News -- June 6, 2006

U.S. to drop Geneva rule, officials say - "The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Conventions that explicitly bans "humiliating and degrading treatment," according to knowledgeable military officials, a step that would mark a further shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards."

Dying for Peace and Freedom? - "Since 1945, no nation on Earth has either declared war against us or attacked us. We intervened in a Korean civil war, a Vietnamese civil war and a Lebanese civil war, and we have gotten men killed to remove political leaders our political leaders didn't like (Panama, Grenada, Afghanistan, Iraq). I can't think of a logical reason why we bombed Serbia, the only Balkan country that fought on our side in two world wars, unless it was because the Bosnians hired a better public-relations firm. ... President Bush let the cat out of the bag in his recent speech at West Point. He didn't talk about world terrorism. He talked about reshaping the Middle East, a fool's errand if ever there were one. Our precious people are not dying for peace and freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are dying for corporate profits and to make the Middle East a safer place for Israel. The only people who are dying for freedom are the Iraqis and the Afghans who want to free their countries of our presence."

The Gay Marriage Amendment - Nazi Ideology with Neocon Spin - "As the war in Iraq descends from "shock and awe" to "shock and disgust" in the American psyche, as the recent revelations from Haditha and Ishaqi, added to Fallujah, Abu Gharib and countless more examples begin to finally hit home to the American public as to what is being done in their name , the Bush cartel has decided that the most immediate and important threat to the American way of life, is, unbelievably, Gay Marriage."

Holes begin to appear in Canadian terrorism case - "The fact that the swoop spread over two years was a sting operation is being underplayed or not even mentioned by the Canadian and American press and electronic media. There is no evidence that the 17 people arrested, five of them minors, had any link with Al Qaeda. Pen portraits appearing in the Canadian press show some of the young men to have become overly religious in the last couple of years. It is also now known that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and probably some other US agencies were also involved in the sting operation."

The Religious Right is Un-American - "Many people associated with the Religious Right in America would have us believe that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. They foster this lie because they want to force their narrow-minded religious beliefs down our throats. They would like us to envision that Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison are standing with them shoulder to shoulder when they spout their distorted views on abortion, contraception, gay marriage, school prayer, evolution, etc. But to assert that the U.S. is a Christian nation is clearly un-American, if we define "American" as holding dear the precepts and values handed down to us in the Constitution by the Founding Fathers. The framers of the Constitution had no intention of defining our country as Christian. On the contrary, they were deeply concerned about preventing any kind of religious tyranny. ... Have you read the Constitution lately? The words "God," "Christ," "Christian," and "Jesus" do not appear even once. The word "religious" appears but a single time, in Article VI: No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.The word "religion" can be found only in the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.When we see the words "religious" and "religion" in the Constitution, it is in the context of a warning against the use of religious pressure as a weapon of tyranny."

Normalizing the Unthinkable - "I asked Pilger what the untold story of Iraq was that’s just not getting through. “Well, the untold story of Iraq should be obvious,” Pilger said. “But it never is. The untold story of Vietnam was that it was an invasion and that huge numbers of civilians were killed. And in effect it was a war against civilians and that was never told and that’s exactly true of Iraq.”"

Documents show issues with wives, child support - " Republican Jim Galley, who is running for Congress as a “pro-traditional family” candidate, was married to two women at the same time, defaulted on his child support payments and has been accused of abuse by one of his ex-wives."

Desert cities are living on borrowed time, UN warns - "Desert cities in the US and Middle East, such as Phoenix and Riyadh, may be living on borrowed time as water tables drop and supplies become undrinkable, says a report coinciding with today's world environment day."

Study says millions have 'rage' disorder - "To you, that angry, horn-blasting tailgater is suffering from road rage. But doctors have another name for it — intermittent explosive disorder — and a new study suggests it is far more common than they realized, affecting up to 16 million Americans."

How bad do you have to go? - "Even though Daniel Thornton occasionally needed to go to the bathroom during his AP history course last year, he also needed a B on the midterm to maintain his grade. So he did what lots of students at Forest Park Senior High School in Woodbridge do in their Darwinian pursuit of academic success: Thornton endured a full bladder and instead hoarded his two restroom passes, which, unused, were worth six points of extra credit."


Again, no bumper sticker.


Quote of the Day
"Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave."
~ Frederick Douglass