"First of all, I expect this conversation we're about to have to stay in the room. I know that's impossible in Washington." Yahoo!

"The extraordinary legal defense of George Bush's domestic spying reads like a blend of Kafka, Le Carré and Mel Brooks."

Read the story by Sidney Blumenthal, The Guardian.

"Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records."

Story in the Nation Journal!

"The Encyclopedia of Terrorism in the Americas containing the essentials on the multifaceted and reactionary violence promoted, supported and carried out by both the U.S. government and its servants in Latin America."

Tag: Bush, NSA, CIA, Terrorism

"The Patriot Act is bad news for the privacy of Americans, but bad news always has a silver lining. In this case it might be a gold lining... for the Bush brothers, at least."

Story at evote.com

"Opus Dei, a Roman Catholic organization with powerful members and a reputation for secrecy, is trying to change its public image."

-> Spiegel International

"The Nation's Simon Maxwell Apter takes a satirical look at intelligence agency sites that have 'spy kid' features. Apter's survey includes the National Security Agency; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and the Central Intelligence Agency. Apter contends that the agencies 'blur fiction and fact, imagination and reality' on these sites, so why not write your own Le Carre-style counter-narrative?"

From disinfo.com

Try the game "battle of the badges" where you have to check backstage-passes at a rock-concert...! If that's the first step to work for the NSA...

Here's an excerpt from CryptoKids™:

"Welcome to the NSA/CSS Kids’ page.

We’re the CryptoKids and we love cryptology.

What’s cryptology? Cryptology is making and breaking codes. It’s so cool. We make codes so we can send secret messages to our friends. And we try to figure out what other people are writing about by breaking their codes. It’s a lot of fun.

On this site, you can learn all about codes and ciphers, play lots of games and activities, and get to know each of us - Crypto Cat™, Decipher Dog™, Rosetta Stone, Slate, Joules, T.Top, and, of course, our leader CSS Sam.

You can also learn about the National Security Agency/Central Security Service - they’re America’s real codemakers and codebreakers. Our Nation’s leaders and warfighters count on the technology and information they get from NSA/CSS to get their jobs done. Without NSA/CSS, they wouldn’t be able to talk to one another without the bad guys listening and they wouldn’t be able to figure out what the bad guys were planning.

We hope you have lots of fun learning about cryptology and NSA/CSS. You might be part of the next generation of America’s codemakers and codebreakers."

Tag: Bush, NSA, CIA, Iraq, media, Medien, Propaganda, Zensur, Rumsfeld, war

Video

Tag: Bush

edited transcript from Amy Goodman's syndicated radio show Democracy Now!!

Warning: Propaganda Deconstruction At Work!

Prima politische Flash-Games! Wegen dem lustigen McDonald's-Spielchen gerade überall verlinkt.

"A group of distinguished experts and scholars, including Robert M. Bowman, James H. Fetzer, Wayne Madsen, John McMurtry, Morgan Reynolds, and Andreas von Buelow, have concluded that senior government officials have covered up crucial facts about what really happened on 9/11. (...) These experts suggest these events may have been orchestrated by elements within the administration to manipulate Americans into supporting policies at home and abroad they would never have condoned absent 'another Pearl Harbor.'

They believe that this White House is incapable of investigating itself and hope the possibility that Congress might hold an unaccountable administration accountable is not merely naive or wishful thinking."

Read on at emediawire.com

"Two recent polls, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll and a New York Times/CBS News poll, indicate why Bush is getting away with impeachable offenses. Half of the US population is incapable of acquiring, processing and understanding information.

Much of the problem is the media itself, which serves as a disinformation agency for the Bush administration. Fox "News" and right-wing talk radio are the worst, but with propagandistic outlets setting the standard for truth and patriotism, all of the media is affected to some degree."

Read on: "Polls Show Many Americans are Simply Dumber Than Bush

Tags: Bush, Media, Iraq

"In this corporate-sponsored cartoon, Martian dissidents learn that oil and competition are the two things that make America great." They should show this cartoon by Vic Haboush again...

Free download at archive.org!

The home of Vic Haboush

"Although lower level military are taking the rap for Abu Ghraib abuse, critics contend Rumsfeld authorized the rape of Iraqi children."

Greg Szymanski reports for arcticbeacon.com.

Tags: Bush, CIA, Iraq

"The UN report confirms Indonesian genocide and Australia's complicity" - Story in The Age Quote from The Age: The report of the United Nations inquiry into Indonesia's brutal 24-year occupation of East Timor will come as no surprise to activists who opposed the policies of successive Australian governments, beginning in 1975, nor to the people of East Timor.

However, the report, which documents torture, rape, slavery and starvation leading to the unnatural demise of as many as 180,000 civilians (from a pre-invasion population of 628,000), should shame those ministers, journalists, diplomats and academics who played down or ignored consistent human rights abuses in the former Portuguese colony — incredibly described as "aberrant acts" by former foreign minister Gareth Evans.

"U.S. role in Timor invasion" in The Advertiser

"ON APRIL 5, 2003, unit founder Captain Eric May detected major glitches in the media pictures coming back from Baghdad, which US forces had just reached. (...) The pull-down of the statue of Saddam Hussein on April 9 was another manufactured event to indicate that the Baghdad had been occupied by US forces. But how did they take the city?

The answer is that US forces were attacked by much-larger Iraq forces at the Baghdad Airport on Saturday morning, April 5, and after bleeding badly from that vicious fight were engaged in a fierce battle in the rubbled, slow-go driving -- under constant Iraqi fire -- through the city of Baghdad, a drive lasting until three days later, when the distraction of Private Jessica abruptly ended so that the media could show a set-up scene of the 'Fall of Baghdad' (i.e., a set-up pull-down of Saddam's Statue).

While causalty figures have been suppressed by the media (along with the existence of the Battle of Baghdad!), international military estimates are that hundreds died. Summer/fall reports from Ft. Stewart, Georgia, about the overflow of 3rd Infanty Division wounded soldiers sleeping in tent cities when they needed medical treatment were never explained, either: There were too many wounded GIs from the Battle of Baghdad to fit in the Ft. Stewart Hospital!"

Full story at nationalvanguard.org

Tags: Baghdad, Bush

"NSA Deputy Director, Gen. Michael Hayden lead the PR blitz by taking questions from reporters at The National Press Club on Monday. The General confirmed to NSA expert James Bamford and Jonathan Landay with Knight Ridder that a feature of the NSA program was the lowering of the legal standard from 'probable cause' to 'reasonably believe' (a.k.a. 'reasonable suspicion') -- which would avoid the FISA Law requirements."

Video and more at bradblog.com

Tag: Bush, NSA,

"Over the weekend, Time magazine and the Washingtonian both reported on five photos of President Bush with Jack Abramoff, but neither publication revealed its source." Go to thinkprogress.com

The Daily Show had a great take on it.

Tag: Bush

"Largely unregulated, the teen rehab industry has scarred thousands of kids for life. Now one lone congressmember is pushing to stop the abuse."

Story on Alternet by John Gorenfeld.

"The White House was told in the hours before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans that the city would probably soon be inundated with floodwater, forcing the long-term relocation of hundreds of thousands of people, documents to be released Tuesday by Senate investigators show."

Spiegel

"US foreign policy in the Middle East came under heavy fire from Human Rights Watch, a leading human rights organization. In its latest world report, the organization accuses the Bush administration of using torture and inhuman treatment of detainees as "a deliberate strategy in its war on terror." These policies have created an atmosphere of tolerance of abuse around the world.

'It's not simply a matter of neglect, or command failure,' he said. 'Rather the use of torture and inhuman treatment was the Bush policy. It was reflective of a deliberate decision by the most senior Bush administration officials to fight terrorism without regard to one of the most basic prohibitions there is in international human rights law.' Reuters reports that the group said the evidence showed abusive interrogation cannot be 'be reduced to the misdeeds of a few low-ranking soldiers, but was a conscious policy choice by senior US government officials. The policy has hampered Washington's ability to cajole or pressure other states into respecting international law, said the 532-page volume's introductory essay."

More on alternet

Left near a tree on a nondescript street on the outskirts of Moscow, the fake rock at the centre of the most embarrassing espionage scandal between Britain and Russia since the end of the cold war looks innocuous enough.

Light brown, 30 centimetres wide, and hollowed out to allow a waterproof box to fit snugly inside, the rock yesterday took on Gibraltar-sized proportions as Russia accused Britain of using it as a covert transmitter to pass messages to agents."

Incredible story in The Guardian

I'm surprised they didn't try that yet.

"Drinking Liberally - Promoting democracy one pint at a time."

"400 Pages of Still-Classified CIA and State Dept Documents Seized From the US Embassy in Tehran" and the latest edition of The CIA World Factbook.

"Meet Calvin Tutley, the White House 'Blame Czar.' When things go wrong in the Bush administration, he says 'blame on.'" At devilducky.com

"A judge nominated by President Bush to one of the highest courts in the nation apparently violated federal law repeatedly while serving on the federal bench. Judge James H. Payne, 64, who was nominated by Bush in late September to join the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Denver, issued more than 100 orders in at least 18 cases that involved corporations in which he owned stock, a review of court and financial records shows."

More at salon.com

Explosives?

Here is a new paper by Steven E. Jones