|
by Nag The T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas (on the outskirts of Austin, Texas) is a private detention facility operated by Corrections Corporation of America. It and a smaller center in Pennsylvania are the only two facilities in the country that are authorized to hold non-Mexican immigrant families and children on noncriminal charges.
That's right, we are now imprisoning children, forcing them to wear jail uniforms and identity badges. Land of the Free. Not to worry, though. The imprisoned children do get instruction daily; if you count one hour of English as actual instruction. They also get, out the goodness of Chertoff's black heart, one half hour of recreational activity, indoors, daily. Even infants have to wear identity badges. Home of the Brave. Read more... (35 comments, 508 words in story) by Nag I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crises. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
Abraham Lincoln Comments >> (22 comments) by Nag "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
Thomas Jefferson Comments >> (16 comments) by Nag
Coming on the heels of the Haditha Massacre, this story just tore my heart out. It's one of those stories that I was about to post in the News Bucket, but had too much to say about it and decided to post a diary instead.
Shooting of pregnant Iraqi touches nerves BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The shooting death of a pregnant Iraqi, apparently by U.S. troops, as she was rushing to a hospital threw an intense spotlight Wednesday on the troubling issue of Iraqi civilian deaths. Iraqi police and witnesses said the troops gunned down the woman and her cousin in their car. The U.S. military said the car entered a clearly marked prohibited area but failed to stop despite repeated signals; shots were fired to disable the vehicle, it said. Link The 35 yr old pregnant woman was being rushed to the hospital by her brother; also in the car was their cousin, a 57 yr old woman. The road had been recently blocked by American troops, but apparently the word had not gotten out to outlying areas. As they rushed to hospital so Nabiha Nisaif Jassim could give birth, they inadvertantly drove on the forbidden road. The Americans said that they fired warning shots to no avail before peppering the car with the bullets that killed both women, and Nabiha'a unborn baby. Now, I've never been in a car racing to the hospital with a pregnant woman, but I imaging that it could be a bit tense and chaotic. No wonder they didn't notice the American troops. Read more... (14 comments, 896 words in story) by Nag
Greg Palast has a new book:"Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf? China Floats, Bush Sinks, The Scheme to Steal "08, No Child's Behind Left, and Other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War." Today on DemocracyNow!, Amy Goodman presented part one of her recent interview with Palast. After seeing it, I will be glued to my tv tomorrow, and am going to buy the book the second it comes out in June. (via Powells.com, of course)
Exerpts from that interview follow: AMY GOODMAN: Is the war in Iraq a war for oil? GREG PALAST: Is the war in Iraq for oil? Yes, it's about the oil, but not for the oil. In my investigations for Armed Madhouse, I ended up with a story far more fascinating and difficult than I imagined. We didn't go in to grab the oil. Just the opposite. We went in to control the oil and make sure we didn't get it. It goes back to 1920, when the oil companies sat in a room in Brussels in a hotel room, drew a red line around Iraq and said, "There'll be no oil coming out of that nation." They have to suppress oil coming out of Iraq. Otherwise, the price of oil will collapse, and OPEC and Saudi Arabia will collapse. And so, what I found, what I discovered that they're very unhappy about is a 323-page plan, which was written by big oil, which is the secret but official plan of the United States for Iraq's oil, written by the big oil companies out of the James Baker Institute in coordination with a secret committee of the Council on Foreign Relations. I know it sounds very conspiratorial, but this is exactly how they do it. It's quite wild. And it's all about a plan to control Iraq's oil and make sure that Iraq has a system, which, quote, "enhances its relationship with OPEC." In other words, the whole idea is to maintain the power of OPEC, which means maintain the power of Saudi Arabia. Saddam was jerking the oil market up and down, so he had to go. It's that simple. The neocons' plan was to destroy OPEC and Saudi Arabia along with it, but the Saudi loving Bush clan would have none of that. Palast reports how Hugo Chavez is offering the US $50/barrel oil. The catch? The money stays in Venezuela and is not pumped back into the US economy by buying US treasuries. That would also wreak havoc with world oil prices, and OPEC. No wonder Bush hates Chavez. You gotta love a guy who pokes a stick in Bush's eye every chance he gets. How do you think average Americans would react to THAT juicy tidbit? Arab oil isn't the only game in town. In other words, when George Bush rides around King Abdullah in his little golf cart on the Crawford ranch, he's not trying to get Abdullah's oil. Abdullah can't drink the stuff. He's got to sell it to us and Japan. But Abdullah takes the money back from the -- when you fill up your SUV, you give your money to Saudi Arabia, the big oil companies, Saudi Arabia. But then he returns it the form of petrodollars, and that is what is funding George Bush's mad spending spree. Read more... (9 comments, 1169 words in story) by Nag
Raw has this Jason Leopold story up and it's a doozy.
Grand Jury Hears Evidence Against Rove
Just as the news broke Wednesday about Scott McClellan resigning as White House press secretary and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove shedding some of his policy duties, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald met with the grand jury hearing evidence in the CIA leak case and introduced additional evidence against Rove, attorneys and other US officials close to the investigation said. The grand jury session in federal court in Washington, DC, sources close to the case said, was the first time this year that Fitzgerald told the jurors that he would soon present them with a list of criminal charges he intends to file against Rove in hopes of having the grand jury return a multi-count indictment against Rove. [snip] Fitzgerald is said to have introduced more evidence Wednesday alleging Rove lied to FBI investigators and the grand jury when he was questioned about how he found out that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA and whether he shared that information with the media, attorneys close to the case said. Fitzgerald told the grand jury that Rove lied to investigators and the prosecutor eight out of the nine times he was questioned about the leak and also tried to cover-up his role in disseminating Plame Wilson's CIA status to at least two reporters. Additionally, an FBI investigator reread to jurors testimony from other witnesses in the case that purportedly implicates Rove in playing a role in the leak and the campaign to discredit Plame Wilson's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, whose criticism of the Bush administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence lead to his wife being unmasked as a covert CIA operative. Luskin said Rove has not discussed any plea deal with Fitzgerald. Read more... (22 comments, 387 words in story) by Nag
storiesinamerica has a wonderful diary up about the minimum wage issue and how we need to support the Democrat effort to push this issue.
I can't imagine going 9 years without so much as a one penny raise. This from the AFL-CIO Working Families site: Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) has introduced the Fair Minimum Wage Act, and you can help by signing on as a citizen co-sponsor of the bill. Read more... (5 comments, 106 words in story) by Nag
When the most recent unemployment numbers came out they had an aroma about them that spoke of being over cooked. While apathy still reigns in a vast number of Americans on such things as appointing extremists to the Supreme Court, or allowing Bush to wiretap our phones, the public remains realisticly pessimistic about the economy. I found those numbers that said that unemployment has dropped sounded like a lot of bull so I started poking around.
The export and import-competitive sectors of the US economy have been tanking for a long time. To keep the story manageable, let's just go back to January 2001. The latest BLS payroll jobs report says that January 2006 is now the 61st month that the US economy has been unable to create any jobs except jobs in domestic nontradable services, most of which are low paid. Of the 194,000 private sector jobs created in January, 46,000 were in construction (and most likely went to Mexican immigrants, both legal and illegal) and 136,000 were in domestic services: Financial Activities (essentially credit agencies) account for 21,000. Administrative & Waste Services account for 17,600. Health Care & Social Assistance account for 37,500. Waiters, Waitresses and Bartenders account for 31,000. Wholesalers account for 15,100. Oh, that's just the beginning... Read more... (45 comments, 782 words in story) by Nag
[From the diaries by susanhu. This was suggested by Matt Santos on 'West Wing," and it struck me as a brilliant solution for real Americans.]
"MEDICARE FOR ALL" WILL SAVE BILLIONS AND GIVE ALL AMERICANS THE CARE THEY NEED Washington, DC: Today, as President Bush focuses on health care in his State of the Union address after ignoring it for five years, Senator Kennedy will put forward real health care reform that would give quality affordable health care for all Americans. America's health care system is the most economically inefficient in the industrial world. Kennedy's plan would fix our fractured system of care, by extending Medicare to all Americans, from birth to the end of life, while allowing any American who wishes to stay in their current employer-sponsored plan to do so. Under Kennedy's bill, employers can tailor their health plans to provide additional services to their employees that wrap around Medicare coverage. While doing a search yesterday, I accidentally came across this article in the American Chronicle and was floored. How come we haven't heard a peep about this?
Here's the basic proposal: The Medicare for All proposal The "Medicare for All" plan will make health care coverage available to every American by expanding the Medicare program to the under 65 population. To promote competition and choice, enrollees will also have the option of choosing any of the plans offered to members of Congress, the President, and Federal employees. Costs will be reduced by administrative savings from moving to a Medicare-style financing system, by bringing modern information technology to health care, by improving quality of care, and by rewarding health care providers based on performance, not just on the number of procedures performed. International competitiveness and job creation will be enhanced by reduced costs and by shifting some of the burden of financing from business contributions to general revenues, as well as the healthier and more productive work-force that will result from universal health insurance coverage. To ease the transition to the new system, coverage will be implemented in phases. In the first, coverage will be extended to individuals 55-65 and to children under 20 years old. In later phases, coverage will be extended to all other Americans not already covered under Medicare. The article reads like a presentation of the proposal and is loaded with details, like eligibility, benefits, and savings both to the government as well as to corporate America. This should be shouted from the rooftops. This is what the Democrats need: real proposals to flesh out the criticism. Go check it out. Crossposted on DKos [Update]: I changed the title to catch a few more eyes Comments >> (54 comments) by Nag
Recently Attorney General Gonzales released a 42 page legal memo to defend Bush's domestic spying program. It seems as if he included a memo that says that Bush doesn't need the Patriot act to continue enhanced surveillance techniques against any terror suspects in the US. Turns out he already had that authority from Congress' OK to use force.
Who knew? Read more... (5 comments, 312 words in story) by Nag
Were Christiane Amanpour's telephone calls illegally intercepted by the NSA?
In a recent interview with the author of the CIA tell all book,"State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration" NBC's Andrea Mitchell pointedly asked James Risen if the NSA is sweeping up information about US reporters in it's illegal spy operation. Risen didn't seem to know the answer to that question. then she asked a doozie out of the blue: "MITCHELL: You don't have any information, for instance, that a very prominent journalist, Christiane Amanpour, might have been eavesdropped upon?" Risen hadn't heard about that. Apparently, neither has Amanpour or CNN. Read more... (20 comments, 668 words in story) by Nag
The Bush legacy is one that just keeps on giving... or handing out punishment, depending on your point of view. There have been some pretty well documented accusations that Bush has quietly set up militias in Iraq to deal with the insurgency, a la El Salvador in the 80's. These government militias are death squads, plain and simple, funded, trained and equipped by the US. The plan was supposedly that these militias could go in and brutally root out members of the insurgency by the hundreds where they live and operate. The fact that this technique often misses the mark and hits innocent Iraqis is obviously an acceptable glitch to US planners. Government militias pick up hapless Sunnis, whisk them away to be tortured, and hundreds then turn up dead in Iraqi rivers, alleys, and countryside. These troops trained by the US use electric shock, skin their victims alive and use electric drills, among other lovely techniques.
This nasty plan has taken a turn for the worse in Iraq. BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iranian-backed militia the Badr Organization has taken over many of the Iraqi Interior Ministry's intelligence activities and infiltrated its elite commando units, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. That's enabled the Shiite Muslim militia to use Interior Ministry vehicles and equipment - much of it bought with American money - to carry out revenge attacks against the minority Sunni Muslims, who persecuted the Shiites under Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein, current and former Ministry of Interior employees told Knight Ridder. The officials, some of whom agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity for fear of violent reprisals, said the Interior Ministry had become what amounted to an Iranian fifth column inside the U.S.-backed Iraqi government, running death squads and operating a network of secret prisons. Reportedly, Iran is investing millions in southern Iraq in the form of aid to charity orginizations and political parties in order to influence the elections. What the US isn't saying is that these militias were originally set up to be death squads to go after insurgents and now the Iranians have taken over the operations to murder Sunnis and further their own interests. Read more... (5 comments, 479 words in story) by Nag
George W Bush has high hopes that history will judge him to be one of the world's greatest leaders. Well,you can stand on a pile of dung and declare it to be granite but eventually it will start to stink. The fact is that the United States of America has condoned, taught and practiced torture as part of its arsenal since the Viet Nam era. Many in Bush's administration have been around long enough to be thoroughly desensitized to violence and torture as a state tool. They can't accept the fact that it is still considered wrong. Bush has consciously made many torture techniques legal, so he thinks he's safe when he says "We don't torture". Bush and his administration can manipulate what is legal, but they can't seem to tell the difference between right and wrong.
But it still comes as a shock to discover that American leaders will open the way for the torture of prisoners, that lawyers will invent justifications for it, that the President of the United States will strenuously resist legislation prohibiting cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners--and that much of the American public will be indifferent to what is being done in its name. Is it any wonder why no one in their right mind believes Condi Rice's explanations of extrordinary rendition done under the noses of the Europeans? Read more... (10 comments, 525 words in story) by Nag
When I was in parochial gradeschool, we learned all about the place that unbaptized babies go when they die: Limbo. Over the years we learned that the church sent any holy unbaptized soul to Limbo, kind of like that can where you throw all your spare change. Baptism had to have top billing and is the only way one can get into heaven, so they had to come up with this Limbo schtick.
Oh, woe is me, I have discovered that the Church is about to do away with Limbo for good. Limbo is one of those concepts that we laughed about even in gradeschool and it got me to thinking. Lately, the Church is just no fun anymore, what with abusive priests, anti-gay proclamations, Santorum... you know, no fun. Why can't it be like the old days when church stuff was a hoot? Read more... (16 comments, 439 words in story)
|
Login
Recommended Diaries
What's the establishment got against Howard Dean?
by northcountry - Dec 3 8 comments A 'controversial' consensus by heathlander - Dec 2 3 comments Obama commits to Middle East peace by shergald - Dec 2 9 comments Me and my son, a Shministim by shergald - Dec 3 Memo To David Paterson: Liz Krueger For U.S. Senate by Intrepid Liberal Journal - Dec 2 2 comments Great White Junta by Jeff Huber - Dec 1 13 comments TARIFFS: The Smoot-Hawley Fairy Tale by unlawflcombatnt - Nov 30 2 comments Saturday Painting Palooza Vol.173 by boran2 - Nov 29 5 comments Recommended World Diaries
Recent Diaries
CSPAN ain't scratching the itch.
by stormbear - Dec 3 Me and my son, a Shministim by shergald - Dec 3 What's the establishment got against Howard Dean? by northcountry - Dec 3 8 comments A 'controversial' consensus by heathlander - Dec 2 3 comments Memo To David Paterson: Liz Krueger For U.S. Senate by Intrepid Liberal Journal - Dec 2 2 comments Obama commits to Middle East peace by shergald - Dec 2 9 comments The Recession is Real! by btchakir - Dec 1 George W. Bush Belongs In Prison by statusquobuster - Dec 1 1 comment Confidence is high... by btchakir - Dec 1 Great White Junta by Jeff Huber - Dec 1 13 comments TARIFFS: The Smoot-Hawley Fairy Tale by unlawflcombatnt - Nov 30 2 comments Saturday Painting Palooza Vol.173 by boran2 - Nov 29 5 comments Breaking the Bailout by danps - Nov 29 1 comment I got yer Thanksgiving. Right HERE!!! by Arthur Gilroy - Nov 28 6 comments Libya sends 3,000 tons of aid to Gaza SHIP TURNED BACK by shergald - Nov 28 8 comments Friday Foto Flogging by AndiF - Nov 28 98 comments In honor of the First Thanksgiving, some history: by btchakir - Nov 27 2 comments We interrupt this broadcast for an example of competence. by stormbear - Nov 26 Process Patented to Identify "Unknown Unknowns" by Knoxville Progressive - Nov 26 7 comments Back when Gates was a "shoot first crazy neocon". by Pen - Nov 26 2 comments More Diaries... Blogroll
THE TRAIL BLAZERS
LOCAL BLOGGERS
BLOG AMNESTY STEVEN D's PICKS
Empire Burlesque
|
||||||||||||
Booman Tribune Homepage admin@boomantribune.com powered by Scoop 
More blogs about Blogs at Technorati.
|
||||||||||||||
