The ousted Kyrgyzstan president, Askar Akayev, last night accused the US of being behind the “anti-constitutional coup” which forced him to flee the country last week, and said he would only resign if given sufficient a guarantee of his personal safety.

In his first interview with the western media since he was driven from the central Asian state he had ruled for 15 years, Mr Akayev said “foreign interference” was “unconditionally an important aspect” in the dramatic events that culminated in his flight last Thursday.

“I think that their influence was prevailing,” he said when asked of US government involvement in the mayhem that is becoming known as the daffodil revolution. He added that the opposition was “supported by the [US organisations] the National Democratic Institute, Freedom House, and other organisations … They were providing training and finance,” he said. The US has maintained an airbase near the capital, Bishkek, ever since it persuaded Kyrgyzstan to host its Afghanistan campaign in 2001.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

WASHINGTON (AP) – House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on Thursday blamed Terri Schiavo’s death on what he contended was a failed legal system and he raised the possibility of trying to impeach some of the federal judges in the case.

“The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior,” said DeLay, R-Texas.

But a leading Democratic senator said DeLay’s comments were “irresponsible and reprehensible.” Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said DeLay should make sure that people know he is not advocating violence against judges.

DeLay, the second-ranking House GOP lawmaker, helped lead congressional efforts 10 days ago to enact legislation designed to prod the federal courts into ordering the reinsertion of Schiavo’s feeding tube. He said the courts’ refusal to do just that was a “perfect example of an out of control judiciary.”

Asked about the possibility of the House’s bringing impeachment charges against judges in the Schiavo case, DeLay said, “There’s plenty of time to look into that.”
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

Let’s shoot us up some judges–how dare they defend the law? The apparent intent of this whole Shiavo circus is to build up the fires of divisiveness that already exists. Graffiti has been springing up in my town: ‘F***ing leftists murdered Terry Shiavo’.

WASHINGTON (AP) – America’s spy agencies were “dead wrong” in most prewar assessments about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and know disturbingly little about current nuclear threats, a presidential commission said Thursday.

“Our collection agencies are often unable to gather intelligence on the very things we care the most about,” the panel concluded in an unsparing report.

It recommended dozens of organizational changes, and said President Bush can implement most of them without congressional action. It also urged the president to back up John Negroponte, his choice to be the new director of national intelligence, in any bureaucratic turf battles ahead.

“The central conclusion is one which I share. America’s intelligence community needs fundamental change,” Bush said at the White House after receiving the critique from a commission he was at first reluctant to appoint.
Full Article:apnews.my.com

I think my outrage quotient is all used up for the time being. This is how they are playing off their WMD scam. But hey they count on mass amnesia and that’s a good bet.

The board of the World Bank today approved the controversial nomination of Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld’s deputy at the Pentagon, as its new president.

Mr Wolfowitz, who will succeed James Wolfensohn on June 1, was assured of board approval after he won over European diplomats during a five-hour charm offensive in Brussels yesterday.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

All it takes is 5 hours of ‘charm’ and you too can win the right to f*** the world

More than 120 North American academics have begun campaigning to get the US state department to change its mind about banning a leading figure from the Nicaraguan Sandinista revolution from teaching in the US.

Dora María Téllez has been prevented from teaching at Harvard because she is considered to have taken part in “terrorist acts” – the Sandinistas’ overthrow of the dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979.

Ms Téllez was due to take up the post of Robert F Kennedy visiting professor of Latin American Studies at Harvard this spring when she was told that she would not be allowed to enter the country.

She has visited the US on many occasions in her profession as a historian. The decision to ban her appears to have been taken in response to the new national “anti-terror” policies.

“The accusation made by the state department against Dora María Téllez is not only a grave violation of her human rights but also amounts to political persecution of those who have engaged in overthrowing the atrocious dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua,” the petition says.

It likens her position to that of Nelson Mandela, who was also once accused of being the member of a terrorist organisation. “Today, the US administration puts in danger the life and security of many persons by arbitrarily accusing them of involvement in ‘terrorist activities’.”
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

Rip-offs by banks and money transfer firms are costing consumers up to 40% of the cash they send abroad, while transactions can take up to 10 days, according to a survey published today by the UK Department for International Development (DFID).
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

Manuel Valanzuela
Decline and Decrepitude 

03/07/05 “Information Clearing House” – – From the highest mountains to the lowest valleys a great energy has gone missing from the land once known as America, its pulsating and vibrant warmth no longer felt as the enveloping mist of the last four years spreads far and wide, from sea to shining sea, penetrating every porous cavity of escape. An energy of positive realms and humanist inclinations has been imprisoned, wasting away in the dungeons of human malice, replaced with the negative manifestation of an alternate universe devoid of light, spawned by miscreants hijacking the idea and principles of what the land once known as America was. 

From clear-cut forests to urban jungles, from golden prairies to steel-glass canyons, from arid deserts to honeycomb-looking, cookie-cutter suburbs, the winds of parallel worlds blow, causing drought throughout, poisoning lands once bountiful, bringing communal sickness to millions of citizens. In their surreal manifestations and hypocritical inclinations swaying and tilting the lone superpower into dimensions of lunacy, hatred and decrepitude, the winds of alternate universes have collided with those of normalcy, love and prosperity, transforming, for the worst, a nation and those residing inside it, creating a schism where non existed, helping send humanity on a collision course with itself, its most dangerous and formidable enemy. 

Come inside the belly of the beast, journeying outside the box of conditioned realities, venturing into new realms of thought, acquiring open minds and nascent understandings, willing to question what is thought to be known and what has been learned, no longer blind to new ways of seeing the world and no longer deaf to the wailing truth of a nation in utter pain and mental anguish.

Inside the belly of the beast the world presently finds itself trapped in, exploring through polluted bowels birthing malignant cancers spread by corporate indifference, continuing into diseased and enlarged entrails of gluttonous addictions, traversing black-blood veins soaked in oil, peering into the empty brain cavity of empire exhibiting corrosive mental disorders created by society itself, showcasing non-existent attention spans, Alzheimer’s-like amnesia, medicated chemical imbalances laced with conditioned fear and insecurity, and the remnants of anti-depressant, hyperactivity sequestering cocktails eating away the minds, imaginations and futures of youth. 

Inside the belly of the beast will we venture into, witnessing the overflowing testosterone of the human animal, the hate-filled, violence-seeking, fear controlled and deranged xenophobia of half the population, the ignorance fed by gutted educations and dumbed-down televised fictions, the castrated courage of the sane half of its citizenship, the silent acquiescence by the citizenry to mass murder and war crimes, the government and corporate controlled minds of people turned sheeple and the wisdom-lacking behaviors of so-called leadership. 

Let us observe a youthful empire in freefall, a nation in decadent decline, collapsing under its own weight and its own self-induced ignorance and unenlightenment, drunk off its arrogance and self-proclaimed aggrandizements of magnificence and manifest destiny. Let us be witness to a land in disrepair, a population in mental anguish. Let us examine a country decrepit in true moral values, empathy and wisdom, a nation quick to rise and fast to fall, lacking the experience of history and the wisdom of time. 
Full Article: informationclearinghouse.info

Few articles make as clear as this one that we are dealing with the culmination of a long history of male dominance and male violence. I know that violence and bestiality are NOT the defining elements of ‘human nature.’ The Christian construct of humans as fallen creatures who need outside intervention to be restored goes far to perpetrate this idea. We may well be ‘fallen’ but we can help ourselves and each other RISE to our TRUE human nature.

In this final part of the three-part series, the former weapons inspector details his beliefs about the neoconservative movement, the American legislative process and his hopes for the future.

Congressional Catch-22

Larisa Alexandrovna: Paul Wolfowitz stated prior to the Iraq invasion that Iraqi reconstruction would pay for itself. It seems that Mr. Wolfowitz, now charged with handling the World Bank, miscalculated. What is going on with the oil in Iraq?

Scott Ritter: Paul Wolfowitz was a salesman; his job was to sell a war. He acknowledged this in an interview with Vanity Fair magazine, in which he acknowledged that WMDs and the threat they posed, was nothing more than a vehicle to sell this war to America. Now you [get] to the war itself and selling it to Congress and [the] questions: How long will this take? Or how much will this cost?

Paul Wolfowitz lied to Congress about the costs of war. There is not a responsible member of government who thought this would be quick and cheap. There was nobody who believed that Iraq oil would pay for itself, no one in the oil business thought so.

What about oil companies, were they for the war or against it?

No oil professional in their right mind would support what is happening in Iraq. This isn’t part of a grand ‘oil’ strategy; it is simply pure unadulterated incompetence.

So they are concerned about their bottom lines, and chaos doesn’t forward that goal.

Right. Oil company executives are businessmen and they are in a business that requires long-term stability. They love dictators because they bring with them long-term stability. They don’t like new democracies because they are messy and unstable. I have not run into a major oil company that is willing to refurbish the Iraq oil fields and invest in oil field exploration and development. These are multi-billion dollar investments that, in order to be profitable, must be played out over decades. And in Iraq today you cannot speak out to projecting any stability in the near to mid-future.

OK, so now to Congress. They approved the war. I know we have discussed the post-9/11 reality and the pressure of not seeming unpatriotic.

Yes, but they also approved the war because Congress had been locked into a corner by the neocons in 1998. Our policy in Iraq since 1991 has been regime change.

How many times did G. H. W. Bush have to say ‘we will not remove sanctions until Saddam is removed from power?’ Bill Clinton inherited this policy of regime change, but the Bush policy was not an active policy, it was a passive policy to strangle, as it were, Saddam. It was not our policy to take him out through military strength. Saddam, however, was able to out-maneuver this policy, he did not get weaker he got stronger. The neocons played on the political implications of this, to box the Clinton administration and Congress into a corner.

When you declare Saddam to be a threat with WMDs and then do nothing, you have a political problem. The neocons played on this. In 1998, the Heritage Foundation, Paul Wolfowitz and the American Enterprise Institute basically drafted legislation [that] became the Iraq Liberation Act. This is public law. So when people ask why did Congress vote for the current war in Iraq, it is simply that they had already voted for it in 1998, they were trapped by their own vote.

So your implication is that in our current foreign policy the neocons have set the tone via thinktanks or supposed thinktanks?

Yes. Look at who funds the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation, and I think you’ll have your answer.

The American Heritage Leninist

What do you think these institutions are trying to achieve? I know the public claim is conservative values, but there is a some speculation regarding what appears more like Leninist, even Trotskyite values, especially given the current domestic government involvement and control or attempt at control of almost every facet of society, economy, family, etc. Even the term ‘Leninist’ was used by the Heritage Foundation to describe their approach to Social Security during the 1980s (read it here – PDF).

A high-level source, a neocon at that, within the system has said to me directly that ‘John Bolton’s job is to destroy the U.N., Rice’s job is to destroy the State Department and replace it with a vehicle of facilitation for making the Pentagon’s national security policy.’

And what of Karen Hughes’ appointment?

Hughes – she is a salesperson; she will sell the policy. She is irrelevant. She is nothing. Her appointment means nothing. Rice has already capitulated to the Pentagon and the White House, and Hughes’ appointment is but a manifestation of that larger reality.

The neocons are parasites. They build nothing. They bring nothing. They don’t have a foundation. They don’t stand for business. They don’t stand for ideology. They use a host to facilitate and grow their own power. They are parasites that latch onto oil until it is no longer convenient. They latch on to democracy until it is no longer convenient.

Rice’s appointment to the State Department is simply to reshape it into a neocon vehicle.

Why the State Department? Why Rice?

The State Department still has free thinkers in it. Rice is a dilettante. Anyone who was there during the Reagan era and her advising on Soviet policy knows how inept she is. She is not there because she is a brilliant secretary of state.

The media has bought into this, because the neocons cleverly put a woman, an African-American woman at that, into this position. So when Rice goes abroad, people do not look at the stupid things she says, they look at what she was wearing and such.

‘Godless people who want power, nothing more’

So you believe the neocons are elitist parasites?

Yes, elitism is the perfect term.

Do you consider it localized or global elitism?

The neocons believe in what they think is a noble truth, power of the few, the select few. These are godless people who want power, nothing more. They do not have a country or an allegiance, they have an agenda. These people might hold American passports, but they are not Americans because they do not believe in the Constitution. They believe in the power of the few, not a government for or by the people. They are a few and their agenda is global.
Full Interview: alternet.org

How do you view recent developments in Venezuela?

When Chavez was first elected and I began following events here, I could see the writing on the wall, as I could see it in Chile in 1970, as I could see it in Nicaragua in 1979-80. There was no doubt in my mind that the United States would try to change the course of events in Venezuela as they had in Chile and in Nicaragua, and before that in various other countries. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to really follow events day to day, but I did try to follow them from a distance, and eventually when Eva Golinger started her website it came to my attention and I began reading some of the documents on the website and I could see the application here of the same mechanisms that were used in Nicaragua in the 1980s in the penetration of civil society and the efforts to influence the political process and the electoral process here in Venezuela.

In Nicaragua I had in 1979 I think, just after the Sandinistas took over, written an analysis of what I believed would be the US program there and practically everything I wrote about happened, because these techniques, through the CIA, through AID, through the State Department, and since 1984 through the National Endowment for Democracy, all follow a certain pattern.

In Nicaragua the program for influencing the outcome of the 1990 elections began about a year and a half before the elections, for uniting the opposition, for creating a civic movement, all these things seem to be happening again in Venezuela. So this is my interest politically in Venezuela, is to see these things happening and to write from time to time about them.

What was the most prominent strategy of US intelligence when you were at the CIA, for protecting US ‘strategic interests’ in Latin America?

When I was in the agency from the late 1950s on through to the late 1960s, the agency had operations going internationally, regionally, and nationally, attempting to penetrate and manipulate the institutions of power in countries around the world, and these were things that I did in the CIA—the penetration and manipulation of political parties, trade unions, youth and student movements, intellectual, professional and cultural societies, religious groups and women’s groups and especially of the public information media. We, for example, paid journalists to publish our information as if it were the journalists’ own information.

The propaganda operations were continuous.

We also spent large amounts of money intervening in elections to favor our candidates over others. The CIA took a Manichean view of the world, that is to say there were the people on our side, and there were people who were against us. And the agency’s job was to penetrate, weaken, divide, and destroy those political forces that were seen to be the enemy, which are those to the left of social democrats, normally, and to support and strengthen the political forces that were seen to be friendly to US interests in all these institutions I just mentioned a few minutes ago.
Full Article: axisoflogic.com

…”Falluja is safe,” said Hadima Khalifa Abed, 42, who returned to her ruined home in January with her husband and 10 children. “But it is safe like a prison.”

American military officials here say they face a difficult choice. Easing the harsh security measures might help revive the economy and cut the 50 percent unemployment rate; it could also allow the return of the insurgents who ran Falluja from last April until the American intervention in November. Even now, insurgents lob occasional mortar shells into the city, and a number of contractors have been killed here.

There are other obstacles. Falluja still lacks a mayor and a city council because of the new Iraqi National Assembly’s failure to form a government. The American military is reluctant to make decisions that will shape the city for decades, and the resulting power vacuum has been crippling.

Hundreds of new police officers, trained in Jordan, are expected to arrive in the city soon, American military officials say. Nongovernmental organizations have donated truckloads of equipment for fire stations, hospitals and schools. But there are no police stations for the officers to work in, and there are no new fire stations because no one has the authority to decide where to build them.
Full Article: nytimes.com

The optimistic headline and pics accompanying this article contrast starkly with its content. Most people just skim headlines and captions anyway.