Chavez 'Inspired' by Anti-Bush Protesters: "Wanna bet on a horse? Of course! Of course!"

Amazing.

He just keeps grabbing the headlines no matter what.

In the infowars we're fighting, that's a crucial weapon.

I guess he's da man, and that's gotta be the plan...


(...)


BTW, "free trade" is bullshit, it's been disproven, and here's my own personal minifesto on it...


Monday, September 26, 2005

Beauty is Skin Deep: "The beauty products from the skin of executed Chinese prisoners" (The Guardian Unlimited - UK)

http://blackkrishna.blogspot.com/2005/09/beauty-is-skin-deep-beauty-products.html#comments


(...)

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, left, speaks to the crowd along with Argentine soccer star Diego Armando Maradona during a rally against the presence of U.S. President Bush in the fourth Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina on Friday Nov. 4, 2005. (AP Photo/Marcelo Hernandez)

Yahoo! News

Chavez 'Inspired' by Anti-Bush Protesters

By DAN MOLINSKI, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 22 minutes ago

MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina - A crowd of 10,000 protesters chanting "Get out Bush!" swarmed the streets of this Argentine resort Friday, hours before the hemisphere's leaders sat down to debate free trade, immigration and job creation.

Before dawn, thousands greeted a train bringing the last group of fellow demonstrators from Buenos Aires, including Bolivian presidential hopeful Evo Morales and soccer great Diego Maradona, who donned a T-shirt accusing President Bush of war crimes.

Chanting "Fascist Bush! You are the terrorist!" the protesters hung from the engine and moved up the sides of the train, trying to shake hands with those inside.

Later, they took to the streets, heading toward a stadium where Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made a speech before joining the Summit of the Americas.

Chavez arrived early Friday, saying he was "inspired" by the protesters, who also oppose the U.S.-led negotiations to form a Free Trade Area of the Americas stretching from Alaska to Argentina.

"Today the FTAA is dead and we are going to bury it here. We are here to change the course of history," he said after stepping off his plane.

But Mexican President Vicente Fox, one of the region's biggest free trade proponents, told reporters that Venezuela and other nations opposed to the FTAA may be left behind as the rest of the hemisphere considers moving forward on creating a huge free trade zone.

One marcher, Canadian steelworker Dennis Matteau, said free trade must be stopped.

"We have NAFTA, so we know about free trade deals," he said. "They are not good for workers."

The march was mostly peaceful, although some self-proclaimed anarchists spray-painted slogans on a bank. Most businesses along the route had closed, except for a fruit stand protected by a wall of wooden crates.

"So far, I've only lost four bananas," owner Blas Zanghi said.

Shuttling between luxury hotels, Bush met with Argentine President Nestor Kirchner as well as Central American and Andean leaders Friday before joining the 34-nation summit.

Leaders attending the two-day summit agreed ahead of time to focus on creating jobs and reducing poverty. In recent days, however, attention has shifted to the free trade issue and sparring between the United States and Chavez, a leftist whose government has used his country's vast oil wealth on social programs for the poor.

Washington maintains the proposed free trade accord, which has stalled amid opposition by several Latin American countries, is vital to creating jobs and increasing wealth in the region.

Chavez, who regularly claims Washington is trying to overthrow him, has said free trade is being forced on Latin American countries and the deal would only help the rich. Instead, he is promoting anti-FTAA deal based on socialist ideals.

Bush arrived Thursday, the same day Venezuela staged a mock U.S. invasion of its own territory. The event was the latest exercise intended to prepare soldiers and civilian volunteers for what Chavez says is a possible attack by American troops.

U.S. officials deny any such plan.

Chavez and Bush will likely see each other Friday at the summit's inauguration but are not scheduled to meet one-on-one.

Jose Miguel Insulza, secretary-general of the Organization of American States — the Washington-based group that organized the summit — said he was disappointed by the attention given to the free trade deal.

"This is not a summit about the FTAA," a frustrated Insulza told reporters.

But Bush seemed to be winning over supporters. A high-ranking Brazilian official, who said he was not authorized to give his name, told reporters 28 of the 34 countries participating in the summit had agreed to relaunch trade talks as early as April.

___

Associated Press writers Nestor Ikeda, Vivian Sequera, and Alan Clendenning in Mar del Plata and Kris Kitto in Buenos Aires contributed to this report.

___

On the Net: http://www.summit-americas.org

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SOURCE - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051104/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/americas_summit_34;_ylt=Am.7aKBon2TUDM8uHyv_jiT.ucsA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl


(...)


BONUS: Well, this is just impeach-y...

Zogby International

Poll: Americans Favor Bush's Impeachment If He Lied about Iraq

By a margin of 50% to 44%, Americans say that President Bush should be impeached if he lied about the war in Iraq, according to a new poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional investigation of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

The poll was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs, the highly-regarded non-partisan polling company. The poll interviewed 1,001 U.S. adults on October 8-9.

The poll found that 50% agreed with the statement:

"If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable by impeaching him."

44% disagreed, and 6% said they didn't know or declined to answer. The poll has a +/- 3.1% margin of error.

Those who agreed with the statement were also more passionate: 39% strongly agreed, while 30% strongly disagreed.

"The results of this poll are truly astonishing," said AfterDowningStreet.org co-founder Bob Fertik. "Bush's record-low approval ratings tell just half of the story, which is how much Americans oppose Bush's policies on Iraq and other issues. But this poll tells the other half of the story - that a solid plurality of Americans want Congress to consider removing Bush from the White House."

Impeachment Supported by Majorities of Many Groups

Responses varied by political party affiliation: 72% of Democrats favored impeachment, compared to 56% of Independents and 20% of Republicans.

Responses also varied by age and income. Solid majorities of those under age 55 (54%), as well as those with household incomes below $50,000 (57%), support impeachment.

Majorities favored impeachment in the Northeast (53%), West (51%), and even the South (50%).

Support for Impeachment Surged Since June

The Ipsos poll shows a dramatic transformation in support for Bush's impeachment since late June. (This is only the second poll that has asked Americans about their support for impeaching Bush in 2005, despite his record-low approval ratings.) The Zogby poll conducted June 27-29 of 905 likely voters found that 42% agreed and 50% disagreed with a statement virtually identical to the one used by Ipsos.


Ipsos 10/8-9 Zogby 6/27-29 Net Change
Support Impeachment 50 % 42 % + 8 %
Oppose Impeachment 44 % 50 % + 6 %
Impeachment Margin + 6 % - 8 % + 14 %

After the June poll, pollster John Zogby told the Washington Post that support for impeachment "was much higher than I expected." At the time, impeachment supporters trailed opponents by 8%. Now supporters outnumber opponents by 6%, a remarkable shift of 14%.

Support for Clinton Impeachment Was Much Lower

In August and September of 1998, 16 major polls asked about impeaching President Clinton (http://democrats.com/clinton-impeachment-polls). Only 36% supported hearings to consider impeachment, and only 26% supported actual impeachment and removal. Even so, the impeachment debate dominated the news for months, and the Republican Congress impeached Clinton despite overwhelming public opposition.

Impeachment Support is Closely Related to Belief that Bush Lied about Iraq

Both the Ipsos and Zogby polls asked about support for impeachment if Bush lied about the reasons for war, rather than asking simply about support for impeachment. Pollsters predict that asking simply about impeachment without any context would produce a large number of "I don't know" responses. However, this may understate the percentage of Americans who favor Bush's impeachment for other reasons, such as his slow response to Hurricane Katrina, his policy on torture, soaring gasoline prices, or other concerns.

Other polls show a majority of U.S. adults believe that Bush did in fact lie about the reasons for war. A June 23-26 ABC/Washington Post poll found 52% of Americans believe the Bush administration "deliberately misled the public before the war," and 57% say the Bush administration "intentionally exaggerated its evidence that pre-war Iraq possessed nuclear, chemical or biological weapons."

Support for the war has dropped significantly since June, which suggests that the percentage of Americans who believe Bush lied about the war has increased.

Passion for Impeachment is Major Unreported Story

The strong support for impeachment found in this poll is especially surprising because the views of impeachment supporters are entirely absent from the broadcast and print media, and can only be found on the Internet and in street protests, including the large anti-war rally in Washington on September 24.

The lack of coverage of impeachment support is due in part to the fact that not a single Democrat in Congress has called for impeachment, despite considerable grassroots activism by groups like Democrats.com (http://democrats.com/impeach).

"We will, no doubt, see an increase in activism following this poll," said David Swanson, co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org. "But will we see an increase in media coverage? The media are waiting for action in Congress. Apparently it's easier to find and interview one of the 535 members of Congress than it is to locate a representative of the half of the country that wants the President impeached if he lied about the war. The media already accepts that Bush did lie about the war. We know this because so many editors and pundits told us that the Downing Street Memo was 'old news.' What we need now is journalism befitting a democracy, journalism that goes out and asks people what they really think about their government, especially George Bush."

The passion of impeachment supporters is directly responsible for the Ipsos poll. After the Zogby poll in June, activists led by Democrats.com urged all of the major polling organizations to include an impeachment question in their upcoming polls. But none of the polling organizations were willing to do so for free, so on September 30, AfterDowningStreet.org posted a request for donations to fund paid polls (http://afterdowningstreet.org/polling). As of October 10, 330 individuals had contributed $8,919 in small donations averaging $27 each.

AfterDowningStreet.org has commissioned a second poll which is expected soon, and will continue to urge all polling organizations to include the impeachment question in their regular polls. If they do not, AfterDowningStreet.org will continue to commission regular impeachment polls.

Footnotes:

1. AfterDowningStreet.org is a rapidly growing coalition of veterans' groups, peace groups, and political activist groups that was created on May 26, 2005, following the publication of the Downing Street Memos in London's Sunday Times on May 1. The coalition is urging Congress to begin a formal investigation into whether President Bush committed impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq war.

2.Here are the complete tables from the Ipsos poll, plus the definitions of regions used by Ipsos and the U.S. Census Bureau.

3. Zogby asked: "If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable by impeaching him through impeachment."

4. Pollsters have offered various reasons for refusing to poll on impeachment. For example, Gallup said it would do so "if, and when, there is some discussion of that possibility by congressional leaders, and/or if commentators begin discussing it in the news media."

(10/13/2005)

- Indymedia Chiapas, Mexico

BACK TO ZOGBY IN THE MEDIA

SOURCE - http://www.zogby.com/Soundbites/ReadClips.dbm?ID=11982


(...)


BONUS: I don't care who you are, they're trying to take your shit...

Infowars.com

House Vote Counters Eminent Domain Measure

Associated Press | November 4 2005
By JIM ABRAMS

COMMENT:

This is a major victory against those who would seek to completely undermine property rights. Now we must lobby our representatives in the Senate to support this legislation and curb this rampant employment of "eminent domain" before it gets even more out of control.

WASHINGTON - Conservative defenders of private property and liberal protectors of the poor joined in an overwhelming House vote to prevent local and state governments from seizing homes and businesses for use in economic development projects.

The House legislation, passed 376-38, was in response to a widely criticized 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court last June that allowed eminent domain authority to be used to obtain land for tax revenue-generating commercial purposes.

That decision, said the House's third-ranked Republican, Deborah Pryce of Ohio, "dealt a blow to the rights of property owners across the country."

The bill would withhold for two years all federal economic development funds from states and localities that use economic development as a rationale for property seizures. It also would bar the federal government from using eminent domain powers for economic development.

It now goes to the Senate, where Sen. John Cornyn R-Texas, has introduced similar legislation.

The ruling in Kelo v. City of New London allowed the Connecticut city to exercise state eminent domain law to require several homeowners to cede their property for commercial use.

Conservatives were in the forefront in arguing that this was a dangerous interpretation of the "takings clause" in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution that allows the government to seize property for public use, with just compensation.

"Governments should not be able to bulldoze a person's home or business to benefit other individuals," said Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-Texas.

Liberals warned that it could make it easier to tear down poor neighborhoods. "We don't need you on this one," Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said to those arguing that eminent domain can lead to beneficial urban renewal projects. "We need you to respect the right of those minorities and those poor people to hold on to what is their own."

Opponents of the legislation argued that its exclusion of economic development was too broad and that the federal government should not be interceding in what should be a local issue. "We should not change federal law every time members of Congress disagree with the judgment of a locality when it uses eminent domain for the purpose of economic development," said Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va.

About half the states are also considering changes in their laws to prevent takings for private use.

The Bush administration, backing the House bill, said in a statement that "private property rights are the bedrock of the nation's economy and enjoy constitutionally protected status. They should also receive an appropriate level of protection by the federal government."

The House, by a voice vote, approved a proposal by Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., to bar states or localities in pursuit of more tax money from exercising eminent domain over nonprofit or tax-exempt religious organizations. Churches, he said, "should not have to fear because God does not pay enough in taxes."

Eminent domain, the right of government to take property for public use, is typically used for projects that benefit an entire community, such as highways, airports or schools.

Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the majority opinion in Kelo, said in an August speech that while he had concerns about the results, the ruling was legally correct because the high court has "always allowed local policymakers wide latitude in determining how best to achieve legitimate public goals."

Several lawmakers who opposed the House bill said eminent domain has long been used by local governments for economic development projects such as the Inner Harbor in Baltimore and the cleaning up of Times Square in New York. The District of Columbia is expected to use eminent domain to secure land for a new baseball stadium for the Washington Nationals.

REAL SOURCE - http://www.infowars.com/articles/ps/eminent_domain_house_vote_counters_measure.htm


Download a documentary and it's classic sequel to Save The World...

http://www.archive.org/details/911theRoadtoTyranny

http://www.archive.org/details/MartialLaw911

Plan BK: The Solutions - "I ain't scared of Thugs, Pimps, Drug-dealers, Crackheads, Black Guys, White Guys... nobody, until they start acting scary."

Seriously.

I ain't scared of nobody.

I know being a pussy is a waste of energy.


(...)


I ain't scared of a stereotype until that stereotype starts acting scary, and that's just the best way to play it. Most of these people are real cool until you set 'em off, just like anybody else. And just like anybody else, anybody can screw you, so best to keep your instincts in reserve and money tight, often it's the last person you expect who'll catch you unawares.

I don't trust everybody 100%, but I don't automatically distrust anybody either.


(...)


I remember I used to get in more trouble for what I said than others did for what they did.

To wit: I was never the type back in college to push-up on a lil' shawty with a fake-mack; either I was into it or I wasn't. Other dudes by design would fake interest in what they said for a couple of hours while feeding 'em drinks and messing with their brains, and try to bag 'em by the end using a combo of guilt and faux-commitment.

I even have a buddy who's bagged a tonne of ho's who told me he always discusses marriage on the first date - even though it's the last thing on his mind.

It "works", if that's how you wanna work it.


(...)


Honesty is the best policy of fools in love with a dream.

Do we have the balls to be that fool?

That foolish?


(...)


I remember the dot-com bust a few years back, and argued vehemently with CEO's and others about how little we should trust what these bustas say. I mean c'mon, nearly all of them suits gambled and guessed wrong, and all the interviews in them magazines suggesting the technological revolution was impermeable were flat-out incorrect.

So, either they were lying or they were wrong, and either way, fuck 'em. They don't deserve to be trusted just because they are who they are at the upper-echelons of society, and neither does anyone else.

I don't care who you are, if I can beat what you say, then that red-headed step-child of an idea is taking a hella-beating.


(...)


I had a white friend rip Kate Moss for doing not just coke - but he heard it was "crack", an exponentially worse drug that justified her being pariah'd out of the modeling world. He was incorrect (it was coke), but that's besides the point.

He then later said that crystal meth was getting huge these days, and he even ran into a white-dude on a Saturday night in a city he visited who came up to him fairly frenzied, and said: "I've been up since Wednesday!" before darting off.

We had a good laugh (another white dude was there), until I made this point:

"So wait a second, a nigga get high for 15 minutes smoking crack and he's the scum of the earth, but a white-guy gets high for 4 days and it's "cute"???"

What if he drove a car? Or stole some shit to get higher?

Hmph.

Oh well.

Fuck that ex-crack dealer George Bush Sr., fuck his kids, and fuck his grand-kids.

(Actually, the twins are kind of cute.)

After all, we're all fucked.


(...)


I did some Nate Doggin' for a friend's track a while back, he's a really good rapper and a really nice guy, I've kicked-it in his hood with him and his baby-mama and they were great. He's a young cat with two little kids to feed, and after just getting out of jail again he mentioned to us that he bought a sawed-off shotgun for $200 instead of a handgun for $600 because it was cheaper, but that it could still be hidden in the big-pantlegs of hip hop gear.

Now, this got us half-eye-rolling and half-shook, but I know dude, and he's really a nice guy. He's got a record so getting work is tougher, he's got a limited skill-set, and he's of average intelligence as opposed to exceptional - and since most of us are average that's who we should worry about.

The exceptional ones will make they're money no matter what: Jay-Z moved kilos of coke before millions of CD's; 50 Cent moved "From Pieces to Weight" in the crack-game, etc. They will be fine, just like the 50 - 70% of dumbasses in a nice suburb who have a legitimate chance to squeeze into post-secondary education while less than 10% of dumbasses in the hood do.

I can't front: homie's gotta carry a piece on him if he's looking to make money off anything but random piece-work, and if he's carrying a pound of something or the cash to buy it then he'd better stay strapped. I don't like it, but I understand, and as long as I'm not caught up in it then I'm in the clear.

Homeboy don't scare me, but I wish him luck surviving the game he's playing, and hope he makes it out with enough cash to front another way out, and raise them kids right - "So they don't rob me in 10 years!!!" (Chris Rock).

T.H.U.G. - L.I.F.E.

The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody


"I didn't create T.H.U.G. - L.I.F.E., I diagnosed it."

- Tupac Shakur

(...)


There's more examples in the arsenal but you get the point: it just ain't worth hating anybody you don't have to, and in fact, it's a waste of time and energy.

In fact, if you walk the streets and every second or third person invokes an instinctive guttural reaction of fear and anger, you'll be mentally and spiritually weakened or contorted into a mess sooner than later.

And, you're a pussy.

CIA holds captives in secret prisons abroad: report... "And if the Nazi's made deals, these are the deals they would make."

Okay, I haven't read the article yet.

And, I don't friggin' care.

I'll read it in a minute, but I gotta say: this is completely insane.

If there's one thing that bears repeating on this issue, it's clearly this:


THEY ARE TORTURING INNOCENT MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN!!!


How do I know they are innocent?

Well, I've got facts.

But, so do you.

So, screw the facts, here's some logic for you...


(...)


Suppose that torturing detainees "works" even after hundreds of experts said it doesn't, and that you get no good information through coercion when you could befriend them and cut deals with them in captivity.

But, suppose you still believe it works, after all, it makes sense: if someone whupped your ass badly enough for 3 or 4 hours you'd probably talk, so in 3 or 4 years you'd be singing like friggin' Pavarotti.

Fair enough, I understand your logic.

But check this out:


HOW COME THE WAR IS GOING SO FREAKIN' BADLY???


Assuming you had Mohammed in captivity, or "Mo" for short, and you decide to torture him for a bit to see if he had any information. So, you take Mo and you beat the hell out of him, and ask him to reveal something, ANYTHING, that could help you win the ubiquitous "War on Terror".

So Mo says: "Ahhh! Okay, enough, you win! Tell you what, there's a huge cache of weapons in a warehouse on the outskirts of Basra, it's 3 miles north of the city limits. Just take Abdullah Road north to Mustafa Avenue, hang a right, pass Niaze Crescent, and on your left-hand side is a yellow building full of insurgent blow-'em-up-real-good-toys hidden in the basement. Go ahead, check it out for yourself, trust me, you can't miss it, and I'm not going anywhere. Now please, get your evil-cracka foot outta my ass. Thanks".

Okay, so Mo is still held in captivity, and all you have to do is send your troops in Iraq to where Mo said the stash was, find it, confiscate it, and send word back that Mo speaks the truth and the ass-whuppin's worked.

But, that hasn't happened.

They are obviously getting no good intelligence from torturing innocent victims as is conclusively proven by the war in Iraq getting worse and worse and worse and worse and worse...


(...)


In fact, no Al-Qaeda leaders have been found at Guantanamo.

This has been admitted, and these Nazi's would certainly trumpet any they found to prove this disgusting mess works.

In fact, according to the New York Times and other publications, a few thousand Taliban were airlifted by the U.S. military out of Afghanistan and into Pakistan just before the post-9/11 invasion to ensure they could keep the fighting going.

Or maybe because the father-figure relationship the CIA has from creating the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to fight the Soviets gave them a big ol' warm-fuzzy.


Here, I even Googled it for ya...

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/24/international/asia/24AFGH.html?ex=1131080400&en=31d2f4a3631c7f40&ei=5070

http://prisonplanet.com/the_airlift_of_evil.html

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?id=1521846767-1109


(...)


So, the war keeps getting worse, they are building 14 new military based in Iraq, and they sure as hell aren't leaving until they're finished completely controlling the entire region, including Syria, Iran, Libya... and anywhere else they want.

So: why are they torturing innocent Muslims?

It's simple: to train people to torture people.

Once you have people willing to torture people, they come in very handy when you want to torture people. And once you decide to torture people, then you can pick and choose who you want to torture whenever you want with ease knowing you have the manpower willing and ready and able to torture people.

And then...

...you torture people.

Perhaps eventually...

...even people like us.


(...)


For their big plans to resurrect the 4th Reich and take over the whole world forever and ever and ever, check this out...


The Endgame: Neo-Continuity...

Friday, August 19, 2005

http://blackkrishna.blogspot.com/2005/08/endgame-neo-continuity.html


(...)


I wish us luck...


(...)

The logo of the Central Intelligence Agency is swept clean in the lobby of the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. (Jason Reed/Reuters)

Yahoo! News

CIA holds captives in secret prisons abroad: report

By Joanne Allen 13 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA has been hiding and interrogating al Qaeda captives at a secret facility in Eastern Europe, part of a covert global prison system that has included sites in eight countries and was set up after the September 11, 2001, attacks, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

The secret network included "several democracies in Eastern Europe" as well as Thailand and Afghanistan, the newspaper reported, but it did not publish the names of the European countries at the request of senior U.S. officials.

U.S. government officials declined comment on the report, but it was likely to stir up fresh criticism of the Bush administration's treatment of prisoners in its declared war on terrorism since the September 11 attacks.

Russia and Bulgaria immediately denied any facility was there. Thailand also denied it was host to such a facility.

The newspaper, which said its report was based on information from U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement, said the existence and locations of the facilities were known only to a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.

The CIA has not acknowledged the existence of a secret prison network, the newspaper said.

Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, principal deputy to Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, declined to comment when asked about the report at a news conference in San Antonio where he delivered a speech about intelligence reforms.

"I'm not here to talk about that," he said.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, "I'm not going to get into specific intelligence activities. I will say that the president's most important responsibility is to protect the American people."

The Bush administration's policy toward prisoners taken in Afghanistan and Iraq has come under heavy criticism at home and abroad. Inmate abuse at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison was strongly condemned in the Muslim world and among U.S. allies while many have called for more openness about those being held at a U.S. navy base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spurned a request by U.N. human rights investigators and denied them the opportunity to meet with detainees at the Guantanamo prison for foreign terrorism suspects.

But the administration also faced problems at home. In an October 5 bipartisan vote, the Senate approved 90-9 an amendment to regulate the Pentagon's handling of military detainees by establishing rules for their interrogation and treatment despite strong White House opposition.

'BLACK SITES'

According to the Washington Post, the prisons are referred to as "black sites" in classified U.S. documents and virtually nothing is known about who the detainees are, how they are interrogated or about decisions on how long they will be held.

About 30 major terrorism suspects have been held at black sites while more than 70 other detainees, considered less important, were delivered to foreign intelligence services under a process known as "rendition," the paper said, citing U.S. and foreign intelligence sources.

The top 30 al Qaeda prisoners are isolated from the outside world, have no recognized legal rights and no one outside the CIA is allowed to talk with or see them, the sources told the newspaper.

The paper, citing several former and current intelligence and other U.S. government officials, said the CIA used such detention centers abroad because in the United States it is illegal to hold prisoners in such isolation.

The Washington Post said it was not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program at the request of senior U.S. officials who argued that disclosure could disrupt counterterrorism efforts or make the host countries targets for retaliation.

The secret detention system was conceived shortly after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, when the working assumption was that another strike was imminent, the report said.

Russia's FSB security service, the main KGB-successor agency that leads the country's battle against militant violence, denied any such facilities on its territory.

"You can say for sure that this is not in Russia," said FSB spokesman Nikolai Zakharov.

Bulgarian Foreign Ministry spokesman Dimitar Tsanchev said, "We do not have any such facilities and there are no foreign detainees kept secretly in Bulgaria."

Thai government spokesman Surapong Suebwonglee said, "There is no fact in the unfounded claims," but added Bangkok was probably mentioned because it helped catch Hambali, an Indonesian accused of being Osma bin Laden's key link to Southeast Asia, in 2003.

Thailand's security cooperation with the United States would have to be done "in an open and legitimate manner," he said.

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(...)


BONUS: Oh well, at least we can still get high...

Yahoo! News

Denver Voters OK Marijuana Possession

By JON SARCHE, Associated Press Writer Wed Nov 2, 7:40 AM ET

DENVER - Residents of the Mile High City have voted to legalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana for adults. Authorities, though, said state possession laws will be applied instead.

With 100 percent of precincts reporting early Wednesday, 54 percent, or 56,001 voters, cast ballots for the ordinance, while 46 percent, or 48,632 voters, voted against it.

Under the measure, residents over 21 years old could possess up to an ounce of marijuana.

"We educated voters about the facts that marijuana is less harmful to the user and society than alcohol," said Mason Tvert, campaign organizer for SAFER, or Safer Alternatives For Enjoyable Recreation. "To prohibit adults from making the rational, safer choice to use marijuana is bad public policy."

Bruce Mirken of the Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project said he hoped the approval will launch a national trend toward legalizing a drug whose enforcement he said causes more problems than it cures.

Seattle, Oakland, Calif., and a few college towns already have laws making possession the lowest law enforcement priority.

The Denver proposal seemed to draw at least as much attention for supporters' campaign tactics as it did for the question of legalizing the drug.

Tvert argued that legalizing marijuana would reduce consumption of alcohol, which he said leads to higher rates of car accidents, domestic and street violence and crime.

The group criticized Mayor John Hickenlooper for opposing the proposal, noting his ownership of a popular brewpub. It also said recent violent crimes — including the shootings of four people last weekend — as a reason to legalize marijuana to steer people away from alcohol use.

Those tactics angered local officials and some voters. Opponents also said it made no sense to prevent prosecution by Denver authorities while marijuana charges are most often filed under state and federal law.

The measure would not affect the medical marijuana law voters approved in 2000. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that medical marijuana laws in Colorado and nine other states would not protect licensed users from federal prosecution.

Also Tuesday, voters in the ski resort town of Telluride rejected a proposal to make possession of an ounce or less of marijuana by people 18 or older the town's lowest law enforcement priority. The measure was rejected on a vote of 308-332.

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SOURCE - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051102/ap_on_el_st_lo/denver_marijuana

Brad Pitt Narrates PBS Miniseries on Health: "3 billion people live on less than $2 a day... we're doing everything wrong." (Wake up Mr. Pitt!)

"Wake me up Mr. West!"


"Mr. West..."


"Mr. West..."


"Mr. West..."







"Uh-huh, yeah...


Uh-huh, yeah...


Uh-huh, yeah...


Uh-huh, yeah...



Just wanna bling-it, like Ye say,
Ring my celly off the hook,
BOOST my ego, today,
Gettin' greedy 4 pay?
Gettin' greedy 4 say?
Once the needy get speedy,
We be, okay,
So I'm throwin' a par-tay,
4 all, 2 say,
How you wantin' 2 play?
How you wantin' 2 stay?
How much longer, can we stop?
2 feel, this way?
I'm sure, we got dreams,
Forgot, but that means,
We get a chance to remember,
How we felt in our teens,
Not as bad as it seemed,
Thinkin' how we schemed,
Thinkin' how we leaned-on, each other,
When we knew what that meaned,
Now, music alone,
Just helps me, lose it,
Only choose-news,
That makes me feel like I don't, abuse it,
Crews-choose, to feel bad,
Hate how they, confuse it,
Know they wanna lose it,
When they do, it proves it,
See, a Friday nite, means,
A break, from fake dreams,

Thinkin' now's the time to find out...

What rhymin' means...


[chorus]

I heard Kanye say,
Nothin's ever promised tomorrow, today,
So like Ye, I pray,
And like Jay, I say,
My diamond's gonna shine,
Forever today...


And sometimes the hurt,
Gets me, double-teamin',
Dealin' with my own,
And friends, stopped dreamin',
We all see, the stop-signs,
'Til we stop, for bread-lines,
Gettin' shot, by headlines,
And bought, by deadlines,
Guess that SUV, was a gas, at the time,
So, the colors come and go,
But we still, deceivin',
Thinkin' we ain't goin' slow,
'Til we feel, like thievin',
Forgot who really makes us feel like, believin',
Buy who's sellin' us what's right,
But we ain't relievin',
We all just grievin',
We all just kneelin',
Guess we all, just here,
Until, we leavin',
So, look out, 4 land-mines,
You can find 'em, in prime-rhymes,
The crime, in prime-time,
Ain't truth, like art shine',

I guess we all just payin' our fines...

I know it...


[chorus]

I heard Kanye say,
Nothin's ever promised tomorrow, today,
So like Ye, I pray,
And like Jay, I say,
My diamond's gonna shine,
Forever today...


(And sometimes we forget,
What made us smile, today...
And in forgetting,
We see ourselves, so far, away,
We've got the tools, right here,
To make us, feel, okay...
It helps, if we can stop,
And just press play...)"

- Black Krishna, "Heard 'Em Say" (BKB-Mix)


(...)


BONUS: "Wake up Mr. Pitt!"

This April 2005 photo supplied by WGBH and Nova shows actor Brad Pitt with children in Ethiopia. Pitt narrates the upcoming six-hour PBS miniseries 'RX for Survival: A Global Health Challenge.' In the past two years, Pitt has become increasingly involved in fighting poverty in Africa. (AP Photo/WGBH/NOVA,J. Tayloe Emery)

Yahoo! News

Pitt Narrates PBS Miniseries on Health

By JAKE COYLE, AP Entertainment Writer Mon Oct 31, 9:22 PM ET

NEW YORK - Brad Pitt's voice is usually identified with movies such as "Troy," "Ocean's Eleven" and "Twelve Monkeys" — not a six-hour documentary on global health.

Starting Tuesday night on PBS and ending Thursday (check local listings), Pitt will narrate six hour-long episodes of "RX for Survival: A Global Health Challenge," which follows health care workers and researchers struggling to contain disease among the world's poor.

"I've been involved with the issue of poverty — I've been studying it for about a year and half now," Pitt told The Associated Press in a phone interview Monday from Calgary, Alberta. "I think one of the major causes of that is health, global health."

Pitt has made several trips to Africa in the past two years, including one in July to Ethiopia, where his "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" co-star Angelina Jolie adopted her daughter, Zahara.

While tabloid coverage of Pitt and Jolie has been extensive, the 41-year-old actor told Diane Sawyer on ABC's "Primetime Live" in June that he wanted to redirect some of that attention to poverty in Africa.

"I think it could be one of the major issues of the century," he told the AP. "There are two things at stake here: one is human interest and the other is self-interest. We're finding out that there's no safe haven from infectious diseases. It's a plane flight away."

"The human interest is enough — the fact that millions are dying from preventable, curable diseases," Pitt said. "But if the human interest isn't enough, then wisdom will tell you that self-preservation is."

He mentioned the Avian bird flu as an example, and said he wondered if AIDS might not have "jumped the pond" if Africa had a proper health infrastructure.

What led Pitt to this interest in poverty?

"I don't know," he said. "To me personally, it goes back to the will to understand and that's what we're lacking most. So I want to educate myself as much as I can to understand the situation, to understand the solutions."

"I've had the luxury of travel and in the luxury of travel, I've seen the detriments of poverty and I've gone on to see how easy the cures can be — cures that cost cents to the richest nation in the world."

___

On the Net:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/rxforsurvival/

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SOURCE - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051101/ap_en_ce/people_brad_pitt









BONUS: "Thanks for the Wake-up Mr. Jones!"


Courtesy of Mr. Alex Jones at infowars.com and his Tyranny Response Team...

CTV News

Dr. David Butler-Jones, Chief Public Health Officer, speaks with Canada AM on Tuesday.

CTV.ca News Staff

One day after officials revealed wild birds carrying the H5 strain of avian flu virus have been found in Canada, the nation's chief public health officer is urging Canadians not to panic.

"The first thing to know is that it's a huge leap for a bird virus to become a human virus that spreads efficiently in people," said Dr. David Butler-Jones, appearing on CTV's Canada AM.

"That's just a tremendous leap and very difficult and we likely would actually be able to watch that with the surveillance and have better preparation for it," he said.

In fact, Butler-Jones said that avian flu viruses have been discovered before.

"This really just documents more clearly what we've known for a long time -- that there's a range of avian viruses and that we do see them in all parts of the world, including in North America."

"In terms of the one that most people are worried about, the H5N1 that we see in Southeast Asia, the Americans have been doing surveillance in Alaska -- that's where it would come across."

Meanwhile, a stakeholder is also reassuring that Canada is in a good position to stop an outbreak of avian flu in commercial poultry stocks.

The Canadian Press reported that Chicken Farmers of Canada General Manager Mike Dungate said Canadians learned lessons the hard way last year when testing indicated that the avian flu found on a goose and duck farm near Abbotsford, B.C. was not the H5 variety.

Instead, the 37,000 geese on the Fraser Valley Duck and Goose Ltd. farm were exposed to the H7N3 strain of avian influenza virus. The outbreak caused no major human health problems, but forced the culling of some 16 million poultry.

Dungate noted that the outbreak, which devastated the industry in the Fraser Valley, prompted the tightening of controls on biosecurity and improved communication with federal officials.

On Monday, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced that several wild waterfowl in Quebec and Manitoba have tested positive for H5 flu viruses. However, the chance of the strain being the lethal H5N1 type is "likely fairly remote," said Jim Clark of the CFIA.

Health officials in Winnipeg conducting tests on the H5-infected birds won't know whether they have H5N1 until mid-week.

Even if the Canadian birds are carrying the H5N1 virus, it does not mean they are necessarily related to the viruses behind the poultry outbreaks in Southeast Asia.

That strain is behind the avian flu problem growing in Asia, where more than 60 people have died of H5N1 infection transmitted from poultry.

With the strain crawling through Europe as migrating fowl fly westward, there are mounting fears that the virus could mutate into one that can easily spread among humans and thus prompt a global pandemic.

SOURCE - http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20051101/poultry_canada_051101/20051101?hub=Health



*** AND ***

CTV News

Sorting fact from fiction about the bird flu

Angela Mulholland, CTV.ca News

Although there's lots of speculation and concern, there's no certainty that the H5N1 bird flu strain will lead to the next human flu pandemic. Angela Mulholland sorts out some of the myths surrounding this frightening possibility.

The bird flu in Asia will soon lead to a flu pandemic

It's impossible to confirm that the H5N1 bird flu strain in Asia and now in Europe will lead to the next human flu pandemic, although it is worrisome. While the World Health Organization says there is no reason yet to panic, they concede that with the virus spreading quickly and its behaviour continually changing, "the probability that a [human] pandemic will occur has increased."

The bird flu has mutated so that it can spread human to human

Although there have been a handful of suspected cases of human-to-human transmission in Asia, they have been rare and require further study to confirm.

According to the WHO, data from these incidents suggest that transmission requires very close contact with an ill person. What's more, none of the cases spread beyond a first generation of close contacts and caused illness in the general community.

If the H5N1 bird flu comes to Canada, a flu pandemic is inevitable

Bird flu has been in Canada before; an outbreak in B.C. in the spring of 2004 caused by the H7N3 strain led to the slaughter of thousands of chickens. It also infected two humans, but they suffered only from mild flu-like symptoms and the eye infection conjunctivitis.

The Asian H5N1 strain has not been found in Canada but even if it arrives, there is still no reason to believe that it will lead to a human flu pandemic. The strain has not mutated to allow widespread human-to-human transmission.

If the bird flu comes to Canada, I should stop eating chicken

The primary way humans can become infected with bird flu is by coming in direct contact with infected poultry and/or surfaces contaminated with their droppings. You cannot get the virus by eating chicken or other poultry or their eggs.

In the very few cases of human-to-human bird flu transmission, the method of transmission cannot be confirmed but likely came by breathing in the contaminated breath droplets from the infected patient, not through food.

Antibiotics will help me avoid bird flu

Antibiotics won't help you avoid contracting either the usual human flu or bird flu. Antibiotics are used to treat infections that are caused by bacteria and are of no use against viruses.

Getting a flu shot now will help me in a flu pandemic

Flu vaccines are reformulated each year to counter one specific virus strain. Since we still don't know which strain will cause the next flu pandemic, it is not yet possible to create a vaccine.

Still, vaccine manufacturers are doing the foundation work to develop a vaccine to H5N1. But even if a vaccine can be developed, it would take many months to mass-produce and distribute. And it seems unlikely that manufacturers will be able to meet demand. That's why more attention is being paid to antivirals as the first line of attack in the event of a pandemic.

As for the flu shot, the regular human flu still kills hundreds of people a year in Canada, so getting the flu shot remians important for those most at risk, such as the elderly.

Taking Tamiflu now will help me avoid bird flu

Tamiflu is an antiviral medication, and while it may reduce the severity and duration of influenza, it is not a vaccination and may not prevent infection.

As well, widespread inappropriate use of antivirals could lead to the development of resistant strains of flu, just as not taking antibiotics properly can lead to more virulent strains of bacteria.

If I can get my hands on it, I should stockpile a supply of Tamiflu

Tamiflu is available only by prescription and is already in short supply. The federal, provincial and territorial governments have stockpiled 35 million Tamiflu pills, says the Public Health Agency of Canada, about enough to treat 3.5 million people. The country's chief medical officer of health, Dr. David Butler-Jones, says some provinces plan to buy an additional five million pills.

Though there have been reports of Canadians buying Tamiflu over the Internet, the federal government wants the top priority for use of the drugs to be the treatment of people hospitalized for flu within 48 hours of the onset of their illness, since the antivirals are not effective after that point. The second priority would be to treat, at first sign of illness, health-care workers and essential or emergency services workers.

What's more, a recent report of a Vietnamese girl with bird flu suggested that Tamiflu may not be the best line of attack against H5N1 in humans. Another drug, zanamivir, sold under the brand name Relenza, may be more effective.

SOURCE - http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20051024/bird_flu_myths_feature_051024/20051024?hub=Specials



*** VS. ***

Yahoo! News

Bush Outlines $7.1B Flu-Fighting Strategy

By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer 1 hour, 6 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - President Bush outlined a $7.1 billion strategy Tuesday to prepare for the danger of a pandemic influenza outbreak, saying he wanted to stockpile enough vaccine to protect 20 million Americans against the current strain of bird flu.

The president also said the United States must approve liability protection for the makers of lifesaving vaccines. He said the number of American vaccine manufacturers has plummeted because the industry has been hit with a flood of lawsuits.

Bush said no one knows when or where a deadly strain of flu will strike but "at some point we are likely to face another pandemic."

The president, in a speech at the National Institutes of Health, said the United States must be prepared to detect outbreaks anywhere in the world, stockpile vaccines and anti-viral drugs and be ready to respond at the federal, state and local levels in the event a pandemic reaches the United States.

Bush outlined a strategy that would cost $7.1 billion including:

_$1.2 billion for the government to buy enough doses of the vaccine against the current strain of bird flu to protect 20 million Americans; the administration wants to have sufficient vaccine for front-line emergency personnel and at-risk populations, including military personnel;

_$1 billion to stockpile more anti-viral drugs that lessen the severity of the flu symptoms;

_$2.8 billion to speed the development of vaccines as new strains emerge, a process that now takes months;

_$583 million for states and local governments to prepare emergency plans to respond to an outbreak.

Bush said a pandemic flu would be far more serious than the seasonal flu that makes hundreds of thousands of people sick ever year and sends people to their doctors for a flu shot. "I had mine," Bush said. Unlike seasonal flu, pandemic flu can kill people who are young and healthy as well as those who are frail and sick, he said.

In asking Congress for money to buy vaccine, Bush said the vaccine "would not be a perfect match to the pandemic flu because the pandemic strain would probably differ somewhat from the avian flu virus it grew from. But a vaccine against the current avian flu virus would likely offer some protection against a pandemic strain and possibly save many lives in the first critical months of an outbreak."

He also said the United States was increasing stockpiles of antiviral drugs, such as Tamiflu and Relenza. Such drugs cannot prevent people from catching the flu, but they can reduce the severity of the illness when taken within 48 hours of getting sick, he said.

"At this moment there is no pandemic influenza in the United States or the world, but if history is our guide there's reason to be concerned," Bush said. "In the last century, our country and the world have been hit by three influenza pandemics, and viruses from birds contributed to all of them."

He pointed out that the 1918 pandemic killed over a half million Americans and more than 20 million people across the globe. "One-third of the U.S. population was infected, and life expectancy in our country was reduced by 13 years.

"The 1918 pandemic was followed by pandemics in 1957 and 1968, which killed tens of thousands of Americans and millions across the world," Bush said.

Bird flu has been documented in Asia and has spread to Europe but has not reached the United States, the president said. "Our country has been given fair warning of this danger to our homeland and time to prepare," he said.

Bush said the cornerstone of his strategy was to develop new technologies to produce new vaccines quickly. "If a pandemic strikes, our country must have a surge capacity in place that will allow us to bring a new vaccine online quickly and manufacture enough to immunize every American against the pandemic strain," Bush said.

The principal goal of Bush's plan, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said, "is the capacity for every American to have a vaccine in the case of a pandemic, no matter what the virus is." "There is no reason to believe that in the next day or two or week or month that that's going to occur," Leavitt said on CBS's "The Early Show." But he added that "we do need to be ready in case it begins to mutate into a human transmissable disease."

Pandemics strike when the easy-to-mutate influenza virus shifts to a strain that people have never experienced before, something that has happened three times in the last century. While it is impossible to say when the next super-flu will strike, concern is growing that the bird flu strain known as H5N1 could trigger one if it mutates to start spreading easily among people. Since 2003, at least 62 people in Southeast Asia have died from H5N1; most regularly handled poultry.

The nation's strategy starts with attempting to spot an outbreak abroad early and working to contain it before it reaches the United States.

Today, most of the world's vaccine against regular winter flu, including much of that used by Americans each flu season, is manufactured in factories in Britain and Europe.

The government already has ordered $162.5 million worth of vaccine to be made and stockpiled against the Asian bird flu, more than half to be made in a U.S. factory.

But the administration plan, to be released in more detail on Wednesday, calls for more than stockpiling shots. It will stress a new method of manufacturing flu vaccines — growing the virus to make them in easy-to-handle cell cultures instead of today's cumbersome process that uses millions of chicken eggs — as well as incentives for new U.S.-based vaccine factories to open.

Such steps will take several years to implement, but the hope is that eventually they could allow production of enough vaccine to go around within six months of a pandemic's start.

___

Associated Press Writer Nedra Pickler contributed to this report.

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SOURCE - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051101/ap_on_he_me/bush_flu


(...)


BONUS: "Wake-up Mr. Normal! Would you buy a used-car from this man?"

President Bush speaks Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2005 at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. Bush outlined a $7.1 billion strategy Tuesday to prepare for the danger of a pandemic influenza outbreak, saying he wanted to stockpile enough vaccine to protect 20 million Americans against the current strain of bird flu. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

(...)


BONUS: "Wake-up Mr. Normal! If you do buy-in, here's how his buddies take your money..."


Monday, October 24, 2005

Back to "Work" - CONFIRMED: Bush Melting Down

SOURCE - http://blackkrishna.blogspot.com/2005/10/back-to-work-confirmed-bush-melting.html#comments