war news o'the day

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not a satire.

http://www.statesman.com/asection/content/auto/epaper/editions/monday/news_e36f6abf747df11c000d.html

President Bush ushered in the third season of T-ball on the South Lawn on Sunday with two squads of children from Virginia military bases. "Today we honor the men and women who wear our nation's uniform, and it is our honor to welcome two teams, two mighty squads" from military bases, Bush said before placing the first ball in the tee and yelling "play ball!"

The Little League Yankees from Naval Base Norfolk faced the Little League Braves of Fort Belvoir... No score is kept in the T-ball games.

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not a satire.

http://famulus.msnbc.com/FamulusIntl/reuters06-24-115023.asp?reg=MIDEAST

BAGHDAD, June 24 — Iraqi footballers -- freed from the threat of beatings and jailings under Saddam Hussein -- celebrated their return to the national soccer stadium on Tuesday by thrashing a U.S. military side 11-0.

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mp3: the new crack cocaine

http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/2225871

With none of the fanfare that usually accompanies the introduction of a new bill, Rep. Lamar Smith (R.-Tex.) quietly slipped proposed new legislation into the hopper Thursday calling for greater FBI and Department of Justice (DoJ) involvement in Hollywood's ongoing war against [music] file swappers.

The Piracy Deterrence and Education Act of 2003 (H.R. 2517) calls for the FBI to "develop a program to deter members of the public from committing acts of copyright infringement"... In addition, the DoJ would be required to formulate programs to educate the public on copyright laws.

Smith, chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, found a co-sponsor of the bill in Rep. Howard Berman (D.-Calif.), who introduced legislation in the last Congress that would have authorized copyright owners to hack into computers of suspected file swappers.

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speaking of the dept. of justice and its educational mission

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/6154665.htm

In his quest to turn the federal Freedom of Information Act from a window on the government into an impenetrable shield against public scrutiny, Attorney General John Ashcroft has found an ally.

A confounding ruling last week from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said that the Justice Department has every right and reason to refuse to release the names of hundreds of people arrested after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The court, in a 2-1 ruling, even agreed that the detainees' attorney's names could be kept secret.

...The majority rationalized that "America faces an enemy just as real as its former Cold War foes, with capabilities beyond the capacity of the judiciary to explore."

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yet more education. at first, this article seems somewhat comical, but it gets scary fast. monkey wants to hide in tree.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020603&s=dreyfuss

From New York to Chicago, from Florida to California, police departments are creating, rebuilding or strengthening intelligence units and antiterrorism squads... Some of the momentum is coming from police departments, responding to the new threat of terrorism and taking the opportunity to expand their powers. And some of it is coming from the Feds, in an effort to create "a seamless web" (in the words of Attorney General John Ashcroft) uniting local law enforcement, the FBI and the US intelligence community. A little-noticed provision of the USA Patriot Act, which passed Congress last fall, requires the FBI and CIA to train state and local police to handle national security information.

Ironically, all this is occurring in the complete absence of any actual terrorist activity. In Maryland, FBI and police officials could not identify even one recorded incident of terrorism in the state. And the same is true elsewhere. Chicago, for instance, which is in the process of substantially relaxing restrictions on police surveillance activity, has experienced zero incidents of terrorism since the 1970s, when Puerto Rican independence activists set off a bomb in the city. And, according to both Chicago Police Department and FBI officials, not a single incident of terrorism has been prevented, either. "We've arrested people on anthrax hoaxes and bomb scares," says Pat Camden, spokesman for the CPD. But incidents? Zilch.

...The Maryland state legislature passed antiterrorism measures that mimicked the expanded wiretap and surveillance provisions of the USA Patriot Act... Last fall New York hired David Cohen, a thirty-six-year veteran of the CIA and former chief of its covert operations wing, to run its intelligence unit.

...Begun in Chicago and New York in the 1980s, Joint Terrorism Task Forces [JTTFs] proliferated in the 1990s, growing to about three dozen by last year. In the wake of September 11, Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that all fifty-six FBI field offices would have a JTTF in place within a year... The Maryland JTTF unites the FBI with police departments around the state; it includes officers from the Maryland State Police; from the city of Baltimore; from Baltimore, Montgomery, Prince Georges, Anne Arundel and Howard counties; and from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Customs, the Secret Service, the Internal Revenue Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and other agencies, for a total of fifty to sixty full-time antiterrorist specialists.

...[Mike Clemens, a veteran FBI agent who heads Maryland's JTTF, explains:] "We have general intelligence files on domestic terrorist groups," he says. "There are all sorts of those files. And again, you get into that fine line. We identify a group, develop sources inside it. Maybe we make fifteen contacts or more over a period of six months, and if they are all negative, we just leave them alone."

Meanwhile, across Maryland, police departments are building intelligence units and cementing ties to the FBI... In Baltimore County the antiterrorism unit is tracking groups from the Ku Klux Klan to globalization activists. "We never like to talk about the intelligence unit," says Bill Toohey, a spokesman for the county police. "It just monitors things."

...Now Ashcroft and White House homeland-security czar Tom Ridge are pledging a tenfold increase in federal subsidies to police for antiterrorism. Ridge is asking for $3,500,000,000.00 next year for local police, fire and emergency services--on top of what cities, and local police, are spending themselves...That, in turn, has created a bonanza for private industry to supply goods and services to police departments. At the mayors' conference in Washington in January, eager vendors were everywhere displaying their wares, including sophisticated intelligence software.

Under the Justice Department program, each state was asked to conduct a county-by-county assessment of potential terrorist threats in order to qualify for the federal largesse. In each city and county local police were required to identify up to fifteen groups or individuals called potential threat elements (PTEs). The Justice Department helpfully points out that the motivations of the PTEs could be "political, religious, racial, environmental [or] special interest."

...Since September, relentless pressure from Ashcroft has brought most states up to speed. In Maryland, according to Don Lumpkins of the Maryland Emergency Management Agency, after an eighteen-month effort the police in Baltimore, Annapolis and twenty-three counties have come up with at least a dozen PTEs--none of which he or other officials would identify. In Iowa, Ellen Gordon, the state's homeland security adviser, says "our Department of Public Safety figures there may be three or four terrorist-type cells" in the state, but she declined to identify them.

...Ashcroft's Justice Department is now supporting a series of training programs that explicitly urge police to worry not just about Al Qaeda-style terrorists but also about environmentalists and other troublesome activists. The core program was launched by one of Justice's twenty-eight Regional Community Policing Institutes, based at Wichita State University in Kansas, which helps train police from 650 departments in Kansas and Nebraska. In its curriculum, called A Police Response to Terrorism in the Heartland: Integrating Law Enforcement Intelligence and Community Policing, the Wichita institute urges police to collect information on "enemies in our own backyard," including "the Green Movement" --described in a footnote as "environmental activism that is aimed at political and social reform with the explicit attempt to develop environmental-friendly policy, law and behavior."

"We have a virtual buffet of political extremism out here," says David Carter, a professor at the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University and one of two authors of the curriculum. Carter, an instructor at the Wichita training site, warns that the police ought to be concerned "not just with Al Qaeda but with the groups involved in the [World Economic Forum] protests in New York, or the World Trade Organization protesters... How do we balance--which is a real conundrum--homeland security with our constitutional rights? Which is more important? Are our rights important, if we are being blown up?"

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hippies against nutrition

http://www.statesman.com/business/content/business/ap/ap_story.html/Financial/AP.V0238.AP-Biotech-Confere.html

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)--Hundreds of demonstrators descended on city streets to denounce a conference on genetically engineered agriculture even before it had begun. Chanting, banging drums and carrying signs that read "We Don't Want to Eat Their Corporate Creations," protesters swarmed the streets Sunday around the state Capitol and nearby conference center. Police in riot gear and on horseback faced off with the demonstrators, arresting 11 people on charges of unlawful assembly, vandalism and possessing weapons, including a switchblade and other sharp objects.

Officials were bracing for more protests throughout the three-day Ministerial Conference and Expo on Agricultural Science and Technology, which was expected to draw officials from more than 100 countries. It was set to begin Monday.

...Agriculture Department officials say the conference is designed to help developing countries reduce hunger and improve nutrition... The Agriculture Department has closed the conference to the public and certain events to the media.

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this is the army, mister jones

http://www.milwaukeemagazine.com/072003/pressroom.html

To prepare for duty as embedded journalists during the war in Iraq, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporters Katherine Skiba and Nahal Toosi received thousands of dollars worth of combat training at media boot camps... American taxpayers picked up the tab for these and many other expenses in the military's embedded media program.

"That's one way of looking at it," concedes Maj. Tim Blair, Pentagon officer in charge of the program. Another way of looking at it is the embedded media, by accepting military handouts at taxpayer expense, betrayed the public's trust and venerable journalism policies against freebies. These hidden costs of the program have gone curiously unreported.

...Taxpayers had no reason to suspect they would foot the bill when the Pentagon recruited 775 embedded journalists to tell the military's story. For critics who already feared embeds were too beholden to report objectively, this sweetheart deal will likely cast further doubt... Almost every major news organization has a strict policy against journalists accepting anything free from people they cover... The military did require embeds to pay for their reporting equipment (satellite phones or laptops) and for optional things like immunizations, helmets or body armor. This is pocket change, however, compared to expenses for a non-embedded reporter - $16,000 to $35,000 for everything from tents to gas masks to hiring drivers, estimates a Columbia Journalism Review story.

...The Journal Sentinel's Skiba spent six days at Fort Benning, Georgia, and Toosi five days at Quantico, Virginia. The Pentagon's Lt. Col. Gary Keck, who coordinated the camps, says the training is worth "thousands and thousands of dollars." ...Skiba hitched a ride with soldiers on a chartered Boeing B-747; a similar commercial flight from Chicago to Kuwait City has a $1,400 ticket price... [For a] minimum daily ration of two meals... and two 16-ounce bottles of sterilized water, for a month, the cost to the military is more than $500 per journalist... Free shelter saved embeds the cost of a tent ($130 retail), sleeping bag ($100 retail) or hotels in Kuwait City and Baghdad ($100 nightly minimum). They also took no-cost loans of gas masks ($179-$329 retail) and nuclear/biological/chemical suits ($45-$59 retail). And, yes, protection courtesy of the U.S. armed forces. To hire a former British Royal Marine from Centurion to escort you to Baghdad, the charge is around $400 a day.

Embeds kicked out of their units for rules violations were then responsible for themselves, a powerful incentive to play along.

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we are a generous people

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/06/23/1056220539895.html

As it has sought to spread the peacekeeping burden, the Bush Administration has agreed to help underwrite the participation of such countries as Poland, Ukraine, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and the Dominican Republic. India, which the US has asked to provide thousands of troops, has asked for financial help as well. These deals, which by one [Brookings Institution] estimate could cost $250,000,000.00 over the next year...may draw criticism that the US partners in the reshaping of Iraq are those whose support can be bought - the "coalition of the billing".

...The bills will substantially add to US troop expenses, which, by one congressional estimate, are running at $3,000,000,000.00 a month.

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a mark a yen a buck or a pound is all that makes the world go around

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20030623/wl_afp/iraq_worldwrap&cid=1512&ncid=1480

BAGHDAD (AFP) - The US-led coalition announced that it would pay the salaries of as many as 250,000 former soldiers of Saddam Hussein... "The payments will be paid monthly and the recipients must renounce Baathism and violence," the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) said, adding that between 200,000 and 250,000 of the estimated 400,000 to 600,000 members of Saddam's security forces were expected to be eligible.

...In London, the price of benchmark Brent North Sea crude oil for August delivery rose 24 cents to $27.26 per barrel in early trade. New York's benchmark light sweet crude contract for July delivery was up 17 cents to $29.65 per barrel in out-of-hours electronic deals.

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a few goooooood men

http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030624124136.1v7vm0kv.html

BAGHDAD (AFP) US authorities in Iraq have been forced to change the name of the planned Iraqi armed forces, after learning that the orginal title they came up with created an unfortunate acronym in Arabic. The planned force was originally entitled the New Iraqi Corps, whose initals in English produce a colourful Arabic synonym for fornication.

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primum non miserere

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-turned-away,0,3826824.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

BALAD, Iraq -- On a scorching afternoon, while on duty at an Army airfield, Sgt. David J. Borell was approached by an Iraqi who pleaded for help for his three children, burned when they set fire to a bag containing explosive powder left over from war in Iraq. Borell immediately called for assistance. But the two Army doctors who arrived about an hour later refused to help the children.

...Maj. David Accetta, public affairs officer with the 3rd Corps Support Command, said the children's condition did not fall into a category that requires Army doctors to care for them. Only patients with conditions threatening life, limb or eyesight and not resulting from a chronic illness are considered for treatment. "Our goal is for the Iraqis to use their own existing infrastructure and become self-sufficient, not dependent on U.S. forces for medical care," Accetta said in an e-mail to AP.

..."Through the interpreter, one of the doctors told the father that we didn't have any medicine here ... and were not able to provide them care," said Borell. "And he also expounded on the fact that they needed long-term care." Borell said the combat hospital was fully stocked. "Right before they left, I looked at the one doctor, asked him if he could at least give them comfort care," said Borell. "He told me they were not here to be the treatment center for Iraq."

...Borell said he felt betrayed by the Army, which he joined after high school. Besides the letter to his wife, he also wrote to his congresswoman and several media outlets describing the incident. His superiors have not said a word, said Borell.

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I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0619-11.htm

...A closer look at these American GIs, sweltering in the heat of an unwelcoming Iraq, reveals the glazed eyes and limp expressions of those who have witnessed a war they do not understand and have begun to resent. By their own admission these American soldiers have killed civilians without hesitation, shot wounded fighters and left others to die in agony... Such is their level of hatred they preferred to kill rather than merely injure. Sgt Meadows, 34, said: "The worst thing is to shoot one of them, then go help him." ...Cpl Richardson said: "Shit, I didn't help any of them. I wouldn't help the fuckers. There were some you let die. And there were some you double-tapped." He held out his hand as if firing a gun and clucked his tongue twice. He said: "...You didn't want any prisoners of war. You hate them so bad while you're fighting, and you're so terrified, you can't really convey the feeling, but you don't want them to live."

...The men have been traumatized by their experiences. Cpl Richardson said: "At night time you think about all the people you killed. It just never gets off your head, none of this stuff does. There's no chance to forget it, we're still here, we've been here so long. Most people leave after combat but we haven't." Sgt Meadows said men under his command had been seeking help for severe depression: "They've already seen psychiatrists and the chain of command has got letters back saying 'these men need to be taken out of this situation'. But nothing's happened."

...Cpl Richardson added: "Some soldiers don't even fucking sleep at night. They sit up all fucking night long doing shit to keep themselves busy - to keep their minds off this fucking stuff. It's the only way they can handle it. It's not so far from being crazy but it's their way of coping. There's one guy trying to build a little pool out the back, pointless stuff but it keeps him busy."

Sgt Meadows said: "For me, it's like snap-shot photos. Like pictures of maggots on tongues, babies with their heads on the ground, men with their heads halfway off and their eyes wide open and mouths wide open. I see it every day, every single day. The smells and the torsos burning, the entire route up to Baghdad, from 20 March to 7 April, nothing but burned bodies."

Specialist Bryan Barnhart, 21, joined in: "I also got the images like snapshots in my head. There are bodies that we saw when we went back to secure a place we'd taken. The bodies were still there and they'd been baking in the sun. Their bodies were bloated three times the size."

Sgt Quinones explained: "There are psychiatrists who are trying to sort out their problems but they say it's because of long combat environment. They know we need to be taken away from that environment." But the group's tour of duty has been extended and the men have been forced to remain as peacekeepers. Cpl Richardson said: "Now we're in this peacekeeping... You make up the rules as you go along."

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3018558.stm

Six UK soldiers killed in Iraq were shot by civilians after weapons searches in homes turned into a bloody showdown... British commanders in Iraq described the deaths as "unprovoked murder"... Mr Blair paid tribute to the dead soldiers, saying they had been doing "an extraordinary and heroic job trying to provide a normal and decent life for people in Iraq."

...Iraqis were angry at the way soldiers were searching their houses for weapons, said BBC correspondent Clive Myrie. British troops and local leaders had agreed a contract for searching houses... Locals said the contract had been broken, as no notice was given... After following the soldiers to the police station, the Iraqis say the British fired the first shots on a peaceful demonstration. This provoked the Iraqis to fire back and storm the police station.

...The deputy leader of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Abdulaziz al Hakim, told the BBC people objected in particular to troops searching houses and women... Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon told BBC Radio 4's Today programme there were "many thousands" of troops which could be sent to Iraq if deemed necessary.

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http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/06/24/wolfowitz.tribunals/

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signed a delegation last weekend putting Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz in authority over the tribunals that will try al Qaeda and Taliban suspects, the officials said... Individuals brought before the tribunals would have no right to a jury trial, no right to confront their accusers and no right to judicial review of trial procedures or sentences, which could include death.

...After the chief military prosecutor drafts charges against a detainee, Wolfowitz will have the authority to approve those charges and send the detainee to trial. As appointing authority, he also will select military officers to sit on commissions. If commission members cannot resolve matters related to procedures, motions or facts, Wolfowitz will make the final decision.

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o blix where are thou?

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/06/24/1056220578841.html

While weapons of mass destruction may yet be unearthed in Iraq, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said today that the United States had jumped to conclusions on the basis of "shaky" evidence. "I don't exclude that the US inspectors ... may find something. It is possible," Blix told the Council for Foreign Relations in New York. "But it is somewhat puzzling, I think, that you can have 100 per cent certainty about the weapons of mass destruction and zero certainty about where they are," he said... He particularly questioned how countries like the United States and Britain appeared to reach iron-clad conclusions from the intelligence on offer.

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3911.htm

The CIA report that had been used by U.S. Secretary Powell, during his speech to the UN as evidence of Iraq's hidden WMD capacity has been removed from the CIA's web site.The copy of the original report has been stored on this website [see URL above] for safe keeping. Google [also] had cached the original HTML version of the report... The report was used to mislead UN members and had stated that "Coalition forces have uncovered the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program."

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3015272.stm

[British] Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says he never saw the controversial "dodgy dossier" about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction before it was published in February. Mr Straw said the dossier was an "embarrassment" for the government... He apologised to the student whose thesis was used as the basis of the "dodgy dossier"...He admitted the whole "dodgy dossier" affair was "a complete Horlicks".

...He dismissed suggestions that the government had sold the war to the British people on a false premise... "We did not use the words 'immediate' or 'imminent'... We did not use that because plainly the evidence did not justify that. We did say there was a 'current and serious' threat."

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http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030623193229.0pt0vhqe.html

MADRID (AFP) Jun 23, 2003

Spain's government, which supported the US-led war against Baghdad, distorted intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the lead-up to the war, a leading newspaper said Monday... El Pais said Spain's CNI intelligence service had ruled out from the outset of the Iraqi crisis the possibility that Baghdad had the capability to build nuclear weapons. Neither could CNI establish any close links between the former Saddam Hussein regime and al-Qaeda terrorist networks... CNI also said Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction, did not have the capacity to use them and posed no imminent threat that would have required immediate military action.

...[But Spanish President] Aznar said in a television interview in February: "You can be sure that I am telling you the truth. The Iraqi regime has weapons of mass destruction." An overwhelming majority of Spaniards opposed their government's support of the war and 75 percent of them think that US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have not told the truth about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, according to a poll on Monday on SER radio. Some 64 percent of of the 1,000-strong sample felt that Aznar did not tell the truth... About 68 percent of respondents said Aznar should not have refused to appear before parliament to clarify the Iraqi weapons issue.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26926-2003Jun24?language=printer

WASHINGTON - There is no evidence that senior Iraqi leaders were among those killed in a U.S. attack on a convoy last week near the Syrian border, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday. Initial news reports about the attack said Saddam Hussein or his sons, Odai and Qusai, were thought by U.S. intelligence to have been in the convoy... An undetermined number of people in the convoy were killed in the raid.

...Rumsfeld also used his news conference to offer a renewed defense of the Bush administration's assertion that the U.S.-led war on Iraq was justified by the threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

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http://ens-news.com/ens/jun2003/2003-06-24-01.asp

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 24, 2003 (ENS) - A convoy of vehicles bearing Greenpeace banners with a single activist walking in front carrying a white flag, today returned a uranium yellowcake mixing canister to U.S. military guards stationed at the Tuwaitha nuclear plant just south of Baghdad. The size of a small car and adorned with radiation symbols, the canister was brought into Tuwaitha on a flatbed truck.

...The military was aware of the canister's presence, locals say, but it was left open and unattended for more than 20 days... “If this had happened in the UK, the U.S. or any other country, the villages around Tuwaitha would be swarming with radiation experts and decontamination teams," said Mike Townsley of Greenpeace. "It would have been branded a nuclear disaster site and the people given immediate medical checkups."

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don't worry, be happy

Southern Iraq will boast its first business-standard accommodation from late July - a floating hotel in the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. Henry Pluge Group, part of Hong Kong-based Mayhill Group, has been granted a license by the U.K. government, which administers southern Iraq, to operate the Odysseus, a 450-berth cruise liner, which should arrive at the port July 28... The cruise liner has a pool, gym, international caterers and a store. Henry Pluge will provide a daily bus services to Basra.

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=417485

Libya has been "aggressively pursuing" the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction since the United Nations sanctions against the country were suspended after the Lockerbie trial, America claimed yesterday.

John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, signalled that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's regime was once again in Washington's sights... America is investigating whether the Gaddafi regime has recruited Iraqi scientists who had previously worked for Saddam Hussein.

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http://www.hipakistan.com/en/detail.php?newsId=en29915&F_catID=&f_type=source

KABUL, June 23: Afghanistan's "deteriorating" security situation is not conducive to encouraging refugees to come home, Amnesty International warned on Monday. "The security situation across Afghanistan has steadily deteriorated in 2003, and cannot be said to have fundamentally, durably and effectively changed," the international human rights watchdog said in a statement. "It is therefore unlikely that repatriation can be promoted in the foreseeable future."

...Amnesty said fighting among rival militias and renewed attacks by Taliban remnants had contributed to plummeting security and a situation of instability in up to two-thirds of the country... Amnesty said it was concerned that the inability of many refugees to sustain their return to their homes amid security problems and inadequate foreign aid was leading to "destitution and renewed cycles of displacement."

"The situation is exacerbated by the fact that many instances of return are taking place in less than voluntary circumstances," it said. While neighbouring Pakistan and Iran had hosted up to six million Afghan refugees for more than 20 years, Amnesty said there were signs that "asylum fatigue" had led to pressure on refugees to return, in contravention of international human rights standards... Amnesty also criticised Britain and Australia for their willingness to forcibly return asylum seekers and refugees... Forcible returns of refugees or rejected asylum seekers "sends out the misleading message to developing states hosting far larger numbers of Afghans, that return to Afghanistan should be promoted."

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a view from germany

http://www.bigeye.com/weinberg.htm

...America doesn't feel like America any more. The climate of militarism and fear, similar to any totalitarian state, permeates everything. Bush is the first American president in memory to swagger around in a military uniform... In the airports of provincial cities, there are frequent announcements in that assuring, disembodied voice of science-fiction films: "The Department of Homeland Security advises that the Terror Alert is now . . . Code Orange." Every few weeks there is an announcement that another terrorist attack is imminent... Millions are listed in airport security computers as potential terrorists, including antiwar demonstrators and pacifists. Critics are warned to "watch what they say" and lists of "traitors" are posted on the internet.

The war in Iraq has been the most extreme manifestation of this new America, and almost a casebook study in totalitarian techniques. First, an Enemy is created by blatant lies that are endlessly repeated... Then, a War of Liberation, entirely portrayed by the mass media in terms of our Heroic Troops... Finally, as has happened with Afghanistan, very little news of the chaos that has followed the Great Victory. Instead, the propaganda machine moves on to a new Enemy-- this time, Iran.

It is very difficult to speak of what is happening in America without resorting to the hyperbolic cliches of anti-Americanism that have lost their meaning after so many decades, but that have now finally come true. Perhaps one can only recite the facts, and I have mentioned only some of them here. This is, quite simply, the most frightening American administration in modern times.

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http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s886651.htm

President George W Bush has urged the US Congress to pass his 10-year, $5,600,000,000.00 Project BioShield initiative aimed at speeding vaccines against possible biological weapons like anthrax and smallpox... "For the sake of our national security, the United States Congress must pass the BioShield legislation as soon as possible," Mr Bush told a biotechnology conference.

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http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-06-24-us-texas-terrorism_x.htm

HOUSTON (AP) — Federal homeland security officials have informed Texas law enforcement agencies of intelligence reportedly gathered from suspected al-Qaeda operatives discussing potential terrorism in the state next month. Authorities obtained intelligence pointing to a possible terrorist threat in Texas during the July 4 holiday.

...FBI spokesman Bob Doguim said... the information received was very nonspecific and... it is not surprising that reports of possible terrorism increase around significant dates... "We also know that terrorist organizations would target what we term 'economic targets'... We also know that the energy sector is a part of that. It's sexy to spin it into being Texas. This state is a major player in the oil and gas industry."

But that is not the information the FBI has, Doguim said of the intelligence which did not specify a target, an exact time or a type of terrorist attack.

...The [Texas] governor's office announced Tuesday that more than 700 local governments will get $84,200,000.00 for anti-terrorism equipment and homeland security planning.

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