The World Health Organization has released a study that verifies the United States is the undisputed champion in mental illness*, dominating various pathologies ranging from anxiety to depression to poor impulse control. We easily vanquished underachieving Old Europe in post-traumatic stress syndrome, bipolar disorder, and bulimia nervosa. Additionally, our magnificent land trounced the supposedly productive Asian countries in both senility and agoraphobia, while coasting past Africa in pediatric hyperactivity. In fact, there would have been a gold medal sweep for America if Ukraine had not cheated by submitting doctored urine to edge us out in substance abuse.

In retaliation for Ukrainian treachery, "Chicken Kiev" will henceforth be known by every patriotic American as "Chicken Freedom".

Distributing praise for America's smashing victory requires giving the devil his due. Although liberals abhor complimenting the right wing, it is undeniable that without conservatives the United States would not even be one of the hundred craziest countries. This is especially true as it relates to the glamour categories of paranoia and psychosis.

Any nation that aspires to lead the world in mental illness requires a leader who is unabashedly mentally ill, and in this area America is truly blessed. Rather than educating himself on major issues of life and death by studying, George W. Bush faithfully listens to the voices in his head that have been keenly honed during a lifetime of not studying. Bush takes this approach based on his deeply held belief that only by remaining abjectly ignorant of all relevant facts can he possibly make a fully informed decision. His commitment to prioritizing fantasy over reality is strong and unyielding. The former Texas governor is a one-man psycho ward, and absent his sterling contribution the United States could never have achieved derangement preeminence.

When entering international mental illness competitions, having the Religious Right on your team is like being able to send Babe Ruth up to the plate. The W.H.O. awarded America numerous insanity bonus points for the insistence by our Holy Rollers that the bible must be interpreted literally. The English word "gay" doesn't mean what it meant just a few decades ago, yet American zealots insist that the meaning of words translated from six thousand year old Hebrew can be defined with precision and should be used to justify persecuting human beings. The continued death struggle by our fundamentalists to stave off the diabolical homosexual agenda of Tinky Winky and SpongeBob SquarePants guarantees that America's glorious reign as numero uno loco will not end anytime soon.

Projection is a component of mental illness that consists of attributing one's own deficiencies to others. Rush Limbaugh deserves acclaim for enabling America to ace this category by making the observation that women who become liberals choose their philosophy to compensate for being sexually undesirable. The scoring committee noted that this ultimate case of projection came from a guy around whom the Pacific Ocean could not get wet.

The list of conservatives who deserve to be acknowledged for their contributions to our winning effort is a lengthy one indeed. There is Asian American right wingette Michelle Malkin, who has written longingly of the good old days during World War II when citizens with yellow skin enjoyed free room and board at all the finest internment centers. There are the forty-five percent of Oklahomans who voted to keep cockfighting legal, although fairness dictates inclusion of the footnote that most of them did not know cockfighting involves poultry. And then there are those Californians who approve of Arnold Schwarzennegger's pathetic job performance, apparently because since he took office no one in the state has been killed by a cyborg assassin.

Of course, none of this proves that all conservative are bonkers. Many Republicans are just as sane as the next guy, assuming the next guy happens to be Hannibal Lector. Even so, it is important to avoid stereotyping: as David Steinberg has observed, some blacks have no rhythm, some Jews can't handle money, and some Chinese people don't all look alike. Just because right wingers believe the greeting "Happy Holidays" constitutes a threat to their personal liberty does not necessarily mean that every single one of them is cracked.

There might be a rational conservative somewhere. The vaunted liberal sense of fairness dictates that we allow for the possibility, however theoretical it may be.

It is helpful to understand why right wingers collectively lack any semblance of mental health. Clinicians have isolated the causality, one that is fraught with irony: impaired blood flow to the brain resulting from inhaling smog emitted by trees. Science has yet to determine why psychotropic toxins produced by foliage target anti-environment Republicans rather than higher primates, but it may be some sort of cosmic quid pro quo.

The great thing about starboard brainsickness is its constancy. From the inception of the United States when right wingers passionately insisted that women were lesser humans and blacks merely farm animals, our domestic goose steppers have been dependably daft. Through the centuries, conservatives have opposed all social advancement, and have done so in the name of a supreme being whom they otherwise disregard. Whether the issue has involved instituting public education or fluoridating the drinking water, the maniacs of the right have screamed that the Apocalypse was being expedited. As is invariably true with people whose porch lights flicker dimly, the more conservatives are proven wrong, the more adamant they become.

But while Republicans are the grandmasters of dementia, they do not possess a monopoly. Eight percent of self-identified liberals in America voted for Bush, which is like eight percent of self-identified pedestrians in Japan voting for Godzilla. The reason generally given involves approval of the Bush war on terrorism. Left unanswered is whether the most praiseworthy dimension of his anti-terror approach was allowing our nation to be attacked or subsequently letting the attackers get away so that we could concentrate on killing people who had nothing to do with it.

In either case, approximately one out of every twelve liberals has partaken of the Kool Aid and now swears that Bush is The Magnificent Zorro, a swashbuckling defender of all peasants who bravely smites evildoers hither and yon. It is troubling when a few of the good guys don aluminum headwear while lip-synching to Fox News, but it just goes to show that this wonderful country's commitment to mental illness runs wide and deep.

The World Health Organization must be congratulated for finally declaring what those of us who are flag wavers have long contended – that in addition to being the planet's only military superpower, the United States sets the pace in the field of furthering madness. Without meaning to gloat, when it comes to being non compos mentis, we're number one with a bullet (and sixty-seven thousand nuclear warheads).

America is going to remain the alpha crazy dog for quite some time, so all of you lousy little sane nations had better get used to it. Hopefully, you will not become offended when we get in your faces to rave like lunatics about our W.H.O.-documented supremacy, and you won't be offended as long as you remember just one thing:

It's not bragging if it's true.

ATLANTA -- The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has begun a series of experiments to see how likely the bird flu virus could result in a human pandemic.
    
The six-month series of experiments seeks to simulate the mixing and matching of genes from the H5N1 avian flu virus that has plagued Asia and a common human flu virus that public-health experts fear could turn avian flu into a pandemic, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
    
CDC scientists inside an ultra-secure laboratory have started swapping the genes of the H5N1 avian virus with the genes of an H3N2 virus, the strain behind most recent human flu outbreaks.
    
The goal is to substitute the eight genes of each virus, one by one, with the eight genes from the other virus to see which of more than 250 possible combinations create flu viruses that could spread easily among humans.
    
The work responds to fears by global public health experts that the bird flu virus could mutate to form one that could spawn a global outbreak of the disease.

And How To Prepare For The Upcoming Influenza Pandemic

Who inserted a mutated version of the human influenza virus in a pig in South Korea? That's what a leading biologist wants to know. Health authorities claim that animal viruses from pigs and poultry are jumping to humans and infecting them, causing some people to die. But it appears somebody is helping the process along.

Nature Magazine, in its February 24 issue, reported that biologist Henry Niman, who works for a biotechnology company, was examining flu viruses' gene sequences that were placed in GenBank, the public database for genetic sequence information. Niman found a strain of human flu virus that was created in 1940 in a London lab by scientists who were experimenting with the virus that caused the global flu pandemic of 1918. The flu sequence, obtained from a pig virus, had been placed in GenBank by researchers at Chungnam National University in Daejon, South Korea. Neither the World Health Organization (WHO) or the South Korean government have commented on Niman's claim. Niman says "the incident raises worrying questions about how the human flu genes got into a virus in a pig." While laboratory accidents may be responsible, Niman wonders if this is evidence of "bioterrorism" at work?

Why is the subject of bioterrorism brought up with the flu? Obviously researchers in communicable disease, vaccines and biological warfare see this is an opportunity to gain attention and funding if they sensationalize this story. But is al Qaeda a real suspect in this emerging flu outbreak in Asia? There appears to be more to this than selfish aggrandizement of scientists' careers or stuffing money into research projects. Are the bio labs themselves the threat, or al Qaeda? Dr. Niman says: "(WHO doesn't) want to think about the fact that it escaped from some lab, which is most certainly what happened."

News stories about germ warfare, that a biological terrorist could unleash a virus of some kind against the world, are now frequently mentioned within reports about the threat of a flu outbreak. A Reuters news report in February of 2005, quoting Interpol, said "the threat of a biological terrorist strike by al Qaeda is very real. If al Qaeda launches a spectacular biological attack which could cause contagious disease to be spread, no entity in the world is prepared for it," said the Reuters report. [Reuters Feb. 22, 2005]

But a terrorist would have some cause, some homeland, some family roots to protect. A virus can encircle the globe and kill indiscriminately. Only a psychotic would spread such a weapon. Terrorists can plant dynamite sticks and blow up buses loaded with passengers, even aircraft in the sky. But they need a laboratory and sophisticated knowledge and equipment to create mutated flu viruses. A worldwide flu pandemic is more likely to escape from an existing laboratory that conducts viral experiments than any alleged terrorist group. That's what caused the brief SARS virus outbreak, which was traced back to a laboratory worker in China. "Patient zero," a professor working on viral strains that cause influenza, transported the SARS virus from Guangzhou to Hong Kong on the way to a wedding. He later succumbed to the virus.

Swine Flu Revisited?

Few reporters dare bring up the possibility that the threat of an impending epidemic is being used for unrevealed political agendas. Recall that the world sat on edge as news reporters declared the SARS virus was on its way to becoming a global pandemic. SARS fizzled and killed only about 812 people worldwide. For comparison, seasonal influenza in the US kills thousands, mostly older adults. Also recall the Swine Flu "epidemic" of 1976 which caused President Gerald Ford to call for the mass inoculation of the American people. The Swine Flu vaccination program caused many side effects including Guillain-Barre syndrome which resulted in more deaths than the virus. The Swine flu itself dissipated and was not a major influenza outbreak. Why is the news media drumming up such public anxiety in such a concerted fashion? Is this a re-run of the Swine flu episode?

A small number of people in Asia where there is close contact with animals, died due to a dreaded flu virus known as H5N1, believed to be the strain that caused the flu pandemic of 1918 that killed millions worldwide. The bigger concern is that a mutated flu virus may have found a way to be transmitted from human to human. So far, as of early 2005, less than 100 people in Asia have tested positive for the influenza A H5N1 strain. It's as if public health authorities are disappointed the infection hasn't widened. [...]

Credibility of Public Health Agencies in Question

The credibility of governmental health gencies is waning. Predicting an epidemic, the Centers for Disease Control has been calling on the public to received flu shots for the 2004-2005 flu season, but when the supply of flu vaccine was interrupted by contamination problems at a manufacturing plant, no overwhelming epidemic resulted. It's obvious the CDC is hyping the flu threat to get the vaccine sold and get the manufacturers off the hook for losses occurring from unused vaccine.

Furthermore, a study now shows that flu shots for the elderly have not saved lives. [Arch Intern Med 2005 165:265-72, 2005] The CDC also called for toddlers under the age of two years to be vaccinated against influenza for the first time this year. But researchers now say there is "no good science" to back such a vaccination program. [Lancet 365:773-80, 2005] How long will the public go on believing public health agencies with these types of embarrassments?

CDC has had time to prepare for a worldwide flu outbreak, but continues to say the world is unprepared. Somebody ought to lose their job over this lack of preparation. Laurie Garrett, author of The Coming Plague (1994) says CDC Epidemiologic Intelligence Office Karl Johnson MD, presided over an event in 1989 called viral "war games." Health authorities have been practicing for more than 5 years but continue to say they are unprepared.

A Hidden Population Control Agenda?

People are asking, what's the real agenda behind the flu pandemic scare? There is worldwide public discussion that the anticipated flu pandemic is being hatched by plan in order to curb the size of the world human population. According to the United Nations, the world's population will increase by 40 percent, from 6.0 to 9.1 billion by the year 2050. Virtually all of the growth will come in the developing world, especially the 50 poorest countries. [United Nations Feb. 25, 2005]

Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) was wrong. He predicted an ever multiplying human population that grew exponentially. But in developed countries, population size is stagnant, particularly in Japan, the US, and Western Europe. Furthermore, Malthus couldn't have foreseen the tremendous increase in agricultural productivity. Malthus' theory was that the world would run out of resources as population multiplied.

The question is, could population controllers intentionally introduce germs to selectively cull the size of human populations? Even if released by accident, the consequences could be so disastrous that laboratory experiments like these should be outlawed. Viruses strike harder in undeveloped lands. The developing world has the poorest nutrition and is more vulnerable to infection and mortality.

There is some public discussion that the world has to return to the plagues of old to control population size. Much of this thinking emanates from Darwinism, a mentality of "survival of the fittest" that permeates biology today. Those who aren't fit won't survive. It's all part of evolution, so they say. But being fit from an immune standpoint depends largely upon the nutritional state of any population.

Moreover, there is suspicion that worldwide restrictions on the dose of essential vitamins and minerals in dietary supplements by CODEX, a United Nations food standards and trade organization, is somehow timed to coincide with the release of a virus that could eradicate millions of people. Undernourished people are more vulnerable to infection.

One of the telling facts that reveal health authorities are manipulating the public and softening them up for a flu pandemic is the absence of any real preventive measures outside the control of public health authorities. [...]

Filomeno Fortes, the department head for disease control at the health ministry told Reuters, 'Of the six cases we've had in Luanda, we've had two deaths until now. All six came from Uige. None of these represents a primary case from Luanda,' Fortes said. 'Our fear is that if we don't control cases coming from Uige, there is a risk that they could infect people in Luanda,' he added.

Health officials in Angola say that the death toll in Uige is 112 but the actual toll could be higher. Officials fear that in rural areas, many may have died without even making a trip to the hospital.

There is no known cure for the virus. Symptoms include nausea, high fever, vomiting, diarrhea with blood and headaches.

Carlos Alberto, a spokesman for the Angolan health ministry asked for more help from outside sources. 'We need cleaning materials, medicines, protective clothing, that kind of thing,' Alberto said.

Most of the victims of the virus have been children. The government of Angola has had difficulty dealing with the crises in a nation that has been ravaged by decades of civil war.

Since 1933 you and all other Americans have been pledged for the debt of the UNITED STATES owed to international bankers, most of whom are foreign to our country. Your credit, labor, productivity and property have been used and is now being used as collateral by the incorporated UNITED STATES OF AMERICA without your knowledge or consent. This is legal until you take back your implied consent by a special, lawful process.

In fact, you are unknowingly volunteering to be chattel for a mortgage held by financiers from the founding of this nation. Perhaps you infer that the name on the tax statement is yours and so you respond as though it were. This is voluntary servitude. To make this servitude legal it was necessary to "cut a hole in the fence." No matter that the escape route is hidden, obscured by legal brambles to make escape difficult. That it is not used presumes consent. It is not impossible, just seemingly difficult and even implausible.

Your status as a subject is based upon a presumption that if you did not wish to be so encumbered you would use the law to do something about it. As long as you do not use the escape route provided by law it is presumed that you are content to "remain in the pasture and be milked and used as chattel." This word has the same root as the word, "cattle." Do you get the picture?

Can such a premise be true? It seems totally out of step with everything you and I have ever known about our world, our nation, our government and our relationship to it! Our parents never behaved as though they we were chattel. They dutifully paid their taxes, voted in elections, waved an American flag on the 4th of July. Our teachers taught us about our history, our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, our Revolutionary War, how we fought the greatest army and navy the world had ever seen at the time. Nowhere in our history classes did we encounter any such premise of subjection to a central government that rules our lives. Our civics teacher never told us anything about this. Nothing in our world even hinted that we were subjects to a highly centralized government. Surely this could be true of other peoples, but not of us! For most people this cannot be. The truth cannot be heard because it is too discordant with our entire experience.

And yet we can document that:

George Washington did not chop down a cherry tree,

Lincoln did not free the slaves (they became subjects of the Federal District, the District of Columbia)

The War with Mexico was begun by General Zachary Taylor's provocations along the Nueces River

the battleship Maine blew up from the inside

Woodrow Wilson knew that the Lusitania was carrying US munitions to the war in Europe and would be sunk

Franklin D. Roosevelt had maneuvered the Japanese into an attack on Pearl Harbor and had cut fuel shipments to the Pacific fleet to ensure the presence of enough old ships to offer a tempting target

Truman knew that there were other good alternatives to an invasion of Japan and did not need to drop the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Roosevelt knew about the NAZI concentration camps, LBJ knew that there was no attack on the Maddox and Turner Joy in the Gulf of Tonkin when he asked for a Congressional Resolution to attack North Vietnam

the US government had been warned by numerous documented sources that there would be an attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

All of this is from documented historical sources. Yet we continue to believe the myths that are in our histories, our movies, our mainstream media and our mass consciousness. John F Kennedy warned us that,

The great enemy of the Truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived, and dishonest - but the myth - persistent, persuasive and realistic.

You will probably find it hard to accept that you have been living in an illusion for your whole life. Much of what you believe is an illusion and you will only find your freedom when you can allow yourself to look behind the veils of illusion to see Reality. WHO you are is far greater than "what" you perceive yourself to be. When you have the courage to stand face-to-face with the illusion and call it what it is, you will have stepped through the most difficult task set before you on your Earth Journey. There IS a way out! But the only way out is through—through understanding how we came to this predicament and following a precise formula to obtain your sovereignty. We have been warned repeatedly throughout our history, but we weren't listening very closely. Now we might have one more chance to take back our power and our sovereignty.

The nature of the conspiracy to defraud can be best understood in comments by one of the major conspirators in the triumph of establishing the Federal Reserve, "Colonel" Edward Mandell House, who is purported to have said this in a private meeting with President Woodrow Wilson:

"[Very] soon, every American will be required to register their biological property in a national system designed to keep track of the people and that will operate under the ancient system of pledging. By such methodology, we can compel people to submit to our agenda, which will effect our security as a chargeback for our fiat paper currency. Every American will be forced to register or suffer being unable to work and earn a living. They will be our chattel, and we will hold the security interest over them forever, by operation of the law merchant under the scheme of secured transactions.

"Americans, by unknowingly or unwittingly delivering the bills of lading to us will be rendered bankrupt and insolvent, forever to remain economic slaves through taxation, secured by their pledges. They will be stripped of their rights and given a commercial value designed to make us a profit and they will be none the wiser, for not one man in a million could ever figure our plans and, if by accident one or two should figure it out, we have in our arsenal plausible deniability. After all, this is the only logical way to fund government, by floating liens and debt to the registrants in the form of benefits and privileges. This will inevitably reap to us huge profits beyond our wildest expectations and leave every American a contributor to this fraud which we will call 'Social Insurance.' Without realizing it, every American will insure us for any loss we may incur and in this manner, every American will unknowingly be our servant, however begrudgingly. The people will become helpless and without any hope for their redemption and, we will employ the high office of the President of our dummy corporation to foment this plot against America." [...]

Two recent reports cast light on the impact of growing social inequality in the US. The first, the annual inventory of the very rich compiled this month by the business magazine Forbes, tracks the wealth of the world's billionaires, and their increasing numbers in the US. The second is the "report card" issued by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) on the state of the infrastructure in the United States.

Together these studies provide a devastating exposure of the price being paid - in the form of basic necessities of daily life - for the ongoing process of diverting ever-greater sums of the national wealth into the personal investments portfolios and bank accounts of the super-rich in America.

Forbes reports that the world's billionaires counted 691 among their number in 2005, an increase of over 100 in just a year's time. The aggregate wealth of this handful of men and women reached $2.2 trillion, an increase of $300 billion in just one year. On average, the net worth of each is nearly $3.2 billion.

More than half of these billionaires - 341 - are in the US, a jump of 69 over last year. But while the ranks, and personal fortunes, of these super-rich has risen, there has been a corresponding deterioration of the basic infrastructure relied upon by ordinary Americans in their everyday life - roads, railroads, public schools, and other basic necessities. In many cases, these structures are literally crumbling. [...]

The Forbes report provides a glimpse not only of the obscene amounts of wealth accumulated by these individuals, but of the property and personal possessions they have amassed along the way as an essential component of their extravagant lifestyles. [...]

In contrast to this glowing picture of prosperity provided by Forbes, the American Society of Civil Engineers' "report card" delivers a just-above-failing grade on the state of the infrastructure in the United States. Overall the ASCE assigns a grade of "D," a slight drop from the "D-plus" it awarded when it last issued a report in 2001.

The report examines 12 categories of infrastructure, including roadways, bridges, dams, drinking water, wastewater treatment, railroads, navigable waterways, public school facilities and the power grid. The authors state that a total investment of $1.6 trillion (not counting needs to upgrade for recent security concerns) over the next five years will be required to bring the US up to minimum standards.

In a statement introducing the report, ASCE President William Henry explained, "Americans are spending more time stuck in traffic and less time at home with their families."

The advisory council of 24 civil engineers which prepared the report found that the average American spent a full week stuck in traffic on overcrowded roads and waiting out long construction delays. Drivers in Kansas City are estimated to spend $500 a year in time and extra gasoline. In Los Angeles, the cost shoots up to $1,660 year. Motorists also spend some $54 billion a year - $275 apiece - in repair and operating costs from driving on roads full of potholes.

The US rail network has not kept up with demand either. Besides being more expensive, shipping by truck adds to highway congestion and road maintenance costs. ASCE estimates that up to $195 billion in investments will be required over the next 20 years to maintain the current share of freight shipped by rail and to allow for anticipated increases in volume.

Passenger rail service fares no better. The heavily used Amtrak Northeast Corridor line will have to be shut down within two years if three bridges are not repaired. In New York City the heavily traveled East Side subway line was shut down no less than three times in a single day this month due to separate power failures. The next day another line was closed while workers investigated smoke in one of the system's old, narrow tunnels.

With the current state of disrepair, the condition of infrastructure is also matter of life and death, not just inconvenience and economics.

In July 2004, a slab falling off a deteriorated bridge in New York City critically injured a motorist on the parkway below. More than one in four highway bridges are now considered structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

The number of dams rated unsafe has risen to 3,500, and there were 29 dam failures in the United States in the past two years. In March 2004, the Big Bay Lake Dam in Mississippi failed, destroying 100 homes.

The nation's wastewater systems are also sorely in need of repair. Eight hundred fifty billion gallons of raw sewage are released annually into rivers, streams, lakes and oceans. In Pima County, Arizona, a sewer line break in 2002 forced 90 homes to be evacuated and closed part of a busy street for six weeks.

As for drinking water, each day 6 billion gallons of treated water disappears due to leaky pipes and old water mains. A break in a 40-year-old main in Northbrook, Illinois, left the town without drinking water for 15 hours. Federal expenditures on treatment plants for fiscal year 2006 will equal less than 10 percent of the annual demand.

As the ASCE president summarized in his statement, "We need to establish a comprehensive, long-term infrastructure plan as opposed to our current ‘patch and pray' method." But any such systematic approach to tackling infrastructure or any other societal problem is inconceivable under capitalism in decay, when the only concern of those wielding the levers of industry is how to exploit the vast majority while pampering themselves endlessly.

The burgeoning ranks and fortunes of the US billionaires come under conditions where the social infrastructure of society is under relenting attack from corporate America, the Bush administration and Congress, in the form of job cuts, attacks on health care, pensions and education. This is coupled with growing rates of personal indebtedness and bankruptcies for working families.

The degree of waste and squandering of vital resources by the super-elite personified by the Forbes billionaires - and the protection of their right to do so by the political establishment, including both big business parties - is an indictment of the profit system.

WASHINGTON - None of the 15 U.S. agencies that collected or assessed intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is likely to be commended for doing an exemplary job, according to officials familiar with a report being prepared by a presidential commission.

Comment: From the Bush administration's point of view, US agencies did quite a fantastic job when it came to inventing or spinning intelligence to "create the reality" of Iraq's WMD's. The invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq by the US is the proof.

The nine-member panel led by Republican Laurence Silberman, a retired federal appeals court judge, and Democrat Charles Robb, a former Senator from Virginia, is expected to issue its report on weapons of mass destruction next week. It's unclear how much of the report, which may run into the hundreds of pages, will be available to the public.

"I think questions had to be answered as to why we were so wrong," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a member of the commission. "We needed to have recommendations as to how to prevent something like this from ever happening again."

The commission also is highly critical of the agencies' performance on Iran, North Korea and Libya, individuals familiar with its findings said on condition of anonymity.

Comment: In other words, they lied about Iraq's WMD's, and now they are lying about Iran's nuclear intentions.

The report comes at a critical time for the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and others charged with collecting, protecting and analyzing secrets.

All face the prospect of sweeping changes from the intelligence reform bill passed in December, including the appointment of a national intelligence director. President Bush's nominee, John Negroponte, has a Senate confirmation hearing next month. [...]

Comment: First, Bush and gang cherry-picked intelligence and even pressured agencies through visits by Dick Cheney to produce data that was more "friendly" to the Neocons' intentions. Then Bush appointed a CIA director to clean house and get rid of anyone who did not firmly support Bush's actions. Now many agencies are being turned into scapegoats so that the power of all the different intelligence organizations can be consolidated under one person who is loyal to Bush. During these various maneuvers, most Americans and the international community just sat by and watched - and continue to silently watch - the transformation of the US into a police state.

The commission, for instance, has reconsidered the issue of aluminum tubes. A National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq in October 2002 said that most intelligence agencies believed that Iraq's "aggressive pursuit" of high-strength aluminum tubes provided "compelling evidence" that Saddam Hussein's regime was reconstituting its uranium enrichment effort and nuclear program.

In its report last summer, the Senate Intelligence Committee found that the Energy Department was more accurate in its assessment that Iraq sought the tubes for a conventional rocket program, not a nuclear program.

Comment: For proof of the mainstream media's complicity in the whole process, just check and see how many news outlets gave equal attention to analyses that contradicted what the Bush regime wanted to hear about Iraq's alleged weapons.

The Silberman-Robb commission also closely examined U.S. capability to understand the programs for weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, of Libya, North Korea and Iran. [...]

In contrast to the Sept. 11 commission, the WMD commission's work has been done largely behind closed doors, with only brief press releases about witnesses who appeared.

McCain said he's learned much about the intelligence agencies and how they interact now and in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. He said he's gotten an understanding of the value of "human intelligence" - or traditional spying - and that the report was worth the $10 million Congress dedicated to it.

Comment: The American taxpayer, in addition to funding an illegal war and human rights violations, now gets to help pay an additional $10 million for a report filled with even more lies.

Final drafts of the commission's report are being circulated among the intelligence agencies for declassification. Historically, they have tried to use that process to keep secret some of the most embarrassing or critical details of investigative findings.

Commission spokesman Larry McQuillan said commissioners intend to release as much of the report as possible.

There is now no better, or more accurate, way to say it: The Republican Party has gone nuts – absolutely, certifiably, sycophantically nuts.

It went officially bananas upon declaring, in the small hours of Monday morning, a national emergency in the sad yet exhaustively adjudicated case of Terri Schiavo. That much was obvious when the party chucked its last vestiges of states-rights principles and respect for separation of powers into the anything-for-the-religious-right pot of electoral gold.

Republicans' blatant whoring at the altar of slaughtered ideals and political opportunism was so conspicuous as to make its examination here only tiresomely redundant. So let's not bother.

What we should bother ourselves with, however, is the truly bothersome and, it seems, growing emotional instability of these congressional Republicans, which any rational onlooker might characterize as this: folks on the verge – thus we are on the verge, given that they are in charge – of a political nervous breakdown; the result of too much heady success from too much groveling to too many narrow interests.

The stress of so much power coupled with insatiable ambition is showing.

One of their own, Representative Donald Manzullo of Illinois, inched close to party self-diagnosis when he opined, "I have been here 13 years and I have never seen anything like this before." And that's coming from a man who's lived through the manufactured government-shutdown hysteria, the manufactured impeachment hysteria, the manufactured Iraq hysteria and all the other manufactured hysterias to which we as a nation have been subjected since the Grand Old Party began its studied re-ascendancy.

And looking back, one can see that its ascendancy was in no small part due to its study of orchestrated hysteria. The skies have regularly fallen and Democracy put at grave risk because Hillary misplaced a file or Bill got his jollies or John tossed a medal or the you-know-who elite banned Christmas or ... you take your pick. You can set your watch by the GOP barraging us with some newly revealed, outrageous liberal escapade – each and every one manufactured to distract from the less than publishable goal of unfettered political power.

We're not to notice as the ruling party deepens a grotesquely mounting national debt in its pursuit of assassinating social programs, or as it finances a class-warfaring plutocracy to sustain a graft-driven political machine, or promotes the fantasy of a democratically reforming Middle East to justify a fraudulent invasion. To notice is only to buy into the vast liberal media's propagandistic ways.

We are, however, expected to salute when the ruling party, positively dripping with selflessness, snaps into action over an exceedingly personal, private and local legal matter. (Naturally we should disregard its own memorandum as to what "a great political issue" it is. See above: liberal media.)

We are expected to salute because the scam has worked for the charlatans so many times before. But this time the great majority of Americans – 70 percent according to an ABC News poll – noticed what was not intended to be noticed: the naked hypocrisy, the sheer opportunism, the downright shabby spectacle of it all. [...]

Notwithstanding the satisfaction that comes from seeing reprobates get what they deserve in the form of a disapproving public, is there not something almost sad about watching today's GOP, a party with a long and noble tradition, make such a fool of itself?

Naw.

Not after what it's put us through.

LONDON - The United States has committed "grave violations of human rights" against prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq, the Foreign Affairs Committee of Britain's parliament said in a report on Friday.

The report also called on the British government to make clear whether it uses intelligence passed on by other countries that may have been gathered by torturing suspects.

"We conclude that United States personnel appear to have committed grave violations of human rights of persons held in detention in various facilities in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and Afghanistan," the committee wrote in its influential annual report on human rights.

"We recommend that the government make it clear to the United States administration, both in public and private, that such treatment of detainees is unacceptable."

The committee said it was "surprising and unsettling" that the government had twice failed to answer whether London receives information extracted under torture by a third country.

"The arguments for evaluating information which purports to give details of, for example, an impending terrorist attack, whatever its provenance, are compelling," the committee said.

"We further conclude, however, that to operate a general policy of use of information extracted under torture would be to condone and even to encourage torture by repressive states." [...]

A September visit to Hebron

OFF the beaten path, you see the desert for miles from Hebron Hills on this September day. If it weren't for the military outposts, the barbed wire and the checkpoints, it would actually be quite peaceful here - a National Geographic spread waiting to happen. The goats are grazing nearby. Amidst the chaos and the hell, there's beauty here.

South of Jerusalem, past the checkpoints, this is the area of the West Bank which Israel has basically taken over. Our human rights delegation with Bustan, Ta'ayush and others is making our way to Hebron in an SUV. On the highway going south from Jerusalem you can see the excesses of the settlement enterprise.

We head off the highway and on to a dirt road where Mosa Abu Gibran, a member of the Fellahin minority working the land today, invites us into his cave for tea with his relatives. There is a rickety wooden fence and the stones shaping the pathway. He tells us that near here 40 houses have been demolished and Apache helicopters fly overhead to protect the nearby settlements. Two days before, a settler knocked down tents in the village. The security forces have come into villages in Hebron Hills and closed off the caves and wells where the Fellahin minority has lived for centuries. Many, deprived of shelter and water and harassed by settlers and Occupation forces, have been forced to move from the land they have called home for centuries.

He tells us that he lives as if he's second class and that he lives in fear of not just security forces, but also settlers. He says he is made to feel like an animal.

Near the settlement of Sausya, a Fellahin village which once had over 125 people residing there now has only about 30 people. The military forces, set up to protect the settlement on the hillside considered to be on Holy Land, look down on the handful of people who are left. Italian human rights activists with "Operation Dove" have been sleeping here for weeks. It wasn't long ago that the Civil Administration destroyed the village well by pushing a car into it and poisoning it with zinc. The security forces are still closing the many caves with stones along Hebron Hills where the Fellahin have tradionally lived. They even destroyed the donated solar panels that had been set up by Bustan to provide some basic level of power to the village for cooking and lighting.

The Nuwaja family, who live in what is left of their village, are now only 26. As they cook in the fire nearby, having only their tents, carpets and memories, they see the security forces with their guns looking down at them from the settlement above serving as a simple, metaphoric portrait of the Occupation.

The entire Hebron region has been under fire for decades. More recently, in 1999, security forces evicted several hundred Palestinians from the region after declaring it a live-fire area.

In January of 2003, Ta'ayush activists and members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams who went to the South Hebron Hills region to Palestinian farmers plow their land were attacked by settlers. The settlers, armed with guns and stones, beat the activists and pushed a tractor down a valley and stole other equipment that was on it.

In April of 2004, Israeli security forces destroyed 11 structures in south Hebron including shacks, tents and public facilities erected by the British government's Department for International Development.

In September of 2004, the High Court of Justice decided to uphold the injunction barring the IDF from demolishing tents, caves and structures inhabited by the Palestinians in the southern Hebron Hills near Sausiya. The legal battle had been ongoing since since Yair Har Sinai, had been murdered.

Later in September, Kim Lamberty and Chris Brown, two members of the Christian Peacemakers Team, were injured in Hebron Districts after being attacked by settlers for escorting children from Tuba to al-Tuwani elemenatary school. She received treatment for a broken arm and he received broken arms and a punctured lung.

In October, eight settlers with wooden sticks and sling shots attacked Christian Peacemakers team member Diana Zimmerman, Diane Janzen, an Operation Dove member, and two Amnesty International employees, Donatella Rovera and Maartje Houbrechts. The masked settlers stole a video camera in the beating attack and the Operation Dove member was treated in Beer Sheva for a broken arm.

Recently, 60 Palestinians from Hebron Hills petitioned the High Court of Justice against the government's intention to confiscate lands for construction of the Separation Fence.

And so on it goes, nothing changes. To the outsider, this is like embracing madness as a way of life. People here are still fighting over the Promised Land in Hebron, the city of hell.

CRIMINAL TRINITY: the US, ISRAEL AND HOLLAND

The Netherlands — 21 March 2005 - According to information today from the Dutch embassy in Washington: ''the US government wants to discuss with The Hague what rôle the Dutch military will play during military conflicts and crisis situations over the next four years.'' The Dutch embassy confirms this, but the dutch foreign office wants to keep it out of the news in Holland and is silent this far.

Most Dutch people regard it as an enormous shame that The Netherlands: ''is among a select group of allies that will be approached in the near future by Washington for closer military co-operation.''

Like criminals chosen by criminals.

The Netherlands has always secretly and overtly been supporting the illegal US and Israeli wars and armed conflicts. As such the Quislings in the Hague have put the whole country at the disposal of the american neocons, with the Israelis and their Mossad secret service running a contraband 'State within a State' at the main Schiphol airport.

Most of the time the Dutch navy and Air force have (secretly) assisted the illegal US operations, like in the latest US coup in Venezuela. (Now assisting and preparing the next move on the island of Aruba) And by the supply of navy ships the dutch assist in the gathering of intelligence wherever the americans want them to do so.

More dutch commandos and marines will also be deployed in Iraq for the fake reason ''to help US forces seek out al-Qaeda operatives'': the 'kill and destroy' operations which are war crimes.*

This is all paid for by the dutch taxpayers who in general do not know a damn thing about what's really going on behind their backs: how much permanently is stolen and how many crimes they pay for.

On an international scale Holland takes the 6th place among the rich nations, but the working people pay - after Sweden as number one - the second highest taxes in the world. All big multinationals use Holland as some kind of tax free haven, where they sometimes even get subsidized by their gangster friends in the government; the populace in Holland is as maltreated as the unkowing masses in the US.

Hundreds of Dutch 'commandos'- many times US trained ''Special forces'' with a 'license to kill' - are now secretly leaving the Netherlands to assist the american war criminals in their extermination, jailing and torturing of still more people in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Six hundred more dutch uniformed and 'licensed killers' are kept 'in reserve' by the Quislings in The Hague, which now are serving the americans like their forefathers probably served the Nazis. Labour MP Bert Koenders protested - as one of the few in the spineless and cowardly dutch parliament - against dutch troops again taking part in - what he called - ''those american kill and destroy operations''.

Contrary to the outspoken wishes of 80% of the Dutch people, who are against the illegal american warfare, the Dutch government secretly has turned the country into one of the worst collaborators of the present american administration and it's disgusting war crimes. For their criminal behavior in former Tjechoslavakia some guilty dutch politicians have already been heard in Court.*

''They must be made to pay the price for their crimes'', is a growing feeling.

The fact that also the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, has declared the war in Iraq illegal, has not had any human effect on the war criminals among all american/israeli stooges in the dutch so called government in The Hague and the collaborating dutch military ignorants.

The shameless and incompetent Dutch gov't nitwits did not even react when the US Senate concocted the so called "The Hague Invasion Act", threatening to rescue the US war criminals if ever they are charged with war crimes like at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Afraid as the 'Neocon Junta' in Washington is, knowing that they must appear in court too.

Bolton: Bush's barbaric pitbull versus the UN lapdogs.

This unfriendly - to say the least - "Invasion of the Netherlands Act" was attached to the House version of a State Department authorization bill that blocked US money for the UN. Blackmail with billions, done as usual by the US' UN-representation which now is in the hands of one of the worst US law rapers and bullies ever: John Bolton, the Neanderthaler of diplomacy as he's looked upon in international circles. 'Justice's Terminator' as US shame.

The 'Hague Invasion Act' was designed to undermine the 1998 treaty creating the International Criminal Court now seated in The Hague. It is a World Court to judge large-scale Human Rights abuses, and the treaty was signed by President Clinton in his last days in office.

Only terror states, afraid of having to answer to accusations of large-scale human rights abuses, did not sign the treaty. It was a unique and unheard of act in American history when president Bush immediately revoked the signature by the U.S. as signed earlier by president Clinton.

This totalitarian US 'Hague Invasion Act' would also prevent any US government agency from cooperating with the court and would block military aid; to any non-Nato state which ratifies the ICC treaty, which has been signed by more than 150 governments in the United Nations.

The dutch people who dislike the war and belligerent acts of the two main rogue states right now, the United States and Israel, those people wait for justice to return, so those war criminals in the Hague, Dutch industry, the military top and all collaborating 'journalists' can be taken to Court and charged with the 'crimes against humanity' they are committing now.*

The present government of the Netherlands, which also hypocritically calls itself 'christian' - is like the 'managing' criminals in the US, Israel, Britain, and Italy - a burning shame for humanity.

They must be stopped.

ROME — The U.S. military command in Iraq has blocked two Italian policemen from examining the car in which an Italian intelligence agent was shot to death in Baghdad, a newspaper said Wednesday.

Corriere della Sera said that the policemen were about to leave when the Italian Embassy in Baghdad received an order from the U.S. command on Monday to abort the mission for security concerns.

The embassy in Baghdad reportedly alerted Rome authorities, who called off the trip.

The car, a Toyota Corolla, is reportedly still in American hands, at Baghdad airport where it was originally rented.[...]

Italian authorities say that examining the vehicle is key to assessing what happened on March 4, when U.S. troops opened fire on the car carrying secret service agent Nicola Calipari, another intelligence officer and journalist Giuliana Sgrena, who had just been released after a month of captivity in Iraq.[...]

The U.S. military said that the vehicle was speeding and refused to stop, and that a U.S. patrol tried to warn the driver with hand and arm signals, by flashing white lights and firing shots in front of the car and into the car's engine block.

Berlusconi said the car was traveling slowly at night and stopped immediately when a light was flashed at it, shortly before U.S. troops fired on the car. Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini said the fire appeared to have hit the right side of the car.

Vowing to shed light on the incident, Washington has ordered an investigation into the shooting, to be led by a U.S. brigadier general with the participation of Italian officials. The joint commission is expected to release its findings by mid-April.

Field commander Rizvan Chitigov has been killed in Chechnya during a raid carried out by pro-Moscow security forces and the republic's Interior Ministry troops, the Itar-Tass news agency cited the republic's first deputy prime minister Ramzan Kadyrov.

"Chitigov was surrounded and eliminated after he put up armed resistance," Kadyrov was quoted by the news agency as saying.

Chitigov, aka American or Suraka, born 1965, was placed on the federal wanted list on suspicion of being involved in kidnappings. In the early 1990s Chitigov visited the United States and upon his return he oversaw military intelligence in Aslan Maskhadov's government.

The FSB, Russia's domestic security service, suspected that Chitigov had been maintaining ties with foreign intelligence services and was himself a CIA agent, former FSB spokesman Aleksandr Zdanovich said in April 2001.

According to some reports, Chitigov had a green card — a permanent residence permit in the U.S.

In the summer of 2001 he told journalists that he intended to poison Russian soldiers with virulent toxins.

Rizvan Chitigov was also a close ally of the infamous warlord Khattab.

In 2002 Russian security services obtained a recording of Chitigov's conversation with the Chechen envoy to the United Arab Emirates Khizir Alkhazurov, where Chitigov allegedly asked his interlocutor to write a manual for preparing toxic substances and send it to Chechnya.

During a search at one of Chitigov's bases in the Chechen highlands security forces discovered stocks of ricin and other toxins and instructions on how to use them in combination with conventional weapons.

Police mistook a group of Iraqi soldiers wearing civilian garb for insurgents and opened fire, sparking a 10-minute gunbattle that left five dead in the northern Iraqi town of Rabia.

In Baghdad, hundreds of electricity workers demanded an end to terror attacks that have killed many of their colleagues.

The soldiers in Rabia, 145 kilometres west of the larger city of Mosul, were dressed in street clothes and were armed, confusing police, according to the region's police chief, Ahmed Mohammed Khalaf. Three soldiers and two police were killed and another eight wounded in the exchange of friendly fire.

In the former rebel stronghold of Fallujah, police patrolled the streets and imposed a sudden, late-afternoon curfew, shouting through loudspeakers: "Close your stores and go home!" They also set up checkpoints and searched cars in the city.

It was unclear why the sudden curfew was put in place. Earlier, a battle broke out in the northern Jolan neighbourhood between unidentified gunmen and Iraqi security forces, witnesses said. [...]

BISHKEK - Reports say the capital of Kyrgyzstan is in chaos. Looters have ransacked shops and set buildings on fire following days of political opposition protests.

Emergency services personnel say there are no police in the city.

The Kyrgyz parliament installed an opposition deputy as acting president following the mysterious disappearance of President Askar Akayev. The new interior minister has vowed to clamp down on looting.

But the opposition appears to have seized control of the Central Asian country after days of violent protest.

"It's not the opposition that has seized power," said one of the protesters, "it's the people."

Ukraine has offered to mediate in the crisis, which has left the Soviet-era regime teetering on the brink of collapse.

Akayev came to office with the fall of the Soviet Union. He was not a Communist apparatchik as in neighbouring states, but a physicist, who introduced democratic reforms.

But after 15 years in office, corruption and nepotism were rampant. So too is poverty: the protests started in the poor southern provinces.

The uprising began after Akayev, who is prohibited from seeking another term, was accused of seeking to amend the constitution so he could stay in office another term.

The demonstrations culminated in thousands of rock-throwing, club-wielding opposition supporters overrunning the government's main seat of power in the capital.

Kyrgyzstan has been wracked by demonstrations since a March 13 runoff vote saw the opposition nearly shut out of the nation's 75 seat parliament.

But analysts warn this isn't yet a people power event. "It's not a revolution. I would rather say it's an implosion of the state, at least the state that was maintained by Mr. Akayev," said Andrei Kortunov of Moscow's New Eurasia Foundation. [...]

March 23 -- The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has warned former Pentagon adviser Richard Perle that it may sue him for his role in the alleged looting of Hollinger International Inc., the Chicago-based media company once controlled by Conrad Black.

Perle, 63, a Hollinger director, said in a telephone interview that he received and responded to a so-called Wells notice, a formal warning that the agency's enforcement staff has determined that evidence of wrongdoing is sufficient to bring a civil lawsuit.

The SEC staff, which has reviewed Perle's response, plans to urge the regulatory body's commissioners to authorize a suit against him, according to people familiar with the matter.

Hollinger International officials, shareholders and the SEC allege that Black and former Hollinger President David Radler wrongfully diverted proceeds from the sale of some of the chain's newspapers for their personal use. Perle was a member of Hollinger International's three-member executive committee, with Black and Radler, from 1996 to 2003.