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"News Fit to Transmit in the Post Cassini Flyby Era"
Genocide * The Big Lie * Reverse FCC * RFK * K
05 June 2003
"As a result of the war,
corporations have now been enthroned
and an era of corruption in high places will follow,
until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands,
and the Republic is destroyed.
--Abraham Lincoln1) The Silent Genocide from America- - Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death
2) Iraq WMD, the Big Lie- - "How the big lie about Iraq came to be"
- - "We Used To Impeach Liars" by William Rivers Pitt
3) Senators seek to reverse FCC ruling
4) Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
5) Kucinich draws crowd, but not media"Fear not the path of truth for the lack of people walking on it."
-- Robert F. KennedyEditor's Notes:In stark contrast to the unreality portrayed on US television, the world is awakening to the horrendous consequences, the deathly lies of a barbaric brutal war machine laying democracy on its side, and destroying Earth's ecosystems.
"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered."
-- Thomas Paine, The Crisis Papers, 1776
1) The Silent Genocide from America- - Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death
The Silent Genocide from America
by Mohammed Daud Miraki, MA, MA, PhD
Director Afghan DU & Recovery Fund
[Excerpt]
"After the Americans destroyed our village and killed many of us, we also lost our houses and have nothing to eat. However, we would have endured these miseries and even accepted them, if the Americans had not sentenced us all to death. When I saw my deformed grandson, I realized that my hopes of the future have vanished for good, different from the hopelessness of the Russian barbarism, even though at that time I lost my older son Shafiqullah. This time, however, I know we are part of the invisible genocide brought on us by America, a silence death from which I know we will not escape." (Jooma Khan of Laghman province, March 2003)
These words were uttered by an aggrieved Afghan grandfather, who saw his own and that of others' familial extinction at the hands of the United States of America and her allies. Another Afghan, who also saw his demise, said:
"I realized this slow, yet certain death, when I saw blood in my urine and developed severe pain in my kidneys along with breathing problems I never had before. Many of my family members started to complain from confusion and the pregnant women miscarried their babies while others gave birth to disabled infants" (Akbar Khan from Paktika province, February 2003)
The perpetuation of the perpetual death in Afghanistan continues with the passage of each day. Every day, people see the silent death striking their families and friends, hopeless and terrified at the sight of the next funeral in their minds' eyes. This indiscriminate murder of the Afghan people continues while those, whose tax money paid for the monstrous weapons and brought about this genocide pretend as though all is well. The horrific pictures of those dying -- whose bodies do not correlate to their age since they have internalized so much uranium dust that it impacted the morphology of their bodies -- remain in the memories of those still living who are fearfully waiting for their turn of disaster. The pregnant women are afraid from giving birth to babies -- horrified to see a deformity instead of a healthy child. This is the legacy of the US "liberation", an indiscriminate murder of the weak and the unarmed that do not have any means of self-defense. In fact, there is no defensive measure against such Weapons of Mass Destruction because these deadly particles of uranium oxide -- the dust formed after uranium pulverizes upon impacting a target -- remain in soil, water and cover the surface of vegetation for generations to come.
When a US bomb or that of her allies landed on an Afghan village or town, the land and its people have become part of the deadly legacy of silent death. This death sentence is different from any other type because in this type death sentence all the people, their land and future generations are condemned to an inescapable genocide. The tragedy that makes this state of affairs so dreadful is the unavoidably invisible threat that targets everyone indiscriminately. Moreover, the threat has become endemic to the fiber of existence, contaminated the land, water and its inhabitants. In fact, when Bush jr. said, "we will smoke them out…" he lived up to his promise, making life an unattainable reality for the unborn and unsustainable reality for the living, hence, sentencing Afghan people and their future generations to a predetermined death sentence.
The true extent of this disaster is unfolding as time goes by. In light of the continuous revelations about the quantity and types of weapons used in Afghanistan, the worse has not fully materialized. Everyday, US AC 130 gunships, A-10s and B 52s bomb Afghan villages and towns at each turn when a unit of US troops encounter resistance. Consequently, not only, the perpetual death continues but rather, every round of depleted uranium is one additional nail in the collective coffin of the Afghan people.
The usage of great number of munitions and armaments dropped by US jets resulted in upsurge of various health problems weeks into 2002. This pattern is different from that experienced by the Iraqi after the first Gulf War where it took years for many of the birth defects, deformities and other health conditions to surface. This points to the enormity of uranium weapons used in Afghanistan, a fact, illustrated by many investigators world wide, notably Dai Williams in England, and Dr. Durakovic from the Uranium Medical Research Center in Canada, and Dr. Marc Herald in the United States among others. Furthermore, various international newspapers and media outlets notably Le Monde Diplomatique, Guardian, Frontier Post, BBC, CBC, Al Jazeera among others have reported the types of weapon systems used against Afghan targets -- villages, towns -- and mountain cave complexes. According to the BBC (April 10, 2002), more than 6600 J-dam bombs were dropped on Afghanistan. On October 2002, Boston Globe also reported:
"In contrast with older weapons, the new generation finds its way with advances such as target-elevation data and satellite signals. The JDAM already has proven itself in Afghanistan. By February [2002], commanders had dropped 6,600 JDAMs, consultants estimate - so many that stockpiles ran low and officials had to scramble up more production from a Missouri factory."
By October 2002, the first anniversary of US invasion of Afghanistan, more than 10000 tons of bombs landed on Afghan soil. (Socialist Worker Online, October 11, 2002) Imagine the magnitude of carnage and contamination caused by such barbarism. While another report by Kate Randall on December 2001, put the number of US bombed dropped at 12,000 --
"Since the US launched the war on Afghanistan October 7, more than 12,000 US bombs have been dropped on the country. According to the Pentagon, about 60 percent of these bombs have been precision-guided by satellite or laser technology. However, many of these bombs–dropped by B-52s and other aircraft from tens of thousands of feet in the air–have strayed off course, hitting civilian targets." (WSWS, December 29, 2001)
In another report, a year after September 11, 2001, Matt Kelley of the Associated Press put the US munitions statistics as follows:
"U.S. and coalition airplanes have conducted more than 21,000 flights over Afghanistan, dropping more than 20,000 munitions. About 60 percent of the ordnance dropped on Afghanistan has been precision guided, the highest percentage in any conflict."
Similarly the Guardian reported on April 10, 2002:
"More than 22,000 weapons - ranging from cruise missiles to heavy fuel-air bombs - have been dropped on the country over the past six months…. US pilots dropped more than 6,600 joint direct attack munitions (J-dams), the satellite-guided bombs… One in four bombs and missiles dropped by the US on Afghanistan may have missed its target"
The new generations of hard target weapons whose warheads are made of dense metal have contributed to the heavy contamination of land, water and general population..
[EXCERPT]
I wish to conclude this paper with the following quote from one of the victims of the US bombing:
"Tell America, we are not fools. Your words and actions are those of evil. We do not have airplanes like you do, however, we have one thing that you do not have principles and morals. We will never do anything remotely similar to American children what Americans have done to our children and families. They might win some fights, but we have already won the big fight, the moral ground." (Nurullah Omar-Khail, March, 2003)
Mohammed Daud Miraki, MA, MA, PhD
Director Afghan DU & Recovery Fund
Mdmiraki@ameritech.net
For the complete article and graphic photos, see:
http://www.rense.com/general37/InvisibleGenocid.html= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
- - Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of DeathDemocracy Now!,
the U.S. broadcast premiere of a documentary film called
"Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death"
The film provides eyewitness testimony that U.S. troops were complicit in the massacre of thousands of Taliban prisoners during the Afghan War.
It tells the story of thousands of prisoners who surrendered to the US military's Afghan allies after the siege of Kunduz. According to eyewitnesses, some three thousand of the prisoners were forced into sealed containers and loaded onto trucks for transport to Sheberghan prison. Eyewitnesses say when the prisoners began shouting for air, U.S.-allied Afghan soldiers fired directly into the truck, killing many of them. The rest suffered through an appalling road trip lasting up to four days, so thirsty they clawed at the skin of their fellow prisoners as they licked perspiration and even drank blood from open wounds.
Witnesses say that when the trucks arrived and soldiers opened the containers, most of the people inside were dead. They also say US Special Forces re-directed the containers carrying the living and dead into the desert and stood by as survivors were shot and buried. Now, up to three thousand bodies lie buried in a mass grave.
The film has sent shockwaves around the world. It has been broadcast on national television in Britain, Germany, Italy and Australia. It has been screened by the European parliament. It has outraged human rights groups and international human rights lawyers. They are calling for investigation into whether U.S. Special Forces are guilty of war crimes.
But most Americans have never heard of the film. That's because not one corporate media outlet in the U.S. will touch it. It has never before been broadcast in this country.
Today, Democracy Now! brings you the premiere broadcast of "Afghan Massacre" in the United States.
"Afghan Massacre" is produced and directed by award-winning Irish filmmaker Jamie Doran. Doran is has worked at the highest levels of television film production for more than two decades. His films have been broadcast on virtually every major channel throughout the world. On average, each of his films are seen in around 35 countries. Before establishing his independent television company, Jamie Doran spent over seven years at BBC Television.
Watch show on Realplayer (low-bandwidth)
http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/dn20030526b.rm&proto=rtspWatch show on Realplayer (high-bandwidth)
http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/dnB20030526b.rm&proto=rtsp
2) Iraq WMD, the Big Lie- - "How the big lie about Iraq came to be"
- - "We Used To Impeach Liars" by William Rivers Pitt
Credibility Gap, Anyone?
Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service
WASHINGTON, Jun 2 (IPS) - When all three major U.S. newsweeklies -- Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report--run major features on the same day on possible government lying, you can bet you have the makings of a major scandal.
And when the two most important outlets of neo-conservative opinion -- The Weekly Standard and The Wall Street Journal--come out on the same day with lead editorials spluttering outrage about suggestions of government lying, you can bet that things are going to get very hot as summer approaches in Washington.
The controversy over whether the administration of President George W. Bush either exaggerated or lied about evidence that it said it had about the existence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion has mushroomed over the past week.
"This is potentially very serious," said one Congressional aide. "If it's shown we went to war because of intelligence that was 'cooked' by the administration, heads will have to roll--and not just little heads, big ones."
The administration was already on the defensive last week as the controversy took off in Europe, particularly in Britain where Prime Minister Tony Blair found himself assailed from all directions for either wilfully exaggerating the intelligence himself or being "suckered," as his former foreign minister Robin Cook called it this weekend, by Washington's neo-conservative hawks, who started agitating for war even before the dust settled in lower Manhattan after the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Matters took a turn for the worse when the London Guardian reported Saturday about the existence of a transcript, obviously leaked from a senior British official, of an exchange at the Waldorf Hotel in New York between U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and British Foreign Minister Jack Straw just before Powell's presentation of the evidence against Iraq before the United Nations Security Council Feb. 5.
It quotes Powell, whose forceful case to the Council was decisive in persuading U.S. public opinion that Baghdad represented a serious threat, as being "apprehensive" about the evidence presented to him by the intelligence agencies. He reportedly expressed the hope that the actual facts, when they came out, would not "explode in their faces." (At a Rome press conference Monday, Powell insisted that he considered the evidence "overwhelming" when he spoke before the Council.)
But it appears that Powell's musing was accurate, as, after almost two months in uncontested control of Iraq, U.S. troops and investigators have failed to come up with concrete evidence of an Iraqi WMD program, let alone an actual weapon.
The scenario of an uneasy Powell received a major boost in the accounts of the three newsweeklies. U.S. News reported, for example, that, during a rehearsal of Powell's presentation at CIA headquarters Feb. 1, the normally mild-mannered retired general at one point ''tossed several pages in the air. 'I'm not reading this,' he declared. 'This is bull----'."
The same magazine also reported that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) formally concluded that, "There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons" in September 2002, just as Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld was telling Congress that the Baghdad "regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas."
The accounts by Newsweek and Time were similarly damning. One "informed military source" told Newsweek that when the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) asked the CIA for specific WMD targets that should be destroyed in the first stages of the invasion, the agency only complied reluctantly.
But what it provided "was crap," a CENTCOM planner told the magazine, consisting mainly of buildings that were bombed in the first Gulf War in 1991. And agency experts reportedly could not tell the war-planners what agents were located where.
If true, that contradicts a series of bald assertions by administration officials and their supporters over the last nine months. "Simply stated," Vice President Dick Cheney declared in the first call to arms last August, "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
"We know where (the WMD) are," declared Rumsfeld in a television interview Mar. 30, well into the first week of the war. "They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
He has since retreated from that certainty, suggesting last week that the Iraqis "may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer."
There is also growing doubt about the evidence that Bush himself touted this weekend as proof--two truck trailers described by officials as mobile weapons-productions labs.
According to a CIA report noted in the 'Slate' Internet magazine, key equipment for growing, sterilizing and drying bacteria was not present in either trailer. Iraqi officials have said the trailers were used to produce hydrogen for artillery weather balloons..
[Excerpted]
..On Sunday, the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said he hoped to begin hearings--with the Select Committee on Intelligence--before the Jul. 4 recess, while the ranking member of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee has asked the CIA to produce a report by Jul. 1 reconciling its pre-war assessments with actual findings on the ground.
For the complete article, links to related news items, see:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=655&ncid=655&e=1&u=/oneworld/20030603/wl_oneworld/118151054605718= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
- - "How the big lie about Iraq came to be"Did our spy operations blow the call on WMDs, or did Bush distort the truth?
By Robert Scheer
June 4, 2003 - Leave it to a Marine to be blunt. When Lt. Gen. James Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, was asked Friday why his Marines failed to encounter or uncover any of the weapons of mass destruction that U.S. intelligence had warned them about, his honesty put the White House to shame.
"We were simply wrong," Conway said. "It was a surprise to me then, it remains a surprise to me now, that we have not uncovered [nuclear, chemical or biological] weapons" in Iraq. And, he added, "believe me, it's not for lack of trying. We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwait border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there."
Now that the "imminent threat" posed by Iraqi chemical or biological weapons has turned out not to be so imminent, the question is: Did our gazillion-dollar spy operations blow the call, or was the dope they developed distorted or exaggerated by our political leaders?
Either way, heads should roll..
For the complete article, see:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/scheer/2003/06/04/wmd/print.html= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
- - "We Used To Impeach Liars" by William Rivers Pittsee:
http://truthout.org/docs_03/060303A.shtml
3) Senators seek to reverse FCC rulingFCC commissioners are expected to testify at a
Senate Commerce Committee hearing on ownership rules.
June 2, 2003; Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bipartisan group of senators opposed to television networks expanding their reach expressed confidence they had the votes to roll back a rule adopted by communications regulators Monday.
The group said it was pressing ahead with legislation to retain limits keeping a network from owning stations that together reach more than 35 percent of the national audience.
The three Republican members of the Federal Communications Commission voted earlier Monday against their two Democrat colleagues to raise the limit to 45 percent as part of a wider easing of decades-old media ownership rules.
But Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi told a news conference there was no partisanship in Senate opposition to the new cap.
"A lot of Republicans, in fact, probably most of the Republicans in Congress, would not agree with this decision," said Lott, the former Republican leader of the Senate..
[Excerpt]
For the complete article, see:
http://money.cnn.com/2003/06/02/news/companies/fcc_senate.reut/
4) Assassination of Robert F. KennedyThursday June 6, 1968 -
The Day The United States Died
by Mark Elsis
[Excerpt]
"Fear not the path of truth for the lack of people walking on it."
Robert F. Kennedy
Right after delivering a rousing speech to an overflowing ballroom of exuberant campaign supporters thanking them for helping him win the big prize of the California Democratic primary for President, the junior Senator from New York State, Robert Francis Kennedy was shot at by an assassin four times within a couple of inches. He was wounded by three of the bullets with the fourth bullet going through his jacket. The exact time was 12:15am Wednesday morning June 5, 1968. The location was the kitchen pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. I was only a 10 year old boy back then, but I somehow knew the day Bobby Kennedy died, the next day, Thursday June 6, 1968, was the day the United States died.
If this assassination of Bobby Kennedy didn't happen, he would have been the Democratic presidential nominee in 1968. He then would have faced the Republican presidential nominee, Richard Mulhouse Nixon, in the November election. Bobby most likely would have won and been the next President of the United States. Since Bobby was opposed to the Viet Nam War (police action), this would have put an end to it in 1969 instead of 1975.
This death by assassination of Bobby Kennedy occurred only 63 days after the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis and also less then 5 years after his older brother, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was assassinated in Dallas.
The United States has never been the same since. The dreams of a better, more democratic life for all Americans was brutally slain over and over and over again. We were then, and we still are living in a fascistic country that is run by an evil military industrial corporate complex that assassinate leaders for not playing ball, their war machine ball..
..Six people were shot in the kitchen pantry that night. Lying on the floor, shot three times,
Bobby's last audible words were "Is everybody okay?"
For the complete article, see
http://RobertFKennedy.net/TheDayTheUnitedStatesDied.htm
5) Kucinich draws crowd, but not mediaKucinich draws crowd, but not media
By John Nichols
June 3, 2003
George McGovern says that he won the Democratic nomination for president in 1972 in part because no one took him seriously during 1971.
"For more than a year members of my small national staff and some of my early supporters and I had been crisscrossing the country on separate routes, finding workers and trying to make my views known," recalled the former senator from South Dakota. "We drew scant national attention. But the reception was favorable at almost every stop."
Jimmy Carter says much the same thing about the campaign that won him the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination and, ultimately, the presidency. Carter still recalls the humbling experience of walking up to people on the street in the small towns of Iowa and New Hampshire during those long, lonely months of 1975 and introducing himself with the line, "Hello! I am Jimmy Carter, and I am running for president."
That notion of the candidacy that gets little national attention but quietly builds significant support at the grass roots came to mind Saturday night, when Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-chairman Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, swept into Madison.
Kucinich gets no respect from the national media. When the New York Times featured a drawing of the candidates for the Democratic nomination Sunday, the Ohio congressman was missing - as he has been from much of the early coverage of the campaign.
Yet, with barely a week of preparation, Kucinich's Wisconsin backers pulled together a rally that drew more than 1,000 people to the Orpheum Theater Saturday night. While many in the crowd were still deciding whom they will support next year, the enthusiasm for Kucinich's "peace and prosperity" message should serve as a wake-up call for the national political correspondents who continue to neglect the former Cleveland mayor's candidacy.
The national media remain obsessed with the campaign of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who, despite the fact that he was a more tepid critic of the Iraq war than Kucinich, was pegged as the "anti-war" candidate. Dean gets notice not so much for his stands on the issues as for his willingness to pick fights over the issue with the presumed front-runners in the race: Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt.
On the morning after Kucinich appeared at the Orpheum, the Sunday New York Times magazine featured another big article on Dean. And if Kucinich backers are smart, they will be glad of that. Dean, a self-proclaimed fiscal conservative with a so-so record on issues of concern to working people, has been dubbed the acceptable "liberal" by the inside-the-Beltway crowd.
Kucinich, on the other hand, is the candidate who draws the crowds in places like California, Wisconsin and, according to recent reports in the Des Moines Register, the key first-caucus state of Iowa.
The Register's veteran political writer, David Yepsen, reports, "Kucinich has been spending considerable time in Iowa and his good score indicates he could be on the verge of becoming a factor in the Iowa contest." Even more helpful to the Kucinich campaign may be a line from John Carlson, another Register columnist, who says the candidate is "from the Michael Moore wing of the Democratic Party."
There is still a good deal of time between now and when the Democratic nomination is decided. And there are no guarantees that Kucinich - who is still finding his voice on the stump, and whose campaign has yet to develop the structural strength that is a requirement in the fast-paced 2004 race - will catch fire in the same way that McGovern or Carter did.
But, if the grass roots still count for anything, then the Kucinich people have earned some bragging rights. Drawing a thousand people on a Saturday night in Madison and being compared with Michael Moore in the Des Moines Register could yet prove to be more meaningful than flattering mentions in the New York Times.
Published: 6:55 AM 6/03/03
© Madison Newspapers, Inc. All rights reserved.
http://www.madison.com/captimes/opinion/column/nichols/50097.php= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
For the web site of the campaign to elect
Dennis J. Kucinich in 2004see:
www.kucinich.us
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