Subject:
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Newsbits -- the Usual
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 27 Oct 2003 12:38:39 GMT
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Viewed:
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243 times
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9/11 Commission Could Subpoena Oval Office Files
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1026-02.htm
“It’s obvious that the White House wants to run out the clock here,” he said in
an interview in Washington. “It’s Halloween, and we’re still in negotiations
with some assistant White House counsel about getting these documents ? it’s
disgusting.”
He said that the White House and President Bush’s re-election campaign had
reason to fear what the commission was uncovering in its investigation of
intelligence and law enforcement failures before Sept. 11. “As each day goes by,
we learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists
before Sept. 11 than it has ever admitted.”
Free speech kept off U.S. streets
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?GXHC_gx_session_id_=7005a3db99f9af20&pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1067121006945&call_pageid=968332188854
“I mean, somebody who was going to attempt an assassination wouldn’t be carrying
a protest sign. He’d be carrying a sign saying: I love George!’”
Presser agrees: “It seems these security zones’ for protesters have very little
to do with the president’s physical security and a whole lot to do with his
political security.”
“Just as the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center were careful to
blend in and stayed away from mosques,” he says, “anyone who had ill will toward
the president could just put on a pro-Bush T-shirt and, under this policy, he’d
be allowed to move closer to the president by the Secret Service.”
Strange Bedfellows
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20031110&s=rozen
Sadoon Al-Bunnia is one of three principals in one of Iraq’s oldest companies,
the Al-Bunnia Trading Company. The Iraqi firm has become a major subcontractor
for US firms working under US government contracts in Iraq. But, as documents
obtained by The Nation from the Lugano office of the Swiss Federal Commercial
Registry show, Sadoon Al-Bunnia is also a founding partner of a Swiss-registered
firm called the Malaysian Swiss Gulf and African Chamber (MIGA), which the US
government and the United Nations Security Council have designated as funders of
Al Qaeda.
Big Bucks in Iraq
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20031110&s=shorrock
Many observers, including even US businessmen and Iraqis who favored “regime
change” in Iraq, agree. They say the shock therapy being applied in Iraq will
concentrate wealth in the hands of large US and Iraqi corporations, particularly
the family-owned businesses that have won the majority of subcontracts from
Bechtel and Halliburton. “I like the analogy of Wal-Mart coming into a town,”
says Timothy Mills, an attorney in the Washington law firm Patton Boggs who
represents several US and foreign corporations that have contracted with the US
government and are doing business in Iraq. “The downtown dies, Wal-Mart grows
and the owners of local businesses are displaced. The effect of Iraq’s new
foreign investment law for the medium and small-sized Iraqi business could be
very detrimental and could result in even more concentration of capital in
Iraq.” With the US Export-Import Bank providing $500 million to insure US
investors, he added, “If I was an Iraqi and I was political, I’d say this was a
ploy to favor US companies and let them steal the riches of Iraq.” In a similar
vein, Fareed Yasseen, an adviser to Adnan Pachachi, a member of the Governing
Council, says that the CPA has made its economic plans “completely out of the
Iraqi context.” He worries that the CPA will sell state-owned assets to cronies
of the previous regime and create a “new class of oligarchs” in Iraq. “They
haven’t taken into account Iraq’s reality at all,” he says.
It’s all about how it plays in soundbites. None of this plays well on the 11
O’clock news -- but it’s still probably closer to the truth than most people
will allow.
There is the appearance of the poltically expedient -- and then there is the
actual facts surrounding the matter. That’s the White House disconnect right
there -- the “show” versus what is real.
If this were a card game, the “tell” would be Shrub’s near garrulousness of
late. He doesn’t say anything important or meaningful, but he is trying to make
his face-time before the cameras.
-- Hop-Frog
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