Bush "Developing Illegal Bioterror Weapons" for Offensive Use
By Sherwood Ross, t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor
Wednesday 20 December 2006
In violation of the US Code and international law, the Bush administration is spending more money (in inflation-adjusted dollars) to develop illegal, offensive germ warfare than the $2 billion spent in World War II on the Manhattan Project to make the atomic bomb.
So says Francis Boyle, the professor of international law who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by Congress. He states the Pentagon "is now gearing up to fight and 'win' biological warfare" pursuant to two Bush national strategy directives adopted "without public knowledge and review" in 2002.
Iraqi Women's Bodies Are Battlefields for War Vendettas
By Kavita N. Ramdas, Global Fund for Women
Tuesday 19 December 2006
The United States' so-called "liberation" of Iraqi women has made them less free than they were under the Baathist regime, with abduction, rape, and "honor" killings now a daily reality.
The Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) recently issued a frightening report documenting the growing practice of public executions of women by Shia Militia. One of the report's more grisly accounts was a story of a young woman dragged by a wire wound around her neck to a close-by football field and then hung to the goal post. They pierced her body with bullets. Her brother came running trying to defend his sister. He was also shot and killed. Sunni extremists are no better: OWFI members estimate that no less than 30 women are executed monthly for honor related reasons.
Pentagon Eyes $468.9 Billion Budget for 2008
By Andrea Shalal-Esa and Jim Wolf, Reuters
Friday 15 December 2006
Washington - The White House has approved a $468.9 billion budget for the Pentagon in fiscal year 2008, a six-percent increase over last year's request, according to a Defense Department document obtained by Reuters.
It is also asking the Pentagon to cover some Army and Marine Corps war costs in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of the regular budget, rather than through emergency budget requests.
The 2008 budget request is $4.7 billion more than the level the Pentagon forecast in its 2007 budget documents.
Despite a $168 Billion Budget, Army Faces Cash Crunch
By Greg Jaffe, The Wall Street Journal
Tuesday 12 December 2006
Fort Stewart, Georgia - With just six weeks before they leave for Iraq, the 3,500 soldiers from the Third Infantry Division's First Brigade should be learning about Ramadi, the insurgent stronghold where they will spend a year.
Many of the troops don't even know the basic ethnic makeup of the largely Sunni city. "We haven't spent as much time as I would like on learning the local culture, language, and politics - all the stuff that takes a while to really get good at," says Lt. Col. Clifford Wheeler, who commands one of the brigade's 800-soldier units.
Instead, the troops are learning to use equipment that commanders say they should ideally have been training with since the spring. Many soldiers only recently received their new M-4 rifles and rifle sights, which are in short supply because of an Army-wide cash crunch. Some still lack their machine guns or long-range surveillance systems, which are used to spot insurgents laying down roadside bombs. They've been told they'll pick up most of that when they get to Iraq.
The strains here at Fort Stewart - one of the busiest posts in the U.S. military - are apparent throughout the Army. They spotlight a historic predicament: The Iraq war has exposed more than a decade's worth of mistakes and miscalculations that are now seriously undermining the world's mightiest military force.
Showdown Looms Over Domestic Spying
By David Kravets, The Associated Press
Sunday 17 December 2006
San Francisco - Federal agents continue to eavesdrop on Americans' electronic communications without warrants a year after President Bush confirmed the practice, and experts say a new Congress' efforts to limit the program could trigger a constitutional showdown.
China's River Dolphin Declared Extinct
By Andrew C. Revkin
Sunday 17 December 2006
The first species to be erased from this planet's great and ancient Order of Cetaceans in modern times is not one of the charismatic sea mammals that have long been the focus of conservation campaigns, like the sperm whale or bottlenose dolphin.
It appears to be the baiji, a white, nearly blind denizen of the Yangtze River in China.
On Wednesday, an expedition in search of any baiji, run by Chinese biologists and baiji.org, a Swiss foundation, ended empty-handed after six weeks of patrolling its onetime waters in the middle and lower stretches of the river, the baiji's only known habitat.
Corporate Agribusiness Is Behind Our Deadly Food Supply
By Sally Kohn, AlterNet.org
Monday 18 December 2006
First it was spinach. Now it's green onions at the Taco Bell. What's next? The growing anxiety over our nation's food supply is enough to make you chew your nails - unless of course they're contaminated with E. coli as well. Is nothing safe?
In the United States today, 80 percent of beef is slaughtered by four companies, 75 percent of pre-cut salad mixes are processed by two companies and 30 percent of milk is processed by just one company. Most of our fresh produce comes from the same region of California where the contaminated spinach and now green onions were grown. During off seasons, up to 70 percent of the produce sold in the United States comes from other countries.
Globalization has meant that, with the click of a button, we can connect with people and places halfway across the country or the world. But rather than just exchanging ideas and cultures, we've increasingly come to depend on the rest of the world for our consumption of goods, services, energy - and food. With the speed of clicking a button, an E. coli outbreak in California or China can threaten our entire food supply and risk a widespread pandemic.
Gone are the days of family farms, which would produce sustainable, healthy food that also fed the local economy. Today, a staggering 330 farmers abandon farming each week. In the 1930s, there were over seven million family farms in our country. Today, roughly two million remain.
Environmental Group Offers Road Map to Curb Global Warming
The Associated Press
Monday 18 December 2006
Rockport, Maine - A regional environmental group Monday released a comprehensive "climate change roadmap" to reduce pollution linked to global warming by 75 percent in the northeastern United States and eastern Canada.
Environment Northeast said the proposals included in the 275-page plan draw from many of the best practices already found within the region, including Massachusetts's use of low-emission, hybrid buses and Maine's requirement that new state buildings exceed energy codes by 20 percent.
Women Lose Ground in the New Iraq
By Nancy Trejos, The Washington Post
Saturday 16 December 2006
Baghdad - Browsing the shelves of a cosmetics store in the Karrada shopping district, Zahra Khalid felt giddy at the sight of Alberto shampoo and Miss Rose eye shadow, blusher and powder.
Before leaving her house, she had covered her body in a billowing black abaya and wrapped a black head scarf around her thick brown hair. She had asked her brother to drive. She had done all the things that a woman living in Baghdad is supposed to do these days to avoid drawing attention to herself.
It was the first time she had left home in two months.
"For a woman, it's just like being in jail," she said. "I can't go anywhere."
US Not Winning War in Iraq, Bush Says for 1st Time
By Peter Baker, The Washington Post
Wednesday 20 December 2006
President Bush acknowledged for the first time yesterday that the United States is not winning the war in Iraq and said he plans to expand the overall size of the "stressed" U.S. armed forces to meet the challenges of a long-term global struggle against terrorists.
As he searches for a new strategy for Iraq, Bush has adopted the formula advanced by his top military adviser to describe the situation. "We're not winning, we're not losing," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. The assessment was a striking reversal for a president who, days before the November elections, declared, "Absolutely, we're winning."
Neo-Cons Wanted Israel to Attack Syria
By Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service
Tuesday 19 December 2006
Washington - Neo-conservative hawks in and outside the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush had hoped that Israel would attack Syria during last summer's Lebanon war, according to a newly published interview with a prominent neo-conservative whose spouse is a top Middle East adviser in Vice President Dick Cheney's office.
Meyrav Wurmser, who is herself the director of the Centre for Middle East Policy at the Hudson Institute here, reportedly told Yitzhak Benhorin of the Ynet website that a successful attack by Israel on Damascus would have dealt a mortal blow to the insurgency in Iraq.
Darfur: Genocide Without Borders
By Peter Boehm, The Independent UK
Wednesday 20 December 2006
As anarchy spreads, rampaging militias bring death and carnage to refugees in neighbouring Chad.
The village is still smouldering. A girl combs through the remains of a burnt-down hut with her bare hands, trying to salvage knife blades and rakes that were not consumed by the fire. Two women, with tears in their eyes, have broken down in front of a pile of ash, wailing violently.
A band of youths is patrolling the ruins near Koukou-Angarana, bows and arrows slung over their shoulders, boomerangs and knives at the ready. But their decision to form a self-defence group has come too late. The Arab horsemen who swept through the village on their bloody rampage have long since vanished.
It is a tragically familiar scene in Darfur, the province of western Sudan where more than 200,000 people have been killed and at least two million brutally forced from their homes - a genocide unleashed and sustained by the Islamist government in Khartoum - but this man-made inferno now sweeping across the plains is taking place across the Sudanese border in Chad. The pattern is identical to events in Darfur, where the well-armed Arab raiders allied to the Sudanese government set villages ablaze, rape the women, and leave a trail of dead black Africans in their wake. Just as in Darfur, the Sudanese government is being accused of being behind the violence in Chad, an accusation which is rejected by Khartoum.
Pentagon Wants $99.7 Billion More for Wars
By Andrew Taylor, The Associated Press
Wednesday 20 December 2006
Washington - The Pentagon wants the White House to seek an additional $99.7 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to information provided to The Associated Press.
The military's request, if embraced by President Bush and approved by Congress, would boost this year's budget for those wars to about $170 billion.
High IQ Linked to Being Vegetarian
BBC News
Friday 15 December 2006
Intelligent children are more likely to become vegetarians later in life, a study says. A Southampton University team found those who were vegetarian by 30 had recorded five IQ points more on average at the age of 10.
Researchers said it could explain why people with higher IQ were healthier as a vegetarian diet was linked to lower heart disease and obesity rates.
The study of 8,179 was reported in the British Medical Journal.
Wal-Mart Wins Ruling on Foreign Labor
Bloomberg News
Tuesday 19 December 2006
Wal-Mart Stores cannot be held liable under United States law for labor conditions at some of its overseas suppliers, a federal judge has ruled.
