David Sirota writes that how each party answers its big questions will not only decide the 2006 or 2008 elections but whether America will still have a political system that represents our country's people. Polls consistently show that Americans want a vastly more progressive economic policy, are concerned about Big Money's influence on our government and support bringing the troops home from Iraq within a year. In other words, what the public wants is very clear despite the political establishment's efforts to muddle the issues.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122505X.shtml

The massive US effort will leave behind this legacy: Iraqis will actually have, on average, fewer hours per day of electricity in their homes than they did before the US-led invasion in March 2003.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122505G.shtml

The White House decision to order surveillance of international phone calls by US citizens without a warrant violated longstanding practices and could undermine a key US intelligence agency that's critical in the struggle against terrorists, former senior intelligence officials and other experts said this week.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122505F.shtml

George Bush has no doubt had his share of difficult years before, but in political terms 2005 must go down as his worst year in office. His approval ratings had plummeted and are only now inching their way up the ladder. The political capital he sought to spend after his re-election has been squandered.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122505E.shtml

Deep in a remote, fog-layered hollow near Sugar Grove, W.Va., hidden by fortress-like mountains, sits the country's largest eavesdropping bug. Located in a "radio quiet" zone, the station's large parabolic dishes secretly and silently sweep in millions of private telephone calls and e-mail messages an hour.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122505Y.shtml

Lieber Herr Dr.Hingst,

mit freundlichen Grüßen und besten Dank für die Zusendung der Chronik von Frau Mag.Veronika Örge. Diese habe ich auf meiner Homepage unter dem Titel: "Bürger wehren sich erfolgreich" link http://www.mikrowellensmog.info/Chronik.html

online gestellt.

Univ.-Doz.Dr.Ferdinand Ruzicka
http://www.mikrowellensmog.info

US airstrikes in Iraq have surged this fall, jumping to nearly five times the average monthly rate earlier in the year, according to US military figures. Until the end of August, US warplanes were conducting about 25 strikes a month. The number rose to 62 in September, then to 122 in October and 120 in November.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122505Z.shtml

NEDA is still working on our Ohio exit poll analysis which shows clearly that Ohio's exit polls are more than consistent with vote miscounts - if Ohio's exit poll discrepancies were caused by vote miscounts, they look very much like they were outcome-altering.

In other words, Ohio exit poll data is SCREAMING outcome-altering vote miscounts. However, the Ohio analysis is time consuming and tedious because

1. there is not one complete data set because Mitofsky did not release sample sizes with the Election Science Institute (ESI) data set, and the raw survey data he released to the U of Michigan does not include vote counts, so our data has to be hobbled together from two sources, and the analysis tried and tested in several ways, and

2. we are doing it manually in spreadsheets rather than with programs. this type of analysis is not easy to accomplish using spreadsheets.

In the future, now that we've devised the analysis, it could be programmed automatically and we recommend, and I believe candidates will agree after seeing the Ohio exit poll analysis, that no candidate should concede or be sworn into office without first obtaining and analyzing their election and exit poll data.

ANNOUNCEMENT - NEW! NEDA is today releasing a brief paper in rebuttal to Mark Lindeman of Bard College who wrote a recent essay supporting the shoddy invalid exit poll analyses of the Election Science Institute (ESI) and Mitofsky that were released in June and presented at the American Statistical Association conference in October.

This is YOUR little Xmas present from me, so don't say I never gave you anything. ;-)

http://www.electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/exit-polls/ESI/Mark-Lindeman-Response.pdf

Please read this interesting paper (to me at least ;-) and pass it on, to any reputable mathematical department, or to a press person who would be willing to ask any reputable math department to evaluate it, including Bard's mathematics department, who can correctly evaluate their professor Lindeman's essay, ESI/Mitofsky's analysis, and NEDA's mathematical logic proof and inform us who is correct. If only we could get the press to cover this, it would correctly set the stage for our scientifically sound Ohio exit poll analysis that will be released soon.

NEDA has mathematically disproven Mitofsky's exit poll analysis! You'd think that the press might find that interesting, but then the media (NEP) is Mitofsky's biggest client, so perhaps that causes issues?

Kathy Dopp
http://uscountvotes.org

Originally Thirteen Techniques for Truth Suppression

by David Martin, author of America's Dreyfus Affair

Strong, credible allegations of high-level criminal activity can bring down a government. When the government lacks an effective, fact-based defense, other techniques must be employed. The success of these techniques depends heavily upon a cooperative, compliant press and a mere token opposition party.

1. Dummy up. If it's not reported, if it's not news, it didn't happen.
2. Wax indignant. This is also known as the "how dare you?" gambit.
3. Characterize the charges as "rumors" or, better yet, "wild rumors." If, in spite of the news blackout, the public is still able to learn about the suspicious facts, it can only be through "rumors." (If they tend to believe the "rumors" it must be because they are simply "paranoid" or "hysterical.")
4. Knock down straw men. Deal only with the weakest aspect of the weakest charges. Even better, create your own straw men. Make up wild rumors and give them lead play when you appear to debunk all the charges, real and fanciful alike.
5. Call the skeptics names like "conspiracy theorist," "nut," "ranter," "kook," "crackpot," and of course, "rumor monger." Be sure, too, to use heavily loaded verbs and adjectives when characterizing their charges and defending the "more reasonable" government and its defenders. You must then carefully avoid fair and open debate with any of the people you have thus maligned. For insurance, set up your own "skeptics" to shoot down.
6. Impugn motives. Attempt to marginalize the critics by suggesting strongly that they are not really interested in the truth but are simply pursuing a partisan political agenda or are out to make money (compared to over-compensated adherents to the government line who, presumably, are not).
7. Invoke authority. Here the controlled press and the sham opposition can be very useful.
8. Dismiss the charges as "old news."
9. Come half-clean. This is also known as "confession and avoidance" or "taking the limited hangout route." This way, you create the impression of candor and honesty while you admit only to relatively harmless, less-than-criminal "mistakes." This stratagem often requires the embrace of a fall-back position quite different from the one originally taken. With effective damage control, the fall-back position need only be peddled by stooge skeptics to carefully limited markets.
10. Characterize the crimes as impossibly complex and the truth as ultimately unknowable.
11. Reason backward, using the deductive method with a vengeance. With thoroughly rigorous deduction, troublesome evidence is irrelevant. For example: We have a completely free press. If they know of evidence that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) had prior knowledge of the Oklahoma City bombing they would have reported it. They haven't reported it, so there was no prior knowledge by the BATF. Another variation on this theme involves the likelihood of a conspiracy leaker and a press that would report the leak.
12. Require the skeptics to solve the crime completely. For example: If Vince Foster was murdered, who did it and why?
13. Change the subject. This technique includes creating and/or publicizing distractions.
14. Scantly report incriminating facts, and then make nothing of them. This is sometimes referred to as "bump and run" reporting.
15. Baldly and brazenly lie. A favorite way of doing this is to attribute the "facts" furnished the public to a plausible-sounding, but anonymous, source.
16. Expanding further on numbers 4 and 5, have your own stooges "expose" scandals and champion popular causes. Their job is to pre-empt real opponents and to play 99-yard football. A variation is to pay rich people for the job who will pretend to spend their own money.
17. Flood the Internet with agents. This is the answer to the question, "What could possibly motivate a person to spend hour upon hour on Internet news groups defending the government and/or the press and harassing genuine critics?" Don't the authorities have defenders enough in all the newspapers, magazines, radio, and television? One would think refusing to print critical letters and screening out serious callers or dumping them from radio talk shows would be control enough, but, obviously, it is not.
18. http://www.dabney.com/wacomuseum/library/martin1.html


Alfred Lambremont Webre, JD, MEd
ICIS-Institute for Cooperation in Space
3339 West 41 Avenue
Vancouver, BC V6N3E5 CANADA
Tel: 604-733-8134
Fax: 604-733-8135
Email: peace@peaceinspace.org
Campaign: http://www.peaceinspace.org
Exopolitics: http://www.exopolitics.com
ICIS: http://www.peaceinspace.com
Click here to send a letter to the Canadian Parliamentary Leaders for public ET Hearings
http://www.peaceinspace.net

Roxanne Stapleton
rstapleton@trinidadexpress.com

Sunday, December 25th 2005

Part One

THERE is a growing number of well-reputed professors and scientists around the world, who are raising the alarm about mobile phone base transmitter masts.

They are cautioning that there is an increased incidence of cancer in people working or residing in the vicinity of the masts.

But the global telecoms industry is sticking to its guns, purporting that people in close proximity to the masts are safe and they (providers) are heeding industry standards for radiation emissions.

However, scientific experts counter that those very industry standards are not stringent enough and should be reviewed.

Researcher, Steve Gamble notes that the US, Australian and New Zealand Governments take the transmitter mast issue "seriously enough at both the national and local levels to adopt the precautionary principle and introduced policies of prudent avoidance, which have effectively banned the erection of these masts from school buildings and residential areas and in other densely populated locations".

Mark Townsend in a story carried in The Observer also gave a rather grim take on what was transpiring in Britain.

He wrote: "Schools and hospitals in Britain are making millions of pounds from deals to site mobile phone masts on their premises despite health concerns.

"More than 1,000 schools and hospitals have accepted offers from telecom companies averaging £10,000 to house masts and antennae on their premises."

Townsend reports that campaigners claimed they had identified 15 cancer clusters among people living close to the masts.

The campaigners used special meters which detect microwave emissions from nearby masts.

He wrote that although there is no direct evidence linking microwave radiation from masts to ill health, the campaigners findings ignited calls for a fresh inquiry into the biological effects of mobile phone masts.

Townsend noted that Phil Willis, Liberal Democrat MP, chairman of the all-party Parliamentary group on Mobile Telecommunications, said: "When you examine some of these clusters there are patterns that clearly give credence to the biological effects being looked at in association with these stations."

He also wrote that pressure groups Mast Action UK and Mast Sanity gathered research using complaints from residents living near mobile phone masts who reported a high incidence of cancer and other adverse health effects.

"The clusters include one at Crediton, near Exeter, where residents reported four cancers and three leukemias cases within 300 metres of a mast.

"Another at Gainsborough, Lincolnshire involves four brain haemorrhages-three among next-door neighbours, in residents living within 100 metres of a mast," he said.

Another cluster was identified at Milford Haven, Wales where six people had been diagnosed with cancer since a mast was erected.

At a family home which was described by Townsend as being "sandwiched between two masts, one at a hospital and the other on the roof of an office block", the wife was diagnosed with skin cancer, her husband with throat cancer and their 13 year-old daughter complained of a rash.

http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_news?id=124397534

--------

SERIOUS CONGLOMERATES OF CANCER AND OTHER PATHOLOGIES THAT HAVE BEEN TIE BY THE POPULATION NEXT TO ANTENNAS OF TELEPHONY http://omega.twoday.net/stories/466717/

Cancer Clusters in Vicinity to Cell-Phone Transmitter Stations
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/580224/

Cancer Cluster in Spain 2000-2005
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1319986/

Ausgegrenzt und unsichtbar

UNICEF-Jahresbericht „Zur Situation der Kinder in der Welt 2006“ - „Armutsbekämpfung und Kinderschutz gehören zusammen“.

http://www.sonnenseite.com/index.php?pageID=6&news:oid=n4292

Im Norden Chinas fällt der Grundwasserspiegel jedes Jahr um 1,50 Meter. Das Gleiche gilt für weite Teile Indiens - hauptsächlich im Punjab, dem Brotkorb des Landes. Auch im Süden der USA geht es langsam aber sicher an die Wassersubstanz - vor allem wegen Bewässerung für die Landwirtschaft. Spanien und Portugal hatten im letzten Sommer große Wasserprobleme.

http://www.sonnenseite.com/index.php?pageID=18&article:oid=a4272

David Sirota
Sirotablog
12.20.05
WorkingforChange.com blog

Oh, you've been hearing it everytime you tune into politics: Democrats in Washington saying they are serious about taking back the House. And yes, we would all like to believe them. But there is, after all, one essential, minimal, base-level indicator to seriousness - whether Democrats will even bother to show up to vote on the most critical legislation. And all you had to do was look at the most critical vote of the year early yesterday morning to suddenly realize that Democrats might still be oh-so-comfy in the minority.

The vote was on the GOP budget bill - you remember, the one that newspapers note "cuts $39.7 billion from social-welfare programs like Medicare, Medicaid and child-support collection." It passed by 6 votes. Why should we be asking Democrats questions about this vote when the House is controlled by Republicans? Well take a look at the official roll call and you'll see that 6 Democrats didn't show up to vote. They are:

Rep. Joe Baca (D-CA)
Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL)
Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL)
Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA)
Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX)
Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA)

Yes, you read that right - one of those missing six was Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) - the guy who heads up the Democrat's House campaign committee. You know, the committee that is supposed to be most seriously focused on developing a message and a record that helps Democrats win back the House in 2006. [...] Read the rest at Workingforchange.com: http://tinyurl.com/cye2x


© Virginia Metze

By JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: December 21, 2005
The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 - A surveillance program approved by President Bush to conduct eavesdropping without warrants has captured what are purely domestic communications in some cases, despite a requirement by the White House that one end of the intercepted conversations take place on foreign soil, officials say.

The officials say the National Security Agency's interception of a small number of communications between people within the United States was apparently accidental, and was caused by technical glitches at the National Security Agency in determining whether a communication was in fact "international."

Telecommunications experts say the issue points up troubling logistical questions about the program. At a time when communications networks are increasingly globalized, it is sometimes difficult even for the N.S.A. to determine whether someone is inside or outside the United States when making a cellphone call or sending an e-mail message. As a result, people that the security agency may think are outside the United States are actually on American soil.

Vice President Dick Cheney entered the debate over the legality of the program on Tuesday, casting the program as part of the administration's efforts to assert broader presidential powers. [...] Read more at: http://tinyurl.com/e36fn


© Virginia Metze

The Democratic Party Blog
Posted by Tim Tagaris on December 20, 2005 at 09:12 AM
Anchorage Daily News:

The official vote results from the 2004 general election are riddled with mistakes and discrepancies, are impossible for the public to make sense of, and should be corrected as soon as possible, the Alaska Democratic Party says.

To most Alaskans, the election may seem like a long-done deal, something that concerns only political junkies, candidates and analysts. But questions have been swirling ever since the polls closed about how the results were tabulated and the reliability of the electronic voting machines, said Kay Brown, spokeswoman for the Democratic Party.

For instance, when district-by-district vote counts are totaled, President Bush received 292,267 votes, according to an analysis by the Democrats. But his official total was 190,889, a difference of more than 100,000 votes, according to the state Web site.
[...] Read more at http://tinyurl.com/72jkd


© Virginia Metze

AMERICAblog.com
by John in DC - 12/21/2005 10:01:00 AM

Bush said Democratic leaders endorsed his domestic spying program, and we're now finding out that those very same Dem leaders either weren't briefed at all on the program OR expressed their grave concern about it at the time. That hardly counts as "the Dems endorsed it."

Go Nancy! The following is Pelosi's press release:

Pelosi Requests Declassification of Her Letter on NSA Activities
Washington, D.C. -- House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today on her request to the Director of National Intelligence to declassify a letter she wrote several years ago to the Bush Administration expressing concerns about the activities of the National Security Agency.

"When I learned several years ago that the National Security Agency had been authorized to conduct the activities that President Bush referred to in his December 17 radio address, I expressed my strong concerns in a classified letter to the Administration and later verbally.

"Today, in an effort to shed light on my concerns, I requested that the Director of National Intelligence quickly declassify my letter and the Administration's response to it and make them both available to the public. [...] Read the rest of her press release at http://tinyurl.com/9j7h9


© Virginia Metze

By Carol D. Leonnig and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 22, 2005; Page A01

The presiding judge of a secret court that oversees government surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases is arranging a classified briefing for her fellow judges to address their concerns about the legality of President Bush's domestic spying program, according to several intelligence and government sources.

Several members of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said in interviews that they want to know why the administration believed secretly listening in on telephone calls and reading e-mails of U.S. citizens without court authorization was legal. Some of the judges said they are particularly concerned that information gleaned from the president's eavesdropping program may have been improperly used to gain authorized wiretaps from their court

"The questions are obvious," said U.S. District Judge Dee Benson of Utah. "What have you been doing, and how might it affect the reliability and credibility of the information we're getting in our court?" [...] Read it in the Washington Post: http://tinyurl.com/adnxf Also reprinted in TruthOut: http://tinyurl.com/dfb5h


© Virginia Metze

Bush on the defensive after revelations on domestic spying

Updated: 5:36 a.m. ET Dec. 20, 2005
Associated Press, MSNBC

WASHINGTON - Some Democrats say they never approved a domestic wiretapping program, undermining suggestions by President Bush and his senior advisers that the plan was fully vetted in a series of congressional briefings.

“I feel unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse, these activities,” West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, said in a handwritten letter to Vice President Dick Cheney in July 2003. “As you know, I am neither a technician nor an attorney.”

Rockefeller is among a small group of congressional leaders who have received briefings on the administration’s four-year-old program to eavesdrop — without warrants — on international calls and e-mails of Americans and others inside the United States with suspected ties to al-Qaida. [...] Read more at http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10542545/


© Virginia Metze

Compromises on key bills in the Senate force GOP to face hard issues in an election year.

By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the December 23, 2005 edition

WASHINGTON – In the gray-suited halls of the US Senate, few days have produced more high drama than the one this Wednesday - which yielded no fewer than five major pieces of legislation, 11th-hour wheeling and dealing, and sober messages to some powerful senators that it is no longer politics as usual in terms of party solidarity.

Wrapping up work for the year, the Senate passed two key defense bills - dropping a plan in one of them to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to drilling - and a six-month extension of the USA Patriot Act. Senators also approved a $601.6 billion social spending bill, and identified nearly $40 billion in spending cuts.

But before the final curtain, Democrats and a handful of moderate Republicans managed to ensure that some especially divisive issues, ranging from privacy rights to the fairness of the US tax code, come up early in 2006 - an election year. For Democrats, it's the high-water mark for minority clout since Republicans took control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. [...] Read the rest at: http://tinyurl.com/8ug25


© Virginia Metze

Shhhh! They Could Be Listening In On This Column!

by Steve Young
Dec. 22, 2005
American Politics Journal

Dec. 22, 2005 -- HOLLYWOOD (apj.us) -- Is there anything richer or more important a lesson for our children than to learn from one's failures? And has there been a year more filled with opportunities for one man to learn from than the failures that have has befallen one man's legacy than President Bush's 2005? Katrina, FEMA and Michael Brown... continued war... administration-connected indictments... social security reform... Veterans Administration deficit... torture revelations... paying for positive columns in Iraqi papers... Terry Schiavo... Harriet Miers... 9/11 Commission "F"s... plummeting popularity... and so much more!

But, wowzers -- talk about blundering!

This past week is one for the history (of "How To Crush The Bill of Rights") books. Or was it that with time running out on '05, George Bush wanted to put a lock on TIME's Man-of- the-Year cover (and this should not be perceived as a reminiscence of Hitler's TIME cover boy days -- though you have every right to do so).

It seems that for the past few years, the President secretly authorized National Security Agency taps into the homes and businesses of American citizens without court-approved warrants. [...] Read the rest of this article at http://tinyurl.com/89yvc


© Virginia Metze

RAW STORY
Originally published on Thursday December 22, 2005
Last Updated: 12/22/3905

John Conyers, Jr., (D - MI) ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, and 26 other Congressmen today submitted a resolution of inquiry into warrantless wiretapping of citizens on U.S. soil.

The resolution would demand that Attorney General Gonzales turn over documents believed to be in his possession authorizing the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance. It would also request documents detailing any legal recommendations regarding the order.

Deadline for the hand-over would be 14 days. [...] Conyer's statement appears next. Here are some statements from the Conyer memo:

"These revelations raise some of the most serious legal and constitutional questions conceivable in our democracy - whether our own government is able to intercept our most private conversations without establishing to any independent party that such eavesdropping is in any way necessary or related to a possible crime. For 25 years under FISA we have created special procedures for obtaining intelligence information on U.S. soil. The standard for getting a wiretap warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is so low that only 5 out of the 19,000 applications have been denied since 1978. We even allow FISA orders to be obtained on a retroactive basis for the first 72 hours, in case the government needs to move with great speed. [...] Read it at http://tinyurl.com/da34v


© Virginia Metze