Give me something to cheer about...

[jonnygemini]

wow... what a hero is six year old Deamonte Love
www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-children5sep05,0,113027.story?page=1&coll=la-home-headlines


KATRINA'S AFTERMATH
He Held Their Lives in His Tiny Hands
By Ellen Barry, Times Staff Writer

BATON ROUGE, La. — In the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard, this group of refugees stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the road, holding a 5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed him around as if he were their leader.

They were holding hands. Three of the children were about 2 years old, and one was wearing only diapers. A 3-year-old girl, who wore colorful barrettes on the ends of her braids, had her 14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-old spoke for all of them, and he told rescuers his name was Deamonte Love.

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Thousands of human stories have flown past relief workers in the last week, but few have touched them as much as the seven children who were found wandering together Thursday at an evacuation point in downtown New Orleans. In the Baton Rouge headquarters of the rescue operation, paramedics tried to coax their names out of them; nurses who examined them stayed up that night, brooding.

Transporting the children alone was "the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, knowing that their parents are either dead" or that they had been abandoned, said Pat Coveney, a Houston emergency medical technician who put them into the back of his ambulance and drove them out of New Orleans.

"It goes back to the same thing," he said. "How did a 6-year-old end up being in charge of six babies?"

So far, parents displaced by flooding have reported 220 children missing, but that number is expected to rise, said Mike Kenner of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which will help reunite families. With crowds churning at evacuation points, many children were parted from their parents accidentally; one woman handed her baby up onto a bus, turned around to pick up her suitcase and turned back to find that the bus had left.

"When my kids were little I used to lose them in Target, so it's not hard for me to believe," said Nanette White, press secretary for Louisiana's Department of Social Services. "Sometimes little kids just wander off. They're there one second and you blink and they're gone."

At the rescue headquarters, a cool tile-floored building swarming with firefighters and paramedics, the children ate cafeteria food and fell into a deep sleep. Deamonte volunteered his vital statistics. He said his father was tall and his mother was short. He gave his address, his phone number and the name of his elementary school.

He said that the 5-month-old was his brother, Darynael, and that two others were his cousins, Tyreek and Zoria. The other three lived in his apartment building.

The children were clean and healthy — downright plump in the case of the infant, said Joyce Miller, a nurse who examined them. It was clear, she said, that "time had been taken with those kids." The baby was "fat and happy."

All evening Thursday as strike teams came and went to the flooded city, volunteer Ron Haynes carried one of the 2-year-old girls back and forth, playing with her until she was calm enough to eat dinner.

"This baby child was terrified," he said. "After she relaxed, it was gobble, gobble, gobble."

As grim dispatches came in from the field, one woman in the office burst into tears at the thought that the children had been abandoned in New Orleans, said Sharon Howard, assistant secretary of the office of public health.

Late the same night, they got an encouraging report: A woman in a shelter in Thibodeaux was searching for seven children. People in the building started clapping at the news. But when they got the mother on the phone, it became clear that she was looking for a different group of seven children, Howard said.

"What that made me understand was that this was happening across the state," she said. "That kind of frightened me."

The children were transferred to a shelter operated by the Department of Social Services, rooms full of toys and cribs where mentors from the Big Buddy Program were on hand day and night. For the next two days, the staff did detective work.

One of the 2-year-olds steadfastly refused to say her name until a worker took her picture with a digital camera and showed it to her. The little girl pointed at it and cried out, "Gabby!" One of the boys — with a halo of curly hair — had a G printed on his T-shirt when he arrived; when volunteers started calling him G, they noticed that he responded.

Deamonte began to give more details to Derrick Robertson, a 27-year-old Big Buddy mentor: How he saw his mother cry when he was loaded onto the helicopter. How he promised her he'd take care of his little brother.

Late Saturday night, they found Deamonte's mother, who was in a shelter in San Antonio along with the four mothers of the other five children. Catrina Williams, 26, saw her children's pictures on a website set up over the weekend by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. By Sunday, a private plane from Angel Flight was waiting to take the children to Texas.

In a phone interview, Williams said she is the kind of mother who doesn't let her children out of her sight. What happened the Thursday after the hurricane, she said, was that her family, trapped in an apartment building on the 3200 block of Third Street in New Orleans, began to feel desperate.

The water wasn't going down and they had been living without light, food or air conditioning for four days. The baby needed milk and the milk was gone. So she decided they would evacuate by helicopter. When a helicopter arrived to pick them up, they were told to send the children first and that the helicopter would be back in 25 minutes. She and her neighbors had to make a quick decision.

It was a wrenching moment. Williams' father, Adrian Love, told her to send the children ahead.

"I told them to go ahead and give them up, because me, I would give my life for my kids. They should feel the same way," said Love, 48. "They were shedding tears. I said, 'Let the babies go.' "

His daughter and her friends followed his advice.

"We did what we had to do for our kids, because we love them," Williams said.

The helicopter didn't come back. While the children were transported to Baton Rouge, their parents wound up in Texas, and although Williams was reassured that they would be reunited, days passed without any contact. On Sunday, she was elated.

"All I know is I just want to see my kids," she said. "Everything else will just fall into place."

At 3 p.m. Sunday, DSS workers said goodbye to seven children who now had names: Deamonte Love; Darynael Love; Zoria Love and her brother Tyreek. The girl who cried "Gabby!" was Gabrielle Janae Alexander. The girl they called Peanut was Degahney Carter. And the boy whom they called G was actually Lee — Leewood Moore Jr.

The children were strapped into car seats and driven to an airport, where they were flown to San Antonio to rejoin their parents. As they were loaded into the van, the shelter workers looked in the windows.

The baby gaped with delight in the front seat. Deamonte was hanging onto Robertson's neck so desperately that Robertson decided, at the last minute, to ride with him as far as Lafayette.

Shelter worker Kori Thomas held Zoria, 3, who reached out to smooth her eyebrows. Tyreek put a single fat finger on the van window by way of goodbye.

Robertson said he doubted the children would remember much of the helicopter evacuation, the Causeway, the sweltering heat or the smell of the flooded city.

"I think what's going to stick with them is that they survived Hurricane Katrina," he said. "And that they were loved."

[Healthy Merking]

the bright side:

chaos is a pre-cursor to birth

a righteous society?


soak yourself in knowledge and beam the shit out

from here on

every 'destructive' event will expose corruption more and more

be wise

do not be a martyr

be wise

do not unnecessarily sacrifice yourself

be wise

dont be a hero

be WISE



there are a lot of ships lost at sea

dont join them

be the lighthouse that shows them the shore

PEACE

[jonnygemini]

the bright side:

chaos is a pre-cursor to birth

a righteous society?


soak yourself in knowledge and beam the shit out

from here on

every 'destructive' event will expose corruption more and more

be wise

do not be a martyr

be wise

do not unnecessarily sacrifice yourself

be wise

dont be a hero

be WISE



there are a lot of ships lost at sea

dont join them

be the lighthouse that shows them the shore

PEACE

prolly the wisest thoughts I have heard in days

let us gather every flicker and spark of light before it fades to dark

let us capture and reflect it for all all those who seek it

but let us not be afraid to get our hands dirty either...

You gave me some goodness on a day I needed it, let me return the favor from my favorite founding father...

The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.
Thomas Paine
US patriot & political philosopher (1737 - 1809)

[jonnygemini]

www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html

Today sept 6 2005
5:05 P.M. - SAN DIEGO (AP): Nearly 80 Hurricane Katrina refugees are enjoying a bit of luxury at one of the city's most posh hotels.

The group spent Monday night free of charge in the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego, a giant waterfront hotel where rooms typically begin at $200 a night. It's a big step up from the high school gymnasium where the evacuees spent the previous night.

Businessman David Perez brought the families Sunday from Baton Rouge to San Diego on a chartered Boeing 737. On Labor Day, Perez treated them to a barbecue dinner before they checked into their hotel rooms.

Perez, an oil-and-gas exploration company executive, offered to pay for the 30 rooms but the hotel donated four nights, meals included, said hotel general manager Ted Kanatas.

[jonnygemini]

warning LaRouche wackery may follow...taken with a grain of salt, I hope this proves to be true:

This article appears in the Sept. 16, 2005 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Congress Swept Up In ´Revolutionary Tide´
by Debra Hanania Freeman

Despite frantic attempts by the Bush Administration to exonerate itself from an avalanche of charges of criminal negligence and malfeasance in the face of the worst domestic disaster in American history, it seems that nothing can stop what Lyndon LaRouche has called the "incoming tide" of a cultural paradigm-shift against the insanity of the Bush-Cheney crowd.

In the week following the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. Congress essentially ignored the mutterings of a President who is increasingly being described as "dangerous," "unable to deal with reality," and in "deep denial," and began action on aggressive bipartisan measures aimed not only at providing immediate humanitarian relief for the victims of Katrina, but also at launching reconstruction of the entire region.

Echoing the approach outlined by Lyndon LaRouche in his emergency Sept. 3 webcast, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (Nev.) moved upon the start of Senate business Sept. 6 with a proposal for $150 billion for reconstruction. Despite some initial sniping from the Republican caucus, Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), the Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, not only defended Reid´s proposal, but raised it to $200 billion. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Republican leader Bill Frist (Tenn.) also endorsed the proposal.

On Sept. 7, Democratic Senators Reid and Kent Conrad (N.D.), joined by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and John Spratt (S.C.), sent a letter to their Republican counterparts in which they urged their colleagues to suspend bills before Congress to cut government services ($70 billion in tax cuts and $35 billion in cuts affecting Medicaid, food stamps, and student loans), and "instead swiftly consider emergency legislation to address the nation´s needs after Hurricane Katrina." The letter, which was initially well received, stated, "Now is not the time to cut services for our most vulnerable, cut taxes for our most fortunate, and add $35 billion to the deficit.

Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) released a proposal to create a New Orleans and Gulf Coast Redevelopment Authority, modelled on FDR´s Tennessee Valley Authority, with the intention of investing $150 billion in putting people back to work rebuilding their own communities.

On Sept. 8, Reid issued a statement proposing priorities for the session: "We are facing a national crisis. Americans are suffering. We must adjust our priorities. If there is an immediate lesson to draw from the Federal government´s failures last week, it is that there is no time to wait. Families are counting on us, and we owe it to them to do everything we can to help."

Reid demanded that Frist postpone action on the previously announced Commerce, Science, and Justice Appropriations bill, which contains some small business tax incentives, and instead "go direct to the Defense Authorization bill and add proposals to help survivors, veterans, re-examine FEMA, and create Sen. Hillary Clinton´s proposed "Katrina Commission." With that done, Reid proposed, "let us get to the Energy and Water bill ... to help rebuild the infrastructure that has been destroyed along the Gulf Coast. It includes billions for the Army Corps of Engineers and flood control, and it should be a priority in this Senate."

Leading Republicans responded to the Reid proposals immediately. Sen. Pete Dominici (R-N.M.), the Chairman of the Energy and Water Committee, announced that he would convene his committee to provide the Army Corps of Engineers with the money it needs, exactly as Reid had proposed.

Along with the aggressive actions aimed at a swift reconstruction effort, members of the House and Senate also made it clear that they had no intention of shirking their oversight responsibility. Elected officials remained furious at the failure of the Bush Administration to respond to early warnings that a catastrophe was about to hit the region, and were no less furious at the slow response once disaster struck. Their anger and frustration was also clearly shared by the American people.

On Sept. 6, Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), James Oberstar (D-Okla.), and Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the ranking Democrats on the House Government Reform, Transportation, and Infrastructure, and Homeland Security Committees respectively, sent a 17-page letter to House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-Va.) and Don Young (R-Ak.), the Chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, as well as the Acting Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security. The letter urges the Republican leaders to accept their responsibility to examine the preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina, in order "to understand what went wrong and why." Among the 10 questions that the Democrats posed for the inquiry was, "Has FEMA been undermined and underfunded?" Davis responded with an announcement that he would call the hearing the week of Sept. 12.
Failure of Presidential Leadership

Senator Reid dealt a devastating blow to the Administration when, in a letter to Susan Collins (R-Me.), the Chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, he explicitly addressed an issue that, until then, only LaRouche had had the guts to address publicly: the personal failure of leadership of the President. Collins and the ranking Democrat on the committee, Joe Lieberman (Conn.), had issued a letter a day earlier indicating their intention to conduct oversight hearings into the Federal government´s response to the tragic events surrounding Hurricane Katrina.

Clearly not entirely satisfied that the hearings would take up the obvious question, Reid wrote to Collins, applauding the intention stated in her and Lieberman´s letter, but pressing the point that Federal officials, including the White House, were well informed about the consequences such a storm would bring, as well as the measures that were required both before and after such a storm hit. Reid insisted that it was well known that a major hurricane would inevitably hit this section of the Gulf Coast within a matter of days, yet the residents and local governments were left to "fend for themselves."

Any responsible oversight, Reid insisted, must examine the degree to which Bush´s Texas vacation interfered with the response to the hurricane; how it was possible that Bush appeared not to know that the New Orleans levees were likely to be breached, despite numerous reports by his own Federal agencies; whether budget cuts by the Bush Administration thwarted the efforts of the Army Corps of Engineers; and whether the President responded by dispatching a sufficient number of troops and equipment to assist in rescue and evacuation.

The Reid letter hammers away at the absence from Washington of the President and key members of his Administration, both before and after the disaster hit. "How much time did the President spend dealing with this emerging crisis while he was on vacation? Did the fact that he was outside of Washington, D.C., have any effect on the Federal government´s response? When it became apparent that a major hurricane was days away from striking the Gulf Coast, why didn´t President Bush immediately return to Washington from his vacation and why didn´t he recall key officials and staff members back from their vacations? Would the presence of key officials in Washington have improved the response? Why did the Bush Administration fail to act according to their own December 2004 National Response Plan?"

As the White House reeled under the charges, Collins wasted no time in responding that her Committee would indeed investigate these and other questions. "Governments at all levels failed in their obligations to protect the people. It is hard to understand the lack of response to a disaster that was predicted for years. It is hard to understand the lack of response in the light of the money that has spent on national security since 9/11," she said. "If our system did such a poor job when there was no enemy, how would we have coped with a terrorist attack that provided no advance warning and that was intent on causing as much and destruction as possible?"

As more and more members of Congress found themselves riding the tide of what Lyndon LaRouche has identified as a "revolutionary shift" in outlook, the same view was echoed in countless newspaper editorials across the nation. Although Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director Michael Brown was the target of much of the early criticism, by the middle of the week of Sept. 5, in the face of the White House´s continued failure to provide any leadership at all, the focus shifted to President Bush.

An op-ed that appeared in the Baltimore Sun and Los Angeles Times by the Clinton Administration´s chief budget official for national security, Gordon Adams, was paradigmatic of pieces that appeared across the nation. Adams wrote: "The disastrous Federal response to Katrina exposes a record of incompetence, misjudgment, and ideological blunders that should lead to very serious doubts that the Bush Administration should be allowed to continue in office.

"When the President of the U.S. points the finger away from the lame response of his Administration to Katrina and tries to finger local officials as the culprits, he betrays the unwillingness of this Administration to speak the truth and hold itself accountable.

"We have a President who is apparently ill-informed, lackadaisical, and narrow-minded, surrounded by oil baron cronies, religious fundamentalist crazies and right-wing extremists and ideologues. He has appointed officials who give incompetence new meaning...."
The Thugs Respond

By midweek, with the Congress acting in bipartisan action against the ineptitude of the White House, with a Republican Party increasingly in revolt, and with public opinion against the President showing no signs of abating, the thugs swung into action.

Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, in a pathetic attempt to dull the population´s knowledge of the full magnitude of the tragedy, acted on what are reported to be orders from the White House, and forbade the release of any photographs depicting the deaths resulting from Katrina. The President announced that he was dispatching Thug-in-Chief Dick Cheney to the region. But, before Cheney left, he moved to bludgeon the uprising by Congressional Republicans.

Following what well-informed Washington, D.C. sources report as a "pointed intervention" by the Vice President, on the night of Sept. 7, Frist and Hastert reversed their earlier agreement to launch a bipartisan investigation, and announced that they were moving to create what they called a "bipartisan, bicameral commission," controlled by the Republicans, to investigate the Administration´s failure in the Katrina crisis. Both Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders were stunned at the blatant attempt at a coverup.

Reid and Pelosi made it clear that they would not assign any Democrats to this sham committee. In a statement from the floor, Reid blasted the proposal, saying: "I have no details on this proposal. What little I do know raises serious concerns.... One, it´s not bipartisan. An investigation of the Republican Administration by a Republican-controlled Congress is like having a pitcher call his own balls and strikes." At a news conference, Pelosi related that when she had spoken to the President to urge him to fire FEMA head Brown, Bush said, "Why would I do that?" Pelosi told the press, "I said, because of that that went wrong, Mr. President, of all that simply did not go right last week. And he said, ´What didn´t go right?´ " A clearly furious Pelosi assailed Bush as "oblivious, in denial, and very dangerous."

Reid later said that he would support legislation being prepared by Hillary Clinton to establish an independent commission like the one set up to investigate the events of 9/11. He said that numerous Republicans had already requested copies of the bill.

Despite Cheney´s move to obstruct the ongoing work of the Congress, in an attempted coup d´état that echoed his earlier actions to invoke the "nuclear option," there is no indication that Cheney can hold back mounting opposition from Republicans. Leading Republican Senators, including John Warner (Va.), James Inhofe (Okla.), John McCain (Ariz.), Sam Brownback (Kan.), Jeff Sessions (Ala.), Mike Crapo (Id.), and Jim DeMint (S.C.), all said that the proposal threatens to trample the oversight plans of five Senate committees and, as such, they would oppose it. Susan Collins (on the Senate side), and Tom Davis (on the House side), said the proposal would not stop them from forging ahead with their investigations, which have strong bipartisan support.

In an obvious attempt to quell the intensifying political storm, Homeland Security czar Chertoff announced that he was appointing Vice Adm. Thad Allen, chief-of-staff of the U.S. Coast Guard, to take charge of recovery operations in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, and recalling FEMA head Brown to Washington. Chertoff claimed that Brown was not being fired, but it was widely expected that Brown would soon tender his resignation.

Although Brown´s removal was demanded by a parade of Democrats, it will do little to halt the ongoing paradigm-shift that actually began even prior to the November 2004 election, when Lyndon LaRouche won a critical fight inside the Democratic Party, that resulted in Democrats reasserting their roots as the party of FDR, and their commitment to the principle of the general welfare. That shift resulted in fierce opposition to Bush´s early attempt to destroy Social Security, and gained bipartisan momentum in May, as Cheney´s first attempted coup against the Senate was defeated when a group of Democratic and Republican Senators shut down his "nuclear option."

LaRouche moved quickly when Katrina hit, not only defining the direction that was necessary to address the catastrophe, but also identifying the fact that the country could no longer survive with a President who was insane, and a Vice President who was a sociopath. Bush and Cheney themselves may prove to be LaRouche´s most effective allies in their own removal from office, so that the Congress can act unimpeded to do what LaRouche has outlined, and "pull this nation together now."

[jonnygemini]

September 30, 2005 -- The Bush spinmeisters' Kabuki dance with Patrick Fitzgerald. There is an interesting stylized dance taking place between the White House and Patrick Fitzgerald, the Special Prosecutor in the CIA leak case.

For weeks, there have been rumors inside the Beltway that something big would be announced about the case during the last weeks of September. The silence and lack of substantial leaks were indications that a major turn of events would soon occur. Yesterday afternoon, the White House quickly swore in John G. Roberts as Chief Justice, just hours after his Senate confirmation. Rather than wait for the next morning and thus get two days of puff ball coverage by the media, the White House wanted to clear the calendar on Friday for a possible announcement by Fitzgerald. The White House, unsure of what might be coming from the prosecutor, floated the story that Bush would "definitely" name a replacement for Sandra Day O'Connor on Friday.



The White House Kabuki dance with Patrick Fitzgerald

But then New York Times reporter Judith Miller was quickly released from prison in Alexandria Thursday night. No one expected it. In fact, the cable news channels were forced to show over three month-old file footage of Miller entering the US Courthouse in DC because they were also caught unprepared by the surprise announcement and lacked lead time to get reporters to the US Courthouse in Alexandria where Miller had been held for 85 days.

It was then announced that Miller had decided to cooperate with Fitzgerald and testify today before the Grand Jury in Washington, DC. Not surprisingly, the White House spin Kabuki dancers, fully expecting a Friday announcement from Fitzgerald, altered course and announced that Bush would not name a replacement for O'Connor until some time next week. The White House, unsure of when Fitzgerald might announce indictments, wants to keep the Supreme Court announcement ace up its sleeve in order to compete for news coverage when Fitzgerald makes his announcement.

It is clear that Miller was the missing link in Fitzgerald's criminal probe of the leak that a number of CIA insiders have told this editor was "devastating" to the agency. Miller's attorney claimed that Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a target of the leak probe, had released her from a confidentiality pledge. But that agreement had already been reported months ago. Something has changed. A former Justice Department prosecutor told this editor that Fitzgerald is the type of prosecutor who starts low in the food chain and works his way up to nab the big fish. Fitzgerald is said to have, very early on in the case, "flipped" John Hannah, Libby's deputy.

One possible explanation for the sudden turn of events regarding Miller and Libby is that Fitzgerald may have also "flipped" Libby as a witness. A promise of limited immunity to Libby would have cleared the way for testimony from Miller on what she discussed with Cheney's chief of staff. That means the ultimate target of Fitzgerald could be Cheney.

There's an interesting footnote to the Cheney family's recent activities. Lynne Cheney was recently spotted at a Washington, DC Pottery Barn buying items for the Cheney's new $2.7 million house in St. Michael's on the eastern shore of Maryland. The Cheneys will be close neighbors of the Rumsfelds.

Dick Cheney recently had surgery on two aneurysms behind his knees, thus taking him out of the public spotlight more than is the usual case. The Soviet leadership, which the Bush administration has striven so much to emulate, used to exile their sacked leaders to dachas in the countryside. Might the same thing be in store for a Vice President named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the CIA leak case? A quick resignation prior to the 2006 elections and replacement by a Rudy Giuliani or George Pataki, or [shudders] Jeb Bush? And, of course, in traditional GOP fashion, a presidential pardon of unindicted co-conspirator Cheney (a la Gerald Ford and unindicted Watergate co-conspirator Richard Nixon).

Meanwhile, GOP congressmen are beginning to abandon former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. They are undoubtedly aware of the connections of DeLay to mobster money funneled by indicted GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Even a puff piece by reporter Mark Leibovich on DeLay in yesterday's Washington Post's Style section did little to stop the continual shark bites on DeLay from his GOP colleagues. Of course, DeLay's troubles come at the same time that one of his major supporters, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Israeli government, face an aggressive espionage probe by U.S. Attorney for Eastern Virginia Paul McNulty -- indicted Defense Intelligence Agency official Larry Franklin has agreed to a plea bargain in return for his cooperation as a prosecution witness.

After almost five years of incessant outrages by the Bush regime, I have never been more optimistic that the tide may be beginning to turn.

[jonnygemini]

The Triangle - Ed-Op
Issue: 9/30/05

Triangle Ed-Op Interviews: Congressman Curt Weldon
By James Mack, Jr.

Operation Able Danger is the kryptonite of the 9-11 Commission. The American public had hoped independent hearings into the Sept. 11 attacks would help us understand the problems within our intelligence network that led to our government missing the signals. After the conclusion of the commission, however, there were some unanswered questions. Congressman Curt Weldon (R. Pa.) is the Vice Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and expert on global security. Rep. Weldon is also an adjunct professor at Drexel University. Weldon recently exposed the workings of Operation Able Danger, a secret unit working with intelligence pre-9-11. This unit identified lead hijacker Muhammad Atta but was allegedly instructed not to pursue the man who would eventually plunge the nation into an international war on terror. Congressman Weldon talks with us about Operation Able Danger, bureaucracy hindering intelligence and global security.


T: Congressman Weldon, first I'd like to thank you for the time you're taking with me.

Curt Weldon: Sure.

T: Recently, we saw that the Able Danger hearings went on that you were involved with yesterday, and the Pentagon has ordered the active duty officers involved not to speak on the subject.

CW: Yes, unfortunately.

T: However, one civilian was allowed to talk. A former military officer, correct?

CW: Well actually, most of them have spoken at various times to the media, but only one was not barred by the Pentagon from speaking yesterday, and the lawyer for two of the others did speak on the other's behalf and actually said much of what they would have said if they had been allowed to speak. But the whole process is totally troubling and very disturbing to me.

T: Are the actions of the Pentagon pretty much what they have been throughout past investigations like the 9-11 Commission, or is it pretty much new for them to start ordering officers to not talk?

CW: Well, I don't know. I know they turned over a lot of information to the 9-11 Commission. In this case, neither the 9-11 Commission or the Pentagon have been straight with the American people about Able Danger and information that was gathered about Al-Qaida.

So, what I've had to do is to fight with both of them, both the 9-11 Commission and the [Bush] administration, who I think neither of whom wants this information to be put out to the American people. Now, what bothers me is that the bulk of the information in Able Danger acquired was open-source information; it wasn't classified. To deny these military officers, who are very dedicated, loyal Americans, to tell their story not only flies in the face of everything this country stands for, but it is also a personal attack against them. It also flies in the face of the legitimate role of Congress in oversight of the executive branch. So as Senator Glassly said yesterday, this is a lot of bigger than Curt Weldon or Able Danger: It's about Congress exercising its legitimate roll in oversight.

T: That brings up another interesting point. Do you believe that actions of the Pentagon and the Bush administration might have a negative impact on future independent commissions? Do you think Americans will look more warily on commissions like the 9-11 Commission?

CW: Yes, this whole process has soured me on the process of commissions. The 9-11 Commission, which I supported with my vote and which I supported verbally, was basically empowered by the Congress and the American people, with 80 full-time staff people and $15 million dollars to fully and completely investigate what happened before 9-11. This whole story indicates they didn't do that.

In addition, the Pentagon, when people asked them for information that's open source, has no right, in my mind, to basically prevent that information or those people from talking. If this were a case where they might jeopardize our national security, I'd be the first to say, "Wait a minute. We'd better think through this." Or I would say, "Let's do the hearings in a closed session." The Pentagon didn't do either. They didn't want a closed session. They just said, "We are stopping these people from testifying." Now, [Sen.] Arlen Specter [R-Pa.] said publicly that he was not happy with this, and as you might have noticed, he didn't adjourn the hearing. He continued the hearing, which leads me to believe we're going to have additional hearings in the Senate.

I can tell you I talked to [Rep.] Jim Sensenbrenner [R-Wis.], the chairman of the judiciary committee in the House of Representatives, and I think you're going to see a congressional hearing in the House as well for one or more committees. This cannot stand. It's too important, because it was the largest attack in the history of the country and 3,000 innocent people died. No one has the right to shut down people from talking because they're fearful that might be embarrassed, and that's what I think is at play here. I think it's over-embarrassment, not national security.

T: Well, that also brings up a good point about the military. Recently, we've seen the military take on a different social role in civilian life, especially with the hurricanes. It seems as if the National Guard and the reserve units are no longer what they were, say, 30 or 40 years ago. Today, they are more active duty than they were before. Do you think this is correct, or something else?

CW: Well, what's happened with our military was caused by a continual decrease in the number of personnel serving, starting in the early 1990s and continuing through the early 2000s. We cut back the size, or what we call the "end-strength" of the military dramatically in the '90s.

We eliminated whole tactical units, fighter planes ... we cut back our navy in the '90s from 585 ships to where it is today, which is about 230 ships. When you cut back the military to that extent and you increase the rate of their deployment, there's a misfit there. So back in 1998 under President Clinton, we went to something called the "total force" concept. The total force concept said we're going to rely on the guard and reserve for every one of our missions, and now they're going to play a role, both in combat and in other requirements, where our military was typically called upon in the past.

So this wasn't an accident; this was a deliberate effort started in the mid to late 1990s because we made decisions both in the White House, the Pentagon, and the Congress supported them to basically decrease the size of our military and therefore increase the dependence on the guard and reserve units.

So the only way you can decrease the use of guard and reserve units is to cut back on the number of deployments around the world, which I have supported in the past, or increase the size of the military, which we've done slightly in this year's defense budget.

But that's why we have this use of guard and reservists. It's now about 30 percent of our troops when they're deployed. It is because we have no other choice. When you cut back the military the way that we've cut them back, then you have to get those men and women from reserve status and National Guard status to use them in this total force concept.

T: Do you believe that the doctrine of Posse Comitatus is something that will be constantly evolving, especially after what happened with the natural disasters. Or do you think that with the naysayers already out there saying that Posse Comitatus is a principle doctrine that should not be changed in any way, the last thing the American public wants is to see military policing the citizenry?

CW: I think that'll be a subject for national debate and discussion, and that began yesterday with the hearing with Senator Specter. I am one who is very leery of having our military involved with domestic involvement. However, that doesn't mean you won't see the military continue to play the kind of role with the National Guard has played for decades, which is to assist towns and communities in cleaning up. The more you get into a difficult situation is in an area we've just saw in New Orleans, and I was there three days after the hurricane struck. I was the first elected official going to New Orleans, where you had total anarchy and total chaos, and you had basically no effective police department. The question the American people are going to have to answer is, "What is a total breakdown in law enforcement?" and there you've basically decimated your local police. Then, is it acceptable, either under marshal law or under some other status, to have the military provide that security. And that's an issue that has not yet been decided, and again, will be the subject of additional hearings and discussion and is really a part of what was talked about yesterday at the hearing of the Judiciary Committee.

T: Do you see the direction of global security as something that's truly changed after 9-11, from the old law enforcement model on terrorism to the new war on terrorism? Do you believe that the government really has changed its modality to fighting terrorism, and if so, do you think it's been a good change?

CW: Well, we clearly weren't prepared for 9-11, and it was very frustrating to me, because in 1999 and 2000 I consistently fought the CIA on the reluctance to deal with the intelligence overhaul and reforms that we needed, many of which are in place today despite CIA objection. In the war against terrorism, intelligence oversees intelligence, and the ability to understand emerging threats is the number one priority.

You've got to take out the terrorist plans before they occur and before they hit our soil. We've made improvements there, and we have shifted resources into that area. But it's going to require a continuing transformation of our military to be able to make a response to a different kind of threat. We're not dealing with the threats of the Cold War, where you have the potential of a major superpower to strike us with an all-out nuclear attack. The threat today is the use of asymmetric threats - the suitcase bomb, the biological or chemical weapon, the dirty bomb - the use of terrorist activities as we've seen. To deal with those kind of threats, the military has got to transform itself, which we're beginning to go through right now. In fact, as the Drexel newspaper, I would encourage your readers to sign up for my class I usually teach twice a year on international security issues. We go through a lot of this stuff, and in the end we let students get involved in the same discussions and decisions that I have to make as a member of Congress in both of these areas. So a transformation is necessary, the threats are changing, and the parameters of our security are changing.

No longer can a 20th century military respond to 21st century threats and challenges. That requires the military to understand that change is necessary - especially necessary - as we face the fact that we don't have the resources that we would like to have to get the military all of the equipment they need and still take care of the quality of life that allows us to have an all volunteer force.

The largest portion of our defense budget today, unlike past years when we used to have a draft, is basically for the education, the healthcare, the housing, the family, and the quality of life for the troops to keep people volunteering.

That's going to continue to be the top priority, but in having the largest amount of money to spend on the troops and their morale, then you don't have as much money to spend on big weapons systems, ships, tanks, and big airplanes, and there you got to do things differently. That's a major debate and discussion that's going on right now as we do what's called the "quadrennial defense review," which is a planning effort over four years to look at where the military needs to be four and eight and ten years from now.

T: Do you believe that there are actually those in Congress that may still be using that law enforcement model to fight terrorism?

CW: Domestically, it is a major law enforcement problem, but because the terrorist cells are largely based overseas, it is in the forefront an intelligence issue to be able to get massive amounts of data and use that to basically pull together trends and patterns of overseas operations and people, not U.S. citizens, but people overseas, that basically result in a terrorist attack or action against our people here at home. We're doing that with the Terrorism Threat Integration Center, which is now called the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC).

My frustration is I first proposed that capability in 1999. In fact, on November 4th, 1999, I had briefing in my office on Iran with the FBI, the CIA, and Defense Department to create what we have today, and the CIA said, "Thank you, Congressman, but we don't need that capability."

So, the biggest challenge I face is dealing with bureaucracies that think they're not answerable to anyone. I'm talking about the CIA; I'm talking about aspects of the Defense Department and the need for members of Congress to be more aggressive in oversight. That's why I wrote the book that I wrote this year.

It's not often that a member of Congress publicly takes on the CIA, but I thought I had no other choice. The agency wasn't being responsive. They had, in my opinion, a terrible track record. Therefore, it was my job to ask the tough questions and shake them up.

It's achieved the result I wanted, and in the end, continuing to play an aggressive role will help us, I think, be able to meet the threats we expect to see in this century.

[jonnygemini]

October 4, 2005
A New Measure of Well-Being From a Happy Little Kingdom
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

What is happiness? In the United States and in many other industrialized countries, it is often equated with money.

Economists measure consumer confidence on the assumption that the resulting figure says something about progress and public welfare. The gross domestic product, or G.D.P., is routinely used as shorthand for the well-being of a nation.

But the small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has been trying out a different idea.

In 1972, concerned about the problems afflicting other developing countries that focused only on economic growth, Bhutan's newly crowned leader, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, decided to make his nation's priority not its G.D.P. but its G.N.H., or gross national happiness.

Bhutan, the king said, needed to ensure that prosperity was shared across society and that it was balanced against preserving cultural traditions, protecting the environment and maintaining a responsive government. The king, now 49, has been instituting policies aimed at accomplishing these goals.

Now Bhutan's example, while still a work in progress, is serving as a catalyst for far broader discussions of national well-being.

Around the world, a growing number of economists, social scientists, corporate leaders and bureaucrats are trying to develop measurements that take into account not just the flow of money but also access to health care, free time with family, conservation of natural resources and other noneconomic factors.

The goal, according to many involved in this effort, is in part to return to a richer definition of the word happiness, more like what the signers of the Declaration of Independence had in mind when they included "the pursuit of happiness" as an inalienable right equal to liberty and life itself.

The founding fathers, said John Ralston Saul, a Canadian political philosopher, defined happiness as a balance of individual and community interests. "The Enlightenment theory of happiness was an expression of public good or the public welfare, of the contentment of the people," Mr. Saul said. And, he added, this could not be further from "the 20th-century idea that you should smile because you're at Disneyland."

Mr. Saul was one of about 400 people from more than a dozen countries who gathered recently to consider new ways to define and assess prosperity.

The meeting, held at St. Francis Xavier University in northern Nova Scotia, was a mix of soft ideals and hard-nosed number crunching. Many participants insisted that the focus on commerce and consumption that dominated the 20th century need not be the norm in the 21st century.

Among the attendees were three dozen representatives from Bhutan - teachers, monks, government officials and others - who came to promote what the Switzerland-size country has learned about building a fulfilled, contented society.

While household incomes in Bhutan remain among the world's lowest, life expectancy increased by 19 years from 1984 to 1998, jumping to 66 years. The country, which is preparing to shift to a constitution and an elected government, requires that at least 60 percent of its lands remain forested, welcomes a limited stream of wealthy tourists and exports hydropower to India.

"We have to think of human well-being in broader terms," said Lyonpo Jigmi Thinley, Bhutan's home minister and ex-prime minister. "Material well-being is only one component. That doesn't ensure that you're at peace with your environment and in harmony with each other."

It is a concept grounded in Buddhist doctrine, and even a decade ago it might have been dismissed by most economists and international policy experts as naïve idealism.

Indeed, America's brief flirtation with a similar concept, encapsulated in E. F. Schumacher's 1973 bestseller "Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered," ended abruptly with the huge and continuing burst of consumer-driven economic growth that exploded first in industrialized countries and has been spreading in fast-growing developing countries like China.

Yet many experts say it was this very explosion of affluence that eventually led social scientists to realize that economic growth is not always synonymous with progress.

In the early stages of a climb out of poverty, for a household or a country, incomes and contentment grow in lockstep. But various studies show that beyond certain thresholds, roughly as annual per capita income passes $10,000 or $20,000, happiness does not keep up.

And some countries, studies found, were happier than they should be. In the World Values Survey, a project under way since 1995, Ronald Inglehart, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, found that Latin American countries, for example, registered far more subjective happiness than their economic status would suggest.

In contrast, countries that had experienced communist rule were unhappier than noncommunist countries with similar household incomes - even long after communism had collapsed.

"Some types of societies clearly do a much better job of enhancing their people's sense of happiness and well-being than other ones even apart from the somewhat obvious fact that it's better to be rich than to be poor," Dr. Inglehart said.

Even more striking, beyond a certain threshold of wealth people appear to redefine happiness, studies suggest, focusing on their relative position in society instead of their material status.

Nothing defines this shift better than a 1998 survey of 257 students, faculty and staff members at the Harvard School of Public Health.

In the study, the researchers, Sara J. Solnick and David Hemenway, gave the subjects a choice of earning $50,000 a year in a world where the average salary was $25,000 or $100,000 a year where the average was $200,000.

About 50 percent of the participants, the researchers found, chose the first option, preferring to be half as prosperous but richer than their neighbors.

Such findings have contributed to the new effort to broaden the way countries and individuals gauge the quality of life - the subject of the Nova Scotia conference.

But researchers have been hard pressed to develop measuring techniques that can capture this broader concept of well-being.

One approach is to study how individuals perceive the daily flow of their lives, having them keep diary-like charts reflecting how various activities, from paying bills to playing softball, make them feel.

A research team at Princeton is working with the Bureau of Labor Statistics to incorporate this kind of charting into its new "time use" survey, which began last year and is given to 4,000 Americans each month.

"The idea is to start with life as we experience it and then try to understand what helps people feel fulfilled and create conditions that generate that," said Dr. Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton economist working on the survey.

For example, he said, subjecting students to more testing in order to make them more competitive may equip them to succeed in the American quest for ever more income. But that benefit would have to be balanced against the problems that come with the increased stress imposed by additional testing.

"We should not be hoping to construct a utopia," Professor Krueger said. "What we should be talking about is piecemeal movement in the direction of things that make for a better life."

Another strategy is to track trends that can affect a community's well-being by mining existing statistics from censuses, surveys and government agencies that track health, the environment, the economy and other societal barometers.

The resulting scores can be charted in parallel to see how various indicators either complement or impede each other.

In March, Britain said it would begin developing such an "index of well-being," taking into account not only income but mental illness, civility, access to parks and crime rates.

In June, British officials released their first effort along those lines, a summary of "sustainable development indicators" intended to be a snapshot of social and environmental indicators like crime, traffic, pollution and recycling levels.

"What we do in one area of our lives can have an impact on many others, so joined-up thinking and action across central and local government is crucial," said Elliot Morley, Britain's environment minister.

In Canada, Hans Messinger, the director of industry measures and analysis for Statistics Canada, has been working informally with about 20 other economists and social scientists to develop that country's first national index of well-being.

Mr. Messinger is the person who, every month, takes the pulse of his country's economy, sifting streams of data about cash flow to generate the figure called gross domestic product. But for nearly a decade, he has been searching for a better way of measuring the quality of life.

"A sound economy is not an end to itself, but should serve a purpose, to improve society," Mr. Messinger said.

The new well-being index, Mr. Messinger said, will never replace the G.D.P. For one thing, economic activity, affected by weather, labor strikes and other factors, changes far more rapidly than other indicators of happiness.

But understanding what fosters well-being, he said, can help policy makers decide how to shape legislation or regulations.

Later this year, the Canadian group plans to release a first attempt at an index - an assessment of community health, living standards and people's division of time among work, family, voluntarism and other activities. Over the next several years, the team plans to integrate those findings with measurements of education, environmental quality, "community vitality" and the responsiveness of government. Similar initiatives are under way in Australia and New Zealand.

Ronald Colman, a political scientist and the research director for Canada's well-being index, said one challenge was to decide how much weight to give different indicators.

For example, Dr. Colman said, the amount of time devoted to volunteer activities in Canada has dropped more than 12 percent in the last decade.

"That's a real decline in community well-being, but that loss counts for nothing in our current measure of progress," he said.

But shifts in volunteer activity also cannot be easily assessed against cash-based activities, he said.

"Money has nothing to do with why volunteers do what they do," Dr. Colman said. "So how, in a way that's transparent and methodologically decent, do you come up with composite numbers that are meaningful?"

In the end, Canada's index could eventually take the form of a report card rather than a single G.D.P.-like number.

In the United States there have been a few experiments, like the Princeton plan to add a happiness component to labor surveys. But the focus remains on economics. The Census Bureau, for instance, still concentrates on collecting information about people's financial circumstances and possessions, not their perceptions or feelings, said Kurt J. Bauman, a demographer there.

But he added that there was growing interest in moving away from simply tracking indicators of poverty, for example, to looking more comprehensively at social conditions.

"Measuring whether poverty is going up or down is different than measuring changes in the ability of a family to feed itself," he said. "There definitely is a growing perception out there that if you focus too narrowly, you're missing a lot of the picture."

That shift was evident at the conference on Bhutan, organized by Dr. Colman, who is from Nova Scotia. Participants focused on an array of approaches to the happiness puzzle, from practical to radical.

John de Graaf, a Seattle filmmaker and campaigner trying to cut the amount of time people devote to work, wore a T-shirt that said, "Medieval peasants worked less than you do."

In an open discussion, Marc van Bogaert from Belgium described his path to happiness: "I want to live in a world without money."

Al Chaddock, a painter from Nova Scotia, immediately offered a suggestion: "Become an artist."

Other attendees insisted that old-fashioned capitalism could persist even with a shift to goals broader than just making money.

Ray C. Anderson, the founder of Interface Inc., an Atlanta-based carpet company with nearly $1 billion in annual sales, described his company's 11-year-old program to cut pollution and switch to renewable materials.

Mr. Anderson said he was "a radical industrialist, but as competitive as anyone you know and as profit-minded."

Some experts who attended the weeklong conference questioned whether national well-being could really be defined. Just the act of trying to quantify happiness could threaten it, said Frank Bracho, a Venezuelan economist and former ambassador to India. After all, he said, "The most important things in life are not prone to measurement - like love."

But Mr. Messinger argued that the weaknesses of the established model, dominated by economics, demanded the effort.

Other economists pointed out that happiness itself can be illusory.

"Even in a very miserable condition you can be very happy if you are grateful for small mercies," said Siddiqur Osmani, a professor of applied economics from the University of Ulster in Ireland. "If someone is starving and hungry and given two scraps of food a day, he can be very happy."

Bhutanese officials at the meeting described a variety of initiatives aimed at creating the conditions that are most likely to improve the quality of life in the most equitable way.

Bhutan, which had no public education system in 1960, now has schools at all levels around the country and rotates teachers from urban to rural regions to be sure there is equal access to the best teachers, officials said.

Another goal, they said, is to sustain traditions while advancing. People entering hospitals with nonacute health problems can choose Western or traditional medicine.

The more that various effects of a policy are considered, and not simply the economic return, the more likely a country is to achieve a good balance, said Sangay Wangchuk, the head of Bhutan's national parks agency, citing agricultural policies as an example.

Bhutan's effort, in part, is aimed at avoiding the pattern seen in the study at Harvard, in which relative wealth becomes more important than the quality of life.

"The goal of life should not be limited to production, consumption, more production and more consumption," said Thakur S. Powdyel, a senior official in the Bhutanese Ministry of Education. "There is no necessary relationship between the level of possession and the level of well-being."

Mr. Saul, the Canadian political philosopher, said that Bhutan's shift in language from "product" to "happiness" was a profound move in and of itself.

Mechanisms for achieving and tracking happiness can be devised, he said, but only if the goal is articulated clearly from the start.

"It's ideas which determine the directions in which civilizations go," Mr. Saul said. "If you don't get your ideas right, it doesn't matter what policies you try to put in place."

Still, Bhutan's model may not work for larger countries. And even in Bhutan, not everyone is happy. Members of the country's delegation admitted their experiment was very much a work in progress, and they acknowledged that poverty and alcoholism remained serious problems.

The pressures of modernization are also increasing. Bhutan linked itself to the global cultural pipelines of television and the Internet in 1999, and there have been increasing reports in its nascent media of violence and disaffection, particularly among young people.

Some attendees, while welcoming Bhutan's goal, gently criticized the Bhutanese officials for dealing with a Nepali-speaking minority mainly by driving tens of thousands of them out of the country in recent decades, saying that was not a way to foster happiness.

"Bhutan is not a pure Shangri-La, so idyllic and away from all those flaws and foibles," conceded Karma Pedey, a Bhutanese educator dressed in a short dragon-covered jacket and a floor-length rainbow-striped traditional skirt.

But, looking around a packed auditorium, she added: "At same time, I'm very, very happy we have made a global impact."

[jonnygemini]

QUINCY, Mass. -- Venezuelan officials signed an agreement Tuesday to provide 12 million gallons of discounted home heating oil to low-income Massachusetts residents.

The fuel is being offered by Citgo, a subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company, which runs roughly 16,000 gas stations in the U.S.

U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, who helped broker the deal, called the agreement "an expression of humanitarianism at its very best," and rejected criticism that the move was motivated by politics. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez often blames the plight of the poor on unbridled capitalism and had criticized the Bush administration for failing to reduce poverty.

"This is a gesture about people," said Delahunt, a Democrat.

Delahunt said the agreement could set an example for U.S. oil companies. Congressional leaders have asked the companies to use some of their profits to fund heating fuel assistance programs for low-income residents.

"I just hope that this sends a message, and that other oil companies will step and help also," Delahunt said.

Venezuela, which has the largest oil and natural gas reserves outside the Middle East, is the world's fifth most important oil exporter and a founding member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

[UniverseSeven]

Venezuela's amazingly high-quality public housing picks up markedly

www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=47244

[UniverseSeven]

Chavez's party has swept the election since the opposition boycotted the election, thanks to American meddling.

Politics or Not, Bronx Warmly Receives Venezuelan Heating Oil

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/07/AR2005120702245.html

[UniverseSeven]

"If European countries claim that they have killed Jews in World War II... why don't they provide the Zionist regime with a piece of Europe," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Iranian television.

"Germany and Austria can provide the... regime with two or three provinces for this regime to establish itself, and the issue will be resolved."

If anyone can find a complete transcript of his statement please post it

[UniverseSeven]

General Elections At Last: Tanzania Decides

allafrica.com/stories/200512150006.html

[jonnygemini]

I used my best google fu for over an hour to no avail
even al jazeera didn't have the transcript

internet censorship is real like Wayne Madsen sez:
rense.com/general69/intercens.htm

The statement is the most logical I've heard in a while, but it's one of those "can't talk about" issues that gets you branded an anti-semite

Why should Palestine pay for German war crimes??

I'd love to hear an answer...updated with more of his quotes

Ahmadinejad’s controversial statements

Israel and the holocaust:

“They have fabricated a legend under the name ‘Massacre of the Jews’, and they hold it higher than God himself, religion itself and the prophets themselves” (Addressing a rally in the southeastern city of Zahedan on Dec 14.) “Israel must be wiped off the map ... The Islamic world will not let its historic enemy live in its heartland.” (Addressing a conference on “The World without Zionism”, in Tehran on Oct 26.) “Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces ... Although we don’t accept this claim...If the Europeans are honest they should give some of their provinces in Europe - like in Germany, Austria or other countries - to the Zionists and the Zionists can establish their state in Europe.”

(Addressing a news conference in Mecca on Dec 8.)

Ties with United States:

“Relations with the United States are not a cure for our ills.” (During the presidential election campaign in June). “Our nation ... has no significant need for (relations with) the United States.”

(At a news conference in Tehran on June 26, after winning the presidential election.)

Europe:

“I’m surprised that the Europeans cannot tolerate others’ opinions. They are used to talking and want others to listen to them.”

(At the Mecca news conference, Dec 8.)

Iran’s nuclear programme:

“(They) are not only refusing to remedy their past deeds but in clear breach of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, are trying to prevent other countries from acquiring the technology to produce peaceful nuclear energy.” (In his speech to the UN General Assembly on Sept 17.) “You are telling us we can’t produce nuclear fuel, that we will give it to you. You who imposed medical embargoes on nations that caused the death of countless numbers of people, what guarantees are there that you will give us nuclear fuel?”

(At the Mecca news conference, Dec 8)

Social and political freedoms:

“We did not have a revolution in order to have a democracy ... People think a return to revolutionary values is only a matter of wearing the headscarf ... The country’s true problem is employment and housing, not what to wear.”

(During the presidential campaign in June)

The economy:

“I will cut the hands off the mafias of powers and factions who have a grasp on our oil, I stake my life on this ... People must see their share of oil money in their daily lives.”

(Quoted telling parliamentarians in Iran’s Kayhan newspaper.) reuters

[jonnygemini]

AP Whitewashes Iranian President’s Holocaust Denial

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s suggestion that the Holocaust never happened was widely reported by the news media. Almost all outlets quoting Ahmadinejad noted that he said at a Dec. 8 press conference:

Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces and they insist on it to the extent that if anyone proves something contrary to that they condemn that person and throw them in jail. Although we don't accept this claim, if we suppose it is true, our question for the Europeans is: 'Is the killing of innocent Jewish people by Hitler the reason for their support to the occupiers of Jerusalem?'

If the Europeans are honest they should give some of their provinces in Europe - like in Germany, Austria or other countries - to the Zionists...

The Washington Post, Reuters, the Guardian, the Independent, the Times of London, the New York Times and others, many of them quoting the official Iranian news agency, IRNA, relayed Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denying quote.

The Associated Press, however, despite dispatching multiple reports on Ahmadinejad’s speech and the subsequent international outcry, never reported that Ahmadinejad said he “[does not] accept this claim” about Hitler’s genocide.

In reports by AP’s Salah Nasrawi, the passage simply disappeared:

"Some European countries insist on saying that during World War II, Hitler burned millions of Jews and put them in concentration camps," Ahmadinejad said. "Any historian, commentator or scientist who doubts that is taken to prison or gets condemned."

"Let's assume what the Europeans say is true ... Let's give some land to the Zionists in Europe or in Germany or Austria," he said. "They faced injustice in Europe, so why do the repercussions fall on the Palestinians?"

Other unsigned AP dispatches summarized the offensive comments as follows:

Saying that "some European countries insist on saying that during World War II, Hitler burnt millions of Jews," Ahmadinejad suggested "let's give some land to the Zionists in Europe or in Germany or Austria so they can have their government there."

Becuase the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, CNN.com and countless others relied on AP’s story about Ahmadinejad’s comments, hundreds of thousands of readers (or more) did not get the full story.