News (Page 2) -- April 11, 2006

Iran Hits Milestone in Nuclear Technology - "Iran has successfully enriched uranium for the first time, a landmark in its quest to develop nuclear fuel, hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday. He insisted, however, that his country does not aim to develop nuclear weapons."

Bush's October surprise - it's coming - "One hears not an encouraging word about US President George W Bush these days, even from Republican loyalists. Yet I believe that Bush will stage the strongest political comeback of any US politician since Abraham Lincoln won re-election in 1864 in the midst of the American Civil War. ... Just as in the 2004 elections, the Democrats will have a losing hand if the White House orders force against Iran. Americans rally behind a wartime leader; the one exception was Vietnam. America's engagement with Iran would resemble the Bill Clinton administration's aerial attack on Serbia rather than the Iraq wars, for there is no reason at all to employ ground groups."

Iraq Mess Is Literally Making People Sick - "U.S. war casualty statistics include only the dead and wounded. It is difficult to obtain information about the troops who become sick during deployment. Some U.S. troops who are sick and have tested positive for DU contamination reported difficulties getting proper medical help. A number of children have been born with birth defects. Returning troops are not regularly tested for DU contamination. Meanwhile, the Pentagon continues to deny that depleted uranium causes severe illnesses."

Iraq: A way out for America - "Israelis breathed a sigh of relief three years ago when America removed the Iraqi threat. After all, Tel Aviv had come under Scud barrages in the first Gulf War, and Saddam Hussein had championed suicide bombers in the current conflict with the Palestinians. Many in Israel, while somewhat skeptical, had genuinely hoped America could help transform Iraq into the region's second democracy. Plainly, things have gone very badly and a reappraisal of US policy is urgently needed."

Abaddon - "The principal target demographic for the atrocity still on storyboards is Russia and China. The nuking of Iran will be a blockbuster remaking of the demonstration events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which announced to the Soviet Union and all comers that the American Aeon had arrived. At least that's how it will appear, and how it's being sold in the boardroom of America Inc. But the large stakeholders who are short-selling their shares in the Homeland, who supply sewage to its army for drinking water and whose loyalties are neither to that nor any other nation-state, may intend, rather, a windfall gotterdammerung that's more Springtime for Hitler."

Israeli military stands by its policy on shelling populated areas - "The Israeli military said Tuesday that it stood by its new policy of firing artillery shells into populated Palestinian areas in an effort to stop rocket fire at Israel, even after a round killed an eight-year-old Palestinian girl."

Is George W. Bush the worst president in 100 years? - "A few hours later in Washington, the U.S. Senate voted 52-48 to increase the ceiling on the national debt, by $781 billion, to $9 trillion (all figures US$) -- or roughly $30,000 for every man, woman and child in the country -- thus avoiding the first-ever default on U.S. debt. The House of Representatives then approved another $92 billion in federal spending to support the war effort in the Middle East." -- Makes financial sense, doesn't it?

Lies Lurk Behind U.S. Terror Policy - "Slowly this country has come to the realization that nothing the president and his minions say is believable, yet they still want us to just trust them. There hasn't been a more dangerous combination of incompetence, mendacity and arrogance since Lansford Hastings encouraged the Donner Party to diverge from the Oregon Trail and take his "short-cut." Bush recently dropped a whopper by telling veteran journalist Helen Thomas that he never wanted to go to war, even as insider memos keep popping up detailing Bush's early intention to attack Iraq. But nowhere has the bald-faced lying been as fierce as in the "war on terror." Here, Bush has raised prevarication to national policy. From the president's disingenuous proclamations that all prisoners are treated "humanely" to the administration's laughable claim that it couldn't disclose the names of those swept into detention after 9/11 because it would violate their right to privacy, there is nothing this crew won't say to avoid accountability."

'War' in Iraq/'War' on AIDS: Same Rhetoric/Same Results - "Both have been obvious total disasters in terms of practical results. Both are supported by fear, economic and social special interests, shifting-sands rationales, bad data, rhetoric spiced with religious fervor, outright deceptions and worse. Both are rooted in over-specified phantom boogeymen, a harmless virus and a perhaps not so harmless, but certainly elusive Osama, and his Fu Manchu-like shadowy network of (I'll kill ya!) Al Qaeda. And yet, 50% of the electorate swallow the War on Terror and even want more, according to the omnipresent polls that should be heavily regulated, or perhaps outlawed since they clearly influence what they are supposed to neutrally report, like poorly designed experiments in biology. With the virus-AIDS hypothesis, it's worse, an overwhelming majority swallow it, and many to suicidal consequences.""

Reading bird entrails in Iran - "Using reason to try to figure out what the Bush regime is likely to do in Iran is about as reliable as trying to divine the future in bird entrails. This is after all a regime that proudly rejects the reality based approach to the world."

Lincoln's Dream Has Died - "Once upon a time in America, a great man stood before the peole and proclaimed that"government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth." Well, that dream has died. And while it may be easy to blame Lincoln's own party for the failure, the truth is, that the Democrats have as much to do with it's death."

Reaction grows to gay student's expulsion - "The news that his boyfriend, Jason Johnson, was expelled from University of the Cumberlands was still sinking in when Zac Dreyer sat at a computer to spread the news. "He is being asked to leave the university because he is gay," Dreyer wrote Thursday on the Web site MySpace.com, the same site school officials used to confront Johnson. "Help get the story out there so that all the gays and lesbians at the university will no longer have to live in secrecy, in fear of having their dreams crushed in front of them.""

US chief executives' pay surges 16 per cent to average of $6m - "The giant pay gap between US corporate bosses and their workers widened further last year, as chief executive compensation leapt 15.8 per cent." -- Didn't your compensation increase 15.8 percent as well?

US economy's latest output: better jobs - " The US economy isn't just producing jobs these days, it's also producing good jobs. Alongside the ads for jobs handling a cash register or a spatula are these new opportunities: ... These reports in the past month symbolize a welcome trend during an economic expansion that at first offered only tepid job gains, both in quantity and quality."