional restrictions to
grant Azerbaijan $3 million in military aid and is winding up to give still
more. washingtonpost.com
Kucinich says
Iraq policy will lead to military draft January
25, 2004 ANNE SAUNDERS America's
policy in Iraq will lead to a resumption of the military draft, Democrat Dennis
Kucinich told high school and college students Saturday. "The
body count keeps rising," Kucinich said, pointing to reports of more deaths
in Iraq. "We are not
that far away from this country moving toward a draft," he said. "It's
just inevitable because the number of troops are going down and the U.S.
commitments are worldwide and there is a point at which that is the next
step." sfgate.com
Christian Evangelicals in Iraq: A Time-Bomb Waiting to Explode
January
25, 2004
Rene L.
Gonzalez I've always had a big axe to grind with these Christian evangelicals.
Ever since being accosted by one fervent follower in the hallways of a building
at the University of Massachusetts and pressured to "recognize Jesus as my
savior", I've had a very big distaste for their kind. These "know it
all" pseudo-Christians make me sick, and I'll tell you why. The British
Telegraph newspaper recently featured an article on a supposed "war for
souls" being waged by American Christian Evangelicals in Iraq. The article
boiled my blood. My first reaction was, "How dare these religious nuts
think they know better than Iraqis what their beliefs should be?" I thought
the whole thing reflected a very ugly racism and paternalism about other people
in the world and their traditions. First of all, they're deceptive and dishonest
about their agenda in Iraq. The following quote describes the nature of this
deception. "Organising in secrecy, and emphasising their humanitarian aid
work, Christian groups are pouring into the country, which is 97 per cent
Muslim, bearing Arabic Bibles, videos and religious tracts designed to
"save" Muslims from their "false" religion."- informationclearinghouse.info
Chaos
Under Heaven, and More to Come January 25, 2004
By Jim Lobe (IPS) Retired
Gen Anthony Zinni began warning that ousting Saddam Hussein, let alone invading
Iraq, risked destabilising the entire Middle East back in 1998, when he led U.S.
Central Command and testified against the Iraq Liberation Act that made ''regime
change'' official U.S. policy. And just six months before the actual invasion
last March, in October 2002, he told the annual Fletcher Conference on National
Security Strategy, ''we are about to do something that will ignite a fuse in
this region that we will rue the day we ever started''.
ipsnews.net
The Fog of Cop-Out
January 25, 2004 By
ALEXANDER COCKBURN My
dear friend and late Nation colleague Andrew Kopkind liked to tell how, skiing
in Aspen at the height of the Vietnam War, he came round a bend and saw another
skier, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, alone near the edge of a precipice.
This was during the period of Rolling Thunder, which ultimately saw three times
as many bombs dropped on Vietnam as the Allies dropped on Europe in the Second
World War. “I could have reached out with my ski pole,” Andy would say
wistfully, “and pushed him over.” Alas,
Andy shirked this chance to get into the history books and McNamara survived the
1960s, when he contributed more than most to the slaughter of 3.4 million
Vietnamese (his own estimate). He went on to run the World Bank, where he
presided over the impoverishment, eviction from their lands and death of many
millions more round the world. counterpunch.org
IBM and Philips team up in radio tags
January
25, 2004 AMSTERDAM (Reuters) U.S. computer giant IBM and Dutch
electronics maker Philips said on Monday they would work together to sell radio
tags that would displace barcodes. Philips' semiconductor unit will make the
tiny radio chips that can be stuck on items from clothes to bottles of milk,
while IBM will provide the computer services and systems. At a later stage a
washing machine will be able to recognise that a bright colour piece of clothing
has been put in the white wash. RFID chips are thin and small and send essential
bits of information about a product to a receiver that can read the signals. The
data could include a product description, packaging and expiry dates, colour and
price. It is a more advanced way to track and describe goods than barcodes,
which are now used for most products and inventory systems. The market
opportunity of RFID tags is estimated at $3.1 billion by 2008, according to
research group Applied Business Intelligence. usatoday.com
Stress
epidemic strikes American forces in Iraq January 25, 2004
By Peter
Beaumont The war's over, but the suicide rate is high and the army is
riddled with acute psychiatric problems.
Up
to one in five of the American military personnel in Iraq will suffer from
post-traumatic stress disorder, say senior forces' medical staff dealing with
the psychiatric fallout of the war.
This revelation follows the disclosure last month that more than 600 US
servicemen and women have been evacuated from the country for psychiatric
reasons since the conflict started last March.
At least 22 US soldiers have killed themselves - a rate considered abnormally
high - mostly since President George Bush declared an end to major combat on 1
May last year. guardian.co.uk
Bone-cold Bush protesters hot under the collar Hundreds
show up at Owens to complain about job losses January
24, 2004 By RYAN E. SMITH The enormous,
inflatable rat with red eyes and nasty claws was about as friendly toward
President Bush as the rest of the crowd protesting his appearance yesterday at
Owens Community College. On the vermin's chest was a sign that read: "Rats
Best Friend Bush." There was a handful of Bush supporters among the 300
people who gathered a short distance down the road from the Center for Fine and
Performing Arts, where the President spoke. Many in the crowd, corralled for
much of the morning in a parking lot next to the college's library, were union
workers who braved the cold temperatures to oppose the President's record on
creating jobs. "I'm tired of our jobs going out of the United States and
the economy going down the hole," said John Wagner, a journeyman carpenter
with Carpenters Local 1138. toledoblade.com
Ford To Announce Layoffs Monday January 24, 2004 By
Jack Wang (KSDK) Members of United Auto Workers Local 325 await word from
the Ford Motor Company Monday on possible layoffs involving second shift workers
at the Hazelwood assembly plant. Several workers were resigned to the possible
layoffs. "We definitely don't like it, we wish we could keep the nightshift
on, we hate to see anyone lose their job, says Jimmy Robinson. ksdk.com
Huge layoffs expected at Kraft Foods
January
24, 2004 By Delroy Alexander Analysts also talk
of plant closings at diversified food-products maker Kraft Foods Inc. is
expected to announce thousands of job cuts early next week as part of Chief
Executive Roger Deromedi's plan to cut costs and put more muscle into marketing.
sunspot.net
Packing
Plant Layoffs January 24, 2004
Des
Moines Hundreds of people in Des Moines are waking up wondering
if they'll still have a job by the end of the day. That's because Des Moines'
Iowa Packing Company has been sold, and half of the more than 500 employees may
not get their jobs back. whotv.com
934 jobs to be lost due to Citibank decision January 24, 2004 Citibank
is closing a credit-card operations center in Trevose, Pa., resulting in the
loss of 934 jobs.
Citibank bought Sears' credit-card operation last year and has decided that the
Trevose facility is no longer needed. philadelphia.bizjournals.com
Alltel To Eliminate Up To Six Hundred
Positions Nationwide January 24, 2004 Little
Rock, AR - Alltel released figures today showing the little rock based
corporation had a pretty good year in 2003, but it also announced it's
eliminating up to 600 positions nationwide. katv.com
Motorola to
close Boynton plant, with 240 laid off and 130 transferred January 24, 2004 By
Marcia Heroux Pounds Ending a 20-year run, Motorola will begin in March
to close its last location in Boynton Beach. Of the 370 jobs at the cell-phone
plant in Quantum Park, 240 people will be laid off. sun-sentinel.com
Sears cuts 240 call center jobs January 24, 2004 Ed Green For the second
time this week, hundreds of workers at a call center in Louisville are being
laid off as a national company consolidates its support operations in other
cities. This
time, 240 workers at the Sears, Roebuck and Co. customer service and call center
operation off Blankenbaker Parkway are being laid off as the retail giant
eliminates the remainder of its operations at the site. louisville.bizjournals.com
Meijer cuts workers, more layoffs planned January
24, 2004 By James Prichard Associated Press Meijer Inc.'s local
midlevel managers may get pink slips this weekend as the company further
streamlines its operations. Some employees were notified Friday. Others will be
told today, said Sande MacLeod, executive vice president of United Food and
Commercial Workers Local 951, which represents 30,000 Meijer employees. lsj.com
The New Reality Laid-Off Workers Just Can’t Find Comparable Jobs January
24, 2004 By
Dean Reynolds Joe Stefano doesn't need the federal government to tell him
it's tough to find a job. Stefano,
56, was laid off two years ago from SBC Communications after 30 years as a
systems engineer — laid off from a job that had paid him close to $100,000
annually. Now
Stefano holds down a part-time job at a Best Buy in suburban Chicago and
freelances. His annual income? "I'll
be lucky if I can crack $10,000," he said. abcnews.go.com
Under Oath, German Agent Says US Warned About 9/11
January 24, 2004 by: The Guardian The United States was warned
of impending September 11 terrorist attacks by an Iranian spy, but ignored him,
German secret service agents testified yesterday in the trial of an alleged al-Qaida
terrorist. republicons.org
US chief Iraq arms expert quits January 24, 2004 The
head of the team searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, David Kay,
has resigned. Mr Kay said he did not believe Iraq
possessed large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons. He
is being replaced by a former deputy head of the United Nations weapons
inspections team, Charles Duelfer. news.bbc.co.uk
Bush's $5 trillion problem: Rising deficit troubles GOP
January
24, 2004 By Gail Russell Chaddock Republican
Party's tenet of small government has run up against a surge in domestic
spending, plus war, tax cuts. Even before President
Bush's next budget hits Capitol Hill, lawmakers even in his own party are
mounting barricades against what many see as a spending binge that's settling
into a habit. csmonitor.com
The CIA revolt against
the White House January
24, 2004 By
Mark Follman Former
intelligence official Larry C. Johnson blasts the Bush administration's
"outright pattern of bullying." For almost a year, the White
House has been quietly
fighting a contentious battle at home on the national security front --
against the U.S. intelligence community itself. Vocal retired intelligence
officials, and anonymous active ones, have protested repeatedly that the White
House has coerced intelligence agencies to rig findings and analysis to suit
administration aims. salon.com
Iraq Blasts Kill Five U.S. Troops, Four Iraqis
January 24, 2004 By
Dean Yates BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A car bomb exploded at the entrance to an
American military installation in Khaldiya in Iraq on Saturday. Three taskforce
All-American soldiers were killed and six were wounded just hours after separate
blasts elsewhere left two servicemen and at least four Iraqis dead. All three
attacks on Saturday took place in the "Sunni triangle"
Pilots Killed as US Copter Crashes in Iraq
January
24, 2004 "PA" Two pilots were killed tonight when a US Army OH-58
Kiowa Warrior helicopter attached to the 101st Airborne Division crashed in
northern Iraq, the US military said. news.scotsman.com
Democrat Edwards wants Iraq war case investigation
January
24, 2004 By Mark Egan LACONIA, N.H. (Reuters)
Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards called on Saturday for an
independent commission to investigate if the Bush administration misled the U.S.
Congress in making its case for war with Iraq and demanded an end to "war
profiteering." forbes.com
Democrat Kerry could beat Bush if election held
tomorrow: poll January 24, 2004
NEW YORK (AFP) Democrat John Kerry could beat
President George W. Bush if the US presidential election were held today,
according to a national poll. Kerry, a
senator for the state of Massachusetts, would net 49 percent of the national
vote against 46 percent for Bush, the Newsweek poll showed. Kerry is also in
front of rivals for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, leading the
field of seven with 30 percent support. story.news.yahoo.com
Halliburton wins Iraq deal despite price gouging
January
24, 2004 By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington The Bush administration
knew that Halliburton had overcharged the US government on an Iraq
reconstruction contract before it awarded the company a separate lucrative
contract last week to repair Iraqi oilfields. news.ft.com
Report: Two Halliburton employees accepted kickbacks January
24, 2004 (AP) Two Halliburton Co. officials accepted up to $6 million in
kickbacks from a Kuwaiti company that was awarded contracts to supply U.S.
troops in Iraq, according to a newspaper report. Democrats bow to Bush on budget
attacks January 24, 2004 By Bill Vann In another indication of their organic
incapacity to offer any alternative to the policies of the Bush administration,
Democrats on Capitol Hill dropped their opposition Thursday to a
Republican-drafted federal budget that includes a provision depriving up to 8
million workers of the right to overtime pay. wsws.org
US democracy drive ‘hypocritical’ January 24, 2004 DAVOS:
Arabs say US is ignoring Israeli WMDs and human rights abuses Arab and
Muslim leaders slammed the United States’ campaign for democracy in the Middle
East as hypocritical on Friday, saying Washington should first end its “double
standards” in the Israeli-Arab conflict. At a public debate at the World
Economic Forum in Davos, senior figures from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran
accused the Bush administration of ignoring Israeli weapons of mass destruction
and human rights abuses towards Palestinians while pressuring Arab and Muslim
states to disarm and democratise. dailytimes.com
Of course the White
House fears free elections in Iraq January
24, 2004 Naomi Klein Only
an appointocracy can be trusted to accept US troops and corporations "The
people of Iraq are free," declared President Bush in his state of the union
address on Tuesday. The previous day, 100,000 Iraqis begged to differ. They took
to Baghdad's streets, shouting: "Yes, yes to elections. No, no to
selection." guardian.co.uk
'It's just wrong what we're doing' January 24, 2004 By DOUG SAUNDERS In
an exclusive interview, repentant Vietnam War architect Robert McNamara breaks
his silence on Iraq: The United States, he says, is making the same mistakes all
over again 'Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future
generations to explain why." theglobeandmail.com
Report: Rumsfeld considers striking Hizbullah to
provoke Syria January
24, 2004 By DOUGLAS DAVIS US
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is considering provoking a military
confrontation with Syria by attacking Hizbullah bases near the Syrian border in
Lebanon, according to the authoritative London-based Jane's Intelligence Digest.
jpost.com
Bush Administration Plan to Give Western Arctic to Oil Industry Will
Industrialize Largest Remaining Wilderness Area in Nation
January
24, 2004 NRDC - Natural Resources Defense Council
Says America Cannot Drill Its Way to Oil Independence; Calls for Increasing Auto
Fuel Efficiency Instead of Destroying Wilderness The Bureau of Land Management's
plan announced today to open the 9-million acre Northwest Planning Area of the
National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) to oil development will produce only a
modest amount of oil and ruin an area with unique cultural and wilderness
values, according to the NRDC. enn.com
Patients complain of medicine shortage January
24, 2004 BAGHDAD Report,
IRIN -- Since the fall of the former regime, Hanifa
Ali, 68, on several occasions, has not been able to find the hypertension
medicine that she used to buy for about US $2 per month from the local pharmacy
in batches of 100. Now she is forced to pay 30 times as much for the same
medicine. But Ali is one of the lucky ones who can afford to pay the $2 per day
for a dose of three from the private pharmacy, or about $60 per month, an
astronomical rise in price.
The Real State of the Union: January
24, 2004 By Jay Shaft A Nation in Crisis, an Economy in Disaster, Soaring
Poverty, Hunger and Homelessness So what’s the good news George? Homelessness
increased 50% in three years, poverty increased again in 2003, and more children
are going hungry. 502 soldiers died in Iraq, and 100 soldiers have now died in
Afghanistan. Is there any good news? scoop.co.nz
Guantanamo: a symbol of US loss of values January
24, 2004 By Richard Cohen
The US does not believe the old rules apply in the war against terror.
If
you are about my age, you grew up on combat movies in which some American POW
told an enemy interrogator that he would supply only his name, rank and serial
number. In the next breath, the American would cite the Geneva Convention in
demanding fair treatment of prisoners. Then, that sounded as American as apple
pie. Now, we're getting that pie in our face. theage.com
Comic Prosecuted for
Anti-Semitic Remarks January
24, 2004 PARIS (AP) A
well-known French comic will be prosecuted for on-air antics that included
dressing up as an Orthodox Jew and decrying an ``American-Zionist'' axis, the
Paris prosecutor's office said Friday. Dieudonne
M'Bala M'Bala's performance, which drew criticism from the French prime
minister, came during a prime-time TV show, ``On Ne Peut Pas Plaire a Tout le
Monde,'' (``You Can't Please Everybody'') on Dec. 1. As
part of the skit, the comic raised an arm and shouted ``Isra-Heil!'' - a
reference to the Nazi slogan, ``Heil Hitler.'' guardian.co.uk
The Revolution Starts Here January 24, 2004
By Rixon Stewart Media
analysts have been slow to recognise it, but quietly and in increasing numbers,
people are beginning to lose interest in television. The novelty has gone,
replaced by a steady stream of tired reruns and contrived reality shows. The
cause of this slide in ratings isn’t in TV schedules and programming, little
has changed there. What has changed can be spelt out in a word that was barely
heard ten years ago: the Internet. 'The New High Ground' In the space of
a few short years, the Internet has been transformed. From being a gadget for
geeks the Internet has now become a powerful force for changing people’s
perception of the world. thetruthseeker.co.uk
ARCH ENEMY January 24, 2004 By MEGAN LEHMANN
LAST February, Morgan Spurlock decided to become a
gastronomical guinea pig. His mission: To eat three
meals a day for 30 days at McDonald's and document the impact on his health.
Scores of cheeseburgers, hundreds of fries and dozens of
chocolate shakes later, the formerly strapping 6-foot-2 New Yorker - who started
out at a healthy 185 pounds - had packed on 25 pounds. But
his supersized shape was the least of his problems. Within
a few days of beginning his drive-through diet, Spurlock, 33, was vomiting out
the window of his car, and doctors who examined him were shocked at how rapidly
Spurlock's entire body deteriorated. "It was really
crazy - my body basically fell apart over the course of 30 days," Spurlock
told The Post. His liver became toxic, his cholesterol
shot up from a low 165 to 230, his libido flagged and he suffered headaches and
depression. nypost.com
Computer reportedly seized from Frist's office
January 24, 2004 By RICHARD POWELSON Democrats
say their computers were infiltrated by GOP staffers.
Federal investigators reportedly have seized a
staff computer in Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's office in a probe to find
Republican aides who improperly accessed Democrats' memos on opposing judicial
nominees. knoxnews.com
Dick Cheney Kills Birds Dead
The manly veep has himself a lazy,
"canned" pheasant slaughter, and we are so impressed January 24,
2004 By Mark Morford So then about a month ago the vice president of these beautiful and
deeply confused United States, he of the struggling defibrillator and the
shockingly nefarious
wife and the gnarled calluses from working Dubya's puppet strings, he of the
thin-lipped sneer that makes babies cry and women wince and foreign policies
crumble like feta cheese in the freezer, well, Dick goes
himself a-huntin'. Not just any ol' regular, camouflage-wearing,
man-versus-nature hunt out in the wild, mind. Dick is far too fragile and
unskilled and spoiled and scared of the open woods and icky furry monsters for
that. Assumedly. Nossir, our man Dick, he has himself flown over, in Air Force
2, on the taxpayer's tab, accompanied by his most favoritest shotgun, to the
exclusive Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier, Westmoreland County, in rural
Pennsylvania, to have himself a nice, cushy "canned"
pheasant hunt. This is what it was: Dick and about nine other overfed white
guys sitting in a comfy luxury blind with their manly shotguns, waiting for the
Westmoreland guy stationed behind them on a hill to release clusters of stunned,
fat, tame game birds from a net. Then they shoot them. Lots and lots of them.
And then they slap each other on the back. And they grunt and say nice shot as
the birds drop like flies as dogs race back and forth hauling dead or dying
birds into huge piles. Whee what fun. More than 400
birds were killed / sfgate.com
The
Other America By BOB HERBERT Either the president doesn't get it, or he
is deliberately ignoring the hard times that have enveloped millions of
Americans on his watch. "For the sake of job growth," said Mr. Bush,
to the loud applause of the Congressional bobbleheads at his State of the Union
address, "the tax cuts you passed should be made permanent. "Job
growth? That's the weirdest thing Mr. Bush has said since he told a CNN
discussion group, "As governor of Texas, I have set high standards for our
public schools, and I have met those standards." Nearly 2.5 million jobs
have been lost since Mr. Bush became president, and the most recent employment
statistics have made a mockery of the claim that tax cuts for the rich would be
the engine of job growth for the middle and working classes. nytimes.com
Moving jobs
abroad: More interest than ever from corporate America
January 23, 2004 (AP) More than 150
corporate executives, many paying $1,400 a head, listened intently for tips on
how to move jobs overseas effectively. Outside, on a frigid Manhattan sidewalk,
a group of fewer than 20 spirited demonstrators protested the "offshore
outsourcing" conference that opened Wednesday. With the loss of jobs to
other countries once again being thrust into the spotlight by a presidential
campaign, the newer trend of moving white-collar positions overseas has grown so
controversial that attendees from major corporations such as Microsoft Corp. and
Cisco Systems Inc. declined to discuss the conference. One speaker unexpectedly
decided to bar the press from his presentation. His topic: Is offshore
outsourcing unpatriotic? "I'd prefer not to comment," the speaker,
Jeffrey Cohen of the big consulting firm McKinsey & Co., said impatiently
when asked why the session had been closed. wcfcourier.com
In new pool of jobs, pay has taken a dive
January 23, 2004 By ROBERT TRIGAUX Anybody happen to see a $5,374
paycheck lying around? Florida seems to have lost it. The Sunshine State is one
of 48 states to see jobs shifting in the past few years from higher-paying
industries to lower-paying ones. On average, Florida jobs in growing industries
pay $29,979, or $5,374 less than jobs that paid $35,353 in contracting
industries. That amounts to a 15 percent pay cut between November 2001 - the end
of the recession - and November 2003. So says an analysis released this week by
researchers at the Economic Policy Institute. The overall quality of newly
created jobs is diminishing across Florida and the United States, says economist
Michael Ettlinger, a co-author of the report. sptimes.com
The
Color of Bush’s Sky January 23, 2004 By
William Rivers Pitt It took a little less than a half hour for George W.
Bush to taint the 215th State of the Union address with a bald-faced lie about
Iraq. It was, in the end, merely an accent in the symphony. The nonsense began
in this order: The economy is growing stronger. The tax cuts are working. Public
schools are flourishing. The Patriot Act is excellent. Everything is rosy in
Afghanistan. The people of Iraq are free. Throughout the vacuous peroration were
more shooting-fish-in-a-barrel applause lines than has ever been heard in any
major speech in American history. “I love God! I love soldiers! I love
America! I love freedom!” went the drumbeat. Once upon a time, we had
standards. Let’s take a few of these in order. scoop.co.nz
Bush's State of the Mess Address
January 23, 2004 By Bev Conover While your first reaction may have been
to reach for a barf bag while listening to George W. Bush deliver his so-called
State of the Union Address with a wink-wink here and a smirk-smirk there, in
retrospect there was a black humor to it. Given all he has messed up since the
five felonious Supreme Court justices substituted their votes for the people's
and installed him in the White House, what could he do besides playing to the
neoconservatives whom he believes constitute the base of the Republican Party
and, therefore, hold the key—called rigged voting—to keeping him in the
White House until he and they either achieve global empire or blow up the world?
onlinejournal.com
The World Trade Center Demolition
and the So-Called War on Terrorism
January 23, 2003 By Peter Meyer Instead of an open inquiry into what
happened, and how the U.S. Air Force (with jet fighters ready to scramble just
ten minutes from Washington) failed to prevent three allegedly hijacked
commercial jetliners from crashing into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, there
is a growing chorus of protest that we have been fed blatant lies by the Bush
administration assisted by the mainstream media. The so-called 9/11 Independent
Commission is a fraud which will conceal the truth, not reveal it. The major
outlines of the truth can already be known by anyone whose mind is not closed
and who wishes to know. Eventually it will be generally recognized and
acknowledged, and those responsible will be revealed. George W. Bush,
Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Ashcroft, Myers, Eberhardt, Powell, Perle, Wolfowitz,
Feith and the others know it, which is one reason why they launched their war on
Iraq before the citizens of the U.S. (at least, those few who care about what
America has traditionally stood for) could bring these traitors to justice for
their crimes and thereby help to defeat the attempt to transform the U.S., and
the rest of the world, into a police state and the Earth into a prison
planet. serendipity.ptpi.net
A scary ordeal at U.S. immigration
January 23, 2004 By Nina Bernstein NEW YORK: A German woman married to a
Brooklyn schoolteacher had been told that she had all her permits when she took
a quick trip to show off her infant daughter to her parents in Germany. But her
return home in late December turned surreal and terrifying when Homeland
Security officials at Kennedy Airport rejected her documents, confiscated her
passport, then detained her and the 3-month-old for 18 hours in a room with
shackled drug suspects. They let her go only after ordering her to leave the
country no later than Jan. 22. After a month of desperate efforts by her
American husband, their lawyers and legislators, a spokeswoman for the Homeland
Security Department said late Tuesday that the woman, Antje Croton, 36, would be
granted a last-minute reprieve. But Croton said she had received no written
notification. "I'm in a nightmare," she said as she packed Tuesday
afternoon, two days before the scheduled deadline, having abandoned hope of
straightening out the problem. "I feel like I'm in the wrong movie." iht.com
The heart breaks
January 23, 2004 By Gideon Levy Na'im Araj awakens
every day at 4 A.M., leaves quietly by the glass door in the living room that
leads directly to the cemetery, and goes to his son's grave, just to be with
him. Mohammed Araj was six and a half, and carefully protected by his father;
even on the day he died, he hadn't been to school, lest something bad happen to
him. His father permitted him to go only as far as the front steps, and Mohammed
did as his father told him. But it wasn't enough: The soldier emerged from the
alley between their house and the cemetery at the edge of Balata camp, and shot
him once, straight to the heart. Mohammed was eating a sandwich. Eyewitnesses
say the street was quiet. The sandwich fell down and was covered with blood.
Mohammed somehow got indoors and cried for his mother, then collapsed in her
arms. Afterward, says the family, the soldiers barred entry to two ambulances
rushing to save the child. haaretz.com
Child sobs for dead mother
January 23, 2004 A woman was killed as Israeli forces demolished 25 houses and a
mosque in the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, continuing an operation to
clamp down on militant activity that has left 400 people homeless in recent
days. A Palestinian woman, 31, was fatally shot in the head during the military
operation, hospital officials said. Her sister and another relative, a
13-year-old boy, were wounded. theage.com.au
Weapon of Mass Deception
January 23, 2004 By DOUG THOMPSON “No
one,” George W. Bush said Tuesday night in the State of the Union speech,
“can ever doubt the word of America.” Say what? I damn near fell off my
chair in my New Hampshire hotel room when I heard Bush utter those preposterous
words. No one can ever doubt the word of America? How about no one can ever,
again, trust the word of America because of George W. Bush’s reckless
disregard for the truth? Does Bush really believe that anyone with an IQ above
that of the average plant can buy his incredible claim that “no one can ever
doubt the word of America?” capitolhillblue.com
Global Eye – Royal
Flush January
23, 2004 Out of the blood and murk of Iraq, yet another sinister connection is
emerging, a skein of corruption tying Dick Cheney's Halliburton, the Bush Family
fortunes -- and a mysterious Kuwaiti company that peddles material for building
weapons of mass destruction. Last week, Pentagon auditors called for a formal
investigation of "overcharges" by Cheney's Halliburton hirelings. The
well-connected corporation -- which has been the chief beneficiary of the Bush
Regime's looting of the American treasury to pay for its ravaging of Iraq -- is
accused of skimming $61 million in excess cream from a shady deal to import
Kuwaiti gasoline into the conquered land. iraqwar.ru
U.S. made Iraq a hotbed
of terrorism By Vladimir Radyuhin In its most damning indictment of
the U.S war in Iraq yet, Russia accused the U.S. of putting Iraq on the brink of
disintegration and turning it into a hotbed of terrorism and instability that
may fuse with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "The realities of the
post-war situation in Iraq are the destruction of national statehood and the
resulting legal vacuum, along with the rampage of violence and crime," said
the Russian Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov, hindu.com
Dollar's dive spells China crisis
January 23, 2004 Anthony Hilton THE world's business leaders now
assembling in Davos for the annual World Economic Forum have currency
fluctuations at, or close to the top of, the list of what they are worrying
about. They see the collapse in the dollar's value as having the potential to
spread economic pain throughout the world - something President Bush failed to
mention in his State of the Union Address on Tuesday. thisismoney.com
Time is Running Out
January 23, 2003 Norma Sherry It’s time my fellow Americans – for
time is running out. It’s time to turn off FOX-TV, MSNBC, CNN, and shun the
pundits. It’s time to take a good hard look at whom we are as a nation and how
we are being led. It’s time to investigate, to contemplate, and to deliberate
the state of our union and the condition of our beloved country.
It is time my fellow Americans to question the questionable, to be unwilling to
accept the double-speak, the non-language of commitment, and the avoidance of
truth. We need to examine our destiny as a nation and envision our role as
human-beings in a planet of other human-beings. opednews.com
White House Opens More of Alaska to Oil and
Gas January 23, 2003 By J.R. Pegg
January 23, 2004 (ENS) - U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton finalized a plan
Thursday to open more than seven million acres of untouched land in Alaska's
North Slope to oil and gas development. Norton said the decision "will help
meet America's need for environmentally sound energy development" but
environmentalists see it as a gift from the Bush administration to the oil and
gas industry. oneworld.net
Infiltration of files seen as extensive
Senate panel's GOP staff spied on Democrats
January 23, 2003 By Charlie Savage Republican staff members of the US
Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year,
monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the
media, Senate officials told The Globe. From the spring of
2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a
computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic. boston.com
Deportee accuses US of 'subcontracting'
torture January 23, 2004 By Ken Warn A
Canadian citizen who was deported by the US to Syria, where he claims he was
tortured, yesterday filed suit against US officials including attorney-general
John Ashcroft and homeland security secretary Tom Ridge. The move came as Canada
faced growing demands for a full public inquiry into its role in the case and
allegations that the Canadian police were attempting to intimidate the media
over the issue. Syrian-born Maher Arar, a computer engineer who lives in Ottawa,
claimed in his suit that US officials deported him to Syria knowing and
intending that he would be tortured there. news.ft.com
Washington Trades Human Rights
for Oil in Azerbaijan January 23, 2004 By
Jim Lobe The oil-rich nation of Azerbaijan, eagerly courted by the
Bush administration, is suffering its worst repression since it became an
independent state--after the Soviet collapse more than a decade ago--according
to a new report released today by New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW). The
55-page report, "Crushing Dissent: Repression Violence and Azerbaijan's
Elections," details hundreds of arbitrary arrests, widespread beatings and
torture, and politically motivated firings of opposition activists and
supporters following October 15 presidential elections widely denounced as
unfair and fraudulent by Western and other observers. oneworld.net
Rule by the Capricious and the Corrupt
Militarism vs. Democracy January 23, 2004 By
WILLIAM A. COOK “More than 725 American military bases (are) spread around
the world. ... Many garrisons are in foreign countries to defend oil leases from
competitors or to provide police protection to oil pipelines, although they
invariably claim to be doing something completely unrelated--fighting the ‘war
on terrorism’ or the ‘war on drugs,’ or training foreign soldiers, or
engaging in some form of ‘humanitarian’ intervention.” Chalmers Johnson,
The Sorrows of Empire How many Americans understand the implications of
Johnson’s observation? Bush’s “State of the Union” address, with its
repetitive mantra declaring America’s gift of “freedom” to the world and
its on-going fight against “terrorists” (used 20 times) obscures the reality
of America’s deployment of “over half a million soldiers, spies,
technicians, teachers, dependents and civilian contractors in other nations”
(Johnson) for purposes of protecting private investors who use American forces
to protect their private interests, not the interests of American citizens. counterpunch.org
What
Price Glory? January 22, 2004 By:
Norma Sherry Are
you better off now than you were four years ago?
Do you feel safer? Is your job more secure or are you among the more
than three million workers without a job and without any hope of a job? Have
you lost your pension or 401K due to corporate malfeasance? Do
you have a nest egg saved for emergencies or are you one mortgage payment
away from losing it all? Or are you one of the nearly two-million Americans
who filed for personal bankruptcy last year? Are your children getting the
finest education your taxes paid for or will they become one of the 50
million adults considered functionally illiterate? thepeoplesvoice.org
US
plans to attack seven Muslim states January
22, 2004 Presidential
hopeful General Wesley Clark says the White House devised a five-year plan
after the 9/11 strikes to attack seven majority-Muslim countries. A
former commander of NATO's forces in Europe, Clark claims he met a senior
military officer in Washington in November 2001 who told him the Bush
administration was planning to attack Iraq first before taking action against
Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan. english.aljazeera.net
Bush’s State of the Union: Threats, lies and delusion
January
22, 2004 By Bill Vann In his third State of the Union address
since his installation as president, George W. Bush Tuesday night spelled out an
election-year agenda consisting of stepped-up global militarism, the continued
looting of the economy to augment the fortunes of America’s super-rich and an
appeal to social and religious backwardness. It was a speech devoid of any new
proposals and lacking even a hint of comprehension of the intense political,
economic and social crises that are racking American society. Instead, behind
the obvious lies and deliberate distortions, what predominated was the
self-delusion of a ruling elite that has never been more distant from the
problems facing the vast majority of the American people and believes that
reality is whatever it claims it to be. wsws.org
Bush
Pushes Plan to Permit Internet Surveillance January
22, 2004 Haider
Rizvi The
Bush administration is pushing to ratify an international convention that civil
libertarians say would pose serious threats to privacy rights at home and
abroad. After
delaying for about two years, U.S. President George W. Bush recently asked the
U.S. Senate to ratify the Council of Europe Cybercrime Convention, a global
agreement apparently created to help police worldwide cooperate to fight
Internet crimes.
ipsnews.net
The betrayal of U.S. voters
January
22, 2004 NYT The morning after the 2000 election, Americans woke up
to a disturbing realization: the United States' electoral system was too flawed
to say with certainty who had won. Three years later, things may actually be
worse. If this year's presidential election is at all close, there is every
reason to believe that there will be another national trauma over who the
rightful winner is, this time compounded by troubling new questions about the
reliability of electronic voting machines. This is no way to run a democracy. iht.com
American reservists ‘were fed pipe dream on service’
January 22, 2004 IAN
BRUCE THE head of the 205,000-strong US reserve
forces said yesterday the Pentagon will have to be more honest with its
part-time volunteers or risk a mass exodus when their enlistments expire.
Lieutenant-General James Helmly said many of the 31,000
"weekend warriors" now on frontline duty in Iraq or Afghanistan had
been fed "a bungled bureaucratic pipe dream" about the length of their
deployment that could trigger a recruitment and retention crisis. A
high proportion of those who signed up for a 12-month tour of duty in Iraq last
year were told they would spend only six months abroad after training. Thousands
have now had their deployment extended to 16 months, causing disruption with
their civilian jobs and families. theherald.co.uk
Earth 'entering uncharted waters'
January
22, 2004 By Alex Kirby The Earth has
entered a new era, one in which human beings may be the dominant force, say four
environmental leaders. In the International Herald
Tribune, they say the uncertainty, magnitude and speed of change in many of the
Earth's systems is without precedent. news.bbc.co.uk
Bomb joke student let
out on bail January
22, 2004 Rebecca Allison The British student facing up to 15 years in jail
after allegedly making a joke about having a bomb in her rucksack at an airport
in America was last night released on bail. Samantha
Marson , 21, from Bridgnorth, Shropshire, was arrested before boarding a
London-bound British Airways flight from Miami on Saturday. She
is alleged to have placed her hand luggage on a x-ray machine before telling the
screener: "Hey, be careful, I have three bombs in here." guardian.co.uk
High
Noon in America January 21, 2004 By:
Philip J. Rappa Cast in the Gary Cooper role in this western drama is the
American citizen, all of whom just wish to live the simple life. Unfortunately
and unforgivingly, that myth is a bust. Yet, we are all living in a time when
frontier- justice rules the day. With the first vote cast in the Iowa Caucus,
the horserace for the presidency begins in earnest. Honestly, even the most
pragmatic citizen realizes that whatever the outcome on Election Day, it will be
the result of nothing more than a “Hobson’s” choice, in that we are
offered a choice of taking what is offered or nothing at all. thepeoplesvoice.org
NO CHILD'S BEHIND LEFT The New Educational Eugenics in George Bush's State of
the Union January 21, 2004 by Greg Palast
Go ahead, George, and lie to me. Lie to my dog. Lie to my
sister. But don't you ever lie to my kids. Deep into your State of the Siege
lecture tonight, long after sensible adults had turned off the tube or kicked in
the screen, you came after our children. "By passing the No Child Left
Behind Act," you said, "We are regularly testing every child ... and
making sure they have better options when schools are not performing." You
said it ... and then that little tongue came out; that weird way you stick your
tongue out between your lips like the little kid who knows he's fibbing. Like a
snake licking a rat. I saw that snakey tongue dart out and I thought, "He
knows." gregpalast.com
Defending the
Undefendable January 21, 2004
In
his third State of the Union speech, George W. Bush appeared more like a
schoolboy who had been caught bullying, trying to defend his actions to an irate
headmaster, than a president striding towards an election, summing up what was
supposed to be a meaningful first period in office and presenting exciting new
policies for the second. Instead,
the President of the United States of America could go no further than to make a
lame attempt to defend the undefendable in one of the most unconvincing and
unimaginative State of the Union addresses in over two hundred years of its
history. english.pravda.ru
Sell oil for gold, Mahathir tells Saudi
Arabia January 21, 2004 JEDDAH
(Reuters) - Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said on Sunday that
Saudi Arabia should sell oil for gold, not dollars, to avoid being
"short-changed" by a decline in the U.S. currency. forbes.com
SUFFER THE FRENCH SCHOOL CHILDREN Hatred Bush Hath
Wrought January 21, 2004
TED RALL Why do they hate us? And where do
they get their hatred from? These questions haunted me and three other American
visitors as we studied a huge display of cartoons drawn by local schoolchildren
assigned to convey their impressions of the United States. Panel after grisly
panel depicted the United States, George Bush and those ubiquitous symbols of
American commercial culture--McDonald's and Coke--as murderous, predatory and
gleefully vicious. Obese Uncle Sams chopping up Iraqi children with a knife,
their blood gushing across construction paper. A leering Statue of Liberty
holding a hamburger in one hand while firing missiles at dying Afghan civilians
across the ocean. The American flag, its bars transformed into prisons for the
child inmates of Guantánamo. A baseball bat painted red, white and blue poised
to smash a ball--which is a globe. The juxtaposition between the artwork's
ferociously angry imagery and the childish drawing styles of the third graders
would disturb the most jaded reader. uexpress.com
Iraq soldier 'sickened' by amputation claim
January 20, 2004 KIM
MUNRO A SCOTS soldier at the centre of a row over the quality of equipment
supplied to British troops in Iraq last night demanded to know if his leg was
amputated only because there was a lack of medical supplies. Sergeant Albert
Thomson said it "sickened" him to think this could be true and
confirmed that his family have hired a lawyer to investigate the claims. scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com
Language
That Empowers Terrorism January
20, 2004 By: John
D. Goldhammer As
soon as the Bush administration declared a “War on Terror,”
something disturbing happened: Dropping this verbal atomic bomb in
response to the horror of September 11th the United States,
a world superpower, elevated a cult leader, mass murderer, and
ideological fanatic—Osama bin Laden and his band of fundamentalist
clones—to the status of a nation state. We gave an already infamous
terrorist renewed credibility among his followers, a tremendous PR coup
and continuing recruitment bonanza for Al Qaeda, dramatically increasing
the threat and spread of terrorism. A highly contagious, barbaric
cluster of ideas (the Islamic face of religious Fundamentalism) was
given new life, empowered to infect additional millions, with its
pathological agenda of hate and murder. thepeoplesvoice.org
Bush Plans New $50B Iraq Spending Request After the Election January 20, 2004
President Bush and his aides have spent the last year and a half telling the
American people that the war in Iraq would cost little. A new report by Defense
News, however, says the president will propose another $50 billion, in addition
to the $166 billion already spent.1,2 According to the non-partisan
Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, the request "won't come
until after the Nov. 2 presidential election" - effectively concealing the
spending request from public scrutiny. misleader.org
George W Bush and the real state of the Union
January 20, 2004 Today the
President gives his annual address. As the election battle begins, how does his
first term add up? 232: Number of American combat deaths in Iraq between
May 2003 and January 2004. 501: Number of American servicemen to die in
Iraq from the beginning of the war - so far. 0: Number of American combat
deaths in Germany after the Nazi surrender to the Allies in May 1945. 0:
Number of coffins of dead soldiers returning home from Iraq that the Bush
administration has allowed to be photographed. 0: Number of funerals or
memorials that President Bush has attended for soldiers killed in Iraq. 100:
Number of fund-raisers attended by Bush or Vice-President Dick Cheney in 2003. 10
million: Estimated number of people worldwide who took to the streets in
opposition to the invasion of Iraq, setting an all-time record for simultaneous
protest 2: Number of nations that Bush has attacked and taken over since
coming into the White House. independent.co.uk
A Worker from the Mad Cow Meat Plant Speaks Out
They
Are Lying About Your Food January
20, 2003 By DAVE LOUTHAN My
name is Dave and I work at Vern's Moses Lake Meats. I
did until the day the mad cow test results on the Sunny Dene cow came back
positive for BSE. That was Wednesday, December 24. On Friday, December 26, the
KXLY news crew was at the end of Vern's driveway, locked out by a cable gate. The USDA had told
the world that the mad cow had been slaughtered here, but it was not in the food
chain. A blatant lie. counterpunch.org
100,000 demand
Iraqi elections January
20, 2004 Associated Press Tens of thousands of Shia Muslims demonstrated in
Baghdad today to demand prompt elections, the protest coming hours before US and
Iraqi officials prepared to seek UN approval for their plans to transfer power
in Iraq. Today's
demonstration saw a huge crowd of Shia Muslims, estimated by reporters at up to
100,000 strong, march about three miles to the University of al-Mustansariyah,
where a representative of their spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,
delivered a speech directed at the parties to the meeting at the UN
headquarters. guardian.co.uk
"Who will give us back our
health?" January
20, 2004 Dahr Jamail Back
in the 1980’s, nuclear armed Israel carried out a pre-emptive bombing of
Iraq’s Al-Tuetha nuclear power station which is located just south of Baghdad.
While Saddam Hussein didn’t posses nuclear weapons, his nuclear power station
which was being constructed still had much radioactive waste stored in two large
warehouses. The waste, stored mostly in large metal drums, sat dormant for many
years. After the Anglo-American Invasion last spring the warehouses were looted,
and many of the barrels containing radioactive material were carted away to be
washed out in the small stream which separates the tiny rural village from Al-Tuetha.
After being cleaned in the water supply for the area, the barrels were then sold
to uneducated people in the village to be used for storing their drinking water.
Thus, the water and now food of the entire village is contaminated with
radioactive material. The health problems experienced by the people in the
village are too numerous to track. Stories abound of strange tumors, rashes and
illnesses. electroniciraq.net
5 million on terrorism list
January
20, 2004 By
TOM GODFREY, TORONTO SUN U.S. security agents have a master list of five
million people worldwide thought to be potential terrorists or criminals,
officials say. "The U.S. lookout index contains some five million names of
known terrorists and other persons representing a potential problem," Brian
Davis, a senior Canadian immigration official in Paris, said in a confidential
document obtained by the Sun. canoe.ca
