like i said, the beginning of the end.

Us To Deploy New Missiles In S.Korea To Destroy WMD In N.Korea: "WASHINGTON, Dec 20 Asia Pulse - The United States will deploy missiles to South Korea in 2005 with the aim of destroying underground facilities for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in North Korea, a U.S. think tank said."

what more proof does anybody need that democracy was only an excuse that could sell the crime.

CHALLENGES 2004-2005: U.S. to Take Bigger Bite of Iraq's Economic Pie: "WASHINGTON, Dec 23 (IPS) - The United States is helping the interim Iraqi government continue to make major economic changes, including cuts to social subsidies, full access for U.S. companies to the nation's oil reserves and reconsideration of oil deals that the previous regime signed with France and Russia.

During a visit here this week, officials of the U.S.-backed administration detailed some of the economic moves planned for Iraq, many of them appearing to give U.S. corporations greater reach into the occupied nation's economy.

For example, the current leadership is looking at privatising the Iraqi National Oil Company, said Finance Minister Adil Abdel Mahdi.

The government, which is supposed to be replaced after elections scheduled for January, will also pass a new law that will further open Iraq's huge oil reserves to foreign companies. U.S. firms are expected to gain the lion's share of access in a process estimated to be worth billions of dollars.

'So I think this is very promising to the American investors and to American enterprises, certainly to oil companies,' Abdel Mahdi said at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on Tuesday.
{snip}
One major move the country is inching towards under U.S. guardianship, which was discussed this week, is a rollback of Iraq's huge subsidies system, which may have kept millions of Iraqis from starvation under U.S. and UK-backed sanctions imposed by the United Nations after the 1991 Gulf War.

The sanctions lasted for 12 years. A study by the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) and Iraq's Ministry of Health found that 500,000 more Iraqi children died under sanctions, from 1991 to 1998, than would have otherwise perished, but they stressed that not all the deaths could be directly blamed on the provisions.

It is believed that many more Iraqis would have died if not for a strong subsidies system that gave food rations to Iraqi families."

the beginning of the end.

International news from swissinfo, the Swiss news platform: "MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has successfully test-fired a mobile version of the intercontinental Topol-M ballistic missile in the last of
four test-firings before its deployment next year, Interfax news agency has reported.

Known as Russia's most sophisticated nuclear missile, it can be fitted with a single or multiple warheads and hit targets more than
10,000 km (6,200 miles) away.

The firing was part of President Vladimir Putin's plan to turn Russia, whose Soviet-era missile arsenal needs serious renewal and
financing, into a major global military and nuclear power."

thought i'd pass it along....

TOP TEN MOST OUTRAGEOUS STATEMENTS OF 2004 ... [Media Matters for America]: "Here are the Top Ten most outrageous statements we have heard this year from members of the media. From anti-Semitic comments and attacks on women, gays, and lesbians to reprehensible acceptance of the Abu Ghraib prisoner torture, these statements are acutely representative of the conservative hate speech we found in the news media:
Rush Limbaugh on the Abu Ghraib photos: 'I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of need to blow some steam off?'
Ann Coulter: '[Senator John] Kerry will improve the economy in the emergency services and body bag industry.'
Tony Blankley called philanthropist George Soros 'a Jew who figured out a way to survive the Holocaust.'
Michael Savage: 'When you hear 'human rights,' think gays. ... [T]hink only one thing: someone who wants to rape your son.'
Oliver North: 'Every terrorist out there is hoping John Kerry is the next president of the United States.'
Pat Robertson on gays and lesbians: '[S]elf-absorbed hedonists ... that want to impose their particular sexuality on the rest of America.'
Pat Buchanan: '[H]omosexuality is an affliction, like alcoholism.'
Bill O'Reilly to Jewish caller: '[I]f you are really offended, you gotta go to Israel.'
Bill Cunningham (Clear Channel radio host who appeared as a guest on The Sean Hannity Show): The election is over because 'Elizabeth Edwards has now sung.'
Jerry Falwell: 'And we're going to invite PETA [to 'wild game night'] as our special guest, P-E-T-A -- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. We want you to come, we're going to give you a top seat there, so you can sit there and suffer. This is one of my spe"

ABOUT FRIGGIN TIME

War Crimes (washingtonpost.com): "THANKS TO a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and other human rights groups, thousands of pages of government documents released this month have confirmed some of the painful truths about the abuse of foreign detainees by the U.S. military and the CIA -- truths the Bush administration implacably has refused to acknowledge. Since the publication of photographs of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in the spring the administration's whitewashers -- led by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld -- have contended that the crimes were carried out by a few low-ranking reservists, that they were limited to the night shift during a few chaotic months at Abu Ghraib in 2003, that they were unrelated to the interrogation of prisoners and that no torture occurred at the Guantanamo Bay prison where hundreds of terrorism suspects are held. The new documents establish beyond any doubt that every part of this cover story is false. "

government of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the corporation....

A key wildlife protection that has governed federal forest management for more than two decades will be dropped under new regulations announced Wednesday by the Bush administration, and requirements for public involvement in planning for the country's 192 million acres of national forest will be dramatically altered.

....

Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who oversees the Forest Service, is a former lobbyist for the timber industry, which threw its political support overwhelmingly toward Republicans in the last election cycle, donating more than $1.7 million to GOP candidates and party committees and just $380,000 to Democrats, according to data compiled by Dwight L. Morris & Associates, a Virginia firm that tracks campaign contributions.

Contributors identifying themselves as working for the timber industry gave $268,552 to the Republican National Committee and another $163,321 to President Bush, records show.

Three of Bush's elite fundraisers were also top timber executives: W. Henson Moore, chief of the American Forest and Paper Assn., the industry's trade group; Otis B. Ingram III, president of a Georgia lumber company; and Peter Secchia, chairman of Universal Forest Products.

Among the first donors to Bush's 2005 inaugural committee was International Paper Co., which donated $100,000 to help pay for the festivities

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-forest23dec23,0,6614483.story?coll=la-home-headlines

DesMoinesRegister.com: "The Dec. 13 Charles Krauthammer column talked about President Bush spreading democracy in Afghanistan ('Miracle in Afghanistan'). This is a 'paper' democracy at best. Hamid Karzai is a puppet president. Warlords still rule in the regions outside Kabul. The Taliban are regaining influence and undermining reconstruction efforts. Opium production is at an all-time high. The warlord's private militias rule the country, not democracy. And, the warlords are gaining more power and influence through the sale of opium. Is this the foundation of good democracy?
-Gerald Pecinovsky,"

government for the people, by the people has turned into a government for the corporation, by the corporation.

The National Institutes of Health: Public Servant or Private Marketer?: "What doctors were not told for years is this: While making recommendations in the name of the NIH, Brewer was working for the companies that sell the drugs. Government and company records show that from 2001 to 2003, he accepted about $114,000 in consulting fees from four companies making or developing cholesterol medications, including $31,000 from the maker of Crestor.

Brewer was far from alone in taking industry's money: At least 530 government scientists at the NIH, the nation's preeminent agency for medical research, have taken fees, stock or stock options from biomedical companies in the last five years, records show."

another lie. tell the people what they want to hear, and make them think you meant what you said. when did actions start to not speak louder than words?

Mourning in Mosul By Eric?Umansky: "Meanwhile, while everybody notes that the White House promised that there will be an investigation. But TP doesn't see the papers mention a related point: There has been no independent or overarching investigation of the abuses, and the administration has opposed the creation of one. (The Post reported that back in May...on pg. A14.)"

what would one expect from a bunch of ex-enronites running our government?

GAO Again Finds Fault With the Federal Books (washingtonpost.com): "The U.S. government's financial record-keeping is so inadequate that congressional auditors said last week that they could not determine whether the federal books meet generally accepted accounting principles.
It was the eighth fiscal year in a row that the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, was unable to provide a definitive opinion on the quality of the federal government's consolidated financial statements. "

we got soldiers getting punished for following a presidial order.... what else is needed to make America wake the fuck up and smell the stench?

American Civil Liberties Union : FBI E-Mail Refers to Presidential Order Authorizing Inhumane Interrogation Techniques: "NEW YORK -- A document released for the first time today by the American Civil Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq. Also released by the ACLU today are a slew of other records including a December 2003 FBI e-mail that characterizes methods used by the Defense Department as 'torture' and a June 2004 'Urgent Report' to the Director of the FBI that raises concerns that abuse of detainees is being covered up. "

we got soldiers getting punished for following a presidial order.... what else is needed to make America wake the fuck up and smell the stench?

American Civil Liberties Union : FBI E-Mail Refers to Presidential Order Authorizing Inhumane Interrogation Techniques: "NEW YORK -- A document released for the first time today by the American Civil Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq. Also released by the ACLU today are a slew of other records including a December 2003 FBI e-mail that characterizes methods used by the Defense Department as 'torture' and a June 2004 'Urgent Report' to the Director of the FBI that raises concerns that abuse of detainees is being covered up. "

Newsday.com - AP News: "NEW PALTZ, N.Y. -- The Social Security Administration is rejecting marriage documents issued for heterosexual couples in four communities that performed weddings for gay couples earlier this year.

The agency "

so TIME magazine named bush as man of the year. to see what distinction that brings, one should read this