This is the 3rd time I've tried to post this. Sometimes I swear someone's screwing with me over the interwebs...... anyways...
This is the title to a book I ran across in Barnes and Noble this past weekend. The stories should have garnered some sort of attention on a national level but there are more important things going on like missing white girls, OJ Simpson, yadda yadda yadda. I'd like for you to check out the wbesite which lists all these stories as well as the source. It's well worth your time.
L8rs
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10411
1. How many Iraqis have died?
Nobody knows exactly how many lives the Iraq War has claimed. But even more astounding is that few journalists have mentioned the issue or cited the top estimate: 1.2
million.
During August and September 2007, Opinion Research Business, a British polling group, surveyed 2,414 adults in 15 of 18 Iraqi provinces and found that more
than 20 percent had experienced at least one war-related death since
March 2003. Using common sociological study methods, they determined
that as many as 1.2 million people had been killed since the war began.
2. NAFTA on Steroids
Coupling the perennial issue of security with Wall Street’s measures of prosperity, the leaders of the three North American nations have convened the Security
and Prosperity Partnership. The White House-led initiative—launched at
a March 23, 2005, meeting of President George Bush, Mexico’s
then-president Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul
Martin—joins beefed-up commerce with coordinated military operations to
promote what it calls “borderless unity.”
Critics call it “NAFTA on steroids.” However, unlike NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), the SPP has been formed in secret, without public input.
“The SPP is not a law, or a treaty, or even a signed agreement,” Laura
Carlsen wrote in a report for the Center for International Policy. “All
these would require public debate and participation of Congress, both
of which the SPP has scrupulously avoided.
3. InfraGard Guards Itself
The FBI and Departmentof Homeland Security have effectively deputized 23,000 members of the business community, asking them to tip off the feds in exchange for preferential treatment in the event of a crisis. “The members of this
rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of
terrorist threats before the public does—and, at least on one occasion,
before elected officials,” Matthew Rothschild wrote in the March 2008
issue of The Progressive.
InfraGard was created in 1996 in Cleveland as part of an FBI probe into cyberthreats. Yet after 9/11, membership jumped from 1,700 to more than 23,000, and now includes 350 of the nation’s Fortune 500 companies. Members typically have a stake in one of several crucial infrastructure industries,
including agriculture, banking, defense, energy, food,
telecommunications, law enforcement and transportation. Eighty-six
chapters coordinate with 56 FBI field offices nationwide.
4. ILEA: Training Ground for Illegal Wars?
The School of the Americas earned an unsavory reputation in Latin America after many graduates of the Fort Benning, Ga., facility turned into
counterinsurgency death squad leaders. So the International Law
Enforcement Academy recently installed by the United States in El
Salvador—which looks, acts and smells like the SOA—is also drawing
scorn.
The school, which opened in June 2005, before the Salvadoran National Assembly had even approved it, has a satellite operation in Peru and is funded with $3.6 million from the U.S. Treasury and staffed with instructors from the DEA, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the FBI, and tasked with
annually training 1,500 police officers, judges, prosecutors and other
law enforcement agents in counterterrorism techniques. Its stated
purpose is to make Latin America “safe for foreign investment” by
“providing regional security and economic stability and combating
crime.”
5. Seizing Protest
Protesting war could get you into big trouble, according to a critical read of two executive orders recently signed by Bush. The first, issued July 17, 2007, and
titled, “Blocking property of certain persons who threaten
stabilization efforts in Iraq,” allows the feds to seize assets from
anyone who “directly or indirectly” poses a risk to the war in Iraq.
And, citing the modern technological ease of transferring funds and
assets, the order states that no prior notice is necessary before the
raid.
On Aug. 1, Bush signed another order, similar but directed toward anyone undermining the “sovereignty of Lebanon or its democratic processes and institutions.” In this case, the secretary of Treasury can seize the assets of anyone
perceived as posing a risk of violence, as well as the assets of their
spouses and dependents, and bans them all from receiving any
humanitarian aid.
6. Radicals=Terrorists
On Oct. 23, 2007, the House overwhelmingly passed, by a vote of 404-6, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, designed to rootout the causes of radicalization in Americans.
With an estimated four-year cost of $22 million, the act establishes a 10-member National Commission on the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism, as well as a university-based Center of Excellence “to
examine the social, criminal, political, psychological and economic
roots of domestic terrorism,” according to the bill’s author, Rep. Jane
Harman (D-Calif.). During debate on the bill, Harman said, “Free
speech, espousing even very radical beliefs, is protected by our
Constitution—but violent behavior is not.”
Jessica Lee, writing in The Indypendent, pointed out that, later, Harman stated: “The National Commission {will} propose to both Congress and {Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael} Chertoff initiatives to intercede before radicalized individuals turn violent.”
7. Slavery’s Runner-Up
About 121,000 people legally enter the United States to work every year with H-2 visas, a program legislators are modeling as part of future immigration reform.
But Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) called this guest worker program “the
closest thing I’ve ever seen to slavery.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center likened it to “modern-day indentured servitude.” They interviewed thousands of guest workers and reviewed legal cases for a report released in March 2007, in which authors Mary Bauer and Sarah Reynolds wrote, “Unlike U.S. citizens, guest workers do not enjoy the
most fundamental protection of a competitive labor market—the ability
to change jobs if they are mistreated. Instead, they are bound to the
employers who ‘import’ them. If guest workers complain about abuses,
they face deportation, blacklisting or other retaliation.”
8. Bush Changes the Rules
The Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice
has been issuing classified legal opinions about surveillance for
several years. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen.
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) had access to DOJ opinions regarding
presidential power and he had three declassified in order to show how
the judicial branch has, in a bizarre and chilling way, assisted Bush
in circumventing its own power.
According to the three memos:
1. “There is no constitutional requirement for a president to issue a new executive
order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous
executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the president
has instead modified or waived it;”
2. “The president, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the president’s authority
under Article II,” and
3. “The Department of Justice is bound by the president’s legal determinations.”
Or, as Whitehouse rephrased them in a Dec. 7, 2007, Senate speech: “I don’t have to follow my own rules, and I don’t have to tell you when I’m breaking
them. I get to determine what my own powers are. The Department of
Justice doesn’t tell me what the law is. I tell the Department of
Justice what the law is.”
9. Soldiers Speak Out
Hearing soldiers recount their war experiences is the closest many people come to understanding the real horror, pain and confusion of combat. One would think that
might make compelling copy or powerful footage for a news outlet, but
in March, when more than 300 veterans from the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan convened for four days of public testimony, the media
largely ignored them.
Winter Soldier was designed to give soldiers a public forum to air some of the atrocities they witnessed. Originally convened by Vietnam Vets Against the War in January 1971, more than 100 Vietnam veterans and 16 civilians described
their war experiences, including rapes, torture, brutalities and
killing of non-combatants. The testimony was entered into the
congressional record and filmed and shown at the Cannes Film Festival.
10. APA Helps CIA Torture
Psychologists have been assisting the CIA and the U.S. military with interrogation and torture of Guantanamo detainees—which the American Psychological Association has said is fine—in spite of objections from many of its 148,000
members.
A 10-member APA task force convened on the divisive issue in July 2005 and found that assistance from psychologists was making the interrogations safe and
they deferred to American standards on torture over international
human-rights definitions.
11. El Salvador's Water Privatization and the Global War on Terror
Salvadoran police violently captured community leaders and residents at
a July 2007 demonstration against the privatization of El Salvador’s
water supply and distribution systems. Close range shooting of rubber
bullets and tear gas was used against community members for protesting
the rising cost, and diminishing access and quality, of local water
under privatization. Fourteen were arrested and charged with terrorism,
a charge that can hold a sixty-year prison sentence, under El
Salvador’s new “Anti-terrorism Law,” which is based on the USA PATRIOT
Act. While criminalization of political expression and social protest
signals an alarming danger to the peace and human rights secured by
Salvadorans since its brutal twelve-year civil war, the US government
publicly supports the Salvadoran government and the passage of the
draconian anti-terrorism law that took effect October 2006.
12. Bush Profiteers Collect Billions From No Child Left Behind
The architect of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), President Bush’s first
senior education advisor, Sandy Kress, has turned the program, which
has consistently proven disastrous in the realm of education, into a
huge success in the realm of corporate profiteering. After ushering
NCLB through the US House of Representatives in 2001 with no public
hearings, Kress went from lawmaker—turning on spigots of federal
funds—to lobbyist, tapping into those billions of dollars in federal
funds for private investors well connected to the Bush administration.
13. Tracking Billions of Dollars Lost in Iraq
Beginning in April 2003, one month after the invasion of Iraq, and
continuing for little more than a year, the United States Federal
Reserve shipped $12 billion in US currency to Iraq. The US military
delivered the bank notes to the Coalition Provisional Authority, to be
dispensed for Iraqi reconstruction. At least $9 billion is unaccounted
for due to a complete lack of oversight.
14. Mainstreaming Nuclear Waste
Radioactive materials from nuclear weapons production sites are being
dumped into regular landfills, and are available for recycling and
resale. The Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) has tracked
the Department of Energy’s (DOE) release of radioactive scrap,
concrete, equipment, asphalt, chemicals, soil, and more, to unaware and
unprepared recipients such as landfills, commercial businesses, and
recreation areas. Under the current system, the DOE releases
contaminated materials directly, sells them at auctions or through
exchanges, or sends the materials to processors who can release them
from radioactive controls. The recycling of these materials—for reuse
in the production of everyday household and personal items such as
zippers, toys, furniture, and automobiles, or to build roads, schools,
and playgrounds—is increasingly common.
15. Worldwide Slavery
Twenty-seven million slaves exist in the world today, more than at any
time in human history. Globalization, poverty, violence, and greed
facilitate the growth of slavery, not only in the Third World, but in
the most developed countries as well. Behind the façade in any major
town or city in the world today, one is likely to find a thriving
commerce in human beings.
As many as 800,000 are trafficked across international borders
annually, and up to 17,500 new victims are trafficked across US borders
each year, according to the US Department of Justice (DOJ). More than
30,000 additional slaves are transported through the US on their ways
to other international destinations. Attorneys from the DOJ have
prosecuted ninety-one slave trade cases in cities across the United
States and in nearly every state of the nation.
16. Annual Survey on Trade Union Rights
The first Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights to be
published by the year-old International Trade Union Confederation
(ITUC) documents enormous challenges to workers rights around the
world. The 2007 edition of the survey, covering 138 countries, shows an
alarming rise in the number of people killed as a result of their trade
union activities, from 115 in 2005 to 144 in 2006. Many more trade
unionists around the world were abducted or “disappeared.” Thousands
were arrested during the year for their parts in strike action and
protests, while thousands of others were fired in retaliation for
organizing. Growing numbers of trade union activists in Africa, the
Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific are facing police brutality and
murder as unions are viewed as opponents of corporatist governments.
17. United Nations' Empty Declaration of Indigenous Rights
In September 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the
Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The
resolution called for recognition of the world’s 370 million indigenous
peoples’ right to self-determination and control over their lands and
resources. The adoption of this resolution comes after twenty-two years
of diplomatic negotiations at the United Nations (UN) involving its
member states, international civil society groups, and representatives
of the world’s aboriginal communities.
The declaration emphasizes the rights of indigenous peoples to maintain
and strengthen their institutions, cultures, and traditions, and to
pursue their development in keeping with their own needs and
aspirations. The declaration was passed by an overwhelming majority
vote of 143–4. Only the United States, Canada, Australia, and New
Zealand voted against the resolution, expressing the view that strong
emphasis on rights to indigenous self-determination and control over
lands and resources would hinder economic development and undermine
“established democratic norms.”
18. Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers
In states across the country, child advocates have harshly condemned
the conditions under which young offenders are housed—conditions that
involve sexual abuse, physical abuse, and even death. The US Justice
Department (DOJ) has filed lawsuits against facilities in eleven states
for supervision that is either abusive or harmfully negligent. While
the DOJ lacks the power to shut down juvenile correction facilities,
through litigation it can force a state to improve its detention
centers and protect the civil rights of jailed youth.
19. Indigenous Herders and Small Farmers Fight Livestock Extinction
The industrial model of livestock production is causing the worldwide
destruction of animal diversity. At least one indigenous livestock
breed becomes extinct each month as a result of overreliance on select
breeds imported from the United States and Europe, according to the
study, “The State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources,” conducted
by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Since research for
the report began in 1999, 2,000 local breeds have been identified as at
risk.
20. Marijuana Arrests Set New Records
For the fourth year in a row, US marijuana arrests set an all-time
record, according to 2006 FBI Uniform Crime Reports. Marijuana arrests
in 2006 totaled 829,627, an increase from 786,545 in 2005. At current
rates, a marijuana smoker is arrested every thirty-eight seconds, with
marijuana arrests comprising nearly 44 percent of all drug arrests in
the United States. According to Allen St. Pierre, executive director of
the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), over 8
million Americans have been arrested on marijuana charges during the
past decade, while arrests for cocaine and heroine have declined
sharply.
21. NATO Considers "First Strike" Nuclear Option
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) officials are considering a
first strike nuclear option to be used anywhere in the world a threat
may arise. Former armed force chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany,
France, and the Netherlands authored a 150-page blueprint calling for
urgent reform of NATO, and a new pact drawing the US, NATO, and the
European Union (EU) together in a “grand strategy” to tackle the
challenges of an “increasingly brutal world.” The authors of the plan
insist that “the first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver
of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons
of mass destruction.” The manifesto was presented to the Pentagon in
Washington and to NATO’s secretary general in mid-January 2008. The
proposals are likely to be discussed at a NATO summit in Bucharest in
April 2008.
22. CARE Rejects US Food Aid
In August 2007, one of the biggest and best-known American charity
organizations, CARE, announced that it was turning down $45 million a
year in food aid from the United States government. CARE claims that
the way US aid is structured causes rather than reduces hunger in the
countries where it is received. The US budgets $2 billion a year for
food aid, which buys US crops to feed populations facing starvation
amidst crisis or enduring chronic hunger.
23. FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutial Drugs
While the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) turns a blind eye, drug
companies are making false, unsubstantiated, and misleading claims in
their advertising, often withholding mandated disclosure of dangerous
side effects. Though companies are required to submit their
advertisements to the FDA, the agency does not review them before they
are released to the public. A Government Accountability Office report
released November 2006 found that the FDA reviews only a small portion
of the advertisements it receives, and does not review them using
consistent criteria.
Claiming lack of funds and resources necessary to impose effective
regulations on drug marketing, the FDA is asking Congress to charge
drug companies fees in order to fund FDA review of advertisements
before they go public as part of renewing the Prescription Drug User
Fee Act (PDUFA). PDUFA has come under fire from consumer advocates who
say it gives the pharmaceutical industry too much leverage over the FDA
and has resulted in rushing drugs to market. But the FDA hopes that if
Congress approves the plan, it will raise more than $6 million annually
through “user fees” to review advertisements.
24. Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror
Testimony in the Japanese parliament, broadcast live on Japanese
television in January 2008, challenged the premise and validity of the
Global War on Terror. Parliament member Yukihisa Fujita insisted that
an investigation be conducted into the war’s origin: the events of
9/11.
In a parliament Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee session held to
debate the ethics of renewing Japan’s “anti-terror law,” which commits
Japan to providing logistical support for coalition forces operating in
Afghanistan, Fujita opened the session by stating, “I would like to
talk about the origin of this war on terrorism, which was the attacks
of 9/11, . . . When discussing these anti-terror laws we should ask
ourselves, what was 9/11? And what is terrorism?”
Fujita pointed out that, “So far the only thing the government has said
is that we think it was caused by al-Qaeda because President Bush told
us so. We have not seen any real proof that it was al-Qaeda.” He
reminded parliament that twenty-four Japanese citizens were killed on
9/11, yet the mandate of a criminal investigation by the Japanese
government never followed. “This is a crime so surely an investigation
needs to be carried out,” said Fujita (Censored 2008, #16).
25. Bush's Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer
The exposure of New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer’s tryst with a
luxury call girl had little to do with the Bush administration’s high
moral standards for public servants. Author F. William Engdahl advises
that, “in evaluating spectacular scandals around prominent public
figures, it is important to ask what and who might want to eliminate
that person.” Timing suggests that Spitzer was likely a target of a
White House and Wall Street operation to silence one of its most
dangerous and vocal critics of their handling of the current financial
market crisis.
Spitzer had become increasingly public in blaming the Bush
administration for the subprime crisis. He testified in mid-February
before the US House of Representatives Financial Services subcommittee
and later that day, in a national CNBC interview, laid blame squarely
on the administration for creating an environment ripe for predatory
lenders.
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