17 June 2004 | Misleader.org As reported in an earlier Daily Mislead,1 the Bush administration awarded a $10 billion Department of Homeland Security contract to Accenture, a company that based its headquarters in Bermuda to avoid paying U.S. taxes. The move defied the President’s promise to make sure everyone is “paying their fair share.”2 As if the Administration’s actions weren’t enough, yesterday the White House’s Congressional allies defeated legislation that would have stopped the contract.
Daily Archives: June 17, 2004
13 posts
by Brendan Lalor A report by 9/11 Commission staff states that “‘no credible evidence’ has emerged that Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 strikes.” Dick Cheney and George W. Bush have a different tack. While stopping short of claiming Saddam was behind the attacks, Cheney claimed again on Monday evidence of a Saddam-Osama link. Interestingly, Bush once admitted the Administration’s inability to establish the link. It was during a rare, January, 2003 press conference. This is from the White House transcript: [Adam Boulton, Sky News (London):] One question for you both. Do you believe that there is a link […]
by Brendan Lalor In a recent column, Jim Hightower listed a series of progressive, alternative sources of news on the radio, web, and elsewhere. Here are a few of the radio sources: Amy Goodman’s sassy Democracy Now Working Assets Radio with Laura Flanders New Dimensions Latino USA Counterspin RadioNation ACORN Radio Alternative Radio with David Barsamian Media Matters with Bob McChesney For the entire list and article, see his Lowdown.
[ Does the Administration want to exercise dissent-control by means of obstructing journalists? This is scary, given that foreign journalists have sometimes been the only ones to really cover important stories — for instance, the British press did a much better job covering the 2000 Florida election debacle than did the U.S. corporate media. –BL ] 15 June 2004 | Salon.com by Robert Schlesinger The Department of Homeland Security has started enforcing an obscure provision in immigration law requiring foreign journalists to seek special visas before entering the United States, even though their nonreporting countrymen can enter without any visa at […]
The innocent are the first casualties of war. Yesterday the UN admitted that it is powerless to help, reports Declan Walsh 16 June 2004 | The Independent There are three actors in every Third World conflict. Each is armed with a weapon of survival. The soldier, usually unpaid and dressed in rags, has his gun. The politician, who stands behind him, has his voice. The civilian – who endures the brunt of misery, illness and death – has only her legs. They are only good for running. In most cases they are not fast enough. Scruple-free governments, rag-tag rebel groups […]
June 16, 2004 | Washington Post by Glenn Frankel NABLUS, West Bank — The accounts of physical abuse of Iraqis by American guards at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad sounded achingly familiar to Anan Labadeh. The casual beatings, the humiliations, the trophy photos taken by both male and female guards were experiences he said he underwent as a Palestinian security detainee at an Israeli military camp in March of last year. There was, he added, a significant difference: The Israelis have rules, he said, and their techniques for breaking down prisoners are far more sophisticated. “What the Israelis do is […]
Jun. 15, 2004 | The State [South Carolina] by PAUL WACHTER and CHRISTINA LEE KNAUSS A Texas group wants conservative Christians to move to South Carolina — 12,000 at a time — to form a biblically inspired government and secede from the United States. Decrying a national tolerance of abortion and gay marriage, and the teaching of evolution, ChristianExodus.org hopes to achieve a majority of like-minded Christians in the state by 2016, the planned year of secession.
[ What a shock to see this run by FoxNews. Thanks to the OKprogressiveAlliance group list for the forward. –BL ] June 15, 2004 | FoxNews.com by Roger Friedman The crowd that gave Michael Moore’s controversial “Fahrenheit 9/11” documentary a standing ovation last night at the Ziegfeld Theater premiere certainly didn’t have to be encouraged to show their appreciation. From liberal radio host/writer Al Franken to actor/director Tim Robbins, Moore was in his element. But once “F9/11” gets to audiences beyond screenings, it won’t be dependent on celebrities for approbation. It turns out to be a really brilliant piece of work, […]
Rumsfeld Issued an Order to Hide Detainee in Iraq June 17, 2004 | New York Times by ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER WASHINGTON, June 16 – Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, acting at the request of George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, ordered military officials in Iraq last November to hold a man suspected of being a senior Iraqi terrorist at a high-level detention center there but not list him on the prison’s rolls, senior Pentagon and intelligence officials said Wednesday. This prisoner and other “ghost detainees” were hidden largely to prevent the International Committee of the Red […]
[ It’s not as though we hadn’t suspected the Administration might plant WMDs, given that its on-going futile search is/was destined to fail. This could get more interesting if other sources confirm the story. –BL ] U.S. Trucks Carrying Radioactive Materials Intercepted In Iraq-Kuwait Border 15 June 2004 | Tehran Times TEHRAN (MNA) -? The UAE-based daily Al-Khaleej reported on Monday that Kuwaiti tariff officials have intercepted a truck loaded with radioactive materials in the Iraq-Kuwait border. The daily quoted informed sources as saying that the radioactive control team from Kuwait’s Health Ministry discovered that one of the trucks belonging to […]
Cheney Speaks In Orlando, Claims Ties Between Hussein And Al Qaida June 14, 2004 | Associated Press ORLANDO, Fla. — Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that Saddam Hussein had “long-established ties” with al Qaida, an assertion that has been repeatedly challenged by some policy experts and lawmakers. “He was a patron of terrorism,” Cheney of Hussein during a speech before The James Madison Institute, a conservative think-tank based in Florida. “He had long established ties with al Qaida.” Cheney offered no details backing up his claim of a link between Hussein and al Qaida.
[ If you factor in workers who have not actively looked for work in the past four weeks, including “discouraged workers” who have given up altogether, [and] those who have given up looking for full-time jobs and have settled for part-time work instead you get an a figure significantly higher than the “official” unemployment rate. –BL ]June 14, 2004 | Reuters NEW YORK — Buried inside the official U.S. employment report each month is a little-known figure that gives a much less rosy picture of the labor market than the headlines. The government agency that produces the data also publishes an […]
[ Bush appointed Jay S. Bybee — author of the infamous memo arguing that torture in the name of “necessity or self-defense” “would eliminate any criminal liability” — to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The memo appears to have been the “basis for the working group report on detainee interrogations presented to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld a year later.” –BL ] June 15, 2004 | Los Angeles Times by Robert Scheer What a revelation to learn that the Justice Department lawyer who wrote the infamous memo in effect defending torture is now a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals […]