19-03-2007, 15:24
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Citaat:
 Zielepiet. Als je dan toch zo nodig een persoonlijke aanval wilt doen (waarom weet ik niet), doe het dan gewoon op een manier die ergens op slaat. Ik heb een inhoudelijke discussie gehad met Encrypted op basis van argumenten. Jij zanikt alleen over andere forummers. Wie zou hier nu om wie moeten lachen? Triest geval. 
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19-03-2007, 16:03
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SAN FRANSISCO CHRONICLE
U.S. is recruiting misfits for army Felons, racists, gang members fill in the ranks Nick Turse Sunday, October 1, 2006 After falling short of its goals last year, military recruiting in 2006 has been marked by upbeat pronouncements from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, claims of success by the White House, and a spate of recent press reports touting the military's achievement of its woman- and manpower goals. But the armed forces have met with success only through a fundamental transformation, and not the transformation of the military -- that "co-evolution of concepts, processes, organizations and technology" that Rumsfeld is always talking about either. While the secretary of defense's longstanding goal of transforming the planet's most powerful military into its highest-tech, most agile, most futuristic fighting force has, in the words of the Washington Post's David VonDrehle, "melted away," the very makeup of the armed forces has been mutating before our collective eyes under the pressure of the war in Iraq. This actual transformation has been reported, but only in scattered articles on the new recruitment landscape in America. Last year, despite NASCAR, professional bull-riding and Arena Football sponsorships, popular video games that doubled as recruiting tools, TV commercials dripping with seductive scenes of military glory, a "joint marketing communications and market research and studies" program designed to attract, among others, dropouts and those with criminal records for military service, and at least $16,000 in promotional costs for each soldier it managed to sign up, the U.S. military failed to meet its recruiting goals. This year, those methods have been pumped up and taken over the top in several critical areas that make the old Army ad tagline, "Be All You Can Be," into material for late-night TV punch lines of the future. In 2004, the Pentagon published a "Moral Waiver Study," whose seemingly benign goal was "to better define relationships between pre-Service behaviors and subsequent Service success." That turned out to mean opening more recruitment doors to potential enlistees with criminal records. In February, the Baltimore Sun wrote that there was "a significant increase in the number of recruits with what the Army terms 'serious criminal misconduct' in their background" -- a category that included "aggravated assault, robbery, vehicular manslaughter, receiving stolen property and making terrorist threats." From 2004 to 2005, the number of those recruits rose by more than 54 percent, while alcohol and illegal drug waivers, reversing a four-year decline, increased by more than 13 percent. In June, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that, under pressure to fill the ranks, the Army had been allowing into its ranks increasing numbers of "recruits convicted of misdemeanor crimes, according to experts and military records." In fact, as the military's own data indicated, "the percentage of recruits entering the Army with waivers for misdemeanors and medical problems has more than doubled since 2001." One beneficiary of the Army's new moral-waiver policies gained a certain prominence this summer. After Steven Green, who served in the 101st Airborne Division, was charged in a rape and quadruple murder in Mahmudiyah, Iraq, it was disclosed that he had been "a high-school dropout from a broken home who enlisted to get some direction in his life, yet was sent home early because of an anti-social personality disorder." Recently, Eli Flyer, a former Pentagon senior military analyst and specialist on the relationship between military recruiting and military misconduct, told Harper's magazine that Green had "enlisted with a moral waiver for at least two drug- or alcohol-related offenses. He committed a third alcohol-related offense just before enlistment, which led to jail time, although this offense may not have been known to the Army when he enlisted." With Green in jail awaiting trial, the Houston Chronicle reported in August that Army recruiters were trolling around the outskirts of a Dallas-area job fair for ex-convicts. "We're looking for high school graduates with no more than one felony on their record," one recruiter said. The Army has even looked behind prison bars for fill-in recruits -- in one reported case, they went to a "youth prison" in Ogden, Utah. Although Steven Price had asked to see a recruiter while still incarcerated, he was "barely 17 when he enlisted last January" and his divorced parents say "recruiters used false promises and forged documents to enlist him." While confusion exists about whether the boy's mother actually signed a parental consent form allowing her son to enlist, his "father apparently wasn't even at the signing, but his name is on the form too." Law enforcement officials report that the military is now "allowing more applicants with gang tattoos," the Chicago Sun-Times reports, "because they are under the gun to keep enlistment up." They also note that "gang activity maybe rising among soldiers." The paper was provided with "photos of military buildings and equipment in Iraq that were vandalized with graffiti of gangs based in Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities." Last month, the Sun-Times reported that a gang member facing federal charges of murder and robbery enlisted in the Marine Corps "while he was free on bond -- and was preparing to ship out to boot camp when Marine officials recently discovered he was under indictment." While this recruit was eventually booted from the Corps, a Milwaukee police detective and Army veteran, who serves on the federal drug and gang task force that arrested the would-be Marine, noted that other "gang-bangers are going over to Iraq and sending weapons back ... gang members are getting access to military training and weapons." Earlier this year, it was reported that an expected transfer of 10,000 to 20,000 troops to Fort Bliss, Texas, caused FBI and local law enforcement to fear a turf war between "members of the FolkNation gang ... (and) a criminal group that is already well-established in the area, Barrio Azteca." The New York Sun wrote that, according to one FBI agent, "FolkNation, which was founded in Chicago and includes several branches using the name Gangster Disciples, has gained a foothold in the Army." Another type of gang member has also begun to proliferate within the military, evidently thanks to lowered recruitment standards and an increasing tendency of recruiters to look the other way. In July, a study by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups, found that because of pressing manpower concerns, "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" are now serving in the military. "Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members," said Scott Barfield, a Defense Department investigator quoted in the report. The New York Times noted that the neo-Nazi magazine Resistance is actually recruiting for the U.S. military, urging "skinheads to join the Army and insist on being assigned to light infantry units." As the magazine explained, "The coming race war and the ethnic cleansing to follow will be very much an infantryman's war. ... It will be house-to-house ... until your town or city is cleared and the alien races are driven into the countryside where they can be hunted down and 'cleansed.' " Apparently, the recruiting push has worked. Barfield reported that he and other investigators have identified a network of neo-Nazi active-duty Army and Marine personnel spread across five military installations in five states. "They're communicating with each other about weapons, about recruiting, about keeping their identities secret, about organizing within the military," he said. Little wonder that Aryan Nation graffiti is now apparently competing for space with American inner-city gang graffiti in Iraq. In the latter half of the Vietnam War, the U.S. military started to crumble from within and American troops began scrawling "UUUU" on their helmet liners -- an abbreviation that stood for "the unwilling, led by the unqualified, doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful." With a growing majority of Americans opposed to the war in Iraq and even ardent hawks refusing to enlist in droves, new policies creating a lower-quality officer corps and the Pentagon pulling out ever more stops and sinking to new lows to recruit and train troops, a new all-volunteer generation of UUUU's may emerge -- the underachieving, unable, unexceptional, unintelligent, unsound, unhinged, unacceptable, unhealthy, undesirable, unloved and uncivil -- all led by the unqualified, doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful. Current practices suggest this may well be the force of the future. It certainly isn't the new military Rumsfeld's been promising all these years, but there's no denying the depth of the transformation. Nick Turse works in the department of epidemiology at Columbia University. A longer version of this piece appeared on www.tomdispatch.com. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...NG42LCIGK1.DTL
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19-03-2007, 16:25
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Citaat:
Ik bied mijn excuses aan. Voortaan zal ik weer inhoudelijk reageren, misschien kan je daar dan ook op reageren.
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19-03-2007, 16:30
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Citaat:
 
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19-03-2007, 17:28
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Op 2 vandaag nu een mooi stuk over de oneerlijke procesgang in de VS. De zaak van Darrel Hunt.
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Velen denken te weten, weinig weten te denken.
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19-03-2007, 19:06
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Citaat:
__________________
Liever een leeuw voor een dag, dan een gazelle voor honderd jaar.
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19-03-2007, 19:43
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Citaat:
Dat door de jury-rechtspraak en de plee-bargain.
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Velen denken te weten, weinig weten te denken.
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20-03-2007, 00:14
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Tja, het is wel en niet oneerlijk. Wel, omdat het effect oneerlijk is, maar niet, omdat het niet feitelijk de rechtsregels overtreedt.
__________________
In Memoriam: Matthew Shepard(1976-1998)-Wake up, meet reality! mccaine.blogspot.com|geengodengeenmeesters.blogspot.com
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20-03-2007, 15:09
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Bush Affirms Support for Gonzales
Bush Calls Attorney General Gonzales to Express Support Despite Calls for His Resignation By PETE YOST and LARA JAKES JORDAN WASHINGTON Mar 20, 2007 (AP)— President Bush sent a powerful message of support Tuesday for embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, calling his longtime friend to express unwavering support in the face of calls for his resignation. The White House also denied reports that it was looking for possible successors for Gonzales. "Those rumors are untrue," White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said. Bush called Gonzales from the Oval Office at 7:15 a.m. EDT and they spoke for several minutes about the political uproar over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, an issue that has thrust the attorney general into controversy and raised questions about whether he can survive. The White House disclosed Bush's call to bolster Gonzales and attempt to rally Republicans to support him. "The president reaffirmed his strong backing of the attorney general and his support for him," Perino said. "The president called him to reaffirm his support." Former House Republican Leader Tom DeLay had said earlier Tuesday that the scandal "is just a taste of what's going to be like for the next two years." "And the Bush administration sort of showed their weakness when they got rid of Don Rumsfeld," the Texan said on NBC's "Today" show. "… This is a made up scandal. There is no evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever. … They ought to be fighting back." Bush's call came as congressional investigators sifted through 3,000-pages of e-mails and other material concerning the dismissal of the prosecutors. Some of the documents spelled out fears in the Bush administration that the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys might not stand up to scrutiny. The documents were not the end of the inquiry. House and Senate panels later in the week expected to approve subpoenas to White House aides Karl Rove, former counsel Harriet Miers and others. Miers' successor, Fred Fielding, was to tell the Judiciary Committees later Tuesday whether and under what conditions Bush would allow the officials to testify. But the documents told more of the story of the run-up to the firings and the administration's attempt to choreograph them to reduce the bloodletting. It didn't work out that way the prosecutors were shocked and angered by the dismissals, the lack of explanation from the Justice Department and news reports that the administration fired the eight for performance reasons. The bubbling discontent worried Justice Department officials. Of particular concern, according to some references in the 3,000 pages of e-mails and other material released late Monday, was the prospect of former U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins testifying before Congress. "I don't think he should," Gonzales' chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, wrote in a Feb. 1 e-mail. "How would he answer: Did you resign voluntarily? Who told you? What did they say?" Cummins was relieved as U.S. attorney in Little Rock, Ark., and replaced by Tim Griffin, a former assistant to top White House aide Karl Rove. In his e-mail to colleagues, Sampson listed more questions that Cummins might have to answer if he were to testify to Congress: "Did you ever talk to Tim Griffin about his becoming U.S. attorney? What did Griffin say? Did Griffin ever talk about being AG appointed and avoiding Senate confirmation? Were you asked to resign because you were underperforming? If not, then why?" The documents that Congress will focus on in the coming days show that Gonzales was unhappy with how Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty explained the firings to the Senate Judiciary Committee in early February. "The Attorney General is extremely upset with the stories on the US Attys this morning," Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse, who was traveling with Gonzales in South America at the time, wrote in a Feb. 7 e-mail. "He also thought some of the DAG's statements were inaccurate." In a statement Monday night, Roehrkasse said he was referring to Gonzales' concerns over the firing of Bud Cummins in Little Rock, who he believed was dismissed because of performance issues. At the hearing, McNulty indicated Cummins was being replaced by a political ally. Neither of the two most senior Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are stepping forward to endorse Gonzales, but likewise are not calling for his ouster. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania said he will reserve judgment until he gets all the facts. Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah has not given interviews on the subject, his spokesman said. Speculation has abounded over who might succeed Gonzales if he doesn't survive the current political tumult. Possible candidates include White House homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, former Solicitor General Ted Olson, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein, federal appeals judge Laurence Silberman and PepsiCo attorney Larry Thompson, who was the government's highest ranking black law enforcement official when he was deputy attorney general during Bush's first term. Among the e-mails released Monday was one McNulty received on Feb. 1 from Margaret Chiara, the U.S. attorney in Grand Rapids, Mich. "Why have I been asked to resign?" she asked. Early this month, she wrote McNulty again, saying that "I respectfully request that you reconsider the rationale of poor performance as the basis for my dismissal. It is in our mutual interest to retract this erroneous explanation." She added: "Politics may not be a pleasant reason but the truth is compelling." Chiara asked McNulty to "endorse or otherwise encourage my selection" as assistant director at the Justice Department's National Advocacy Center, which trains federal, state and local prosecutors. In one uncomfortable exchange with Chiara, McNulty aide Mike Elston said, "our only choice is to continue to be truthful about this entire matter." "The word performance obviously has not set well with you and your colleagues," Elston wrote. "By that word we only meant to convey that there were issues about policy, priorities and management/leadership that we felt were important to the Department's effectiveness." http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireS...2965867&page=1 Waarom zit Tom DeLay nog niet in de cel, eigenlijk?
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20-03-2007, 21:44
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Citaat:
Het punt is dat er veranderingen moeten komen van hogeraf. Het beleid moet omgegooid worden, door middel van extra belastingen en heffingen bijvoorbeeld, desnoods door quota op energie op te leggen. Als je als individu hiertegen probeert te vechten zal je het nooit redden. Het zal een lang, frustrerend gevecht zijn zonder dat je er iets mee opschiet. Het is goed om het licht uit te doen als je een kamer verlaat, maar als je daar krampachtig mee bezig bent heb je alleen jezelf ermee.
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20-03-2007, 21:49
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Is op pagina 1 van deze topic al weerlegd:
Deze zogenaamde 'onthulling' komt van het Tennessee Center For Policy Research, wiens voorzitter komt van... het American Enterprise Institute, de grootste ontkenner van global warming en ontvanger van grote sommen geld van de olielobby (tevens adviseurs van de regering-Bush). De hoge rekening voor de familie Gore komt niet door energieverspilling, maar door het gebruik van milieuvriendelijke (dus dure) bronnen, zoals zonne- en windenergie, groene stroom etc. Keith Olbermann doet verslag: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoYr0iCAkmU En lees hier hoe het verhaal wél in elkaar zit: http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/...WS01/702270382 Uit het artikel: Gore purchased 108 blocks of "green power" for each of the past three months, according to a summary of the bills. That's a total of $432 a month Gore paid extra for solar or other renewable energy sources. The green power Gore purchased in those three months is equivalent to recycling 2.48 million aluminum cans or 286,092 pounds of newspaper, according to comparison figures on NES' Web site. [...] "Every family has a different carbon footprint," said Kalee Krider, a spokeswoman for Gore. The Gores' 10,000-square-foot house on Lynnwood Boulevard has a large one. The Green Power Switch program isn't all that Gore and his wife, Tipper, are doing, Krider said. They use compact fluorescent light bulbs and are in the midst of a renovation project that includes having solar panels installed on their home to reduce fossil fuel consumption, she said. Their car? A Lexis hybrid SUV. "They, of course, also do the carbon emissions offset," she said. That means figuring out how much carbon is emitted from home power use, and vehicle and plane travel, then paying for projects that will offset that with use of renewable energy, such as solar power.
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20-03-2007, 22:39
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Senate votes to end Gonzales' power to name prosecutors
By Pete Yost and Lara Jakes Jordan Associated Press WASHINGTON — The Senate voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to end the Bush administration's ability to unilaterally fill U.S. attorney vacancies as a backlash to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' firing of eight federal prosecutors. Amid calls from lawmakers in both parties to resign, Gonzales got a morale boost with an early-morning call from President Bush, their first conversation since a week ago, when the president said he was unhappy with how the Justice Department handled the firings. With a 94-2 vote, the Senate passed a bill that canceled a Justice Department-authored provision in the Patriot Act that had allowed the attorney general to appoint U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation. Democrats say the Bush administration abused that authority when it fired the eight prosecutors and proposed replacing some with White House loyalists. "If you politicize the prosecutors, you politicize everybody in the whole chain of law enforcement," said Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. The bill, which has yet to be considered in the House, would set a 120-day deadline for the administration to appoint an interim prosecutor. If the interim appointment is not confirmed by the Senate in that time, a permanent replacement would be named by a federal district judge. The vote came as Gonzales and the White House braced for more fallout from the firings. The White House also denied reports that it was looking for possible successors for Gonzales. "Those rumors are untrue," White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said. Bush called Gonzales from the Oval Office at 7:15 a.m. EDT and they spoke for several minutes about the political uproar over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, an issue that has thrust the attorney general into controversy and raised questions about whether he can survive. The White House disclosed Bush's call to bolster Gonzales and attempt to rally Republicans to support him. Meeting later with reporters, White House press secretary Tony Snow characterized Bush's call to the attorney general as "a very strong vote of confidence." Snow said Bush believes the firings were justified. "Let me put it this way: Nobody was removed for reasons of partisan recrimination; nor was anybody removed for the purposes of trying to influence the course of ongoing investigations," Snow said. He called reports that Bush was seeking a replacement for Gonzales "just flat false, period." Former House Republican Leader Tom DeLay had said earlier Tuesday that the scandal "is just a taste of what's going to be like for the next two years." "And the Bush administration sort of showed their weakness when they got rid of Don Rumsfeld," the Texan said on NBC's "Today" show. "... This is a made up scandal. There is no evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever. ... They ought to be fighting back." Bush's call came as congressional investigators sifted through 3,000-pages of e-mails and other material concerning the dismissal of the prosecutors. Some of the documents spelled out fears in the Bush administration that the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys might not stand up to scrutiny. The documents were not the end of the inquiry. House and Senate panels later in the week expected to approve subpoenas to White House aides Karl Rove, former counsel Harriet Miers and others. Miers' successor, Fred Fielding, was to tell the Judiciary Committees later Tuesday whether and under what conditions Bush would allow the officials to testify. But the documents told more of the story of the run-up to the firings and the administration's attempt to choreograph them to reduce the bloodletting. It didn't work out that way — the prosecutors were shocked and angered by the dismissals, the lack of explanation from the Justice Department and news reports that the administration fired the eight for performance reasons. The documents that Congress will focus on in the coming days show that Gonzales was unhappy with how Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty explained the firings to the Senate Judiciary Committee in early February. "The Attorney General is extremely upset with the stories on the US Attys this morning," Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse, who was traveling with Gonzales in South America at the time, wrote in a Feb. 7 e-mail. "He also thought some of the DAG's statements were inaccurate." In a statement Monday night, Roehrkasse said he was referring to Gonzales' concerns over the firing of Bud Cummins in Little Rock, who he believed was dismissed because of performance issues. At the hearing, McNulty indicated Cummins was being replaced by a political ally. Neither of the two most senior Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are stepping forward to endorse Gonzales, but likewise are not calling for his ouster. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania said he will reserve judgment until he gets all the facts. Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah has not given interviews on the subject, his spokesman said. Speculation has abounded over who might succeed Gonzales if he doesn't survive the current political tumult. Possible candidates include White House homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, former Solicitor General Ted Olson, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein, federal appeals judge Laurence Silberman and PepsiCo attorney Larry Thompson, who was the government's highest ranking black law enforcement official when he was deputy attorney general during Bush's first term. http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,660204801,00.html
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21-03-2007, 07:05
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Bovendien laat Al Gore compenseren voor al zijn CO2 gebruik door bomenaanplant, waardoor hij carbon neutral is.
__________________
In Memoriam: Matthew Shepard(1976-1998)-Wake up, meet reality! mccaine.blogspot.com|geengodengeenmeesters.blogspot.com
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21-03-2007, 14:49
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Citaat:
Een interessante kijk, niet?
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21-03-2007, 14:55
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Citaat:
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21-03-2007, 19:25
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Verwijderd
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Citaat:
ooeh, spannend Citaat:
En wat voor maatregelen worden genomen zodat dit niet meer kan gebeuren? Wat voor straf krijgt de VS voor deze illegale handeling?
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21-03-2007, 21:35
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Bwoh... ik lees uiteraard alle artikelen die ik hier plant eerst zelf, en daaruit heb ik al op kunnen maken dat er geen twijfel over bestaat dat de ontslagen politiek gemotiveerd waren. Er moet dan ook niet staan: 'die en die denken', maar: 'de ontslagen waren...', want dat zijn gewoon feiten die uit de gelekte e-mails naar voren zijn gekomen.
Maar de regering-Bush zal allerlei noodgrepen uithalen om de ware schuldigen niet te laten getuigen, namelijk Karl Rove en Bush zelf. Ze hebben eerst Sampson, de Chief of Staff van Gonzales, al ontslagen en Miers, de assistente van Bush. 'Throwing them under the bus' noemen ze dat in de VS: kleine poppetjes opofferen om je eigen gat te redden. Eerder deden ze het met Scooter Libby. Ik heb er geen vertrouwen in dat dit keer wél recht zal worden gesproken. Bush gaat de komende twee jaar uitzitten, ben ik bang, mede omdat de Democraten, ook al hebben ze nu een meerderheid in het Huis en de Senaat, geen impeachment-procedure durven te beginnen.
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21-03-2007, 22:33
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22-03-2007, 08:28
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Citaat:
Maar neem die mobiliteit en technologie van de VS weg, en de overmacht van de VS zal ineen vallen. En wanneer zou dat gebeuren? Als de energie te duur wordt, oftewel als de olie té duur wordt. En wanneer gebeurt dat? Daar verschillen de meningen over, 2015 wordt echter vaak als uiterste datum aangehaald. De VS gebruikt een kwart van de dagelijks geproduceerde olie op aarde, daarnaast heeft ze de grootste economie en het sterkste leger? Denk je dat daar een verband tussen zit? Ik weet het wel zeker. Zonder aardolie, is de VS niks.
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Liever een leeuw voor een dag, dan een gazelle voor honderd jaar.
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22-03-2007, 22:38
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Prosecutor Says Bush Appointees Interfered With Tobacco Case
By Carol D. Leonnig Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, March 22, 2007; Page A01 The leader of the Justice Department team that prosecuted a landmark lawsuit against tobacco companies said yesterday that Bush administration political appointees repeatedly ordered her to take steps that weakened the government's racketeering case. Sharon Y. Eubanks said Bush loyalists in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's office began micromanaging the team's strategy in the final weeks of the 2005 trial, to the detriment of the government's claim that the industry had conspired to lie to U.S. smokers. She said a supervisor demanded that she and her trial team drop recommendations that tobacco executives be removed from their corporate positions as a possible penalty. He and two others instructed her to tell key witnesses to change their testimony. And they ordered Eubanks to read verbatim a closing argument they had rewritten for her, she said. "The political people were pushing the buttons and ordering us to say what we said," Eubanks said. "And because of that, we failed to zealously represent the interests of the American public." Eubanks, who served for 22 years as a lawyer at Justice, said three political appointees were responsible for the last-minute shifts in the government's tobacco case in June 2005: then-Associate Attorney General Robert D. McCallum, then-Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler and Keisler's deputy at the time, Dan Meron. News reports on the strategy changes at the time caused an uproar in Congress and sparked an inquiry by the Justice Department. Government witnesses said they had been asked to change testimony, and one expert withdrew from the case. Government lawyers also announced that they were scaling back a proposed penalty against the industry from $130 billion to $10 billion. High-ranking Justice Department officials said there was no political meddling in the case, and the department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) concurred after an investigation. Yesterday was the first time that any of the government lawyers on the case spoke at length publicly about what they considered high-level interference by Justice officials. Eubanks, who retired from Justice in December 2005, said she is coming forward now because she is concerned about what she called the "overwhelming politicization" of the department demonstrated by the controversy over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. Lawyers from Justice's civil rights division have made similar claims about being overruled by supervisors in the past. Eubanks said Congress should not limit its investigation to the dismissal of the U.S. attorneys. "Political interference is happening at Justice across the department," she said. "When decisions are made now in the Bush attorney general's office, politics is the primary consideration. . . . The rule of law goes out the window." McCallum, who is now the U.S. ambassador to Australia, said in an interview yesterday that congressional claims of political interference were rejected by the OPR investigation, for which Eubanks was questioned. He said that there was a legitimate disagreement between Eubanks and some career lawyers in the racketeering division about key strategy and that his final decision to reduce the proposed penalty to pay for smoking-cessation programs was vindicated by the judge's ruling that she could not order such a penalty. "Her claims are totally false in terms of [us] trying to weaken the case," McCallum said. "Her claims were looked into by the Office of Professional Responsibility and were found to be groundless." In June 2006, the OPR cleared McCallum, concluding that his "actions in seeking and directing changes in the remedies sought were not influenced by any political considerations, but rather were based on good faith efforts to obtain remedies from the district court that would be sustainable on appeal." Keisler and Meron did not return telephone calls seeking comment. U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ruled last August that tobacco companies violated civil racketeering laws by conspiring for decades to deceive the public about the dangers of their product. She ordered the companies to make major changes in the way cigarettes are marketed. But she said she could not order the monetary penalty proposed by the government. The Clinton Justice Department brought the unprecedented civil suit against the country's five largest tobacco companies in 1999. President Bush disparaged the tobacco case while campaigning in 2000. After Bush took office, some officials expressed initial doubts about the government's ability to fund the prosecution, Justice's largest. Eubanks said McCallum, Keisler and Meron largely ignored the case until it became clear that the government might win. She recalled that "things began to get really tense" after McCallum read news reports in April 2005 that one government expert, professor Max H. Bazerman of Harvard Business School, would argue that tobacco officials who engaged in fraud could be removed from their corporate posts. Eubanks said she received an angry call from McCallum on the day the news broke. "How could you put that in there?" she recalled him saying. "We're not going to be pursuing that." Afterward, McCallum, Keisler and Meron told Eubanks to approach other witnesses about softening their testimony, Eubanks said. Matthew Myers of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids was one of the witnesses whom Eubanks asked to change his testimony. Yesterday, he said he found her account to be "the only reasonable explanation" for what transpired. Two weeks before closing arguments in June, McCallum called for a meeting with Eubanks and her deputy, Stephen Brody, to discuss what McCallum described as "getting the number down" for the $130 billion penalty to create smoking-cessation programs. Brody declined to comment yesterday on the legal team's deliberations, saying that they were private. During several tense late-night meetings, McCallum repeatedly refused to suggest a figure, Eubanks said, or give clear reasons for the reduction. Brody refused to lower the amount. Finally, on the morning the government was to propose the penalty in court, she said, McCallum ordered it cut to $10 billion. The most stressful moment, Eubanks said, came when the three appointees ordered her to read word for word a closing argument they had rewritten. The statement explained the validity of seeking a $10 billion penalty. "I couldn't even look at the judge," she said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...v=rss_politics
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23-03-2007, 13:37
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Nog meer leesvoer over alles wat er mis is met Bush, Republikeinen, conservatieve Christenen etc. En geen saaie lappen tekst maar grappige makkelijk leesbare stukjes
http://www.annotatedrant.com/
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Liever een leeuw voor een dag, dan een gazelle voor honderd jaar.
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23-03-2007, 16:42
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23-03-2007, 16:51
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'Amerikaanse minister Gates wilde sluiting Guantánamo'
Uitgegeven: 23 maart 2007 10:28 WASHINGTON - De Amerikaanse minister van Defensie Robert Gates heeft direct na zijn aantreden herhaaldelijk gepleit voor de sluiting van de militaire gevangenis in Guantánamo Bay. Dat berichtte de krant The New York Times vrijdag. Volgens Gates heeft het kamp in het buitenland zo een slechte reputatie dat processen daar zouden worden beschouwd als illegaal. Minister Condoleezza Rice van Buitenlandse Zaken steunde zijn pleidooi om de omstreden detentiefaciliteit op Cuba te sluiten. Gates stelde voor de gedetineerden in de Verenigde Staten te berechten. Minister van Justitie Alberto Gonzales keerde zich fel tegen het idee en kreeg daarbij steun van vicepresident Dick Cheney. Zij wonnen uiteindelijk de steun van president George Bush waarna het plan van tafel ging. 385 gevangenen In de gevangenis in Guatánamo Bay zitten nog 385 mensen vast. De meesten werden opgepakt in Afghanistan. Onder de gedetineerden zijn veertien vooraanstaande figuren van al-Qaeda onder wie Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Die bekende onlangs een waslijst van terreurdaden. Een aantal raadslieden van de Amerikaanse regering verzet zich tegen berechting op Amerikaanse bodem van de terreurverdachten omdat die daardoor extra rechten krijgen. Zij vrezen dan een explosie van civiele rechtszaken, aldus de krant. Omstreden Het detentiecentrum in Guantánamo Bay is inmiddels vijf jaar in gebruik en vanaf het begin omstreden. De Amerikanen houden er zogeheten vijandelijke strijders zonder aanklacht vast. Militaire tribunalen moeten zestig tot tachtig van de gedetineerden berechten. Daarbij is volgens critici de rechtsbescherming voor de gedaagden aanmerkelijk minder dan bij reguliere rechtbanken. Het lot van de overige gevangenen op Guantánamo is ongewis. Opsluiting voor onbepaalde tijd zonder dat het ooit tot een proces komt, is een levensgrote dreiging. Onder vuur Een hooggeplaatste functionaris stelt dat de discussie nog niet over is omdat minister Gonzales zwaar onder vuur ligt wegens het ontslag van een aantal openbare aanklagers. "Laten we eerst maar eens afwachten wat met Gonzales gebeurt. Ik vermoedt dat dit nog niet voorbij is." http://www.nu.nl/news/1018369/22/%27...E1namo%27.html Werkelijk? Condi Rice ook? Zo snel al?  Gonzo en Darth Vader waren natuurlijk tegen.
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23-03-2007, 20:17
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 , ik bedoelde eigenlijk meer dat de teksten op die website die postte wat minder formeel zijn
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Liever een leeuw voor een dag, dan een gazelle voor honderd jaar.
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25-03-2007, 23:13
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'Wash Post' Publishes Rare Op-Ed by 'Anonymous' On FBI Abuse
By E&P Staff Published: March 23, 2007 9:30 AM ET NEW YORK "It is the policy of The Washington Post not to publish anonymous pieces," the newspaper declares on page A17 of today's edition. "In this case, an exception has been made because the author -- who would have preferred to be named -- is legally prohibited from disclosing his or her identity in connection with receipt of a national security letter. "The Post confirmed the legitimacy of this submission by verifying it with the author's attorney and by reviewing publicly available court documents." What follows, in the paper -- and in its opening passages below -- is the submission by "John Doe." The entire piece is available at www.washingtonpost.com. * The Justice Department's inspector general revealed on March 9 that the FBI has been systematically abusing one of the most controversial provisions of the USA Patriot Act: the expanded power to issue "national security letters." It no doubt surprised most Americans to learn that between 2003 and 2005 the FBI issued more than 140,000 specific demands under this provision -- demands issued without a showing of probable cause or prior judicial approval -- to obtain potentially sensitive information about U.S. citizens and residents. It did not, however, come as any surprise to me. Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand -- a context that the FBI still won't let me discuss publicly -- I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled. Rather than turn over the information, I contacted lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union, and in April 2004 I filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSL power. I never released the information the FBI sought, and last November the FBI decided that it no longer needs the information anyway. But the FBI still hasn't abandoned the gag order that prevents me from disclosing my experience and concerns with the law or the national security letter that was served on my company. In fact, the government will return to court in the next few weeks to defend the gag orders that are imposed on recipients of these letters. Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case -- including the mere fact that I received an NSL -- from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie. I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ea..._id=1003562040
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26-03-2007, 18:06
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New U.S. attorneys seem to have partisan records
WASHINGTON - Under President Bush, the Justice Department has backed laws that narrow minority voting rights and pressed U.S. attorneys to investigate voter fraud - policies that critics say have been intended to suppress Democratic votes. Bush, his deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, and other Republican political advisers have highlighted voting rights issues and what Rove has called the "growing problem" of election fraud by Democrats since Bush took power in the tumultuous election of 2000, a race ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Since 2005, McClatchy Newspapers has found, Bush has appointed at least three U.S. attorneys who had worked in the Justice Department's civil rights division when it was rolling back longstanding voting-rights policies aimed at protecting predominantly poor, minority voters. Another newly installed U.S. attorney, Tim Griffin in Little Rock, Ark., was accused of participating in efforts to suppress Democratic votes in Florida during the 2004 presidential election while he was a research director for the Republican National Committee. He's denied any wrongdoing. Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the four U.S. attorneys weren't chosen only because of their backgrounds in election issues, but "we would expect any U.S. attorney to prosecute voting fraud." Taken together, critics say, the replacement of the U.S. attorneys, the voter-fraud campaign and the changes in Justice Department voting rights policies suggest that the Bush administration may have been using its law enforcement powers for partisan political purposes. The Bush administration's emphasis on voter fraud is drawing scrutiny from the Democratic Congress, which has begun investigating the firings of eight U.S. attorneys - two of whom say that their ousters may have been prompted by the Bush administration's dissatisfaction with their investigations of alleged Democratic voter fraud. Bush has said he's heard complaints from Republicans about some U.S. attorneys' "lack of vigorous prosecution of election fraud cases," and administration e-mails have shown that Rove and other White House officials were involved in the dismissals and in selecting a Rove aide to replace one of the U.S. attorneys. Nonetheless, Bush has refused to permit congressional investigators to question Rove and others under oath. Last April, while the Justice Department and the White House were planning the firings, Rove gave a speech in Washington to the Republican National Lawyers Association. He ticked off 11 states that he said could be pivotal in the 2008 elections. Bush has appointed new U.S. attorneys in nine of them since 2005: Florida, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Arkansas, Michigan, Nevada and New Mexico. U.S. attorneys in the latter four were among those fired. Rove thanked the audience for "all that you are doing in those hot spots around the country to ensure that the integrity of the ballot is protected." He added, "A lot in American politics is up for grabs." The department's civil rights division, for example, supported a Georgia voter identification law that a court later said discriminated against poor, minority voters. It also declined to oppose an unusual Texas redistricting plan that helped expand the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. That plan was partially reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court. Frank DiMarino, a former federal prosecutor who served six U.S. attorneys in Florida and Georgia during an 18-year Justice Department career, said that too much emphasis on voter fraud investigations "smacks of trying to use prosecutorial power to investigate and potentially indict political enemies." Several former voting rights lawyers, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of antagonizing the administration, said the division's political appointees reversed the recommendations of career lawyers in key cases and transferred or drove out most of the unit's veteran attorneys. Bradley Schlozman, who was the civil rights division's deputy chief, agreed in 2005 to reverse the career staff's recommendations to challenge a Georgia law that would have required voters to pay $20 for photo IDs and in some cases travel as far as 30 miles to obtain the ID card. A federal judge threw out the Georgia law, calling it an unconstitutional, Jim Crow-era poll tax. In an interview, Schlozman, who was named interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City in November 2005, said he merely affirmed a subordinate's decision to overturn the career staff's recommendations. He said it was "absolutely not true" that he drove out career lawyers. "What I tried to do was to depoliticize the hiring process," Schlozman said. "We hired people across the political spectrum." Former voting rights section chief Joseph Rich, however, said longtime career lawyers whose views differed from those of political appointees were routinely "reassigned or stripped of major responsibilities." In testimony to a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing this week, Rich said that 20 of the 35 attorneys in the voting rights section have been transferred to other jobs or have left their jobs since April 2005 and a staff of 26 civil rights analysts who reviewed state laws for discrimination has been slashed to 10. He said he has yet to see evidence of voter fraud on a scale that warrants voter ID laws, which he said are "without exception ... supported and pushed by Republicans and objected to by Democrats. I believe it is clear that this kind of law tends to suppress the vote of lower-income and minority voters." Other former voting-rights section lawyers said that during the tenure of Alex Acosta, who served as the division chief from the fall of 2003 until he was named interim U.S. attorney in Miami in the summer of 2005, the department didn't file a single suit alleging that local or state laws or election rules diluted the votes of African-Americans. In a similar time period, the Clinton administration filed six such cases. Those kinds of cases, Rich said, are "the guts of the Voting Rights Act." During this week's House judiciary subcommittee hearing, critics recounted lapses in the division's enforcement. A Citizens Commission on Civil Rights study found that "the enforcement record of the voting section during the Bush administration indicates this traditional priority has been downgraded significantly, if not effectively ignored." Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who chaired the hearing, said, "The more stringent requirements you put on voting in order to get rid of alleged voter fraud, the more you're cutting down on legitimate people voting." Acosta, the first Hispanic to head the civil rights division, said he emphasized helping non-English speaking voters cast ballots. In 2005, he told a House committee that he made an unprecedented effort to monitor balloting in 2004 to watch for discrimination against minorities. Justice spokesman Roehrkasse said Acosta "has an impressive legal background, including extensive experience in government and the private sector" and as a federal appeals court clerk. A third former civil rights division employee, Matt Dummermuth, 33, was nominated to be U.S. attorney in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, last December. Before his appointment, he was counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights. He was a special assistant to the civil rights chief from 2002 to 2004. Details of his involvement in reviewing voter rights couldn't be determined, and Dummermuth, a Harvard Law School graduate, didn't return calls seeking comment. Bush administration officials have said that no single reason led to the firings of the eight U.S. attorneys. But two of those who were forced to resign said they thought they might have been punished for failing to prosecute Democrats prior to the 2006 congressional elections or for not vigorously pursuing Republican allegations of voter irregularities in Washington state and New Mexico. Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias of New Mexico has said he thought that "the voter fraud issue was the foundation" for his firing and that complaints about his failure to pursue corruption matters involving Democrats were "the icing on the cake." John McKay, the ousted U.S. attorney for western Washington state, looked into allegations of voter fraud against Democrats during the hotly contested governor's race in 2004. He said that later, when top Bush aides interviewed him for a federal judgeship, he was asked to respond to criticism of his inquiry in which no charges were brought. He didn't get the judgeship. Rove talked about the Northwest region in his speech last spring to the Republican lawyers and voiced concern about the trend toward mail-in ballots and online voting. He also questioned the legitimacy of voter rolls in Philadelphia and Milwaukee. One audience member asked Rove whether he'd "thought about using the bully pulpit of the White House to talk about election reform and an election integrity agenda that would put the Democrats back on the defensive." "Yes, it's an interesting idea," Rove responded. Despite the GOP concerns, Bud Cummins, the Republican-appointed U.S. attorney in Arkansas who was fired, said he had "serious doubts" that any U.S. attorney was failing to aggressively pursue voter fraud. "What they're responding to is party chairmen and activists who from the beginning of time go around paranoid that the other party is stealing the election," Cummins said. "It sounds like to me that they were merely responding to a lot of general carping from the party, who had higher expectations once the Republican appointees filled these posts that there would be a lot of voting fraud investigations. Their expectations were unrealistic." Griffin, the interim U.S. attorney in Arkansas who's replaced Cummins, was a Rove protege and a former Republican National Committee research director. He was accused of being part of an attempt to wipe likely Democratic voters off the rolls in Florida in 2004 if they were homeless or military personnel. Griffin couldn't be reached for comment. Ed Gillespie, then the RNC chairman, said the Republican Party was following election laws and trying to investigate voter fraud by sending out mailers to addresses of registered voters. If the notices came back, he said, the names were entered into a database and checked to see if the voters were listing actual residences. "The Republican National Committee does not engage in voter suppression," he said. "The fact that someone was trying to prevent voter fraud should not disqualify someone from being U.S. attorney." http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/16962753.htm House passes spending bill with Iraq deadline WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush slammed Democrats on Friday after the House narrowly approved a supplemental war spending bill that includes an August 31, 2008, deadline for combat troops to leave Iraq. "Today, a narrow majority in the House of Representatives abdicated its responsibility by passing a war spending bill that has no chance of becoming law, and brings us no closer to getting our troops the resources they need," Bush said about an hour after the vote. The House voted 218-212 to approve the $124 billion spending bill that includes the deadline. Bush said the vote had only one outcome: "It delays the delivery of vital resources for our troops." (Watch Bush speak out against the Democrats' "act of political theater" Video) He repeated his promise to veto the legislation if it reaches his desk. The measure appears unlikely to pass the Senate with the deadline intact. Bush said a spending bill must become law by April 15 to avoid causing hardships for military personnel. "Congress needs to send me a clean bill that I can sign without delay," he said. (Watch Rep. John Murtha say Bush is trying to blame Congress "for his problem" Video) Two House Republicans -- Reps. Walter Jones of North Carolina and Wayne Gilchrest of Maryland -- voted in favor of the bill. Fourteen Democrats voted against it. After the bill's passage, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, told reporters that voters' voices "have been heard." "Congress has acted on the concerns of the American people," she said. Before the vote, Pelosi said the bill would address the problems in Iraq by "rebuilding our military, honoring our promises to our veterans, holding the Iraqi government accountable and enabling us to bring our troops home." "The American people have lost faith in the president's conduct of this war," she added. "The American people see the reality of this war -- the president does not." But Republicans called the measure a "prescription for failure." (Watch Rep. Tom Tancredo explain his vote against the bill Video) "We all want our troops to come home -- when the job is done," said Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas. "We want to win. Internationally announcing our timelines for withdrawal literally hands the enemy our war plan," Johnson said. "What world superpower would do such a thing?" Republicans also denounced the unrelated appropriations attached to the bill. The legislation includes some $21 billion to pay for items not in Bush's original request to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including $25 million to bail out spinach growers in California hurt by last year's E. coli outbreak. The leadership had to win over anti-war Democrats who felt that the measure didn't go far enough. But some of the war's most liberal critics said they weren't buying it. "Four years ago, we were told we had no alternative but to go to war. Now we're told we have no alternative but to continue to war for another year or two," Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, said before the vote. "The fact of the matter is we do have alternatives." Kucinich said, "Congress has the power to stop funding the war. That's what we should do. That's what we should have done, and that's what I'm going to continue to work toward. We have to get out of Iraq, period." However, Rep. James McGovern, an anti-war Democrat from Massachusetts who had been on the fence, said he would vote yes. On the other side of the Capitol, the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday approved a version of the supplemental bill that calls for combat troops to be out of Iraq by March 31, 2008. Republicans say they'll fight to strip out the deadline provisions when the bill reaches the floor next week. Last week, Senate Democrats fell short, on a 50-48 vote, in another attempt to impose a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq. Once both the House and Senate versions are approved, a conference committee will hammer out the differences. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Robert Gates called for Congress to pass a bill quickly, or the military would be forced to take severe stopgap measures because of a lack of funding. Among those measures, Gates said, would be slowing deployment of replacement troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and extending the tours of units already there. "This kind of disruption to key programs will have a genuinely adverse effect on the readiness of the Army and the quality of life for soldiers and their families," Gates said. "I urge the Congress to pass the supplemental as soon as possible." http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS...ion=cnn_latest
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26-03-2007, 20:45
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Deze lui worden niet de zandbak ingestuurd om te vechten, maar om te sterven. Citaat:
Laatst gewijzigd op 26-03-2007 om 20:50.
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26-03-2007, 20:56
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26-03-2007, 21:23
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26-03-2007, 22:15
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Het is niet alsof het lot van die lui iemand intereseert, afgezien van hun broer, die ook hun vader is, enzo.
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27-03-2007, 09:03
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ctrl + c
ctrl + v ctrl + c ctrl + v ctrl + c ctrl + v ctrl + c ctrl + v repeat.
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27-03-2007, 11:11
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Ach, 'Reverend', ik vind het best wel interessant wat hier allemaal staat. Het meeste weet ik toch wel, want mijn vader houdt ons heel erg op de hoogte (hij komt uit de VS dus hij houdt online heel veel Amerikaanse nieuwsbronnen bij). Hij vindt het echt heel erg wat er de afgelopen pakweg zes jaar gebeurd is in zijn land. Hij heeft beide verkiezingen op de Democraten gestemd (per post) ook al vond hij John Kerry helemaal niks, alles liever dan Bush. Ik vind ook dat Bush gewoon afgezet moet worden. Ik bedoel, als Bill Clinton afgezet kan worden voor sex, dan moet Bush toch afgezet kunnen worden voor het liegen over een oorlog en het goedkeuren van marteling enzo?
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27-03-2007, 16:50
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__________________
Liever een leeuw voor een dag, dan een gazelle voor honderd jaar.
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27-03-2007, 18:19
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Oud nieuws uit 2005:
GOP Investigated Pres. Clinton’s Cat But Only Plans ‘Oversight’ on Pres. Bush’s Admitted Illegal Spying Compare and contrast: 1995: Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), then chair of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, investigated whether taxpayers were footing the cost of stationery and postage for the fan club dedicated to President Clinton’s cat, Socks. (They were not - and it turns out Barbara Bush’s dog Millie had a fan club too.) 2005: Two weeks ago, President Bush admitted he willfully flouted a law that requires him to get warrants before wiretapping U.S. citizens. His justification for ignoring the law appears to be noblesse oblige. In reaction, Republicans in charge of the Senate Judiciary Committee announced on Friday that they are planning “oversight” hearings into the matter. The president has admitted he broke the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) hundreds of times. Isn’t it a bit late for “oversight?” http://www.pensitoreview.com/2005/12...llegal-spying/ Maar die Amerikanen sporen niet, hè: Patrick's adoption incentive is baby selling, some say AUSTIN — Houston state Sen. Dan Patrick wants the state to pay $500 to women who give their babies up for adoption instead of aborting them, an idea some say borders on baby selling. "We want that lady to have an incentive that makes her stop and think about having an abortion and that gives her a reason to put her baby up for adoption," said Patrick, a radio broadcaster who champions conservative causes such as abortion and tightening the border. The Republican lawmaker's Senate Bill 1567 was referred to the Senate Health and Human Services Committee on Wednesday. No committee hearing has been scheduled for the bill, which has yet to draw any co-sponsors. "My goal is to save as many babies as we possibly can," said Patrick, who also has a bill to trigger an abortion ban in Texas should the U.S. Supreme Court ever reverse its landmark 1973 decision, Roe v. Wade, legalizing abortion. Critics say his bill doesn't recognize the complex issues involved in a woman's decision to place her baby for adoption and comes dangerously close to baby selling. One anti-abortion group — while supporting the goal of encouraging adoption over abortion — expressed caution. "We just need to make sure there isn't even the perception of baby buying going on," said Joe Pojman, executive director of Texas Alliance for Life. An organization that supports a woman's right to choose said Patrick's bill is terrible. "It's the stuff nightmares are made of," said Fran Hagerty of the Women's Health and Family Planning Association of Texas. "This is insulting to women and also insulting to all the great charitable organizations out there that do wonderful work finding adoptive parents and taking care of the birth mother." It is a crime in Texas to offer to give a thing of value to another for acquiring a child for purposes of adoption. Exceptions are made for necessary pregnancy-related expense that benefit the mother. Patrick said the payments would not be akin to baby selling. "We're just giving someone an incentive to put your baby up for adoption," he said. "Then the baby goes through the normal adoptive process. No one is coming in here and buying a baby." Another group that advocates reproductive freedom said the emphasis should be on preventing unplanned pregnancies by providing women with birth-control options. "If Sen. Dan Patrick wants to improve women's health care options, then he should support the Prevention First Act, which includes common sense ways to reduce the need for abortion," said Carol Drennan, interim executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, in a prepared statement. The head of a national adoption-policy group said a recent study on birth mothers who gave up their children found that many experienced lifelong guilt over their decision. Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, said good adoption practice means presenting all options on a level playing field. "You let women respectfully make the best decision they can at an excruciatingly difficult time. Introducing money into the mix can be coercive," Pertman said. If the bill reduced the 77,374 abortions performed in Texas in 2005 by 5 percent, more than 3,000 babies' lives would be saved, Patrick said. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...n/4654720.html Laatst gewijzigd op 27-03-2007 om 18:22.
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30-03-2007, 21:07
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Former US Attorney says goal of Bush's Department of Justice was to 'fix' elections
Bush's long history of tilting Justice The administration began skewing federal law enforcement before the current U.S. attorney scandal, says a former Department of Justice lawyer. By Joseph D. Rich, JOSEPH D. RICH was chief of the voting section in the Justice Department's civil right division from 1999 to 2005. He now works for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. March 29, 2007 THE SCANDAL unfolding around the firing of eight U.S. attorneys compels the conclusion that the Bush administration has rewarded loyalty over all else. A destructive pattern of partisan political actions at the Justice Department started long before this incident, however, as those of us who worked in its civil rights division can attest. I spent more than 35 years in the department enforcing federal civil rights laws — particularly voting rights. Before leaving in 2005, I worked for attorneys general with dramatically different political philosophies — from John Mitchell to Ed Meese to Janet Reno. Regardless of the administration, the political appointees had respect for the experience and judgment of longtime civil servants. Under the Bush administration, however, all that changed. Over the last six years, this Justice Department has ignored the advice of its staff and skewed aspects of law enforcement in ways that clearly were intended to influence the outcome of elections. It has notably shirked its legal responsibility to protect voting rights. From 2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African American or Native American voters. U.S. attorneys were told instead to give priority to voter fraud cases, which, when coupled with the strong support for voter ID laws, indicated an intent to depress voter turnout in minority and poor communities. At least two of the recently fired U.S. attorneys, John McKay in Seattle and David C. Iglesias in New Mexico, were targeted largely because they refused to prosecute voting fraud cases that implicated Democrats or voters likely to vote for Democrats. This pattern also extended to hiring. In March 2006, Bradley Schlozman was appointed interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo. Two weeks earlier, the administration was granted the authority to make such indefinite appointments without Senate confirmation. That was too bad: A Senate hearing might have uncovered Schlozman's central role in politicizing the civil rights division during his three-year tenure. Schlozman, for instance, was part of the team of political appointees that approved then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's plan to redraw congressional districts in Texas, which in 2004 increased the number of Republicans elected to the House. Similarly, Schlozman was acting assistant attorney general in charge of the division when the Justice Department OKd a Georgia law requiring voters to show photo IDs at the polls. These decisions went against the recommendations of career staff, who asserted that such rulings discriminated against minority voters. The warnings were prescient: Both proposals were struck down by federal courts. Schlozman continued to influence elections as an interim U.S. attorney. Missouri had one of the closest Senate races in the country last November, and a week before the election, Schlozman brought four voter fraud indictments against members of an organization representing poor and minority people. This blatantly contradicted the department's long-standing policy to wait until after an election to bring such indictments because a federal criminal investigation might affect the outcome of the vote. The timing of the Missouri indictments could not have made the administration's aims more transparent. This administration is also politicizing the career staff of the Justice Department. Outright hostility to career employees who disagreed with the political appointees was evident early on. Seven career managers were removed in the civil rights division. I personally was ordered to change performance evaluations of several attorneys under my supervision. I was told to include critical comments about those whose recommendations ran counter to the political will of the administration and to improve evaluations of those who were politically favored. Morale plummeted, resulting in an alarming exodus of career attorneys. In the last two years, 55% to 60% of attorneys in the voting section have transferred to other departments or left the Justice Department entirely. At the same time, career staff were nearly cut out of the process of hiring lawyers. Control of hiring went to political appointees, so an applicant's fidelity to GOP interests replaced civil rights experience as the most important factor in hiring decisions. For decades prior to this administration, the Justice Department had successfully kept politics out of its law enforcement decisions. Hopefully, the spotlight on this misconduct will begin the process of restoring dignity and nonpartisanship to federal law enforcement. As the 2008 elections approach, it is critical to have a Justice Department that approaches its responsibility to all eligible voters without favor. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...nion-rightrail Oké, wie gelooft er nog dat Bush democratisch gekozen is?  De reacties op Democratic Underground zijn heftig: http://www.democraticunderground.com...ess=389x538187 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Panel Asks Rove for Information on '08 Election Presentation By Scott Higham and Robert O'Harrow Jr. Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, March 30, 2007; A05 The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee sought more information yesterday about a presentation by a White House aide given to political appointees at the General Services Administration that discussed targeting 20 Democratic congressional candidates in the next election. In a letter to White House political affairs director Karl Rove, the committee chairman, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), asked about the Jan. 26 videoconference by Rove deputy J. Scott Jennings, which was directed to the chief of the GSA and as many as 40 agency officials stationed around the country. Jennings's 28-page presentation included 2006 election results and listed the names of Democratic candidates considered beatable and Republican lawmakers thought to need help. At a hearing Wednesday about the GSA, Waxman said the presentation and follow-up remarks allegedly made by agency chief Lurita Alexis Doan may have violated the Hatch Act, a law that restricts federal agencies and employees from using their positions for political purposes. In yesterday's letter, Waxman asked Rove who prepared the presentation and whether Rove or Jennings consulted with anyone about whether it might be in violation of the Hatch Act. Waxman also asked whether Rove or any members of his staff have given the same or similar PowerPoint presentations to political appointees at other government agencies. The PowerPoint presentation was a focus of Waxman's hearing Wednesday into Doan's 10-month tenure and into allegations that she has acted inappropriately. Doan denied the allegations at the hearing. Six political appointees at the GSA who participated in the videoconference said Doan asked at the conclusion how the agency could help GOP candidates win in the next elections, according to a letter Waxman sent to Doan. During the hearing, Doan said at least 10 times that she does not recall asking employees to help the GOP or does not recall details about the presentation. The matter is being investigated by the independent Office of Special Counsel. White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said the presentation was not out of the ordinary. "There is regular communication from the White House to political appointees throughout the administration," he said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...901962_pf.html Dus als de Republikeinen winnen in 2008 weten we waaraan het ligt, ok? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rove Aide Resigns By Paul Kiel - March 30, 2007, 1:13 PM Maybe it's a coincidence. White House political director Sara Taylor is out the door at the White House, according to Washington Wire. Taylor came up a number of times yesterday during the Kyle Sampson hearing as having worked closely with Sampson (along with another Karl Rove aide Scott Jennings) to install Rove's former aide Tim Griffin as the U.S. Attorney in eastern Arkansas. "Barry Jackson, a longtime aide to Karl Rove, also is thought to be leaving soon.... All the departures appear to be more-or-less routine turnover," reports the Washington Wire. http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002927.php Al die kleine vissen; daar hebben we niks aan. Het is Rove die we moeten hebben! Die is het 'genie' achter alle schandalen die de Republikeinse partij de afgelopen zes jaar heeft veroorzaakt. Laatst gewijzigd op 30-03-2007 om 23:45.
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06-04-2007, 10:18
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06-04-2007, 22:15
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Jammer dat de belangstelling voor het topic zo tegenvalt.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Evidence Is There: It’s Time for Congress to Investigate the Ties Between the Bush Family and Osama bin Laden By Lucy Komisar, IPS News. Posted April 5, 2007. How the Bush family's private connection to a dirty offshore bank is the only link between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. The following is taken from a chapter, "The BCCI Game: Banking on America, Banking on Jihad," by investigative journalist Lucy Komisar in the new book "A Game as Old as Empire," just published by Berrett-Koehler (San Francisco). Now that the U.S. Congress is investigating the truth of President George W. Bush's statements about the Iraq war, they might look into one of his most startling assertions: that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Critics dismissed that as an invention. They were wrong. There was a link, but not the one Bush was selling. The link between Hussein and Bin Laden was their banker, BCCI. But the link went beyond the dictator and the jihadist -- it passed through Saudi Arabia and stretched all the way to George W. Bush and his father. BCCI was the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, a dirty offshore bank that then-President Ronald Reagan's Central Intelligence Agency used to run guns to Hussein, finance Osama bin Laden, move money in the illegal Iran-Contra operation and carry out other "agency" black ops. The Bushes also benefited privately; one of the bank's largest Saudi investors helped bail out George W. Bush's troubled oil investments. BCCI was founded in 1972 by a Pakistani banker, Agha Hasan Abedi, with the support of Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan, ruler of Abu Dhabi and head of the United Arab Emirates. Its corporate strategy was money laundering. It became the banker for drug and arms traffickers, corrupt officials, financial fraudsters, dictators and terrorists. The CIA used BCCI Islamabad and other branches in Pakistan to funnel some of the $2 billion that Washington sent to Osama bin Laden's Mujahadeen to help fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. It moved the cash the Pakistani military and government officials skimmed from U.S. aid to the Mujahadeen. It also moved money as required by the Saudi intelligence services. The BCCI operation gave Osama bin Laden an education in offshore black finance, which he would put to use when he organized the jihad against the United States. He would move money through the Al-Taqwa Bank, operating in offshore Nassau and Switzerland with two Osama siblings as shareholders. At the same time, BCCI helped Saddam Hussein, funneling millions of dollars to the Atlanta branch of the Italian government-owned Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL), Baghdad's U.S. banker, so that from 1985 to 1989 it could make $4 billion in secret loans to Iraq to help it buy arms. U.S. congressman Henry Gonzalez held a hearing on BNL in 1992 during which he quoted from a confidential CIA document that said the agency had long been aware that the bank's headquarters was involved in the U.S. branch's Iraqi loans. Kickbacks from 15 percent commissions on BNL-sponsored loans were channeled into bank accounts held for Iraqi leaders via BCCI offices in the Caymans as well as in offshore Luxembourg and Switzerland. BNL was a client of Kissinger Associates, and Henry Kissinger was on the bank's international advisory board, along with Brent Scowcroft, who would become George Bush Sr.'s national security advisor. That connection makes the Bush administration's surprise and indignation at "oil for food" payoffs in Iraq seem disingenuous. Important Saudis were influential in the bank. Sheik Kamal Adham, brother-in-law of the late Saudi King Faisal, head of Saudi intelligence from 1963 to 1979, and the CIA's liaison in the area, became one of BCCI's largest shareholders. George Bush Sr. knew Adham from his time running the CIA in 1975. Another investor was Prince Turki bin Faisal al-Saud, who succeeded Adham as Saudi intelligence chief. The family of Khalid Salem bin Mahfouz, owner of the National Commercial Bank, the largest bank in Saudi Arabia, banker to King Fahd and other members of the ruling family, bought 20 percent to 30 percent of the stock for nearly $1 billion. Bin Mahfouz was put on the board of directors. The Arabs' interest in the bank was more than financial. A classified CIA memo on BCCI in the mid-1980s said that "its principal shareholders are among the power elite of the Middle East, including the rulers of Dubai and the United Arab Emirates, and several influential Saudi Arabians. They are less interested in profitability than in promoting the Muslim cause." The Bushes' private links to the bank passed to Bin Mahfouz through Texas businessman James R. Bath, who invested money in the United States on behalf of the Saudi. In 1976, when Bush was the head of the CIA, the agency sold some of the planes of Air America, a secret "proprietary" airline it used during the Vietnam War, to Skyway, a company owned by Bath and Bin Mahfouz. Bath then helped finance George W. Bush's oil company, Arbusto Energy Inc., in 1979 and 1980. When Harken Energy Corp., which had absorbed Arbusto (by then merged with Spectrum 7 Energy), got into financial trouble in 1987, Jackson Stephens of the powerful, politically connected Arkansas investment firm helped it secure $25 million in financing from the Union Bank of Switzerland. As part of that deal, a place on the board was given to Harken shareholder Sheik Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, whose chief banker was BCCI shareholder Bin Mahfouz. Then, in 1988, George Bush Sr. was elected president. Harken benefited by getting some new investors, including Salem bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's half brother, and Khalid bin Mahfouz. Osama bin Laden himself was busy elsewhere at the time -- organizing al Qaeda. The money BCCI stole before it was shut down in 1991 -- somewhere between $9.5 billion and $15 billion -- made its 20-year heist the biggest bank fraud in history. Most of it was never recovered. International banks' complicity in the offshore secrecy system effectively covered up the money trail. But in the years after the collapse of BCCI, Khalid bin Mahfouz was still flush with cash. In 1992, he established the Muwafaq ("blessed relief") Foundation in the offshore Channel Islands. The U.S. Treasury Department called it "an al Qaeda front that receives funding from wealthy Saudi businessmen." When the BCCI scandal began to break in the late 1980s, the Sr. Bush administration did what it could to sit on it. The Justice Department went after the culprits -- was virtually forced to -- only after New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau did. But evidence about BCCI's broader links exist in numerous U.S. and international investigations. Now could be a good time to take another look at the BCCI-Osama-Saddam-Saudi-Bush connection. http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/50156 Lucy Komisar is a New York-based journalist and author of "A Game as Old as Empire," published by Berrett-Koehler (San Francisco).
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08-04-2007, 12:43
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Amerikanen zijn hypocriet. Kijk maar na wat er op nu.nl staat:
VS keurden geheime wapendeal Noord-Korea goed Uitgegeven: 8 april 2007 07:19 Laatst gewijzigd: 8 april 2007 07:23 NEW YORK - De Amerikaanse regering heeft in januari een geheime wapendeal goedgekeurd tussen Ethiopië en Noord-Korea. De aankoop van wapens door het Afrikaanse land gebeurde in weerwil van het VN-embargo dat Noord-Korea eind vorig jaar kreeg opgelegd vanwege de kernproef die het communistische land had uitgevoerd. Dat meldt dagblad The New York Times in de zondageditie. De Verenigde Staten knepen een oogje dicht omdat Ethiopië op dat moment slag leverde tegen islamitische strijders in Somalië. aldus anonieme Amerikaanse functionarissen. Die opmars paste in het Amerikaanse beleid om het moslimextremisten in de Hoorn van Afrika moeilijk te maken. De Ethiopische regering deed een beroep op de regering-Bush om geen stokje te steken voor de wapenlevering. Het land zei te beseffen dat men nu andere leveranciers moest vinden, maar dat dit niet "van de ene op de andere dag" kon. Na een korte discussie besloot Washington de overeenkomst niet te blokkeren. Wel drongen diplomaten er bij Ethiopië op aan om in het vervolg geen wapens meer te kopen van het bewind in Pyongyang, een aartsvijand van de VS. Militair De precieze inhoud en waarde van de lading, die in januari werd verscheept, is onbekend. Het ging volgens Amerikaanse inlichtingendiensten om "mogelijk tankonderdelen en ander militair materieel". Het Amerikaanse ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken wilde niet reageren op het bericht. De Verenigde Staten waren in de VN-veiligheidsraad juist de motor achter strenge sancties tegen het regime van Kim Jong-il. (c) ANP
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Velen denken te weten, weinig weten te denken.
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08-04-2007, 15:43
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Kosovo moet onafhankelijke worden, dus bommen op Serviers. Serviers in Bosnie moeten in Bosnie blijven, dus bommen op Serviers. Maar toch.... Bush Jr. voert morele buitenlandse politiek. En ben vaak niet met hem eens. Met name als over Israel gaat. Maar gewoon het idee: mensen, zolang de rest van de werelnd geen democratie is, blijven we problemen houden.... tja, dat vind ik wel sympathiek
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08-04-2007, 17:50
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08-04-2007, 18:09
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__________________
Velen denken te weten, weinig weten te denken.
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08-04-2007, 19:06
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08-04-2007, 19:27
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09-04-2007, 01:35
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09-04-2007, 01:38
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09-04-2007, 07:01
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__________________
In Memoriam: Matthew Shepard(1976-1998)-Wake up, meet reality! mccaine.blogspot.com|geengodengeenmeesters.blogspot.com
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10-04-2007, 02:10
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Onderzoeksjournalist Seymour Hersch (o.a. 'The New Yorker'), de man die o.a. Abu Graib onthulde, praat met Bill Maher over de (geheime) steun die de regering-Bush geeft aan militante sunnitische groeperingen die banden hebben met Al Qu'aida:
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10-04-2007, 07:17
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10-04-2007, 18:11
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10-04-2007, 18:48
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Het is echter niet zo dat als alle landen maar democratisch worden, alle problemen als sneeuw voor de zon zullen verdwijnen, zoals jij stelt. Wat ook dwaas is, is geloven dat de VS bereid is om (honderden?) miljarden te besteden, om een ander land democratisch te maken.
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