---

From:  FreeHomeAppraisal@technotekno.com
Date:  13 Dec 2005 02:46:14 -0800
>Do you own a home Bob?
>Are you curious what it is REALLY worth?
>Get a FREE home appraisal now.
>
>
>http://technotekno.com/fha/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>ThisAdFrom
>0neEighteeeenPMB
>16ThirtyyyyZer0 13thStreeet
>BoulderColorado eight0three0one
>http://technotekno.com StopSendingPlease
>ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG
>TIMES OF LONDON: ATTACK ON IRAN ON
>DEATH OF THE MEDIA READING TONIGHT
>
>Let us begin the week with news about the man who knew more about THE MAN than most: the late Richard Pryor who many thought would die in l980 but held on and on with many holding on to their seats whenever they saw him perform. He passed on this past weekend. Here, courtesy of BBC.com, some of his wit and wisdom:
>
>�I live in racist America and I'm uneducated, yet a lot of people love me and like what I do, and I can make a living from it. You can't do much better than that.
>
>�Marriage is really tough because you have to deal with feelings... and lawyers.
>
>�I had some great things and I had some bad things. The best and the worst... In other words, I had a life."
>
>Also leaving our world this weekend, 89 year old former Senator Gene McCarthy who had the courage to take on Lyndon Johnson, run for president in l968 and challenge the war.
>
>WHAT THEY SHARED IN COMMON
>
>Russell Shaw comments on Huffington Post:
>
>�In some ways, both McCarthy and Pryor had more in common than you might have expected. Both were brilliant visionaries challenged what was then the norm:
>
>"McCarthy was not like other "liberal" politicians who embraced the Vietnam War not out of a fear that not doing so would cause South Vietnam to fall like a domino, but out of a political calculation that not doing so would cost them blue-collar votes. McCarthy, who read philosophy rather than focus group charts indulgences that transformed Pryor from a boring, trite comedian on "Ed Sullivan" to a voice of comedic brilliance that would transcend race and class�.
>Two very different men, but thinkers both. Men whose lives still teach us, even as their lives have ended."...
>
>news.yahoo.com
>
>RACE ATTACKS IN AUSTRALIA
>
>Al Jazeera.net reports:
>
>�Sunday night rioting in Sydney has left the country in shock.
>Prime Ministerer John Howard condemned the incident,,,speaking for the first time since fighting in the southern suburb of Cronulla left 31 people injured and saw 16 arrests.
>
>"Police have formed a strike force to track down the instigators of the running battles that involved drunken mobs of white men yelling racial slurs, young men of Arab descent and hundreds of police officers."
>
>english.aljazeera.net
>
>WILL TOOKIE BE TERMINATED?
>
>Today's the day when the ex-gang leader/convicted kller turned inspirational role model Tookie Williams learns more about his fate. CNN reports:
>
>�California's Supreme Court has rejected an emergency request to stay the execution of convicted killer and Crips gang co-founder Stanley Tookie Williams, who is scheduled to be put to death early Tuesday. A bid for clemency has gone to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and a decision could come later today.�
>
>THE ROAD TO THE EXIT
>
>A British think tank asks: What�s the best road to victory from Iraq? Their answer: withdrawal.
>
>In the foreword to �Iraqi Liberation: Toward an Integrated Strategy� a report published today by Oxford Research Group, AIR MARSHAL LORD TIM GARDEN, GENERAL LORD DAVID RAMSBOTHAM and PRINCE EL HASSAN BIN TALAL say:
>
>�The UK must examine the extent to which Coalition forces, despite their mission to guarantee security, in fact contribute by their presence to the gathering instability�
>
>�US counter-insurgency tactics may temporarily retard insurgent capabilities. But they have created perverse incentives for some Iraqi leaders to take advantage of US might in �a shadow civil war�. Oxford Research Group director and Iraq Body Count coordinator John Sloboda said:
>
>�Civilian deaths, prisoner abuse and routine humiliation of the general population are continually refuelling the insurgency and providing propaganda for the jihadist movement increasingly exploiting Iraq as a fertile training ground.�
>
>"The report argues for a fresh approach based on seven mutually supporting pillars. Support from honest brokers will help Iraqis build an inclusive and legitimate political process. A framework for Coalition withdrawals will help with the Iraqi assumption of the security and counter-insurgency lead, which will be reinforced by economic development and the rebuilding of human security. All this must be supported by members of the wider international community, who up till now have distanced themselves from the situation, but can no longer ignore it.
>
>The report will be available to download from www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk from 10am UK Time, Monday 12th December.
>
>DOWNING STREET IN THE NEWS
>
>Reporting on a visit to the "scene or the crime." David Swanson is covering Cindy Sheehan's visit to the UK:
>
>�Cindy Sheehan, Brian Haw, and a crowd of other peace activists paid a visit to #10 Downing Street, the home of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Sheehan is known around the world as the mother whose campaign has demanded an explanation from George Bush for her son's death in Iraq. Haw is known to all of Britain as the man who has lived in Parliament Square for the past four years, demanding an end to the war, and even running for Parliament from an address of the sidewalk across from Parliament.
>
>www.afterdowningstreet.org
>
>FREE THE PEACEMAKERS
>
>Arundhati Roy, Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, Cindy Sheehan, Denis Halliday, Rashid Khalidi and many opponents of the war are calling on the kidnappers of the Christian Peacemaker Team in Iraq to release them.
>
>STATE SUPPORTED TERRORISM IN IRAQ
>
>Dahr Jamail and Harb al-Mukhtar write about government sanctioned terror teams known as the �men in the masks:"
>
>www.atimes.com
>
>WHY WE TURNED TO �FREEDOM FRIES�
>
>The LA Times reported yesterday: �The (French) foreign service warned the U.S. various times before the war that there was no proof Iraq sought uranium from Niger, ex-officials say.
>
>MORE PRISON ABUSES IN THE �NEW� IRAQ
>
>The New York Times reports today:
>
>� A raid of an Iraqi government detention center in Baghdad turned up more than 600 prisoners packed into a cramped space, 13 of them requiring hospital treatment.�
>
>WAR WITH IRAN? TIMES OF LONDON SAYS IT�S COMING
>
>News Report: �Israel readies forces for strike on nuclear Iran�
>
>�Israel�s armed forces have been ordered by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, to be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran, military sources have revealed.
>
>�The order came after Israeli intelligence warned the government that Iran was operating enrichment facilities, believed to be small and concealed in civilian locations.
>
>�The crisis is set to come to a head in early March, when Mohamed El-Baradei, the head of the IAEA, will present his next report on Iran. El-Baradei, who received the Nobel peace prize yesterday, warned that the world was �losing patience� with Iran�
>
>In his Nobel address, El-Baradei called on the US and other nuclear powers to set an example by disarming their own arsenals.
>
>OUTRAGE IN ISRAEL
>
>Gideon Levy repots about a horrific case of animal abuse 0n Palestinians by Israeli soldiers in the Israeli newspaper Ha�aretz:
>
>�You go to sleep securely in your home. At 1 A.M. you wake up in horror to the sound of a voice on the loudspeaker calling you to go out into the street immediately. After the soldiers instruct you to return home, suddenly a frightening dog enters your apartment, grabs your child, who is sitting on his bed in shock, bites him hard in his leg and drags him down the 20 steps that lead from the second-floor apartment to the street.
>
>�Can you imagine the nightmare in which the Kassam family found itself last week in the Jenin refugee camp? It's very doubtful. The members of the family didn't believe it either. Their 12-year-old son, Mohammed, who suffers from epilepsy, shouted with fear, until he fainted. His mother grabbed him by the head, so he wouldn?t hit himself on the stairs. His father ran downstairs, helpless, pleading with the soldiers. All the children in the house were shouting in fear. Imagine.
>
>�Apparently it was "an operational mishap." Maybe the dog, a fighter in the Oketz trained dogs unit of the Israel Defense Forces, overstepped the bounds. Maybe it was a mistaken address. It was certainly an "exceptional case," not "human error," but "canine error." The dog entered the wrong apartment and grabbed the wrong person. It happens to the best of dogs. But anyone who, in the dead of night, sics a dog on a peaceful apartment where children are asleep for the night, cannot plead innocence afterward."
>
>www.observer.com
>
>
>Inside The Mediaocracy
>Posted by Danny @ 6:34 am | Comment | Print | Email this Post
>
>RELEASE: BLACK INK DAY
>
>Today, dozens of editorial cartoonists will band together for "Black Ink Monday," unleashing their biting commentary on the current state of affairs in the newspaper business, with a specific emphasis on corporate downsizing.
>
>"These cartoons will be posted on editorialcartoonists.com (home of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists) and � hopefully � in various papers across the country. The AAEC intends to use the protest to draw attention to, not just the loss of individual jobs, but the wholesale weakening of the daily newspaper.
>
><
>
>CNN CARRIES REPORT ON THE GREAT WIKI CONTROVERSY
>
>�NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- A man who posted false information on an online encyclopedia linking a prominent journalist to the Kennedy assassinations says he was playing a trick on a co-worker.
>
>�Brian Chase, 38, ended up resigning from his job and apologizing to John Seigenthaler Sr., the former publisher of the Tennessean newspaper and founding editorial director of USA Today.
>
>"I knew from the news that Mr. Seigenthaler was looking for who did it, and I did it, so I needed to let him know in particular that it wasn't anyone out to get him, that it was done as a joke that went horribly, horribly wrong.�
>
>WOODWARD: A LONE OPERATIVE
>"
>The Observer reports that Bob Woodward�s editors at the Washington Post were no more in control of his activities than Judy Miller�s editors at the New York Times were of hers.
>
>�I don�t think I�ve kept in touch with Bob over the years,� said Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr.
>
>Mr. Downie, on the phone from Washington, D.C., on Dec. 5, was discussing last month�s startling discovery that Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward had become involved in the Valerie Plame Wilson affair more than two years before, without telling his own paper about it.
>
>The dustup over that news has apparently not shaken Mr. Woodward�s habit of keeping information to himself. �I have no clue what he�s working on,� said Jim VandeHei, The Post�s current White House reporter�.
>
>�Mr. Woodward is America�s pre-eminent celebrity investigative reporter. But what is he investigating? Three decades ago, he symbolized the power of day-by-day news reporting. The Watergate scandal broke under a steady battering of incremental news updates by Mr. Woodward and Carl Bernstein�two metro reporters banging into print each tidbit they could learn.�
>
>editorandpublisher.com
>
>FOR MORE ON MILLER: SEE THE NEW VANITY FAIR
>
>Editor & Publisher previews it: � In a lengthy feature piece on this autumn's Judith Miller saga forthcoming in the January issue of Vanity Fair (on sale Dec. 13), writer Seth Mnookin covers much familiar ground but also reveals new details and complaints from the reporter's colleagues at The New York Times. Publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. also gets a good working-over from unnamed in-house critics.
>
>�One of the fresh scoops in the piece, which is titled, "Unreliable Sources," concerns Sulzberger barring Times reporters from talking to Russell Lewis, the former president and CEO of The New York Times Co., when they were working on their extensive report on Miller going to jail and then testifying before the Plame grand jury.
>
>�pressed Sulzberger on why he did that, he replied with a laugh and a quip: "Because I don't know what the f�he's going to tell you." (Earlier this year Lewis co-authored with Sulzberger a Times Op-Ed piece championing Miller's cause.)
>
>GARY WEBB�PRESENTE
>
>Robert Parry of Consortium News writes on the anniversary of the suicide of journalist Gary Webb::
>
>�One year ago, reporter Gary Webb � his life in ruins � killed himself with a handgun. The tragedy made him the final victim of a long-running cover-up protecting the Reagan-Bush administration�s tolerance of drug trafficking by its client army, the Nicaraguan contras.
>
>�But Webb�s death also could be blamed on the fecklessness of modern American journalism. The nation�s leading newspapers had driven the 49-year-old father of three to his desperate act rather than admit that they had bungled one of the biggest stories of the Reagan-Bush era � the contra-cocaine scandal.
>
>�Webb might be alive today if the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times had shown the decency to explain the importance of what the Central Intelligence Agency�s inspector general acknowledged in a two-volume report in 1998...."
>
>www.consortiumnews.com
>
>THE FUTURE?
>
>AP reports Happy News Is Here Again
>
>�DALLAS -- Carrie Rodgers is so engrossed by cable- television news shows that her husband calls her a news addict, but lately she has found another source to balance the onslaught of stories about war, crime and natural disasters.
>
>Two or three times a day, the 28-year-old insurance agent in Columbia, S.C., turns to a Web site called HappyNews.com.
>
>She often clicks first to a section called ''Heroes,'' which recently featured stories about U.S. troops rescuing two cheetah cubs in Ethiopia and the induction of 12 people into the Hall of Fame for Caring Americans��
>
>.
>
>
>Your Letters, A New Video, and Event
>Posted by Danny @ 6:30 am | Comment | Print | Email this Post
>
>ON "CUTTING AND RUNING"
>
>Nick Carlin writes from San Francisco:
>
>�OK, so we lied you into the war and the war has been a disaster and we've destroyed our international credibility and our moral authority and killed tens of thousands of people and maimed hundreds of thousands more and destroyed priceless art and antiquities and used torture and chemical weapons ourselves and played right into the hands of the Islamic jihadists and assisted them in their recruiting efforts, and sacked the US treasury but . . . that's all ANCIENT HISTORY and we can't just CUT AND RUN because if we leave IT WILL BE WORSE!
>
>�Even Democratic politicians are buying to this BS, Here is a great analysis of this flawed argument.�
>
>�
>
>www.theatlantic.com
>
>Jack Dalton writes about a reminder he�s received about the legacy of the US war in Vietnam:
>
>�Wednesday, December 7, 2005, I went to Portland State University�s Multi-Cultural Center to hear a presentation by three people from Vietnam, who are a part of the group of Vietnamese seeking reparations from this country over its use of Agent Orange. It turned out to be a night I will never forget, for many reasons and on many levels.
>
>Mrs. DANG THI HONG NHUT. 69; Mr. HO SY HAI, 61; Dr. NGUYEN TRONG NHAN, 75 were the three speakers at the presentation. A brief bio of each of them can be read here: www.vn-agentorange.org
>
>�There was a forth man who was supposed to accompany these three on their presentation here in the U.S., bringing the issue of Agent Orange use in Vietnam, and its disastrous consequences on the Vietnamese people over the years, to us the American people.--Mr. NGUYEN MUOI � born August 10, 1983, suffers from spina bifida. His father, NGUYEN DINH THANH, born April 10, 1946, was a former soldier in the former South Vietnamese army (ARVN) who was exposed to toxic chemicals in approximately June 1970. Mr. THANH suffered from headaches, nausea and vomiting, colic, and dyspnea. Nguyen Muoi�s mother had two miscarriages in 1974 and 1976. His visa was denied by the U.S. government.
>
>�was really difficult to sit thru the slide and film presentation, detailing exactly what the over 20 million gallons of Agent Orange has done to Vietnam; what it has, and is doing to the Vietnamese people right now, today. But sit thru it I did; mostly thru tear filled eyes�.
>
>�THE RULE OF LAW�
>
>Virginia Weldon writes:
>
>When the Bushies refer to "the rule of law" we need to understand which rule of law they are speaking of ... and, it's not the one our history has stood upon and for. It is the Dominionist's rule of theocratic law, of Biblical law they intend to replace our Bill of Rights with. Until we digest this fact, (this fait accompli in their minds), we are not perceiving the depth of this pernicious insurgence, nor are we able to penetrate the "Divine Mission" GW has set in motion for America and the world.
>