Latest News & Analysis May 16-31 2004

MAY 31

THE WORLD WAR MONUMENT:
WILL POLITICIANS EVER TELL THE TRUTH?

"The new World War II Monument (left, the Monument's Badacchino Sculpture) has been dedicated in Washington, D.C. It is fitting that it happens on Memorial Day Weekend, the traditional day when we honor our war dead. The ceremonies in Washington have been marked with appropriate pomp and circumstances with 'Taps' blown solemnly and often. It is made especially poignant at this sixtieth anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy.¼

"The various politicians have been on display at the ceremonies as they always are and especially so in election years. They all expound on the virtues of 'The Greatest Generation', the term given to these grandfathers and great grandfathers by Tom Brokaw. Terms like 'dying for our freedom', 'the ultimate sacrifice' and 'protecting our way of life' will be bandied about. The problem is that their deaths were unnecessary and those phrases are lies. Yes, they fought and died valiantly and honorably but, unnecessarily and they were not 'dying for our freedom'. This is the one thing the politicians will never say. In point of fact, no American soldier has fought or died for our freedom since our War for Independence or perhaps The War of 1812. The United States has not been in danger from invasion since 1814.

President Bush's remarks at the National World War II Memorial Dedication
"The years of World War II were a hard, heroic and gallant time in the life of our country. When it mattered most, an entire generation of Americans showed the finest qualities of our nation and of humanity. On this day, in their honor, we will raise the American flag over a monument that will stand as long as America itself." (RN24/7: A collection of predictable platitudes defending the very fallacy exposed in the above column.)

OTHER NEWS & ANALYSIS

Prominent U.S. Jews, Israel blamed for start of Iraq war
"'The fact is that this claim is out there,' says the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, on the charge that the Jews and supporters of Israel were the ones who pushed the U.S. into the war. 'We were pointed out at the beginning, and it's easier to blame us when things go bad,' he adds." (RN 24/7: Hey, if the yarmulke fits.¼After all, it's not like Senator Hollings or General Zinni invented this!)

Kennedy/Hatch pro-sodomite, anti-Christian hate crimes bill is back
"While our nation is facing a culture war over same-sex marriage, two U.S. Senators are attempting to add 'sexual orientation' as a protected class status to our nation's laws. Senators Kennedy and Hatch are again trying to ram through passage of the Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act (S. 933), a pro-homosexual hate crimes bill."

Who killed Nick Berg?
"Dr John Simpson, executive director for surgical affairs at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, told Ritt Goldstein of the Asia Times, 'I would have thought that all the people in the vicinity would have been covered in blood, in a matter of seconds ... if it [the video] was genuine.' Simpson agrees with other experts who find it highly probable that Berg had died before his decapitation.

"But there is still the problem of Berg's slight body movements while sitting on the floor, before the beheading. According to a blogger (internet diarist), Nick Possum, 'this footage was subsequently modified frame by frame to make Berg's body move very occasionally.' Apparently, this can be achieved with 'commonly available software.' [http://www.brushtail.com.au/nick_berg_hypothesis.html]"

Who killed Nick Berg? - extended version (RN 24/7: There is much more of interest here for those wishing to pursue it.)

MAY 30

"24's" subversive message

Having just completed its third season, FOX's innovative action thriller-drama "24" is one of TV's cult hits. Employing split screens and kinetic "real-time" pacing, each one-hour episode covers an hour in a single day and features Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer, an agent for the fictitious U.S.-intelligence body the Counter Terrorist Unit. Bauer is seen bailing the president out of different predicaments brought on by conducting an interventionist foreign policy. The series accepts such a premise without challenging the underlying fallacy of pursuing such a policy, one that flies in the face of what the Founding Fathers envisioned for America.

"¼Government policy presumes a static and unchanging world and cannot predict or account for the human response to its policies. 'Even its "dynamic' models are static because they cannot account for every variation.

"In foreign policy, the problem is arguably worse than in domestic policy, because the government deals with political systems its supposed experts cannot understand, cultures that are unfamiliar, and unleashes forces and responses that it never expected. The result is always some 'crisis,' which means nothing more than a dangerous development that had not been part of the plan.

"'24's' preoccupation with this theme seems indicative of an underlying message for viewers. Season after season, we are confronted with the reality that meddling in the affairs of other countries brings deadly consequences home to American soil."

OTHER NEWS & ANALYSIS

Charley Reese: Lying or Confused?
"I confess – I'm not sure if President Bush lied or is just confused when he said in his recent speech that "full sovereignty" was to be handed over to an Iraqi government on June 30. Full sovereignty would mean that the Iraqi government could tell us to get out of the country, and we would have to either go or go to war against the new government."

Jewish Congresswoman says Bush's policies a danger to Jews
The simmering debate over the role of Jewish neoconservatives in drawing America into war in Iraq erupted with new fury this week. One of America's most respected ex-generals took to the airwaves to charge on CBS News' "60 Minutes" that the war had been fought for Israel's benefit, just days after a similar charge was leveled on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

It’s about time we kicked the judges out
"According to LifeNews.com, Florida residents will soon be given an opportunity each of us would love to have – the chance to kick an activist judge in the rear end – figuratively, anyway. Florida Circuit Court Judge George Greer is being challenged for the first time in 12 years in the 2004 election. Anyone who has followed the situation surrounding Terri Schiavo in Florida is intimately familiar with Judge Greer. He placed himself smack dab in the midst of the Terri Schiavo controversy last year when he decreed that Terri's husband, Michael Schiavo, had the right to remove her feeding tube, which would effectively allow her to slowly starve to death." Terri's website More news on the fight for Terri and other disabled people.

MAY 29

this is conservatism? the nader-buchanan fiasco

Readers to Patrick Buchanan's magazine, The American Conservative, recently got quite a surprise. On the June 21th cover was a photo of the darling of environmental extremists, Ralph Nader, with the headline, "RALPH NADER Makes a Play for the Right." A hard-hitting exposé of the ex-Green party candidate trying to pawn himself off as a viable alternative to President Bush? Hardly. There it was in smaller type: "An Interview with Pat Buchanan." So, Nader was making a play for the Right with Buchanan supplying the bat, ball and glove?!

Ralph Nader: Conservatively Speaking

The long-time progressive makes a pitch for the disenfranchised Right.

Pat Buchanan: Let me start off with foreign policy—Iraq and the Middle East. You have seen the polls indicating widespread contempt for the United States abroad. Why do they hate us?

Ralph Nader : First of all, we have been supporting despots, dictators, and oligarchs in all those states for a variety of purposes. We supported Saddam Hussein. He was our anti-Communist dictator until 1990. It’s also cultural; they see corporate culture as abandoning the restraints on personal behavior dictated by their religion and culture. Our corporate pornography and anything-goes values are profoundly offensive to them.

The other thing is that we are supporting the Israeli military regime with billions of dollars and ignoring both the Israeli peace movement, which is very substantial, and the Palestinian peace movement. They see a nuclear-armed Israel that could wipe out the Middle East in a weekend if it wanted to¼.

Ralph Nader: false opposition
"'Citizen Ralph' is the quintessential Establishment revolutionary — fed, funded, pampered and promoted by the globalist elites and one-world corporatists he claims to be fighting. With generous funding from Insider foundations (Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Field, Rubin, Stern, et al.), over the past several decades Nader has launched a plethora of radical 'public interest' groups that have become a permanent, full-time lobbying force for ever bigger government."

Ralph Nader, the Leftist conservative
"Nader may not be the ideal conservative candidate. OK, he's probably not a conservative candidate at all. He's even to the left of Kerry, who has just been recognized as the most liberal of all U.S. senators¼."

Ralph Nader on the Issues

Real News 24/7 on Nader-Buchanan: According to the old adage, politics makes strange bedfellows, meaning that sometimes circumstances compel adversaries to temporarily join forces. It presupposes that this is not a situation sought after, but rather one that is thrust upon the parties involved. Far different, however, is the American Conservative interview, as no one (at least as far as we know) put a gun to Pat Buchanan's head and ordered him to feature veteran Leftwing activist Ralph Nader in his magazine. So what on earth would have possessed him to do so?

Pat, after all, is a political commentator who is hugely popular with many Americans committed to the preservation of traditional values, some of whom backed his unsuccessful attempts as presidential candidate. He has spoken out forcefully and sometimes eloquently against many of the unconstitutional policies, both domestically and abroad, that have been favored by Establishment politicians, whether Democrats or Republicans. (A number of Buchanan's columns have been carried on this website, because he has, on occasion, challenged the prevailing 'wisdom' of the politically correct crowd, particularly his questioning of the U.S. Middle East policy.) But Pat Buchanan, nevertheless, has been problematic for the more perceptive of those who are (or were) his backers.

For example, despite solid evidence showing that he was cheated out of critical votes in the 1996 Republican primaries, Buchanan has never in the least used his very high public profile as author, columnist, television talk show participant, lecture circuit speaker and failed candidate in the 2000 presidental election, to condemn this crime against both himself and the electorate. (His long-running stints with Establishment media sources have been red flags for some conservatives, who maintain that he wouldn't have had them unless he was one part of the system, while others contend that all this shows is an effort to appear 'balanced' on the part of TV networks and publishers.)

And that latter candidacy itself has raised some doubts, too. First, because he ran for the Reform Party, a populist group that, at least at the national level, didn't share some of the key positions held by the core of Buchanan supporters on issues such as the rights of the unborn. In fact, the only issue where they really agreed much with Ross Perot's party was on NAFTA and the outsourcing of American jobs.

Second, despite substantial campaign coffers (which included millions in federal matching funds, as well), no national television ads were run and, with the controlled media blackout, this meant the Buchanan candidacy was not even on the radar screen nationally. It was as if he and his campaign staff could have cared less whether anyone even knew he was running, because it was abundantly clear that the Establishment news sources had no intention of giving him any coverage and because he was also excluded from the only other forum he possibly could hope to have national exposure--the presidential debates.

Ironically, it's the Establishment's third party candidate of choice from that election, Ralph Nader, that Buchanan and his magazine have chosen to promote. Somehow, he's now suddenly supposed to be on our side. Really? The above article revealing him as false opposition and to the left of Kerry should be all that needed to dispel that nonsense. But yet the people at American Conservative want us to believe it. The critical question: Do they believe it.

The interview is an incredible puff piece, in which Nader is served up one softball question after another to hit out of the park. And we're not just talking softball here, we're talking slow pitch softball! Buchanan and company, who ostensibly are for the social reign of Christ the King--which means opposition to abortion and homosexual 'marriages'--not only don't put the 'progressive' candidate on the hot seat with their questions, they don't even give him an occasion to break a sweat. (We know of one former subscriber to the magazine who told us the Nader fiasco was one of the principal reasons that she's cancelled her subscription.)

So, Nader's being paraded before the readership of the American Conservative as a possible option to Bush and Kerry (an absurdity on the face of it), despite his known support for Roe vs. Wade and sodomite 'rights.' (Why is it Nader who's being interviewed and not men such as Ron Paul or Michael Peroutka, either of who is much closer to the ideals Pat professes to believe?) And Buchanan doesn't even challenge him on these stands, opting, instead, to let Nader express his unchristian views unmolested, then move on without fanfare to another subject.

Isn't Pat supposed to be fervently opposed to these evils? If so, how can he look the other way and publish an favorable interview with a man he knows supports what are condemned in Scripture as abominations? (And knows because Nader stated as much in the interview!) Neither was Nader asked if he still subscribed to what in 1972 he gave as the solution to America's problems: : "What is needed is socialism or communism of one sort or another."

The American Conservative interview is troubling, yet opinions as to what it ultimately means will vary. Some, who look to give Pat Buchanan the benefit of the doubt, will likely write it off as an example of poor judgment by someone perhaps seeking to increase newsstand sales by plastering the cover with a well-known figure, but hesitant to throw tough questions Nader's way for fear of losing the interview.

Others will point to it as further evidence that Buchanan is Nader's mirror image; namely, false opposition on the Right. After all, they argue, what real conservative would even for a moment entertain the thought of plugging such a candidacy?

Who's right? That remains to be seen. Certainly it must be said that those who don't trust Buchanan now have a particularly damning bit of evidence to add to their case. The promotion of someone like Ralph Nader is unconscionable, no matter what sort of benign spin some are willing to put on it.

On the other hand, those who uphold the man's basic decency, while equally abhorring the episode, are willing to see what he will do to repair the damage he's done with the interview. But what even they must be asking themselves is just how much 'damage control' should be allotted to Patrick Buchanan before he is written off completely by conservatives.

OTHER NEWS & ANALYSIS

PARENTS ALERT: 'Shrek 2' features transgenderism and crossdressing themes
"The DreamWorks' animated film, "Shrek 2," is billed as harmless entertainment but contains subtle sexual messages. Parents who are thinking about taking their children to see "Shrek 2," may wish to consider the following"

After the attack... What happens?
"Suppose you are conspiring to submerge the United States in a totalitarian Socialist world dictatorship. You have discreetly seized control of the nation’s institutions and government. Now you need to come out of the closet and impose that power. Now you need to nail the dictatorship down. How would you do that?"

Newborns as involuntary donors
"The evil logic of embryonic stem cell experimentation dictates that some human beings can be created for the sole purpose of serving as involuntary test subjects or tissue donors. A research team at Chicago’s Reproductive Genetics Institute has taken that logic an ominous step further by facilitating the birth of five babies 'to provide stem cells for siblings with serious non-heritable conditions,' reported the May 4 New Scientist."

MAY 28

Latest U.S. terror warning raises questions
"Two of the seven suspected terrorists linked by the Bush administration to an impending "hard" attack on the United States are probably not even in North America, said officials Wednesday. After naming the seven suspects – including two Canadians – at a prime-time news conference, top U.S. officials including FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and Attorney General John Ashcroft (photo, right, Mueller in foreground) said none of them is likely to be in the United States."

Ashcroft, Mueller Discuss Terrorist Threat
VIDEO TEXT
Complete press conference

Lawmakers divided over terror warnings
"The FBI and Justice Department insist that warning the public about a possibly devastating terror attack in this country was justified by intelligence and may avert a repeat of the Sept. 11 attacks. But some lawmakers aren't so sure."

Web reveals much, government little about terror suspects
Who is Adam Gadahn, the latest American citizen named by the government as a terrorist suspect feared to be plotting an al-Qaida attack? If an Internet account attributed to him is true, he grew up on 'an extremely rural goat ranch' in Southern California, was once 'obsessed with demonic heavy metal music,' and became a Muslim in November 1995 after being inspired by online religious discussion boards."

OTHER NEWS & ANALYSIS

Is this the future of war?
"Even as the Pentagon struggles with the low-tech reality of war in Iraq, it looks to increasingly bizarre-sounding technology for next-gen fighting systems.¼Officials hope new technologies will shorten combat, minimize casualties, and enable attacks to be carried out with greater precision. "

U.S. pressure Czechs to cancel radar sale to China
"A great wall of silence is hanging over the government's decision to block the export of a high-tech radar system to China. Ministers decided that supplying the Chinese with six Vera passive surveillance radar systems in a multimillion-dollar deal is not in the foreign-policy interests of the Czech Republic." (RN 24/7: Good news is rare when it comes to Communist China, so we should enjoy it when we get chance.)

GIs at Abu Ghraib: Catch-22 revisited
"It was, perhaps, unsurprising that armed solders wandered round the prison in civilian clothes; that logbooks were filled with 'unprofessional entries and flippant comments'; that they 'wrote poems and other sayings on their helmets'; that old friendships replaced the military chain of command; and that saluting of officers was 'sporadic'."

MAY 27

Richard Perle: U.S. war policy 'grave error'
"One of the ideological architects of the Iraq war has criticized the U.S.-led occupation of the country as 'a grave error.' Richard Perle, until recently a powerful adviser to U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, described U.S. policy in post-war Iraq as a failure."

Richard Norman Perle Biographical sketch from Wikopedia

Real News 24/7 on Richard Perle and the Iraq War: What Perle says now about America's conducting of the war conveniently bypasses the crucial role he had in hawking the invasion to the British in what is certainly the most underreported story of the Iraqi War. In November 2002 Perle spoke before Parliament, telling them that the United Nations weapons inspection that was going on at the time in Iraq mattered not, since the United States was determined to invade regardless of whether Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction or not. This would make the attack on Iraq a premeditated act of aggression, despite the misperception of the average deceived American.

OTHER NEWS & ANALYSIS

Neocons' Chalabi is now a neoconman, triggering war and bilking taxpayers
"Nobody is speaking on the record yet, but U.S. intelligence officials are making it clear to a variety of pre-eminent news sources that Ahmad Chalabi, a longtime darling of the neoconservatives who dragged the United States into this war, not only fed Western intelligence sources false information about Saddam Hussein's Iraq but is accused of having passed on U.S. secrets to Iran, possibly through his security and intelligence chief, who is now a fugitive."

More on soldier left brain damaged after playing unruly prisoner at Guantánamo
A United States soldier claims he was left brain damaged by a beating he received while posing as an un-cooperative prisoner at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. Yesterday, the Army admitted that the reservist, Sean Baker, was injured during National Guard training.

Anti-Semitism on this side of the Atlantic
RN 24/7: In this column, Establishment "conservative" Hebert London anguishes over remarks made by Senator Ernest Hollings earlier this month, who maintained that the Iraq War was started by President ''to secure Israel'' and ''to take the Jewish vote from the Democrats.'' London attacks Hollings for alluding to the role of Jewish "neo-con" presidential advisors for seeking "to guarantee Israel's security" and approvingly cites Senator George Allen comment accusing Hollings of making "anti-Semitic, political conspiracy statements." While he does attempt to address the issue as to whether Hollings' claims have any merit more than many do who throw the anti-Semitic slur around, London does not mention the smoking gun: Bush advisor Philip Zelikow's admission that the war is being waged for Israel, even referring to the Zionist state's security concerns as "the threat that dare not speak its name." Is London ignorant of this fact or is he deliberately choosing to omit information that would help his readers determine the truth? No matter, the controlled news media isn't going to spill the beans, nor will the Bush Administration publicize Zelikow's statement, which was not made before a national audience. On goes the deception. Bottom line: If, as Zelikow stated, the war is being fought to assist Israel, why is 'anti-Semitic' (read anti-Jewish) for Hollings and others to state the truth? Then, again, perhaps the real reason that Hollings was attacked is that Israel Firsters don't want the American people to know about our government paying less attention to our nation's national security needs than it does to the threat that dare not speak its name!

Ordinary Iraqis killed: 11,500 and not counting
America and Britain have not only declined to count the number of civilians killed, but have obstructed any attempts to discover the total. The Iraqi Health Ministry tried to collect data on deaths several months ago, but was ordered to stop. "At this time of war and contentious claims, raw sentiment is often palpable. Words can be hurtful. They reveal feelings long held dormant.

MAY 26

Ahmad chalabi and the failure of intelligence

In dawn raids on May 20th, American troops surrounded Ahmed Chalabi's headquarters and home in Baghdad, put a gun to his head, arrested two of his aides, and seized documents. Only five months ago, Chalabi was a guest of honor sitting right behind Laura Bush at the State of the Union. What brought about this astonishing fall from grace of the man who helped provide the faked intelligence that justified last year's war?

Chalabi: From prize to pariah
VIDEO TEXT
"In January, he was still so close to the Bushes he sat behind Laura Bush at the President's State of the Union Address. Now his Baghdad home has been raided, it seems on US orders, amid whispers from Washington that he all along duped the Americans by spying for the Iranians. "

Ritter says Chalabi boasted of Iranian spy link
"Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi leader accused by the CIA of passing US secrets to Tehran, claimed to have close links with Iranian intelligence seven years ago, according to a former UN weapons inspector."

Ahmed Chalabi Biographical sketch from Wikopedia

Background articles:
Chalabi blames Tenet for feud with US
VIDEO TEXT
"Ahmed Chalabi, the former Iraqi exile who worked closely with the White House before the Iraq war, blamed CIA Director George Tenet Sunday for recent allegations that have apparently caused his standing with the Bush administration to plummet. Speaking on CNN's "Late Edition," Chalabi also denied sending classified information to Iran, as has been alleged by the United States."

The truth about Ahmed Chalabi: Why the US turned against their former golden boy
"One well connected Iraqi told me recently, 'he will play the Shia extremist card for all it is worth. He's quite prepared to break Iraq apart if it serves his purpose. He's really dangerous now.'"

U.S. troops raid Chalabi's headquarters in Iraq
"U.S. troops raided a house used by Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi and searched his party offices in Baghdad on Thursday, piling pressure on the former Pentagon favorite now increasingly shunned by Washington."

OTHER NEWS & ANALYSIS

Firefighters excluded from 9-11 testimony
"The independent commission probing the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington decided not to hear from the worker group that lost more lives than anyone else to the terrorists: The Firefighters." (RN 24/7: Maybe the commission thought they had already been through enough. On the other hand, maybe the commission didn't want any testimony that could upset its carefully arranged investigatory apple cart and it knew there are firefighters out there who do precisely that, such as Bill Manning, who called the initial investigation "a half-baked farce." Manning, editor-in-chief of the respected Fire Engineering magazine, made the remark in an editorial, "$elling out the investigation," that appeared in the magazine's January 2002 issue. Ironically, Manning, who decried the destruction of evidence, called for a full investigation of the WTC's destruction. But, then, did anyone every really believe that the current investigation was going to be anything other than a whitewash from the get-go?)

Military: Soldier posing as prisoner severely beaten during Camp X-Ray 'training session'
"The Army confirmed Tuesday that a former military police officer was injured while posing as a prisoner during a training session at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, last year." (RN 24/7: Which goes to prove that Abu Ghraib hasn't cornered the market on brutality against prisoners.)

Karpinski: I was set up
"About two months after the Red Cross warned US commanders of widespread prisoner abuses, the commanding general at the Abu Ghraib prison assured the Red Cross in a confidential letter that Iraqi detainees were being given the best treatment possible and that even more ''improvements are continually being made.'" (RN 24/4: A commander who was caught out of the loop or a caught rat screaming "entrapment"?)

MAY 25

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED AT MAKR AL DEEB: PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY OR MEDIA DISINFORMATION?

On May 19th the United States launched an aerial assault on a target in the Iraqi village of Makr al-Deeb, killing 40 people. This much everyone acknowledges, but about the details there is a wide divergence. Survivors of the bombing say that the attack's victims had been innocent celebrants at a wedding, including women and children, however U.S. military sources, including Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt (right), insist that the target was a legitimate target and no children were among the fatalities. Yet there are discrepancies in the official explanation, which went from a initial flat denial that there had been a wedding party to Kimmitt's callous quip: "Bad people have celebrations, too." So what really happened at Makr al-Deeb?

Kimmitt shows pictures of weapons, says they're from 'wedding' site
"The U.S. military displayed more photographs yesterday to bolster its contention that American aircraft attacked a safe house for foreign fighters near the Syrian border - not a wedding party, as claimed by Iraqi survivors and police and suggested by video footage from the scene.

"Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the coalition deputy chief of staff for operations in Iraq, again showed pictures of items the military said it found at the attack site, including machine guns, ammunition, a Sudan Airways plane ticket, medical gear, a Sudanese passport and battery packs associated with improvised explosive devices."

Full transcript of General Kimmett's press conference From the official Department of Defense website

Incindent at Makr al Deeb
"[On May 19th] an Iraqi wedding party was bombed in the location of Makr al Deeb near the Syrian border. Approximately 40 members of the party were killed, many of them women and children. So far, there is a great deal of pictorial and anecdotal evidence suggesting that the US made a horrible error in mistaking the get-together for a gathering of foreign fighters.

"General Mark Kimmitt, however, has adamantly denied any responsibility for the incident and insists that the site was a legitimate target.

Background articles:
'Wedding video' clouds US denials
VIDEO TEXT
"A videotape has been broadcast which purports to show before-and-after footage of a wedding which Iraqis say the US bombed, killing about 40. The film, released by a US news agency, combines a wedding home movie with video of the aftermath of the attack, which the US says targeted militants."

Wedding in Makr Al-Deeb
PHOTO GALLERY TEXT
"As survivors tell it, the wedding party was in full swing. The band was playing tribal music and the guests had just finished eating dinner when, at about 9 p.m., they heard the roar of U.S. warplanes.

"Fearing trouble, the revelers ended the festivities and went to bed. About six hours later, the first bomb struck."

Iraqis bury victims of US strike
"Mourners said an Iraqi wedding singer and his musician brother were among more than 40 people killed. Television footage has shown bodies, including those of children, wrapped in blankets and loaded onto trucks."

`They didn't even spare one child': Air strike kills families in their beds
"Mothers died with their children in their arms," said Madhi Nawaf, who survived the attack Wednesday in Makr al-Deeb on the Syrian border. Up to 45 people died, mostly women and children from the Bou Fahad tribe.

The Wedding party massacre
"The bombing started at 3am on Wednesday. The villagers from the tiny desert community of Makr al-Deeb were fast asleep, exhausted after a day spent celebrating a wedding. By the time the bombing had stopped and the advancing GIs had finished marauding and shooting their way through the remains of the village, the Americans had killed at least 42 innocent people."

Real News 24/7 on the Makr al-Deeb bombing attack: General Mark Kimmitt has contradicted himself, saying on the one hand that there was no evidence of a wedding party, while on the other hand conceding: "There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations, too." Need we remind him that "bad people" also have small children who take part in celebrations and die?

KIimmitt has promised an investigation into the incident, however when he maintains that his troops were justified in their attack and even denies that any children died, when there is plainly evidence to the contrary, we are permitted to be skeptical as to the honesty and objectivity of such an investigation.

Why was the attack made? No one was firing at the aircraft. It was three in the morning and people were in bed. Earlier, the wedding party had ended abruptly due to the presence of planes, so, according to survivors there was not even the celebratory gunfire that has provoked mistaken attacks in the past.

The military maintains that the strike was being made on a 'safe house' that harbored foreign fighters from across the nearby border in Syria. And yet the majority of those killed are said to be women and children. In this the attack has an eerie similarity to Israel's July 2002 firing of a missile that leveled an apartment building in the Gaza Strip. While the purported target of that attack, Hamas leader Salah Shehada, was killed, so were more than a dozen others, including nine children. The White House called that attack a "heavy-handed action" on the part of Israel, but, of course, did nothing more than complain; the Sharon government received nothing more than this symbolic slap on the wrist and went on their merry way as though nothing amiss happened.

Now that U.S. forces are the ones to have committed the bludgeoning, it will be interesting to see what President Bush has to say. Not much, we think, as he has enough of a scandal to deal with in the Abu Ghraib abuse PsyOp. If he is to be reelected in November, it's incumbent to keep the war as popular as possible and the needless killing of civilians to achieve a nebulous goal isn't the way to do that.

OTHER NEWS & ANALYSIS

Federal official: terrorists planning summer attack
"U.S. officials have obtained new intelligence deemed highly credible indicating al-Qaida or other terrorists are in the United States and preparing to launch a major attack this summer, The Associated Press has learned." (RN 24/7: While intelligence officials are watching for a summer terrorist sneak attack, we suggest that they also keep a very close eye on these guys, as well!)

Iraq and the Christian Zionists
"To understand what is happening in the Middle East, wrote George Monbiot in The Guardian of London recently, you must first understand what is happening in the U.S., where evangelical Christians are driving President Bush's policies. The explanation slowly is becoming familiar to us, he says, but we still have some difficulty in taking it seriously.

U.S. commander present during abuse: Report
"The top U.S. military commander in Iraq may have been present during some interrogations at Abu Ghraib prison when alleged abuses of prisoners occurred, The Washington Post reported on its website today. Citing a recording of a military hearing, the newspaper said a military lawyer for a soldier charged in the Abu Ghraib abuse case testified that a captain at the Baghdad prison said Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez was present during some 'interrogations and/or allegations of the prisoner abuse.'"

MAY 24

CONGRESSMAN RON PAUL ON WHY THE MILLENNIUM CHALLENGE IS BAD FOR AMERICA

¼The wisest approach to international economic development is for the United States to lead by example, to re-embrace the kind of economic policies that led us to become wealthy in the first place. This means less government, less taxation, no foreign meddling. Demonstrating the effectiveness of limited government in creating wealth would be the greatest gift we could send overseas.

— Ron Paul, M.D.
Republican, Texas

New millennium, same old foreign aid
"Though the ill-conceived Millennium Challenge Act has already become law and therefore we are only talking about its implementation, it is nevertheless important to again address some very fundamental problems with this new foreign aid program.

"I believe that the Millennium Challenge Act (MCA) may be one of the worst foreign policy blunders yet – and among the most costly. It is advertised as a whole new kind of foreign aid – apparently an honest admission that the old system of foreign aid does not work.¼"

Background article: US picks 16 nations eligible for new aid fund
"President Bush praised the first group of countries selected to apply for aid Monday from the Millennium Challenge Account, a new aid fund that was launched in February."

Behind the Deception
"It is Mr. Bush who has gotten Congress to pony up billions of dollars more for the UN’s AIDS program and other UN programs like the UN Millennium Challenge Account, the World Bank, etc. It is President Bush who has taken us back into UNESCO, one of the worst UN agencies, after we’d been out of it for 20 years and three administrations." (RN 24/7: His avid promotion of this latest internationalist scheme is just one more proof that George W. Bush isn't what some of his more conservative supporters would like to believe. This link gives more examples. But will they ever learn?)

Real News 24/7 on the Millennium Challenge: As usual, there is much wisdom in Congressman Paul's analysis of of MCA. Among other salient points, he notes an aspect hidden from the average American in all the hoopla over the aid program. "As bad as it is for U.S. tax dollars to be sent overseas to help poor countries," he writes, "what is worse is for it to be sent abroad to help rich and politically-connected U.S. and multi-national companies."

A couple of quibbles, though. Rep. Paul argues that the MCA "may be one of the worst foreign policy blunders yet." Why call it a blunder? The move towards an ever-larger federal government within the framework of an rapidly-developing world government, all of which the Millennium Challenge is very much a part, has gone on relentlessly for decades, whether a Democrat or Republican occupies the Oval Office. James Forrestal, the first Secretary of Defense, who, becoming increasingly distrustful of traitorous goings-on he was seeing at the highest levels of our government, remarked: "Consistency has never been a mark of stupidity. If the diplomats who have mishandled our relations with Russia were merely stupid, they would occasionally make a mistake in our favor."

That famous quotation applies equally in the present case. When a long series of decisions consistently rob our citizens of their money and our country of its sovereignty, all to build up a globalist New World Order, then terms like "blunders" or "stupidity" don't apply¼treason does! Sure there are the dupes, the "useful idiots" who support what sounds good and what they think will get themselves reelected, but who don't give adequate attention to what they're voting on. However, the ones who are drawing up these plans have different motives for pushing this, for they are the ones who see the U.S. being submerged into a global system to be ruled by the United Nations or some similar organization to follow it.

The challenge in Millennium Challenge is really a challenge to see whether America can preserve her freedom against internationalists hell-bent on establishing a one world government. It does us no good to pretend that these things are happening by mistake and we urge Rep. Paul to see the pattern in these policies and no longer attribute to accident what is really a premeditated assault on our nation.

related LINKS

Millennium Challenge Corporation
"Two years ago in Monterrey, Mexico, President Bush called for a 'new compact for global development,' which links greater contributions from developed nations to greater responsibility from developing nations. The President proposed a concrete mechanism to implement this compact -- the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA)¼" Homepage for the U.S./U.N. entity for separating Americans from even more of their money.

The Millennium Challenge Account
VIDEO TEXT
""President Bush called for 'a new compact for global development, defined by new accountability for both rich and poor nations alike. Greater contributions from developed nations must be linked to greater responsibility from developing nations.¼'" From the official White House website. (Please note the video and text links found to the right of the page.)

The Millennium Challenge Account: Creating effective development assistance
This from the Heritage Foundation, an allegedly conservative think tank praised by the likes of Rush Limbaugh. (RN 24/7: Question: Since when has adding substantially to the size of the federal government by the creation of an unnecessary new agency or government doling out billions of dollars in welfare—foreign or domestic—ever been consistent with the view of a limited federal government? Answer: Never! But this hasn't stopped the "conservatives" at Heritage to jump on board as a partner not only with the Bush Administration, but with the United Nations' World Bank. This is as phony a conservatism as the neo-cons' agenda of military adventurism: Neither in any way resembles the nation envisioned by the Founding Fathers, who sought to avoid foreign entanglements.)

Millennium Challenge Corporation - Disinfopedia
"The Bush Administration is hard at work preparing the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) program for the FY04 budget. The MCA concept, unveiled at the United Nations Conference on Financing for Development (FfD) in Monterrey, Mexico in March 2002, is designed to promote economic growth and sustainable, market-oriented practices in poor countries, in order to attract long term investment.¼"

Congressman Ron Paul for President 2004
RN 24/7: Although Representative Paul hasn't announced his candidacy, some Americans who are sick of the status quo have put up this website in hopes of enticing him to make a run for the White House. And while we at Real News 24/7 haven't endorsed a presidential candidate and are not doing so at this time, we are posting this link because Ron Paul is head and shoulders above Bush and Kerry—if for no other reason, then because the concepts of limited government and the Constitution still mean something to him—and thus deserves some consideration.

OTHER NEWS & ANALYSIS

U.S. forces storm mosque
"In a major push, U.S. forces killed at least 32 backers of renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in fierce fighting in Kufa Sunday.¼The Associated Press Television News, meanwhile, obtained a videotape that allegedly captures a wedding party that survivors say was later attacked by U.S. planes early [May 19th], killing up to 45 people. The dead included the cameraman, Yasser Shawkat Abdullah, hired to record the festivities, which ended Tuesday night before the planes struck.
The U.S. military says it is investigating the attack, which took place in the village of Mogr el-Deeb about five miles from the Syrian border, but that all evidence so far indicates the target was a safehouse for foreign fighters." (RN 24/7: Please make sure to click on link to see a photo of one of the dangerous 'foreign fighters' wounded in the attack. Looks like we've taken a page out of Israel's playbook.)

Patrick Buchanan: What does America offer the world?
"A society that accepts the killing of a third of its babies as women's 'emancipation,' that considers homosexual marriage to be social progress, that hands out contraceptives to 13-year-old girls at junior high ought to be seeking out a confessional – better yet, an exorcist – rather than striding into a pulpit like Elmer Gantry to lecture mankind on the superiority of 'American values.'"

Terri Schiavo's parents finally able to visit their daughter
"After weeks of preventing Bob and Mary Schindler from visiting their daughter, Terri Schiavo's estranged husband finally allowed them the opportunity to spend precious time with her. "Terri was very responsive. Her mom greeted her first and she began laughing and trying to talk," Terri's father, Bob Schindler, Sr., told LifeNews.com in exclusive comments. 'Terri looked good with no visible negative signs, however she is being administered antibiotics.'" Terri's website More news on the fight for Terri and other disabled people.

MAY 23

PROBE OF NUN'S RITUALISTIC MURDER: TIP OF THE ICEBERG FOR 'CATHOLIC' SATANISM?

Earlier this month Rev. Gerald Robison was arraigned on charges stemming from the murder of a nun in 1980. The slaying had the trappings of a Satanic ritual and comes at the same time the Archdiocese of Toledo is investigating allegations that Robinson and other priests were involved in ritually-connected sexual abuses. But Toledo is only only one place where such occurrences have been reported. Even the Vatican itself has not been spared. Can any of these accusations be legitimate? And, if so, how can supposed Catholic bishops and priests be involved in Satanism?

Satanic rituals claim as priest accused of nun's murder
"Depending on whom you believe, Gerald Robinson is either a quiet, somewhat remote, balding cleric who has faithfully served the Catholic Church for the past 40 years, or a sexual pervert and participant in bizarre Satanic rituals who killed a 71-year-old nun and covered up the crime.
"Either way, the 66-year-old priest is the talk of the Rust Belt town of Toledo, Ohio, where he has been arraigned on murder charges and imprisoned in the county jail after his arrest last weekend. "

Priest indicted in 'ritual' murder
VIDEO TEXT
"Robinson was arrested April 23 in the strangling and stabbing of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl, 71, during Easter weekend in 1980. He was long a suspect in her death. The nun's body was discovered in a chapel at Mercy Hospital, covered by an altar cloth. Investigators have described it as 'ritualistic' slaying that has the Toledo Diocese looking into claims of satanic sex abuse by priests. " Related story

Real News 24/7: The last sentence quoted above isn't quite accurate, because the Diocese of Toledo had already begun looking into such claims prior to being notified by county prosecutors concerning the Robinson case. Last spring its Review Board considered "wide-ranging allegations of satanic cultic activity, including sexual abuse," lodged primarily against members of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, but which also included others, among them Rev. Gerald Robinson (below, left). One of the Oblates, in fact, has been accused of sexually abusing over a dozen young girls, at least three of them "during rituals and Satanic rites."

The revelation of the diabolical in that Ohio diocese is just one manifestation of a far more pervasive evil that has taken root in what is ostensibly the Roman Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council concluded in 1965. A recent book on 'Catholic' satanic ritual abuse contends:

The current priest sex scandal in the Roman Catholic Church has sent shockwaves throughout the world. However, mainstream media outlets hardly touched upon the fact that many of the accused priests were involved in Satanic Ritual Abuse as part and parcel of their sexual abuse of children and women.¼Father Sean Fortune of Ireland who raped children in a haunted house and threatened detractors with magical hexes, Father Frederick Ryan who tattooed a boy with a devil figure and then raped him, Father Bernard Lane who sexually abused homeless boys in a ritual chamber called The Black Room, et al. (For more on this, see the website for Lucifer's Lodge.)

But even this only gives a hint as to the depth of the hellish cult that lurks behind cassocks and clerical collars. The biggest revelation came from the late Jesuit, Fr. Malachi Martin, a best-selling author often referred to as a "Vatican insider." In his book The Keys of this Blood, he writes:

Most frighteningly for [Pope] John Paul [II], he had come up against the irremovable presence of a malign strength in his own Vatican and in certain bishops’ chanceries. It was what knowledgeable Churchmen called the ‘superforce.’ Rumors, always difficult to verify, tied its installation to the beginning of Pope Paul VI’s reign in 1963. Indeed Paul had alluded somberly to ‘the smoke of Satan which has entered the Sanctuary’. . . an oblique reference to an enthronement ceremony by Satanists in the Vatican. Besides, the incidence of Satanic pedophilia — rites and practices — was already documented among certain bishops and priests as widely dispersed as Turin, in Italy, and South Carolina, in the United States. The cultic acts of Satanic pedophilia are considered by professionals to be the culmination of the Fallen Archangel’s rites. (p. 632. Emphasis added)

In a later, work, The Windswept House: A Vatican Novel, he vividly describes this act, which he calls The Enthronement of the Fallen Archangel Lucifer and which supposedly took place in St. Paul's Chapel in the Vatican. (See Malachi Martin and Satanism in the Vatican.)

Although he wrote it as fiction, Fr. Martin insisted that the ritual really did take place. Although he never named names, it is widely believed that one of those he depicts as a clergyman participating in the sacrilege was the late Archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin (photo, right). This was based on the testimony of a woman publicly identified only as "Agnes," who testified that Bernardin was among those who ritualistically abused her in 1957, when she was 11years old. (See Cardinal Bernardin was a satanist.)

This evil is not going to be solved by the post-Conciliar reform church, because that organization has engendered the very fertile theological soil that fosters these monsters, even if they are the most extreme results. One article on the Robinson case notes that

Challenged as to why they did not investigate the allegations of Satanic rituals, church officials have said that the claims were not credible. They have not explained why Fr Robinson was not placed on leave after he was named as a suspect, in apparent violation of their own policies. He celebrated mass until last week.

"Their policy dictates that they step down the priest and launch an investigation," Claudia Vercellotti of a local group called Snap, or Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, told reporters. "Why was Father Gerald Robinson not stepped down, given the seriousness of the allegations?"

Not credible? Someone should have told Sr. Margaret Ann Pahl (left). But how surprising can it be coming from the same corrupt ecclesiastical establishment permits these sorts of abominations to take place and even gives them a more or less official nods, such as when John Paul II (contrary to the wishful thinking of those who share Fr. Martin's optimistic view of him), while visiting the African nation of Benin in February 1993, "addressed a group of Voodoo adherents (Satanists) and told them they ought to be grateful to their fathers who passed on to them their beliefs addressed a group of Voodoo adherents (Satanists) and told them that they ought to be grateful to their fathers who passed on to them their beliefs." (Also see Vatican preps Catholics for New World Order religion.)

Until such blasphemies are rejected, rather than rationalized, by conservative practitioners of the Vatican II religion, and they wake up to the fact that there is has been a hostile takeover of the Catholic Church by her enemies, then the steady stream of scandals involving "pedophile" Satanist priests and bishops is going to continue, no matter how many "inclusive," "non-judgmental" bandages they slap on the wounds. This is something that's not going to go away, because these enemies have ensconced themselves in position of the highest authority and they don't intend to leave until they reduce the Church to a pile of rubble and they have found the most successful way to do that: Infiltrate the church and sow moral corruption.

(And this is precisely what the secret society Alta Vendita called for more than 100 years ago! Then later (and no doubt in very much concert with the Alta Vista) others burrowed in, such as Modernists, Communists and homosexuals.

Catholics must do what Pope Leo XIII said regarding Freemasonry: "tear away the mask." ( Encyclical: Humanum Genus) When Satanists and their sympathizers have ascended to positions of power, it isn't by accident and this is something that needs to be made known as soon as possible to as many as possible.

OTHER NEWS & ANALYSIS

Summer escapist movie offers no escape from politics
"When a Hollywood disaster movie opens on Memorial Day weekend, there may be some drama outside the movie theater as well as inside: Liberal and conservative groups are both recruiting volunteers to hand out flyers explaining the 'facts' on global warming."

Diebold's voting machine expansion rattles investors, states
"Chief Executive Officer Walden O'Dell says his company won't stop making voting machines, even though states challenge their reliability and investors say there's too little profit in the effort."

California marriage protected for now, group says
"Why do the Democrat politicians keep pushing for homosexual 'marriage' when the people have repeatedly said 'no'?¼"

MAY 22

PRESIDENTIAL RACE runs TRUE TO FORM: CONTENDERS HAVE ROYAL BLOODLINES

When America's colonies fought to be free from Britain, it was a fight against rule by a privileged class. "No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States.¼" So reads the US Constitution. This was to be a clean break with European monarchy. Or so we thought In reality, many presidents have traced their lineage back to Europe's crowned heads. This year is no exception, as George Bush and John Kerry each has kingly ancestors. Kerry's ties include a bloodline shared by King Harald of Norway (photo, left)."

Will Kerry's royal relations ensure a November victory?
"The Democrat’s president candidate John Kerry is related to King Harald of Norway, and according to one expert, royal relation ensures that he will win the election this fall. Not only did Kerry live a couple of years in Oslo during his youth, he is also related with the Norwegian King, according to Harold Brooks-Baker, director of Burke’s Peerage, the 'bible' of the European royal families."

Does royal theory give Kerry edge? "The U.S. presidential election will be largely fought over Iraq and the economy, but if royal genes have anything to do with the result, Democrat John Kerry is destined to dethrone George W. Bush this November. "

Real News 24/7 on America's secret aristocracy: Among the more popularly held and deeply cherished beliefs for many Americans is the one that states anyone can become president. Abraham Lincoln is often held up as the exemplar of this notion of the common man as king, being raised for part of his childhood in a log cabin. If someone from such humble surroundings can make it to the White House, goes the patriotic propaganda that schoolchildren (except those going to prep schools) hear from the earliest age, then anyone can make it. But propaganda is exactly what this is as the accompanying articles clearly show and despite one of reports appearing on the CNN site, this still is news that the vast majority of Americans aren't getting.

Oh, occasionally an attempt is made to get us to like our servitude to the Snob Hill clique, Remember all of the 'Camelot' hype when JFK was president? The Kennedys were pushed as 'our' American royalty and after his assassination this was shifted to the Kennedy clan as a whole. By extension this is what the so-called Eastern Establishment is all about. Even non-Easterners such as Carter, Reagan and Clinton had to be able to prove their Eastern Establishment pedigree before they could get if to the top--the real common man need not apply.

If we wanted that form of government would be one thing, but to have it foisted on us under the guise of representative government is criminal!

When one cuts beyond the myth, the reality is that the big party national candidates, whether they be "yacht club conservative" Republicans or "limousine liberal" Democrats, all come from the same social registers, all travel in the same circles, all send their kids to the same exclusivist schools, which is why--rhetoric aside--neither faction is really the friend of the little man. They don't really have any real 'opposing' ideas, they simply have different management styles for lording it over us. The most successful of them are those who are best able to conceal the look-down-their-nose attitude and adopt the pose of a man for the people.

This is one of those quiet indignities foisted on the American people, no less an affront than the prospect of a presidential campaign in which two members of the Skull and Bones secret society are the probable 'choices' that will be foisted on the voters in the fall election or that whichever one is victorious, he will be surrounded by the same neocon Israel First types and globalists from the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, etc. seeking world government.

All of which should be abhorrent to true Americans. In the final analysis, it is preferable to at least be told that we really don't have any true choice for president (at least from the major parties), since only the rich and privileged have even the remotest chance to be elected, than to be deceived by the accepted fiction that we live under a representative form of government. When the citizens of this country finally awaken to this fact will we have a chance at restoring this land to something in line with the ideals many still cherish and not a moment before.