in the news today

Protesters clash with police on the streets of Mar del Plata, Argentina, during a series of marches and rallies.
(Photo: Chico Sanchez / EPA) | image hosted by truthout.org

Rioting Erupts as Bush Visits Argentina
A hemispheric summit meant to help create jobs and spread democracy throughout the region opened yesterday with large-scale anti-US demonstrations and deep divisions among participating nations about the Bush administration's expanded free-trade agenda.

9 Nights of Rage
Nearly 900 vehicles were torched and 250-plus people arrested as French police desperately battled the country's worst rioting for decades, which has now raged for nine consecutive nights.

Wilkerson Points Finger at Cheney on Torture
Colin Powell's former Chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, stated bluntly that it was Vice President Dick Cheney's office which triggered abuse of Iraqi prisoners with word that filtered down to soldiers in the field that interrogations were not providing needed intelligence. Now, Cheney goes one step further, by appealing to Republican senators this week to allow CIA exemptions to a proposed ban on the torture of terror suspects in US custody.

Judge tosses a blanket on topless protest - Breasts Not Bombs told nudity not part of free-speech rights
Sacramento -- A federal judge denied on Friday a request from a group of Mendocino women who wanted to protest topless on the grounds of the state Capitol. U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell said the group made no compelling argument that showing their breasts constitutes free speech. "Being topless is not inherently expressive" speech, Burrell said. The group, Breasts Not Bombs, had scheduled a protest for noon Monday. The California Highway Patrol threatened to arrest anyone who went topless.
see also: previous - breasts-not-bombs.html

I Can't Wait

David Swanson: I don't know about the world, but certainly I can't wait any longer to end this war or to impeach this president. One more death, American or Iraqi, is too many. Actually, what I said is not true. We do know something about the world. We know that polls that were done last year were unable to find another country on the planet that would have elected Bush or even made it close enough for him to steal.

...They knew they were lying. The world told them. We told them. Courageous members of the US Congress told them.

One of the Congress Members who shouted it the loudest was Dennis Kucinich. He has now introduced a Resolution of Inquiry into the White House Iraq Group. This was the group, led by Rove and Libby, that was tasked with selling the public the war. The Resolution is H Res 505, and it will come to a vote in committee in about 10 days. The time to ask your Representative to Co-Sponsor it is now.

You know, back when talk of impeaching Clinton was the only story on the news, week after week, 36 percent of Americans favored impeachment proceedings, and 26 percent favored actual impeachment. A few weeks ago, before the Libby indictment, a poll commissioned by After Downing Street and conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs found that 50 percent of Americans want Bush impeached if he lied about the war. If we shout that loudly enough, it will climb even higher.

We owe it to the world to do so.

>>> Complete Article >>>

search /RENEGADE/ for "impeach bush"

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how's this for an idea

< < < convictions, principles & ideas? how about "The United States has been hijacked by a group of neocon fascists; Truth and Justice Must Prevail! OK - Let's Fix This!" ...(but, uh, whose "truth" are we going to ask American Citizens to believe?)... well, here is an idea: Just get to the bottom of it, and clean it up. Throw those assholes in jail where they deserve to be because of their conspiracies, and call for an International War Crimes Tribunal. < < <


from http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9887457/ -
Harry Reid sparks a dramatic Senate standoff
On quiet Indian summer afternoon, Democrats spring an Iraq-Libby surprise -
The indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney’s aide Lewis Libby last week offered Democrats a chance to put Iraq intelligence back on the agenda. Reid did so in spectacular fashion.
- - “The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really all about, how this administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions,” Reid said before making the motion which sent the Senate into a closed-door session.


from http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9887457/http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9886959/ -
Heated day in D.C. leads to more prewar probes
Following unusual closed Senate session, Democrats claim victory -
“The United States Senate has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership,” said Majority Leader Bill Frist during the tense hours on Capitol Hill. “They have no convictions, they have no principles, they have no ideas.”

Treasongate

ever hear of Viet Nam? ever hear of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident ??? ever hear of our government faking shit in order to justify war ??? ever hear of, um, Iraq?

search SFGate for "tonkin"

- some results from today -

Tonkin Gulf reports cooked? - Historian's research finds intelligence errors covered up
Scott Shane, San Francisco Chronicle, 10/31/05
The National Security Agency has kept secret since 2001 a finding by an agency historian that NSA officers deliberately distorted critical intelligence during the Tonkin Gulf episode that helped precipitate the Vietnam War, according to two people familiar...

Article Raises Questions About Vietnam War
KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press, 10/31/05
(10-31) 20:01 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) -- The National Security Agency has been blocking the release of an article by one of its historians that says intelligence officers falsified documents about a disputed attack that was used to escalate the Vietnam War...

- see also -

Bigger than Watergate
Ted Rall: "Don't let the Republicans distract you. Treasongate isn't just about deposed vice presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby, who has been charged with five felony counts and faces 30 years in prison, or even deputy presidential chief of staff Karl Rove, who may soon be charged as well. The Libby charges clearly point to the real culprit: Dick Cheney, who told Libby about Plame's covert status in the first place. Cheney abused his security clearance to find out."
<<< relates in part to "justification" of the war on Iraq
"Treasongate includes many of the essential components of Watergate: smearing opponents of the Iraq war and their loved ones, financial shenanigans and a cover-up. Actually it was a cover-up of a cover-up; they lied about trashing Plame, who they targeted because her husband revealed their lies about Iraqi WMDs. Outing a CIA agent is the rancid cherry on top of a triple-dip blob of corruption. You can bet there's more to come."

Treasongate


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Prosecutor Should Dig Deeper

Prosecutor Should Dig Deeper
Scooter Libby lied to cover up greater crimes, the authors argue, and more potential Bush administration crimes should be investigated including lying to Congress, violations of the US Anti-Torture Act and violations of the US War Crimes Act.
>>> Complete Article >>>

Who Talked? It Wasn't the Special Prosecutor
Fitzgerald's 22-page indictment, with its bare-bones outlines of the case, provided a bracing lesson on what major political investigations have become now that they are no longer conducted by independent counsels, and how the culture of rooting out scandal in Washington has fundamentally changed.
>>> Complete Article >>>

Libby Takes the Fall
Conason: While the full implications of the Scooter Libby indictment have yet to emerge - including the question of whether Karl Rove, aka "Official A," ultimately escapes prosecution - special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has convincingly exploded right-wing disinformation about the CIA leak affair.
>>> Complete Article >>>


articles last ten days @ /RENEGADE/

One Step Closer to the Big Enchilada

One Step Closer to the Big Enchilada
By Frank Rich
The New York Times
To believe that the Bush-Cheney scandals will be behind us anytime soon you'd have to believe that the Nixon-Agnew scandals peaked when G. Gordon Liddy and his bumbling band were nailed for the Watergate break-in. But Watergate played out for nearly two years after the gang that burglarized Democratic headquarters was indicted by a federal grand jury; it even dragged on for more than a year after Nixon took "responsibility" for the scandal, sacrificed his two top aides and weathered the indictments of two first-term cabinet members. In those ensuing months, America would come to see that the original petty crime was merely the leading edge of thematically related but wildly disparate abuses of power that Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, would name "the White House horrors."
>>> Complete Article >>>


The White House Criminal Conspiracy
By Elizabeth de la Vega
Tom Dispatch
Legally, there are no significant differences between the investor fraud perpetrated by Enron CEO Ken Lay and the prewar intelligence fraud perpetrated by George W. Bush. Both involved persons in authority who used half-truths and recklessly false statements to manipulate people who trusted them. There is, however, a practical difference: The presidential fraud is wider in scope and far graver in its consequences than the Enron fraud. Yet thus far the public seems paralyzed.
>>> Complete Article >>>


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