Ein Gespräch mit Greg Muttit, Autor eines Berichts über die geplante Privatisierung des irakischen Erdöls, die den Irakern teuer zu stehen und den Ölkonzernen zugute kommt.

http://www.telepolis.de/tp/r4/artikel/21/21448/1.html

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/nov2005/abr2-n29.shtml


Informant: Friends

About 40 investigators and prosecutors are looking into the activities of several lawmakers, including Senator Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), Congressman John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.) and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), who is currently facing unrelated campaign finance charges in his home state of Texas.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/112905O.shtml

Bill Berkowitz writes that the Bush administration is winning the battle to institute public/private partnerships on America's cash-strapped public lands. Is total privatization coming down the pike?

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/112905N.shtml

Lobbyist Jack Abramoff sought the help of US Interior Department officials to save the job of an Indian leader under fire for $37 million in fees his tribe paid Abramoff and a partner, sources say.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/112905L.shtml

Something to be thankful for this week: States refusing to cave to Bush's ineffective sex ed policies.

http://www.tompaine.com/uncommonsense/index.php#6856

Christian Science Monitor
by Philip Gold

11/28/05

There is a process in American political life by which the unthinkable becomes the inevitable and the inevitable becomes, inevitably, a big mess. Central to this process is a peculiarly American inability to ask, let alone answer, the vital questions of any endeavor: an inability empowered by that peculiarly American attitude, 'We don't have to understand the world, we only need to know about us.' This is how we got into Vietnam. This is how we left. This is how we got into Iraq. It would be tragic, were we to leave the same way. In the spring of 2002, a year before the event, I became one of America's first conservatives to oppose the Iraq war. I did so for so many hard military, political, and economic reasons that they amounted to a moral reason...

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1128/p09s01-coop.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Washington Times
by Nat Hentoff

11/28/05

The self-styled 'world's greatest deliberative body,' the U.S. Senate, voted 84 to 14 on Nov. 15 on an 'improved' Sen. Lindsey Graham amendment to the Defense Department authorization bill that prevents prisoners at Guantanamo from filing habeas corpus petitions to our federal courts regarding their conditions of confinement. This includes complaints of abuses and alleged torture from 'enhanced' interrogations. In its present form, this Graham amendment was co-sponsored by Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat, and Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican. Yet, the Supreme Court ruled in Rasul et al v. Bush (2004) that Guantanamo detainees do have due process rights to challenge, under habeas corpus, the legality of their imprisonment. That decision led to lawyers going to Guantanamo Bay, telling us what's going on and then filing habeas corpus petitions in federal district courts in Washington. The Graham-Levin-Kyl amendment cuts off that judicial route except in a very limited form that does not include the actual conditions under which the prisoners are being held...

http://tinyurl.com/8r4s2


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

The American Prospect
by Robert B. Reich

11/28/05

The War in Iraq may end sooner rather than later – not because prominent congressmen or military experts say we should get out, and not because the American public is losing patience. It will end relatively soon because we can't afford the price tag of recruiting enough soldiers to fight it. Our soldiers comprise what's called an 'all-volunteer' army. But the job of soldiering is 'voluntary' the same way any paid job is voluntary. You're not forced to do it. You're paid to do it. Since Richard Nixon ended the draft in 1973, most of the people who join the military do so because it's the most attractive job available to them. Some are motivated by patriotism, of course, but let's not kid ourselves. People facing a choice between a job in the private sector that's near home and safe, and one in the military that's thousands of miles away and may not be safe, will choose to remain civilians -- unless the military job pays more. And for any given age and level of education, it does...

http://www.prospect.org/web/view-web.ww?id=10665


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

The Nation
by staff

11/28/05

"History may well record that the beginning of the end of the American nightmare in Iraq came on November 17, when an old warrior said it was time for the troops to come home. But that will happen only if Congressional Democrats seize the opportunity that Representative John Murtha has offered them to become the tribune of popular sentiment against the war. Like many Americans, Murtha, a Korean and Vietnam war veteran who for three decades has been the pre-eminent Democratic hawk in the House, did not come quickly to the conclusion that the fight in Iraq will not be won by sacrificing more American lives. A backer of the 2002 resolution authorizing George W. Bush to use force, Murtha remained a defender of the misadventure long after many Democrats, and even some Republicans, began to question it. But when Murtha moved, he moved all the way. Describing the war as the result of 'a flawed policy wrapped in illusion,' he told Congress. 'Our military is suffering. The future of the country is at risk. ... Our military has done everything that has been asked of them. ... It is time to bring them home'...

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051212/editors


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp