Sidetracked

Story Link

Two men have been charged with terrorist offences in New York for allegedly providing access to a television station banned in the United States and linked to the Shiite militia group Hezbollah, prosecutors said.

Pakistani-born Javed Iqbal, 42, and US citizen Saleh Elahwal, 53, are accused of conspiring to provide viewers with satellite broadcasts by Al-Manar, an Arabic-language station seen as a mouthpiece for the Lebanese group.

They face a sentence of up to 110 years in jail if convicted on the charges of providing material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organisation.

According to prosecutors, Iqbal and Elahwal ran a satellite television business and allegedly offered to provide Al-Manar to an undercover agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The station, which was listed as a terrorist entity by US authorities in March, allegedly paid thousands of dollars to Iqbal's firm in return."

Sometimes the real news gets lost in the Madonna-Adoption/Kerry-Comment/Foley-Scandal/Adult-Abstinence stream of bullshit that hits the airwaves everyday.

The following is a story from reality:

-----
Story Link

Sunni insurgents have cut the roads linking the city to the rest of Iraq. The country is being partitioned as militiamen fight bloody battles for control of towns and villages north and south of the capital.

As American and British political leaders argue over responsibility for the crisis in Iraq, the country has taken another lurch towards disintegration.

Well-armed Sunni tribes now largely surround Baghdad and are fighting Shia militias to complete the encirclement.

The Sunni insurgents seem to be following a plan to control all the approaches to Baghdad. They have long held the highway leading west to the Jordanian border and east into Diyala province. Now they seem to be systematically taking over routes leading north and south.

Dusty truck-stop and market towns such as Mahmoudiyah, Balad and Baquba all lie on important roads out of Baghdad. In each case Sunni fighters are driving out the Shia and tightening their grip on the capital. Shias may be in a strong position within Baghdad but they risk their lives when they take to the roads. Some 30 Shias were dragged off a bus yesterday after being stopped at a fake checkpoint south of Balad.

In some isolated neighbourhoods in Baghdad, food shortages are becoming severe. Shops are open for only a few hours a day. "People have been living off water melon and bread for the past few weeks," said one Iraqi from the capital. The city itself has broken up into a dozen or more hostile districts, the majority of which are controlled by the main Shia militia, the Mehdi Army.


More at the link above...

In 1947, we sentenced one Japanese interrogator to 15 years hard labor for torturing one of our soldiers this way.

I have no doubt that the American public would be raising hell if al-Qaida had water-boarded one of our soldiers. Remember, these are merely al-Qaida suspects we are talking about here. Where's the outrage?

------
Story Link



WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney has confirmed that U.S. interrogators subjected captured senior al Qaida suspects to a controversial interrogation technique called "water-boarding," which creates a sensation of drowning. Cheney indicated that the Bush administration doesn't regard water-boarding as torture and allows the CIA to use it. "It's a no-brainer for me," Cheney said at one point in an interview. Cheney's comments, in a White House interview on Tuesday with a conservative radio talk show host, appeared to reflect the Bush administration's view that the president has the constitutional power to do whatever he deems necessary to fight terrorism. The U.S. Army, senior Republican lawmakers, human rights experts and many experts on the laws of war, however, consider water-boarding cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment that's banned by U.S. law and by international treaties that prohibit torture. Some intelligence professionals argue that it often provides false or misleading information because many subjects will tell their interrogators what they think they want to hear to make the water-boarding stop.

During an interview on ABC’s This Week, President Bush today tried to distance himself from what has been his core strategy in Iraq for the last three years. George Stephanopoulos asked about James Baker’s plan to develop a strategy for Iraq that is “between ’stay the course’ and ‘cut and run.’”

Bush responded, ‘We’ve never been about stay the course, George!’
Here's a video of the interview.

Oh really, George?

From Whitehouse.gov:

(bush)

And we will stay the course in order to achieve this objective.

October 27, 2003

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(bush)

You know, I told the family how much we appreciated his sacrifice -- he was killed in Iraq -- and assured him that we would stay the course

And we've got to stay the course, and we will stay the course

April 5, 2004

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Scott McClellan)

The Vice President, last night, expressed condolences to President Ciampi who arrived in Washington, yesterday. Getting back to the call, though, the two leaders reaffirmed their strong commitment to stay the course in Iraq

But it's important that we stay the course and finish the job -- and that's what the President has continued to say -- and let the Iraqi people know that we are going to stay the course,

We will stay the course, we will prevail, and they will be defeated.

And that's why it's important to continue to stay the course and prevail. And we will.

November 13, 2003

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Scott McClellan)

We will stay the course.

And we will stay the course because this is important for the future of the Iraqi people...

And it's important that we continue to stay the course.

it's important that we stay the course and finish our work and continue to work with the Iraqi people to help them realize a better future.

...and it's important that we continue to stay the course and finish the job in Iraq.

October 29, 2003

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(bush)

We will stay the course, we will help this young Iraqi democracy succeed,

August 30, 2006

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Scott McClellan)

It's important that we stay the course and help the Iraqi people

The President will continue to stay the course

and we must stay the course and finish the job in Iraq

April 21, 2004

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(bush)

We will stay the course.

April 6, 2004

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(bush)

our Nation will stay the course, and we will prevail.

December 5, 2003

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Scott McClellan )

it's important that we continue to stay the course

December 1, 2003

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(bush)

I was able to assure them that we were going to stay the course

we will stay the course until the job is done.

I'm here to tell you we're going to stay the course.

November 27, 2003

Story Link

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is defending President Bush's anti-terrorism tactics in multiple court battles, said Friday that federal judges should not substitute their personal views for the president's judgments in wartime.

He said the Constitution makes the president commander in chief and the Supreme Court has long recognized the president's pre-eminent role in foreign affairs. "The Constitution, by contrast, provides the courts with relatively few tools to superintend military and foreign policy decisions, especially during wartime," the attorney general told a conference on the judiciary at Georgetown University Law Center.

"Judges must resist the temptation to supplement those tools based on their own personal views about the wisdom of the policies under review," Gonzales said.

And he said the independence of federal judges, who are appointed for life, "has never meant, and should never mean, that judges or their decisions should be immune" from public criticism.

Air Force Times Story Link

Swept up by a wave of patriotism after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Chris Magaoay joined the Marine Corps in November 2004.

The newly married Magaoay thought a military career would allow him to continue his college education, help his country and set his life on the right path.

Less than two years later, Magaoay became one of thousands of military deserters who have chosen a lifetime of exile or possible court-martial rather than fight in Iraq or Afghanistan.

“It wasn’t something I did on the spur of the moment,” said Magaoay, a native of Maui, Hawaii. “It took me a long time to realize what was going on. The war is illegal.”

Magaoay said his disillusionment with the military began in boot camp in Twentynine Palms, Calif., where a superior officer joked about killing and mistreating Iraqis. When his unit was deployed to Iraq in March, Magaoay and his wife drove to Canada, joining a small group of deserters who are trying to win permission from the Canadian government to stay.

Since 2000, about 40,000 troops from all branches of the military have deserted, the Pentagon says. More than half served in the Army. But the Army says numbers have decreased each year since the United States began its war on terror in Afghanistan.

Written by Robbie Robertson, performed by Railroad Earth.

"The war was over and the spirit was broken
The hills were smokin' as the men withdrew
We stood on the cliffs, oh and watched the ships
Slowly sinking to their rendezvous
They signed a treaty and our homes were taken
Loved ones forsaken, they didn't give a damn
Trying to raise a family, end up the enemy
Over what went down on the plains of Abraham

Chorus
Acadian driftwood
Gypsy tail wind
They call my home the land of snow
Canadian cold front movin' in
What a way to ride
Oh, what a way to go

Then some returned to the motherland
The high command had them cast away
And some stayed on to finish what they started
They never parted, they're just built that way
We had kin livin' south of the border
They're a little older and they've been around
They wrote a letter life is a whole lot better
So pull up your stakes, children and come on down

Fifteen under zero when the day became a threat
My clothes were wet and I was drenched to the bone
Been out ice fishing, too much repetition
Make a man wanna leave the only home he's known
Sailing out of the gulf headin' for Saint Pierre
Nothin' to declare, all we had was gone
Broke down along the coast, but what hurt the most
When the people there said "You better keep movin' on"

Everlasting summer filled with ill-content
This government had us walkin' in chains
This isn't my turf, this ain't my season
Can't think of one good reason to remain
I've worked in the sugar fields up from New Orleans
It was ever green up until the floods
You could call it an omen, points you where you're goin'
Set my compass north, I got winter in my blood

[chorus]

Sais tu, Acadie, j'ai le mal du pays
Ta neige, Acadie, fait des larmes au soleil
J'arrive Acadie

President Bush, right, and Speaker of the House Rep. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., receive a tour Cabot Microelectronics Corporation, Friday, July 7, 2006, in Aurora, Ill. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)>

So, as some of you may have heard already, I am back in the US after just a couple of weeks in El Salvador. Why? Well, believe me, it was not an easy decision to make.

Outside of getting very sick the first week, most things were going very well. The country was beautiful, the people were warm and easy going, I was just starting to get a handle on my Spanish, and I was slowly overcoming some minor culture shock. I was really starting to enjoy the cultural interactions that I had on a daily basis.

Unforunately, I had some major problems with the assignment that I was sent to do. It just wasn't going to work for me for various reasons. For one, I could not see the point in teaching English in communities that lack basic needs like running water and health services. From what I was able to find out from other volunteers in country, interest in formal English classes usually wanes after a short 2 or 3 months. Of course, this should not come as a surprise. Learning a foreign language takes a back seat to the daily struggle to sustain yourself and your family. What use is English to someone that is wondering if they will have enough water to drink and bath with next week?

I had other options. I could have taught basic IT skills to young people. While this might have allowed me to stay in more populated areas (and hence keep in touch with what's going on in the world--something that I realized is very important to me), it just wasn't appealing to me.

So what have I learned? Well, for one, I feel like the original Guyana assignment might have been a better fit. At least I would have felt like teaching English, the national language, was a productive thing to do. Also, I think teaching high school English would have been more personally challenging than basic English.

Also, I really learned where my true passions lie. The thought of living for two years in an extremely rural part of El Salvador was not so appealing to me. I live for and love the world of current events, politics, and the global exchange of ideas. It's the reason I went into journalism in college. I was already missing my daily dose of world news and opinion and the thought of living without it, or only getting it in monthly doses, was not making me happy. Essentially, I realized that the best way for me to create change in the world is to stay "tapped in" to this world as much as I can.

So I'm back, looking for a job, and applying to grad schools...

Gunn
P.S. I still have my phone so give me a call!

I'll post more later when I have some time...C-ya in a few!

Link

Washington, May 31 -- Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH), Ranking Member of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, issued the following statement today on Iran:

“The US must not participate in phony diplomacy and diplomatic head fakes in order to force our nation, and the world, into war with Iran.

“Iran has reached out to the United States seeking negotiations to end the current stand-off peacefully. The United States should enter into direct, high-level, negotiations with Iran to peacefully end this stand off. This is exactly what over 70 Members of Congress stated last week when they signed onto a letter, I authored, to President Bush.

“Setting conditions on such talks appears to be an effort to ensure their failure and will only put this nation on the fast track to another unnecessary war.

“The US and the world community would be well served to listen to the words of the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Mohamed El Baradei who stated yesterday that Iran is not an immediate nuclear threat.

“This Administration, once again assisted by a gullible media, seems determined to repeat the very mistakes that led this nation into, and keeps us in, the ill-advised war in Iraq.

“A peaceful solution to the stand-off with Iran must be the top domestic priority of our nation. The US must begin direct negotiations with Iran, at the highest level, and without predetermined conditions set to ensure failure.

“War with Iran can, and must be, avoided.”

Only five more days until I hop on a plane to D.C. and begin my 2-year PC stint. Stay tuned...

Story Link

The White House yesterday ruled out previously authorised direct talks between Tehran and the US ambassador in Baghdad, which were to have focused on the situation in Iraq. The move marks a hardening of the Bush administration's position, despite pressure from the international community to enter into direct dialogue with Iran.

A White House official said that although the US envoy had originally been granted a mandate for talks with Iran, "we have decided not to pursue it."

I'll be out of town until May 21st, traveling to Kentucky and Chicago. I'll try to make some updates while I'm away...We'll see how it goes without a laptop.

Story Link
----


WASHINGTON, May 10 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Today more than 200 scholars, academics, commentators, and former U.S. government officials issued a strong condemnation of the threat of U.S. military action against Iran and called on the Bush administration to enter into face-to-face negotiations with the government in Tehran.

In a letter sent to the White House Tuesday evening, the group urges diplomacy to resolve concerns over the development of nuclear materials that have magnified tensions between Iran and the U.S. and global community.

"As the International Atomic Energy Agency has found no evidence of research or diversion of materials toward atomic weapons in Iran, concerns about future dual use of nuclear technology ought to be addressed in face to face negotiations," write the signatories and supporters, a diverse group of well respected Middle East experts from around the world as well as former U.S. officials and journalists. The letter warns that the likely "catastrophic regional and global consequences of escalating this crisis will not serve the interests of the United States, the course of democratic development in Iran, or the cause of global peace."

Among the signatories are Professors Juan Cole, Charles Butterworth, Richard Falk, Ervand Abrahamian, Ahmad Sadri, and Noam Chomsky. On Wednesday, several signatories of the letter held a press conference in Washington to answer questions about their position. "We started the letter out of a sense of frustration that the experts in the field were not being consulted as the U.S. develops policy toward Iran," explained Professor Ahmad Sadri, who coordinated the project. "This is the same mistake the U.S. government made before going to Iraq. We're saying don't do that again."

This is really amazing...Four to five feet per day?! I would try to avoid that area for a while.

-----
Story Link




SEATTLE -- Visitors to the Johnston Ridge Observatory at the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument can look forward to a spectacular view of a hulking slab of rock that's rapidly growing in the volcano's crater.

It's jutting up from one of seven lobes of fresh volcanic rock that have been pushing their way through the surface of the crater since October 2004.

The fin-shaped mass is about 300 feet tall and growing 4 feet to 5 feet a day, said Dan Dzurisin, a geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey.

Story Link


THE question puzzles and enrages a city: how is it that the Americans cannot keep the electricity running in Baghdad for more than a couple of hours a day, yet still manage to build themselves the biggest embassy on Earth?

Irritation grows as residents deprived of air-conditioning and running water three years after the US-led invasion watch the massive US Embassy they call "George W's palace" rising from the banks of the Tigris.

In the pavement cafes, people moan that the structure is bigger than anything Saddam Hussein built. They are not impressed by the architects claims that the diplomatic outpost will be visible from space and cover an area that is larger than the Vatican city and big enough to accommodate four Millennium Domes. They are more interested in knowing whether the US State Department paid for the prime real estate or simply took it.

While families in the capital suffer electricity cuts, queue all day to fuel their cars and wait for water pipes to be connected, the US mission due to open in June next year will have its own power and water plants to cater for a population the size of a small town

More info here.

It appears that Bush has been amending "signing statements," over 700 in fact, to bills that he signs into law. These statements are not new phenomenons in American politics. In fact, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton all have their own collection of signing statements, some of which are archived at GPOaccess.gov

Besides signing hundreds more than any previous president, Bush also appears to be grossly reinterpreting laws passed by Congress to further his own agenda. Whereas previous presidents merely amended laws to indicate how they would be enforced, or to show vocal support for laws, Bush is claiming constitutional (it actually appears dictatorial) authority to completely invalidate the efforts of D.C. lawmakers. For example (from The Boston Globe):

March 9: Justice Department officials must give reports to Congress by certain dates on how the FBI is using the USA Patriot Act to search homes and secretly seize papers.

Bush's signing statement: The president can order Justice Department officials to withhold any information from Congress if he decides it could impair national security or executive branch operations.

Dec. 30, 2005: US interrogators cannot torture prisoners or otherwise subject them to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

Bush's signing statement: The president, as commander in chief, can waive the torture ban if he decides that harsh interrogation techniques will assist in preventing terrorist attacks.

Dec. 30: When requested, scientific information ''prepared by government researchers and scientists shall be transmitted [to Congress] uncensored and without delay."

Bush's signing statement: The president can tell researchers to withhold any information from Congress if he decides its disclosure could impair foreign relations, national security, or the workings of the executive branch.


-----------

We might as well send Congress home...what's the use?