Is Obama devotee of monkey-god idol?

The Right Wingnuts at Worldnetdaily.com have no shame.

A group of Hindus in India have presented Sen. Barack Obama's campaign with a two-foot Hindu monkey-god idol after hearing the candidate carries a smaller version of the Lord Hanuman good-luck charm with him as he vies for the presidency.


Earlier this week, according to reports in India, Obama representative Carolyn Sauvage-Mar accepted the gold-plated statue, promising to pass it on to the candidate after is it sanctified through ritual Hindu prayers.


"The idol is being presented to Obama as he is reported to be a Lord Hanuman devotee and carries with him a locket of the monkey god along with other good luck charms," reported the Times of India.


An hour-long prayer meeting to sanctify the idol was conducted by Congress party leader Brijmohan Bhama and temple priests.


"Obama has deep faith in Lord Hanuman, and that is why we are presenting an idol of Hanuman to him," said Bhama.

How the mortgage industry stole black America's hard-won wealth.

The 'Mortgage Meltdown' Was No Accident | Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace | AlterNet
Sobering reading.

McCain Gets $373,429 From His Own Tax Plan

More proof of a third term for Bush. Cheney certainly got rich. McCain also will get a windfall.
Think Progress

The McCains', who report an annual income of over $6 million, would receive well over $300,000 from John McCain's tax plan.

It is Politically Inconvenient to Acknowledge Iraq is All About Oil

Informed Comment

As Alan Greenspan put it, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."

Juan has an outstanding historical article on Iraq and the West's efforts to possess it's oil throughout the 20th and now the 21st century.

Key Army general accuses Bush administration of war crimes over prisoner abuse

TwinCities.com

The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing "war crimes" and called for those responsible to be held to account. The remarks by retired Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.


"After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes," Taguba wrote. "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."


Taguba, whose 2004 investigation documented chilling abuses at Abu Ghraib, is thought to be the most senior official to have accused the administration of war crimes. "The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture," he wrote.


[..]Doctors and mental-health experts examined 11 detainees held for long periods in the prison system that President Bush established after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. All of them were eventually released without charges. The doctors and experts determined the men had been subject to cruelties that ranged from isolation, sleep deprivation and hooding to electric shocks, beatings and, in one case, being forced to drink urine.


The report concludes that former detainees are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and injuries that can be traced to their imprisonment. "Some of these men really are, several years later, very severely scarred," said Barry Rosenfeld, a psychology professor at Fordham University who conducted psychological tests on six of the 11 detainees covered by the study. "It's a testimony to how bad those conditions were and how personal the abuse was."


Bush has said repeatedly that the United States doesn't condone torture.


[..]"All credible allegations of abuse are thoroughly investigated and, if substantiated, those responsible are held accountable," said Navy Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.


The Defense Department responds to concerns raised by the International Committee for the Red Cross, he said, which has access to detainees under military control.


"It adds little to the public discourse to draw sweeping conclusions based upon dubious allegations regarding remote medical assessments of former detainees, now far removed from detention," Gordon said.


The physicians group said its experts, who had experience studying torture's effects, spent two days with each former captive and conducted intensive exams and interviews. They administered tests to detect exaggeration. In two of the 11 cases, the group was able to review medical records.


The report, "Broken Laws, Broken Lives," concurs with a five-part McClatchy investigation of Guantanamo published this week. Among its findings were that abuse occurred -- primarily at prisons in Afghanistan where detainees were held en route to Guantanamo -- and that many of the prisoners were wrongly detained.


Also this week, a probe by the Senate Armed Services Committee revealed how senior Pentagon officials pushed for harsher interrogation methods over the objections of top military lawyers. Those methods later surfaced in Afghanistan and Iraq.


Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld didn't specifically approve of the worst abuses, but neither he nor the White House enforced strict limits on how detainees would be treated. There was no "bright line of abuse which could not be transgressed," former Navy general counsel Alberto Mora told the Senate committee.


Leonard Rubenstein, president of Physicians for Human Rights, said there was a direct connection between the Pentagon decisions and the abuse his group uncovered. "The result was a horrific stew of pain, degradation and ... suffering," he said.

There is no Iraqi insurgency, military experts say

AlterNet

A group of military thinkers and Iraq war veterans disputes the claim that the U.S. is waging counterinsurgency in Iraq. They argue that the insurgency has degenerated into a much more complex and chaotic conflict:

[I]n Iraq, "the bulk" of what used to be the insurgents have "now realign[ed] themselves with the American forces" against "the nihilistic-Islamist terrorist Al Qaeda in Iraq," Lt. Col. Douglass Ollivant notes in the latest edition of Perspectives on Politics, which is devoted to a critique of the now-famous counterinsurgency manual. "With the Sunni nationalists at least temporarily allied and AQI deprived of its sanctuary among the Sunni population, just who are the insurgents in Iraq against whom a counterinsurgency might be conducted?"


Instead, what seems to be going on in Iraq is a "competition among ethnic and sectarian communities for power and resources," as General David Petraeus put it. Shi'ites are fighting Shi'ites; Sunnis are battling Sunnis; splinter groups from both sects are waging a low-level religious war; AQI and other jihadists are stirring chaos; and criminal gangs trying to profit from the mayhem. It's an "extremely difficult and lethal problem," observes Lt. Col. Ollivant, who, until recently, was the chief of planning for U.S. military operations in Baghdad. "But it "is not exactly an insurgency."

This distinction has profound implications, and not just in terms of tactics. The rationale for continued U.S. occupation hinges on the pretext that we're fighting to preserve a legitimate, viable Iraqi government. The myth is that the U.S. troops are helping to Iraqis to stand up so that we can stand down. In fact, we're occupying a hostile polity, not supporting a fledgling government.

Guantanamo became a recruiting ground for Al Qaeda/Taleban

TwinCities.com

Mohammed Naim Farouq was a thug in the lawless Zormat district of eastern Afghanistan. He ran a kidnapping and extortion racket, and he controlled his turf with a band of gunmen who rode around in trucks with AK-47 rifles. U.S. troops detained him in 2002, although he had no clear ties to the Taliban or al-Qaida. By the time Farouq was released from Guantanamo the next year, however -- after more than 12 months of what he described as abuse and humiliation at the hands of American soldiers -- he'd made connections to high-level militants.


In fact, he'd become a Taliban leader. When the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency released a stack of 20 "most wanted" playing cards in 2006 identifying militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- with Osama bin Laden at the top -- Farouq was 16 cards into the deck.


A McClatchy Newspapers investigation found that instead of confining terrorists, Guantanamo often produced more of them by rounding up common criminals, conscripts, low-level foot soldiers and men with no allegiance to radical Islam -- thus inspiring in them a deep hatred of the United States -- and then housing them in cells next to radical Islamists.


The radicals were quick to exploit the flaws in the U.S. detention system. Soldiers, guards or interrogators at the U.S. bases at Bagram or Kandahar in Afghanistan had abused many of the detainees, and they arrived at Guantanamo enraged at America.


Taliban and al-Qaida leaders in the cells around them were ready to preach their firebrand interpretation of Islam and the need to wage jihad, Islamic holy war, against the West. Guantanamo became a school for jihad, complete with a council of elders who issued fatwas, binding religious instructions, to the other detainees.


Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby, until recently the commanding officer at Guantanamo, acknowledged that senior militant leaders gained influence and control in his prison. "We have that full range of (Taliban and al-Qaida) leadership here, why would they not continue to be functional as an organization?" he said in a telephone interview. "I must make the assumption that there's a fully functional al-Qaida cell here at Guantanamo."


They were aware that Guantanamo was churning out new militant leaders. In a classified 2005 review of 35 detainees released from Guantanamo, Pakistani police intelligence concluded that the men -- the majority of whom had been subjected to "severe mental and physical torture," according to the report -- had "extreme feelings of resentment and hatred against USA."


"A lot of our friends are working against the Americans now, because if you torture someone without any reason, what do you expect?" Issa Khan, a Pakistani former detainee, said in an interview in Islamabad. "Many people who were in Guantanamo are now working with the Taliban."


In interviews, former U.S. Defense Department officials acknowledged the problem, but none of them would speak about it openly because of its implications: U.S. officials mistakenly sent a lot of men who weren't hardened terrorists to Guantanamo, but by the time they were released, some of them had become just that.


Requests for comment from senior Defense Department officials went unanswered. The Pentagon official in charge of detainee affairs, Sandra Hodgkinson, declined interview requests even after she was given a list of questions.


However, dozens of former detainees, many of whom were reluctant to talk for fear of being branded as spies by the militants, described a network -- at times fragmented, and at times startling in its sophistication -- that allowed Islamist radicals to gain power inside Guantanamo:

• Militants recruited new detainees by offering to help them memorize the Quran and study Arabic. They conducted the lessons, infused with firebrand theology, between the mesh walls of cells, from the other side of a fence during exercise time or, in lower-security blocks, during group meetings.


• Taliban and al-Qaida leaders appointed cellblock leaders. When there was a problem with the guards, such as allegations of Quran abuse or rough searches of detainees, these "local" leaders reported up their chains of command whether the men in their block had fought back with hunger strikes or by throwing cups of urine and feces at guards. The senior leaders then decided whether to call for large-scale hunger strikes or other protests.


• Al-Qaida and Taliban leaders at Guantanamo issued rulings that governed detainees' behavior. Shaking hands with female guards was haram -- forbidden -- men should pray five times a day and talking with American soldiers should be kept to a minimum.
  

The recruiting and organizing don't end at Guantanamo. After detainees are released, they're visited by militants who try to cement the relationships formed in prison.

Maliki raises possibility that Iraq might ask U.S. to leave

McClatchy Washington Bureau

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki raised the possibility that his country won't sign a status of forces agreement with the United States and will ask U.S. troops to go home when their U.N. mandate to be in Iraq expires at the end of the year.


Maliki made the comment after weeks of complaints from Shiite Muslim lawmakers that U.S. proposals that would govern a continued troop presence in Iraq would infringe on Iraq's sovereignty.


"Iraq has another option that it may use," Maliki said during a visit to Amman, Jordan. "The Iraqi government, if it wants, has the right to demand that the U.N. terminate the presence of international forces on Iraqi sovereign soil."


Earlier, Maliki acknowledged that talks with the U.S. on a status of forces agreement "reached an impasse" after the American negotiators presented a draft that would have given the U.S. access to 58 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and immunity from prosecution for both U.S. soldiers and private contractors.


The Iraqis rejected those demands, and U.S. diplomats have submitted a second draft, which Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih told McClatchy included several major concessions. Among those would be allowing Iraq to prosecute private contractors for violations of Iraqi law and requiring U.S. forces to turn over to Iraqi authorities Iraqis that the Americans detain.
[...]
"When we got to demands made by the American side we found that they greatly infringe on the sovereignty of Iraq and this is something we can ever accept," Maliki said. "We reached a clear disagreement. But I can assure you that all Iraqis would reject an agreement that violates Iraqi sovereignty in any way."

Support Rep. Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment

Dear Friends,
I have just read and signed the petition: "Support Rep. Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment"
Please take a moment to read about this important issue, and join me in signing the petition. It takes just 30 seconds, but can truly make a difference. Please sign here.
Once you have signed, you can help even more by asking your friends and family to sign as well.
Thank you!

Strike on Iran nuclear sites under discussion again

What better way to distract a voting public from political and foreign policy failure and corruption than another war?
McClatchy Washington Bureau

Six months ago, after American intelligence agencies declared that Iran had shelved its nuclear-weapons program, the chances of a U.S. or Israeli military strike on Iran before President Bush left office seemed remote.


Now, thanks to persistent pressure from Israeli hawks and newly stated concerns by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the idea of a targeted strike meant to cripple Iran's nuclear program is getting a new hearing.


As Bush travels across Europe to gain support for possible new sanctions against Iran, Israeli leaders have been working to lay the psychological foundation for a possible military strike if diplomacy falters.


In public threats and private briefings with American decision-makers, Israeli officials have been making the case that a military strike may be the only way to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions.


"Temperatures are rising," said Emily Landau, an Iran specialist at the Institute for National Security Studies, an independent Israeli research center.


Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have met twice in recent weeks for extended talks on Iran. America's intelligence chief, Mike McConnell, has traveled to Israel for private briefings, and Israeli Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz publicly declared that a military strike on Iran may be "unavoidable."


In Germany on Wednesday, Bush said that "all options are on the table" if Iran doesn't abandon its uranium enrichment programs.


Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad greeted Bush's initiative by mocking the latest international efforts.


"They've tried by military threats ... and political pressure to stop you from your luminous path," Ahmadinejad reportedly told a rally in Iran on Wednesday. "But today they have seen that all their planning has failed.


"Today the Iranian nation is standing on the nuclear height."


Intelligence analysts disagree over the likelihood of a military strike on Iran before Bush leaves office. But there's little disagreement about the possible repercussions, which could include missile strikes on Israel, an attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities, renewed attacks on Israel from Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon, a resurgence of Shiite Muslim resistance to U.S. forces in Iraq or an attack on oil shipping in the Persian Gulf, which could send crude oil prices well above $200 a barrel.


Some analysts view the latest Israeli threats as an attempt to put pressure on Iran to capitulate to Western demands. Other analysts see the Israeli campaign as intended to press the Bush administration to take the lead if the two nations decide to launch a military strike on Iran.


"The most likely scenario is that the Israelis will train and prepare as if they are very serious -- and that's part of the bluff to get the U.S. engaged," said John McCreary, a retired intelligence analyst for the U.S. Department of Defense.

Want the Truth from the Middle East? Try Mosaic from Link TV

Here is an outstanding source of news from all view points. You'll never hear much of this stuff on the network news in the US.

These steps could lower oil prices, but nobody'll take them

McClatchy Washington Bureau

Independent experts, however, said that government could take at least three other steps that could force oil and gasoline prices down immediately. Neither Bush nor McCain nor Obama endorse any of them.


Perhaps the quickest action, the experts said, would be ordering curbs on financial speculation. Financial industry heavyweights have acknowledged in recent testimony before Congress that such speculation is driving oil prices higher.


Pension funds, endowments and other big institutional investors are pumping big money into index funds linked to commodities, including oil, driving up demand -- and prices. The popular Goldman Sachs Commodities Index attracted $260 billion in investment last year, compared to $13 billion five years earlier.


Complicating any effort to harness that, about 30 percent of the trading in crude oil is done in "dark areas" -- markets in London and Dubai -- that aren't regulated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).


President Bush could order the CFTC to regulate U.S. investments in those markets with a snap of his fingers, said Michael Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland and a former director of trading for the CFTC.


"Essentially this could be ended this afternoon if the Bush administration had the stomach to do it," he said. "Those abdications of responsibility and allowing these exchanges to trade in 'dark' markets ... provides an environment for speculators to thrive."


The CFTC is investigating the link between speculation and oil prices but hasn't scheduled any action.


A second partial solution would be to boost the supply of oil available on the market by releasing as much as 1 million barrels a day of oil now held in the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That step is being pushed by, among others, the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank run by several former Clinton administration officials.


Do that for 90 days -- through the summer driving season when consumer demand for gasoline is highest -- and the reserve would lose less than 15 percent of the oil held in case of national emergency.


"Put that on the market, and the price of oil will fall," said Daniel J. Weiss, a senior fellow at the center.


It's not entirely clear that U.S. refineries could handle all that extra oil, but it would signal to traders of oil contracts that the U.S. market is adequately supplied.


Finally, the Federal Reserve could act to boost the weak dollar, which has led oil producers to demand higher prices for oil, because oil generally is traded in dollars. Oil producers want higher prices to offset the cost of converting dollars into euros and other currencies that have grown stronger against the dollar.


The best way to bolster a currency is to boost interest rates, but the Federal Reserve has been reluctant to do that with America teetering on the brink of recession. The central bank in Europe, where growth is more robust, is poised to raise rates, however. That could weaken the dollar further, and drive oil prices even higher.


Senate Democrats on Tuesday will try to muster 60 votes to allow a vote on legislation that could significantly affect the oil industry and oil prices. The legislation would, among other things, instruct CFTC regulators to require investors to plunk down more of their own money if they want to speculate in oil markets.

Democrats May Take Back Congress AND White House

AlterNet

During the month of April, 41.7% of Americans considered themselves to be Democrats. Just 31.6% said they were Republicans and 26.6% were not affiliated with either major party. This is the third straight month Obama's team has enjoyed a double-digit edge.


Forty-seven percent (47%) of women say they're Democrats and just under 30% identify with the GOP. Men are more evenly divided-36% say they're Democrats and 34% Republican.


Democrats have the advantage among all age groups and also lead among those who earn less than $75,000 a year. The two parties are even among higher-income adults. Party identification is essentially even among Investors but Democrats have a 47% to 25% advantage among non-Investors.


May was also the fourth straight month that the number of Democrats topped 41%. Prior to February of this year, neither party had ever reached the 39% level of support. Rasmussen Reports tracks this information based upon telephone interviews with approximately 15,000 adults per month and has been doing so since November 2002.

Top Israeli official: 'We will attack' Iran to halt nuclear program

On Deadline - USATODAY.com

As Israel's prime minister returned from discussions at the White House, his deputy said in a newspaper interview that "we will attack" Iran if Tehran continues its nuclear program, the Financial Times reports. Prime Minister Ehud Olmet also warned Iran-backed Hamas it might face a "harsh operation" in response to rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip.


"Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable," Shaul Mofaz told the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. "If Iran continues with its program for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The sanctions are ineffective."


It was the most explicit threat to date from a member of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's cabinet. In 1981, Israeli warplanes destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor.

Quick, Progressives Have to Become Players in the Global Media Game Before Corporations Control the Whole Thing

AlterNet

As progressives gather in Minneapolis for the fourth annual National Conference for Media Reform, the fast-moving digital media marketplace should be high on their agenda. A record wave of mergers, acquisitions and significant investment from venture capitalists is raising alarms about the impact these new players will have on a long-term social and political reform agenda. Since there's no evidence these investors are interested in anything but profit, it's up to progressive organizations to become players in the global media game.


Corporate giants are on a global digital shopping spree. Google, Microsoft, and Time Warner are gobbling up leading digital media companies (the current fight between Microsoft and Google for control over troubled Yahoo is an example of this trend). Venture capitalist investment in new media start-ups, including mobile social networks and broadband video platforms, is staggering. It reflects a keen corporate awareness about how a global generation of young people now communicate and promises to have a profound influence on the future of the Internet and other digital services.


Progressives should be especially concerned about how corporate investments affect the diversity of digital ownership. The time is right for progressive organizations to develop sustainable, revenue-generating broadband news and entertainment services. This would enable media reformers, long relegated to the sidelines, to join the game and "counter-program" the mainstream informational culture.

Did Iranian agents dupe Pentagon officials?

In a word, yes, several times. First Chalabi, the Iranian spy, working paradoxically with Israeli spies in AIPAC, manipulated the already inclined neocons in the Bush Administration, to lead the Iraqi invasion.
McClatchy Washington Bureau

Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of Pentagon officials might have "been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service ... to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government," a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday.


A top aide to then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the Pentagon officials' activities after only a month, and the Defense Department's top brass never followed up on the investigators' recommendation for a more thorough investigation, the Senate report said.

So Al Qaeda Is Defeated, Eh? Go Tell It to the Marines

AlterNet

So al-Qa'ida is "almost defeated", is it? Major gains against al-Qa'ida. Essentially defeated. "On balance, we are doing pretty well," the CIA's boss, Michael Hayden, tells The Washington Post. "Near strategic defeat of al-Qa'ida in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qa'ida in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qa'ida globally -- and here I'm going to use the word 'ideologically' -- as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form of Islam." Well, you could have fooled me.


Six thousand dead in Afghanistan, tens of thousands dead in Iraq, a suicide bombing a day in Mesopotamia, the highest level of suicides ever in the US military -- the Arab press wisely ran this story head to head with Hayden's boasts -- and permanent US bases in Iraq after 31 December. And we've won?


[..]Am I alone in finding this stuff infantile to the point of madness? As long as there is injustice in the Middle East, al-Qa'ida will win. As long as we have 22 times as many Western forces in the Muslim world as we did at the time of the Crusades -- my calculations are pretty accurate -- we are going to be at war with Muslims. The hell-disaster of the Middle East is now spread across Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, even Lebanon. And we are winning?


Yes, we've bought ourselves some time in Iraq by paying half of the insurgents to fight for us and to murder their al-Qa'ida cousins. Yes, we are continuing to prop up Saudi Arabia's head-chopping and torture-practising regime -- no problem there, I suppose, after our enthusiasm for "water-boarding" -- but this does not mean that al-Qa'ida is defeated.


Because al-Qa'ida is a way of thinking, not an army. It feeds on pain and fear and cruelty -- our cruelty and oppression -- and as long as we continue to dominate the Muslim world with our Apache helicopters and our tanks and our Humvees and our artillery and bombs and our "friendly" dictators, so will al-Qa'ida continue.