YUCAIPA, Calif. - A moderate earthquake shook most of Southern California Thursday, startling people and knocking items off shelves and desks, but there were no immediate reports of significant damage or injuries.

The early afternoon quake had a magnitude of 4.9 and was centered near Yucaipa in San Bernardino County, east of Los Angeles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. About 25 aftershocks followed in a little over an hour, the strongest estimated at magnitude 3.5.

Residents reported shaking from Los Angeles to San Diego and in counties to the east. Rock slides were reported on Highway 38 in the San Bernardino Mountains.

"All of a sudden I heard a loud rumbling sound, kind of like thunder," said Nick Brandes, 25, manager of a store in Yucaipa. "At the front, all the customers were in a panic. They were all just in a hurry to get out."

Andrea Cabrera, an employee at the Walgreens drug store in Yucaipa, said the store "just had a few items falling, that's all." Customers "were just stunned, and they just stood there," she said.

The Los Angeles Fire Department received no immediate reports of major damage, spokesman Brian Humphrey said. None of
Southern California Edison's 4.6 million customers lost power.

It was the third significant quake to hit California this week: A magnitude-5.2 quake shook Riverside County on Sunday, and a magnitude-7.0 quake struck Tuesday under the ocean 90 miles off Northern California.

Thursday's quake occurred near the San Andreas Fault but not on it, said Lucy Jones, scientist in charge of the U.S. Geological Survey office in Pasadena. She said the quake was not a direct aftershock from Sunday's temblor.

"This is not an unusual level of earthquake activity," Jones said of the state's recent quakes.

Channon Kelly, 31, was eating her lunch in downtown Los Angeles when Thursday's quake hit.

"I almost jumped out of my seat," Kelly said. "I'm starting to get freaked out. We've had so many in the last week, the one Sunday and then in Northern California. I could hear the windows rattling and feel it all at the same time."

A 4.9 magnitude earthquake centered in San Bernardino County rattled a large section of Southern California on Thursday, the third significant temblor to hit the state in less than a week.

While the quake did not cause major injuries or damage, it shook nerves across the region just two days after a 7.2 quake off the Northern California coast prompted a tsunami warning and four days after many residents were jolted awake by a 5.2 quake centered near Anza.

A steam shovel, left, pushes debris off the roadway, south of Crescent City Calif., March 29, 1964, after a Tsunami struck causing extensive damage. Coastal dwellers in far northern California and southern Oregon knew to take it seriously when tsunami sirens sounded after a 7.0-magnitude offshore earthquake, Tuesday, June 14, 2005, and thousands of people were safely evacuated within minutes. Many here still remember the 1964 tsunami that killed 15 people along this stretch of the Pacific Coast. And while there were no destructive waves after Tuesday night's temblor, experts Wednesday praised the decision to announce a tsunami warning for the entire West Coast - better safe than sorry, they said. (AP Photo/File)

Then around 11 p.m. Thursday, a quake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.4 rattled the ocean floor off Northern California, 125 miles west of Eureka. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

It was not strong enough to generate a tsunami warning, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Geological Survey said.

It was, however, probably an aftershock from Tuesday's quake in the area, she said.

Seismologists said that they found no immediate connection between the other quakes. But they were studying whether the Thursday afternoon quake, north of Yucaipa, could be linked to Sunday's Anza quake because they occurred 25 miles apart.

Officials said Southern California usually experiences quakes of this magnitude several times a year, but acknowledged that it's rare for them to occur so close together.

"It is unusual. But we've seen it before," said Caltech seismologist Kate Hutton, noting that quakes often come in clusters over periods of years - a phenomenon that scientists cannot fully explain.

The series of earthquakes was enough to revive anxious chatter Thursday of the coming Big One, a massive quake along the San Andreas fault. Hutton and other experts said they can understand the concern.

"I can empathize why people feel that," added Lucy Jones, the scientist in charge of the U.S. Geological Survey's Southern California office. "We don't handle randomness well. We like to make patterns. The chances are we expect two 'fives' in a week once every 10 years. It's been very quiet. During the '80s, we had earthquakes every day from 1987 to 1994. People are out of habit. They've been lulled down."

The last time the state experienced a similar earthquake cluster was 1986, when the Bishop area was hit by a series of quakes of up to 6.1 in magnitude. Experts said the biggest concern is that smaller quakes could trigger large quakes. Thursday's quake occurred along an as-yet-undetermined "splinter fault" near the San Andreas.

Seismologists said there was a 1-in-20 chance that Thursday's quake was a foreshock - a quake that precedes another quake of magnitude 5 or greater. Such quakes usually occur within hours of each other, but can occur as far apart as five days.

"There's a small chance that this was a foreshock, but it's probably not," Hutton said.

Both this week's Inland Empire quakes occurred near the San Andreas fault, a wide gouge in the Earth's crust where tectonic plates grind against each other. Thursday's quake was centered 8 miles from the fault, while the Anza quake was roughly 25 miles away, along the San Jacinto fault.

The San Andreas, long considered by scientists as a likely source of a catastrophic temblor, has erupted before, causing the great quake of 1906 that devastated San Francisco.

The entire San Andreas fault system is more than 800 miles long and extends 10 miles deep. Scientists say the San Andreas and other faults are storing up energy that is released in an Earth shuddering explosion when the plates slip against one another.

Scientists speculate that earthquake clusters result when energy has been stored for long periods and is released periodically.

"The biggest earthquakes relieve stress," Jones said. "They transfer energy. It relieves stress out of the Earth. When that happens, the Earth relaxes and it stops producing so many small earthquakes."

Also this week, a magnitude 7.8 temblor hit Chile on Monday, killing at least 11 people, and a magnitude 6.8 quake struck the Aleutian Islands off Alaska on Tuesday. Both were preceded and followed by smaller quakes.

Some scientists believe one earthquake can shake loose, or trigger, another nearby or elsewhere in the world. But officials expressed doubts that the Chile or Aleutian Islands quakes were related to those in Southern California because of the distance.

For all their ability to describe the size and location of quakes, scientists acknowledge that there is still much they don't know. Some say that the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults are overdue for large earthquakes, but they cannot say when.

Thirty years ago, seismologists believed they were on the cusp of discovering how to predict earthquakes.

Today, few scientists hold out such hope.

"In terms of earthquakes, the question now is: Will they ever be predictable?" Jones said.

"We know the big picture. But why the earthquake happened today and not yesterday, or last year, or 10 years ago, we just don't know. We also don't know what makes them stop."

Many Southland residents find this uncertainty troubling.

"I think this is leading up to the Big One," said Mentone resident Cora Embry, who grabbed her young son and ran from her home when the shaking began Thursday.

"I feel a big earthquake coming. They say there is no such thing as earthquake weather, but there is."

Thursday's first temblor struck about 1:53 p.m., three miles northeast of Yucaipa, 72 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. The quake, which struck roughly eight miles below ground, triggered rock slides in the San Bernardino Mountains and injured at least one Lake Arrowhead woman when it sent a chandelier crashing onto her head.

In areas close to the epicenter, residents described a shock that almost buckled their knees, caused large panes of glass to shiver and sent furniture pounding against the floor.

While seismologists characterized the earthquake as small - it was strong enough to toss items from shelves and crack walls, but not big enough to damage buildings - residents who lived near the epicenter said it seemed larger.

Redlands resident Susan Mosher was home studying for the bar exam when her dogs began barking, and the interior living room wall began cracking.

"We've had a lot of earthquakes - this is the first one that scared me," Mosher said.

Residents throughout the Los Angeles Basin felt a quivering.

Scientists suggested that the shaking may have seemed much more severe than it was because Southern California is coming off a long period of relative calm, seismically speaking.

"We've had a very quiet decade," Jones said. "We live in earthquake country and we should remember that."

Times Staff Writers Monte Morin, Jia-Rui Chong, Jennifer Delson, Susana Enriquez, Sara Lin, Lance Pugmire, Stephanie Ramos, Susannah Rosenblatt, Joel Rubin, Andrew Wang and Daniel Yi contributed to this report.

EUREKA, Calif. - Just hours after a moderate earthquake shook most of Southern California, a strong quake struck off the state's northern coast to become the fourth significant shaker to jolt California this week.

Neither quake Thursday caused serious damage. One person was injured.

A 6.4-magnitude temblor hit about 125 miles off the coast of Eureka around 11:30 p.m., rattling the ocean floor. In the afternoon, a 4.9-magnitude quake struck east of Los Angeles, startling people and knocking items off shelves and desks. [...]

Four significant quakes have hit California this week: A magnitude-5.2 quake shook Riverside County on Sunday, and a magnitude-7.2 quake trembled Tuesday under the ocean 90 miles off Northern California.

Stephanie Hanna, spokeswoman for the U.S. Geological Survey, said Thursday night's quake was likely an aftershock from Tuesday's shaker. [...]

A moderate earthquake occurred at 02:37:36 (UTC) on Friday, June 17, 2005. The magnitude 5.4 event has been located in NORTHERN SUMATRA, INDONESIA.

The "plan for action" to tackle climate change for the G8 summit next month has been drastically watered down following Tony Blair's visit to Washington, according to a leaked draft.

The new text has been stripped of commitments to fund programmes that appeared in a previous leak of the communiqué, which was dated 3 May. In the new document, of 14 June, some key phrases appear only in square brackets, indicating that their inclusion is in dispute, while other important sentences have been taken out altogether.

In this week's version, even the phrase "our world is warming" has been placed in square brackets. The sentence, referring to the rise in the earth's temperature: "We know that the increase is due in large part to human activity" has been relegated to square brackets, as has: "The world's developed economies have a responsibility to show leadership."

Catherine Pearce, the international climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: "The new text is really attacking the whole science on climate change. The previous text was weak but at least it recognised the science. The US administration has hacked the text to pieces. I just don't know where we can go from here."

Stephen Tindale, the executive director of Greenpeace and a former adviser to Tony Blair, said: "President Bush is an international menace. Blair says climate change is the gravest threat we face but it seems his friend in the White House refuses even to admit the world is warming." [...]

Ms Pearce said: "Every reference to the urgency of action or the need for real cuts in emissions has been deleted or challenged. Nothing in this text recognises the scale or urgency of the crisis of climate change. If they can't do better than this, the outcome of G8 summit will be worse than hot air: it will be a backward step in international climate change policy, simply adding to climate injustice." [...]

The May text had a number of commitments for expenditure of unspecified amounts, which have disappeared from the new version. So have previous G8 commitments, for instance, to fund developing countries to "assess opportunities for bio-energy" and "a fund to enable developing countries to participate in relevant international research projects" are gone. Also deleted are previous monetary commitments to "the development of markets in sustainable energy" in poor countries and funding for "fully operational regional climate centres in Africa".

Analysts said the new text amounted to a serious blow for Tony Blair, who has made progress on climate change one of the two big themes for the meeting of world leaders due to be held at Gleneagles Hotel in July - the other being help for Africa. A spokeswoman for Downing Street, said: "We don't comment on any leaked document. We are focussed on the action that gets delivered at the G8 and we not provide a commentary on on-going discussions."

The Bush administration has consistently questioned the mainstream climate science that shows the world is warming due to human activity. It wants to wait for unspecified technological breakthroughs to solve the problem.

Boys from Africa are being murdered as human sacrifices in London churches.

Police believe such boys are trafficked from cities such as Kinshasa where they can be bought for a little as £10.

The report, leaked ahead of its publication next month, also cites examples of African children being tortured and killed after being identified as "witches" by church pastors.

The 10-month study was commissioned after the death of Victoria Climbié, who was starved and beaten to death after they said she was possessed by the devil.

The aim of the Met study was to create an "open dialogue" with the African and Asian community in Newham and Hackney. In discussions with African community leaders, officers were told of examples of children being murdered because their parents or carers believe them to be possessed by evil spirits. Earlier-this month Sita Kisanga, 35, was convicted at the Old Bailey of torturing an eight-year-old girl from Angola she accused of being a witch.

Kisanga was a member of the Combat Spirituel church in Dalston. Many such churches, supported mainly by people from West Africa, sanction aggressive forms of exorcism on those thought to be possessed.

There are believed to be 300 such churches in the UK, mostly in London.

The report was put together by an expert social worker and lawyer for the Met after talking to hundreds of people in African communities in a series of workshops. It uncovered allegations of witchcraft spells, child trafficking and HIV-positive people who believe that by having sex with a child they will be "cleansed".

An extract reads: "People who are desperate will seek out experts to cast spells for them.

"Members of the workshop stated that for a spell to be powerful it required a sacrifice involving a male child unblemished by circumcision. They allege that boy children are being trafficked into the UK for this purpose."

It adds: "A number of pastors maintain that God speaks through them and lets them know when someone is possessed.

"It is therefore their duty to deliver the child or adult from the evil spirit.

"After much debate they acknowledge that children labelled as possessed are in danger of being beaten by their families.

"However, they would not accept they played a role in inciting such violence."

Last month Scotland Yard revealed it had traced just two out of 300 black boys aged four to seven reported missing from London schools in a three-month period.

The true figure for missing boys and girls is feared to be several thousand a year.

The report says there is a wide gulf between these communities and social services and protection agencies with many people in ethnic communities scared to speak out.

The report concludes police face a "wall of silence" when dealing with such cases.

Experts differ on the merits of the Scotland Yard report. [...]

"It is people in positions of power and money that are manipulating poor people."

The Senate's No. 2 Democrat has compared the U.S. military's treatment of a suspected al Qaeda terrorist at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay with the regimes of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Pol Pot, three of history's most heinous dictators, whose regimes killed millions.

In a speech on the Senate floor late Tuesday, Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, castigated the American military's actions by reading an e-mail from an FBI agent.

The agent complained to higher-ups that one al Qaeda suspect was chained to the floor, kept in an extremely cold air-conditioned cell and forced to hear loud rap music. The Justice Department is investigating.

About 9 million persons, including 6 million Jews, died in Hitler's death camps, 2.7 million persons died in Stalin's gulags and 1.7 million Cambodians died in Pol Pot's scourge of his country.

No prisoners have died at Guantanamo, and the Pentagon has acknowledged five instances of abuse or irreverent handling of the Koran, the holy book of Muslims.

After reading the e-mail, Mr. Durbin said, "If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners."

Comment: The details of abuse from the e-mail to which Durbin is referring are tame compared to other reports of torture conducted by the US and its "allies" at places like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib...

Mr. Durbin also likened the treatment of terror suspects at the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's decision to authorize the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

"It took us almost 40 years for us to acknowledge that we were wrong, to admit that these people should never have been imprisoned. It was a shameful period in American history," Mr. Durbin said. "I believe the torture techniques that have been used at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and other places fall into that same category."

The White House yesterday reacted angrily to Mr. Durbin's remarks.
"It's reprehensible, as Defense Secretary [Donald H.] Rumsfeld said, to suggest that the Guantanamo Bay facility is anything like a gulag or a mad regime or Pol Pot," White House spokesman Trent Duffy told The Washington Times.

"It is reprehensible, has no place in the current debate, and as we've seen over several years, the detainees in Guantanamo Bay are being treated humanely," he said.

Comment: How can one have a debate when one side is dictating to the other what can and cannot be discussed??

"What this is is a disservice to any man and woman serving in the U.S. military who's putting their life on the line each day, because they're trying to paint all military with a broad brush because of the actions of perhaps a few bad apples, who are being punished severely."

Comment: The "few bad apples who are being punished severely" seem to have been the low-ranking patsies. Military and civilian leaders, including Bush and Rumsfeld, were completely off limits in the "prosecution" of the continuing abuse and torture committed by US forces. While Janice Karpinski was demoted, several other complicit leaders were actually promoted for their efforts. From The Guardian:

Despite Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo - not to mention Iraq and the failure of intelligence - and the various roles they played in what went wrong, Rumsfeld kept his job; Rice was promoted to secretary of state; Alberto Gonzales, who commissioned the memos justifying torture, became attorney general; deputy secretary of defence Paul Wolfowitz was nominated to the presidency of the World Bank; and Stephen Cambone, under-secretary of defence for intelligence and one of those most directly involved in the policies on prisoners, was still one of Rumsfeld's closest confidants. President Bush, asked about accountability, told the Washington Post before his second inauguration that the American people had supplied all the accountability needed - by re-electing him. Only seven enlisted men and women have been charged or pleaded guilty to offences relating to Abu Ghraib. No officer is facing criminal proceedings.

The truth is that there is no need for anyone to "paint all military with a broad brush" because the facts speak for themselves. Notice also how the focus of the torture issue is shifted away from Bush administration officials by the White House itself and the blame is placed squarely on the military.

At the Pentagon, Rumsfeld spokesman Larry Di Rita said of Mr. Durbin's remarks: "I didn't hear what he said, but any such comparison would obviously be outrageous and not remotely connected with reality."

[...] Two days ago, I received a call from a friend in New York that many American newspapers were 'encouraged' to post articles AGAINST closing Guantanamo.

I thought that such idea is insane as I did not read such articles before in the US media before, and besides, as a result of the BBC documentary we already know the majority of the Guantanamo prisoners are innocent Afghani citizens who were sold by the Pakistanis to the American forces.

Since my New York friend is usually correct, I set a Google Alert on the word Gitmo and waited. I did not have to wait long... It seems that overnight America was flooded with a major propaganda wave. The wave of evil and hate campaign sweeping America via your Zionist controlled press is mind-boggling.

How could America have stooped to such a level? Is intellectual honesty gone? How could this White House destroy anything which resembles ethics?

And Americans, by their silence, become a part of it.

I went through my Google email and collected for you some of the articles from just the last two days. And these articles circulated on many, many other papers... This is filth of the highest order:

Close-Up Shop At Gitmo? Such talk should be flushed
Amarillo.com (Subscription) - Amarillo, TX

Close Gitmo? Be Careful What You Wish For
Los Angeles Times - CA

Close Gitmo? Bad Idea!
renewamerica.us - Washington, DC

Senate GOP: Closing Gitmo Not The Answer
ABC News - USA

Stand Firm For Gitmo
Washington Times - Washington, DC

Close Gitmo? Hell, No!
Pardon My English - Salem, MA

No Good Reason To Close Gitmo
Heritage.org - Washington, DC

Gitmo By Any Other Name Is Still Necessary
Town Hall - Washington, DC

Gitmo Camp Should Stay Open
Sioux City Journal - Sioux City,IA,USA

Trying To Get - And Get Used To - Gitmo
Washington Examiner - Washington,DC

Going Gonzo Over Gitmo
Men's News Daily - Guerneville,CA,USA

Close Gitmo?
National Review Online - New York, NY

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Halliburton Co. unit will build a new $30 million detention facility and security fence at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States is holding about 520 foreign terrorism suspects, the Defense Department announced on Thursday.

The announcement comes the same week that Vice President
Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defended the jail after U.S. lawmakers said it had created an image problem for the United States. [...]

CONGRATULATIONS America: It seems that we have succeeded where no one else would ever want to go! This nation took a settled Republic and dismembered its form of government turning this democracy into something that looks a lot more like Dumbocracy - and then has had the temerity to wonder why the world thinks we're crazy.

Many writers, including this one, have been trying to figure out why Americans do not react to what this nation is doing in the world today, both at home and abroad. Perhaps the answer is much simpler than many of us imagined.

Initially it appeared that Americans were either just asleep or were willfully blind to all that is and was being done in our name.

It appears that the population is behaving like a herd of dumb animals, slavishly following orders from a certifiable "leader" who has no qualifications, no leadership skills, and no accompanying track record that could ever have justified the failures of GWB in the office that he now occupies.

His "cabinet" has been filled with equally unqualified people who collectively have no experience in military matters, or in the administration of anything meaningful or real. So why does this nation credit this spoiled offspring from a truly criminal family, this AWOL coward who ran away on 911 instead of doing anything at all to interrupt the attacks of that day? WHY has Bush not yet explained himself to the nation or the world?

In the mid nineteen-thirties Sinclair Lewis wrote "It Can't Happen Here" and in that novel he concluded: "Where in all history has there ever been a people so ripe for a dictatorship as ours!"

Even today the US Senate cannot bring itself to apologize to the victims of lynching - 4,743 people killed (illegally) between 1882 and 1968," and we call ourselves a civilized nation! We have taken a dire situation and intensified the risks, destroyed the impediments that might have slowed the rise of anarchy, and all the while we have remained deaf, dumb and blind to what we are creating - WHY?

If the dead of all those wars we entered into - to "Make the World Safe for Democracy" were to be heard on this subject the chorus would be deafeningly opposed to our present course of action. Yet the public in its bubble world of profits and power continues on the one sure path that will bring death and ruination to all the Outlaws say they represent.

These men and women who died in our wars would not applaud what has been done with the sacrifice they did not really choose to make. In WWII 50 million died, for this?

In the two wars we have going now, there are officially over 1700 dead, and there have been over a hundred-thousand exposed to Depleted Uranium and the malignancy of that disease that continues to kill long after the guns have been silenced: this affects not only the GI's but their families as well - yet the public is still not concerned enough to demand real answers from those who got us into this situation.

How many more must die before we begin to scream ENOUGH? What's the magic number here 2,000, 10,000 - 20,000 dead? Who decides what that weighty number will be, who will stand against this injustice, not just for our dead but also for all the people that have been maimed or displaced or killed because of our belligerence?

Why is it so hard for Americans to understand that the people we kill for the OUTLAWS all have families, dreams and would have had futures, had we not slaughtered them, too!

Why do we seemingly not want to know who is responsible for pulling the strings on our homegrown Outlaws - the thugs who sign the orders - then lie about the facts of what they have done and continue to do hourly? One reason that seems to hold a lot of sway is that Congress no longer makes our laws, they've sold that privilege to the highest bidders.

The Government of the United States of America is now of, by and for the Corporations. These are the same corporations, the Corporatocracy, to whom the people of the USA have bequeathed a literal and legal eternal life, while at the same time allowing their own corporate "best interests" to override the needs and interests of the very citizens who made all that largess possible. All the terms of any agreements that the workers for such companies signed on for - are now subject to nullification at the whim of the corporations. The retirement funds, the health-care, and the long-term interests of those who made the profits happen, now represent nothing but "excessive costs" to the corporations that are failing on all fronts, because they have destroyed any incentive for anyone besides the upper-level managers to profit from their existence.

But it gets worse. Americans gave the newly minted outlaw corporations the legal right to exist - now those corporations have no further need for working Americans, because now they have foreign markets to buy their outsourced products, so the public here is overripe to become nothing more than a wage-enslaved herd of animals to be directed and controlled by what suits the corporations - at each and every turn in their corporate schedule for hegemony.

The answers to the above questions are not pretty, but it goes something like this. War is GREAT for business and it's especially good for stockholders, people with jobs at those corporations who hold the SECRET no-bid contracts, and for insiders. Normally Wars are good for the initiating country for the profits that are generated by that action. In this case, since the jobs have been outsourced, down to and including the manufacture of American Flags in China - this nation has actually lost millions of jobs because of the war, and its demands upon our outsourced corporate legions whose profits have never been greater. All this while the public was told to "just go shopping!"

Perhaps it is understandable if the above is the real reason why so many refuse to "know" what's going on - this could explain many things. For instance if the above is true, then it would definitely be understandable that many would indeed fear for the loss of their jobs, or the loss of the income generated in their 401K's, or their stock portfolios - IF they were to publicly demand accountability from those who created 911 and then started these wars to cover-up their crimes. No wonder all the little lambs chose silence over protest: that is what the "smart-money" always does!

Congratulations are in order - it took real perseverance to turn this democracy on its head, and to learn to worship Outlaws while we are killing everything that we have always professed to "believe in." Welcome to the Dumbocracy of the New United States of the Corporatocracy. We have created a prison of the mind that will destroy any rational thoughts we ever had of being human. Maybe, we have become nothing more than pod people without the capacity for critical thought. We have abdicated all that we would each have brought to being viable beings, opting instead to live as footnotes in the margins of the lives of faceless, soulless corporations. In the final analysis we are destroying all that makes each of us valuable - to ourselves or to others.

Think about it - do you really want to be the excuse given for the USA to continue to live as the world's sole Dumbocracy? Break the Silence - NOW!

- kirwan

Comment

Jim Mortellaro
6-17-5

Kirwan -

You ask too much of our people. They no longer have a will. No longer have strength of spirit. No longer. And I'm not so sure that you are correct. That Americans fear for their jobs, etc. Maybe not as much as you credit them.

Maybe it's just a loss of interest and of strength of will. Maybe Americans are so dumbed down by their own media, by the "Free Press," dumbed down by the lies of their elected officials and those who seek public office, by their elected 'leaders,' that they are of the mistaken opinion that they will make it all better. After all, is not that the reason "The People" elected them?

Of course, this is all a cop out. Americans are merely lemmings, following the piper piping the same old worn out tunes, same promises which are rarely or never kept. Maybe.

One thing is certain, Kirwan, to ask that The People break their silence now, is foolish beyond measure. For they will not. The time for a silent revolution, a revolution aimed at changing the corrupt politicians in our government, ruled by money, not by their constituencies, has passed us by.

Only a real revolution will change us. And we've not the guts for that.

Those of us who want just that are too damned old. Those of us who do are too damned frightened. The rest of us just don't give a damn.

So much for speaking out.

I was a soldier for most of the time between 1970 and 1996. I signed out on my retirement from 3rd Special Forces in Ft. Bragg. I had also served in 7th Special Forces, on three Ranger assignments, with Delta for almost four years, as a Cavalry Scout for a while, and in the 82nd Airborne Division as an infantryman. I started my career in Vietnam with the 173rd Airborne Brigade.

I thugged around in eight different places in East Asia, Latin America, and Africa, where I pointed guns at people. Like you, I was an instrument of American foreign policies ­ policies controlled, then as now, by the rich.

In the course of that career, I heard everything you have heard and felt everything you have felt about "loyalty."

Tricky thing, loyalty.

Nowadays, when I talk with some of you, or when I hear conversations recorded with you, I hear many who have very serious reservations about these wars of occupation. I had more than reservations from the get-go about Iraq and Afghanistan, and I opposed them as hard as I could, and so did millions of other people around the world.

But that brain-dead piece of sh*t in the White House who is legally your boss, and all his handlers, starting with Vice President Dick "Halliburton" Cheney they sent you to do this thing anyway.

They talked themselves into believing this would be ­ and these are their words ­ a cakewalk. They surrounded themselves exclusively with others who echoed what was already in their minds; and they punished and villified and isolated anyone who told them what they didn't want to hear. Because they made up their minds to conduct these invasions years ago, and with the attacks of September 11 ­ in which Iraq's role was exactly nothing ­ they figured now was their chance to conduct the re-disposition of the old Cold War military into their new plan to build permanent bases in Southwest Asia.

Since they'd made up their minds, they didn't want to hear anything except rosy scenarios for their plans, because these reptile-minded, preppy gangsters are like spoiled children who can't abide anyone f*cking up their toy-emperor fantasies.

But when those fantasies did get f*cked up, by the realities they ran so hard to escape, they continued to pursue their grim agenda in spite of the mounting consequences, because they don't pay those consequences.

If I had my way, we would issue the whole shriveled, manicured lot of them their assault rifles, put them aboard an Air Force transport, tighten the leg straps on their static line parachutes, and boot their sorry asses out from 800 feet right over the middle of Ramadi ­ where they could drop their harnesses in the street and explain democracy to the locals.

But that's just ranting, because I do so despise them. I hate people who get away with sh*t just because they have money and power. And I hate people who sacrifice the lives of others to amplify or protect that power.

But I'm not telling you anything. You all already know by now what generation after generation has learned the hard way. When the rich start their wars, it's not the rich that get sent to fight them. Yeah, a few go get their time as part of putting together a political career, but we know who does the heavy lifting.

And in these conversations that many of you have with me and thousands of other people, we hear you say ­ more and more often now ­ that you know this war is wrong, but that you have to "do your job," because you are loyal to your buddies; because you feel that you have to back them up; and because if you don't go, someone else will have to. And I respect that sentiment.

But I have to challenge this loyalty thing, and I do it out of respect for you, and because I care about you, and because my own son is back there for his second go-around.

A young friend of mine, Patrick Resta, who recently returned from Iraq, and who is now a member of an organization called Iraq Veterans Against the War, recently told me, "My platoon sergeant tried to get us to violate the Geneva Convention, and when we resisted, he threatened us with punishment. He told us that 'the Geneva Convention doesn't exist in Iraq, and that is in writing at the Brigade level.'"

You all know that this is bullsh*t, and if you didn't know, let me give you a news flash about some ­ not all, but some ­ military lifers; and this is coming from a military lifer. Some of them are dumber than dog sh*t. Some of them say things when they don't have the foggiest f*cking idea what they are talking about. Some of them will say any goddamn thing to get you to do what they want you to do.

But then again, there was a memorandum that came down that suggested the Geneva Conventions were void in Iraq. It didn't come from the Brigade level, though; it came from f*cking George W. Bush's office. And it's a lie. That's why they sat there in front of Congress before they made the author of that memo into the Attorney General of the United States ­ get your head around that­ and denied that they meant it.

But it is a lie.

You do not have to follow illegal orders EVER, under any circumstances, and you ARE bound by International Law. You should also be bound by what you know is right, by your sense of plain common decency.

One of the ways they will get you to do things that you will not want to live with for the rest of your lives is to impose that group-think on you. If one of us is guilty, we are all guilty. And "what happens in Iraq stays in Iraq." This is one of the many ways they take that buddy-to-buddy loyalty and twist it into a way to control you, even when they are trying to get you to violate the law and not only the formal law, but to violate what you know is right, to violate your own conscience and jeopardize your own peace of mind for the rest of your life.

And I'm telling you that you do not owe them or anyone else that kind of loyalty.

They know that many of you know that you were sent to do this thing for a pack of lies about weapons of mass destruction and mushroom clouds over New York City and phony al Qaeda connections (and then when that fell apart, you were there to deliver democracy at gunpoint). So they know that many of you can't stay committed to this violent occupation out of loyalty to that gang of thugs in Washington DC, who are busy every day at home undermi ning the same Constitution you swore to protect (from all enemies foreign and DOMESTIC).

They know that you know that plenty of the officers are out there trying to get new fruit salad medals on their Class-A uniforms, and bucking for promotion, by risking your asses on pointless glory patrols. So they know t hat they can't rely on the loyalty of many of you to the chain of command any more either.

Where do they have to go with this, then, after all? What do they tell you?

"You get out there on that Humvee, and face those IEDs ­ together, as loyal buddies."

"You get out there and ransack people's houses in the middle of the night, and make their babies cry ­ together, as buddies."

"You get out there and set up a road block without Arabic signs or interpreters and get put into that situation where you are tense and don't know, and you shoot up that car and kill parents in front of their children, an d you have to live with that for the rest of your lives ­ together, because you are loyal buddies."

"You get out there and lose life, limb, or eyesight face mental and physical ailments for the rest of your lives together, as an act of loyalty to your buddies."

That's the pressure you have on you today. Cover your buddies, and for some of you, go to Iraq so someone else doesn't take your place.

But let's look at the bigger picture here, and for that I'll take you back to Vietnam, before many of you were born. We heard this same bullsh*t then. Almost verbatim. And do you know what one of the main contributing fac tors was for getting us out of that war?

We quit being good soldiers.

The United States military got to the point where it was no longer an effective fighting force, because US soldiers quit taking orders. It got to the point where an officer who was using his men's bodies to chase medals might find himself on the wrong end of a Claymore mine. Now I'm not advocating that again, and I hope we can stop this before it goes that far.

The other thing many soldiers did was become part of the political resistance at home. They looked at this question of looking out for their buddies and for fellow soldiers in the short term, but staying ina barbaric and immoral war. And they realized that the best thing they could do for their buddies ­ not as soldiers, but as human beings ­ was to enlist in the opposition to the war and bring it to an end.

In the process, many of them discovered that it took a lot more endurance and a lot more courage to oppose the war than it did to demonstrate that macho bullsh*t they were expected to display as they continued to do terrible things to those other human beings whose country they occupied.

Here's how you can exercise a deeper loyalty to the troops there now, and to all those who will continue to go as long as this obscenity continues:

Do everything you can to stop the war.

Question every order, and base those questions on the Geneva Conventions and the Law of Land Warfare. Let them see you keeping a detailed journal of your experience. Send your stories home in letters. Open up discussions about the legitimacy of the war when you are in your billets, even if it does spark controversy. Spread around information you get about the war from sources other than those loud-mouthed news-mannequins on FOX. And email or mail your anonymous membership in to Iraq Veterans Against the War. The link is at the end of this letter.

The day this war stops and they put the last of you on an airplane home, is when you will never again have to smell that fresh-blood smell that stays in your head for hours after you've loaded someone onto a stretcher or rolled them into that big Ziploc bag. The day will come when you all pull out, because this was a losing proposition from the outset, but Bush and his crew were too f*cking stupid to know it.

The best thing is that this war of occupation ends sooner than later, and ­ as an exercise of loyalty to your own conscience, of loyalty to those who are there and those who may go there, and loyalty to the principle of human decency ­ you can find ways to hasten that day. You can find ways to bring closer the day when the Iraqis can get on about the business of taking control of their own destiny, and you and your buddies can sleep in security and comfort in your own homes, play with your children, make love with your partners, and walk down familiar streets unencumbered by the rattling luggage of war.

If bringing this day closer for all of you is the goal, how much more loyal can you get?

Yours for walking unencumbered,

Stan Goff

US Army (Retired)

Stan Goff is the author of "Hideous Dream: A Soldier's Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti" (Soft Skull Press, 2000), "Full Spectrum Disorder" (Soft Skull Press, 2003) and "Sex & War" which will be released approximately December, 2005. He is retired from the United States Army. His blog is at www.stangoff.com.

American officials lied to British ministers over the use of "internationally reviled" napalm-type firebombs in Iraq.

Yesterday's disclosure led to calls by MPs for a full statement to the Commons and opened ministers to allegations that they held back the facts until after the general election.

Despite persistent rumours of injuries among Iraqis consistent with the use of incendiary weapons such as napalm, Adam Ingram, the Defence minister, assured Labour MPs in January that US forces had not used a new generation of incendiary weapons, codenamed MK77, in Iraq.

But Mr Ingram admitted to the Labour MP Harry Cohen in a private letter obtained by The Independent that he had inadvertently misled Parliament because he had been misinformed by the US. "The US confirmed to my officials that they had not used MK77s in Iraq at any time and this was the basis of my response to you," he told Mr Cohen. "I regret to say that I have since discovered that this is not the case and must now correct the position."

Mr Ingram said 30 MK77 firebombs were used by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in the invasion of Iraq between 31 March and 2 April 2003. They were used against military targets "away from civilian targets", he said. This avoids breaching the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), which permits their use only against military targets.

Britain, which has no stockpiles of the weapons, ratified the convention, but the US did not.

The confirmation that US officials misled British ministers led to new questions last night about the value of the latest assurances by the US. Mr Cohen said there were rumours that the firebombs were used in the US assault on the insurgent stronghold in Fallujah last year, claims denied by the US. [...]

The Iraq Analysis Group, which campaigned against the war, said the US authorities only admitted the use of the weapons after the evidence from reporters had become irrefutable.

Mike Lewis, a spokesman for the group, said: "The US has used internationally reviled weapons that the UK refuses to use, and has then apparently lied to UK officials, showing how little weight the UK carries in influencing American policy." [...]

US uses banned weapon

US troops are secretly using outlawed napalm gas to wipe out remaining insurgents in and around Fallujah.

News that President George W. Bush has sanctioned the use of napalm, a deadly cocktail of polystyrene and jet fuel banned by the United Nations in 1980, will stun governments around the world.

And last night Tony Blair was dragged into the row as furious Labour MPs demanded he face the Commons over it. Reports claim that innocent civilians have died in napalm attacks, which turn victims into human fireballs as the gel bonds flames to flesh.

Outraged critics have also demanded that Mr Blair threatens to withdraw British troops from Iraq unless the US abandons one of the world's most reviled weapons. Halifax Labour MP Alice Mahon said: "I am calling on Mr Blair to make an emergency statement to the Commons to explain why this is happening. It begs the question: 'Did we know about this hideous weapon's use in Iraq?'"

Since the American assault on Fallujah there have been reports of "melted" corpses, which appeared to have napalm injuries.

As American and Iraqi casualties on the ground mount relentlessly, President George Bush is in growing political trouble, with Republicans as well as Democrats questioning his handling of a war that has never been less popular here.

In the most visible protest, the veteran Democratic congressman John Conyers organised a forum on the so-called "Downing Street Memo", the July 2002 British Government document indicating that the Bush administration had already made up its mind to invade Iraq, and that intelligence was being "fixed" to fit that policy.

Six weeks after it was leaked in the British press, the memo has belatedly become a hot topic in Washington. Mr Conyers was to present a petition from more than 100 of his Democratic colleagues in the House, signed by 500,000 people, demanding that Mr Bush explain himself.

The White House has haughtily brushed aside this criticism, saying the memo contains nothing new, and again dismissing charges that the intelligence process was politically manipulated. But the administration may find it more difficult to deal with bipartisan demands for an exit timetable for the 140,000 US troops in Iraq.

One of the sponsors of the congressional resolution is Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio Democrat and staunch opponent of the war, who ran for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination. More worrying for the White House, another sponsor is the North Carolina Republican Walter Jones, a strong backer of the invasion (and an author of the 2003 "freedom fries" campaign against France in Capitol Hill cafeterias). [...]

There is an increasingly sour mood in America, much disillusioned with Mr Bush, and inclined to share Mr Conyers' belief that "we got into a secret war we hadn't planned, and now we're in it we can't get out". [...]

Mr Bush's approval ratings have tumbled further, to just 41 per cent, the lowest level of his presidency. One reason is dissatisfaction with the economy, most notably the soaring cost of petrol. But the biggest reason is Iraq, which threatens to undermine his second-term strategy. [...]

But in the past month alone, 80 US soldiers and more than 700 Iraqis have died and the Pentagon admits that the violence is as bad as a year ago. Even some of its allies blame the White House for not telling the truth about the extent of the insurgency. "We always accentuated the positive and never prepared the public for the worst," Senator Lindsay Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said.

The President's signature policy - the campaign to part-privatise social security - has hit a brick wall. "Exit Policy on Social Security is Sought," was a Washington Post headline, above a report explaining how senior Republicans were urging the White House to quietly drop the measure, since it had no hope of passing.

Other Bush policies are also under attack. In a rare act of defiance, the Republican-led House voted by 238 to 187 to scrap a provision of the Patriot Act, which allows the FBI to check library and bookstore records in anti- terrorism inquiries. The President vows to veto any such change, just as he promises to "stay the course" on Iraq, and to press ahead with social security reform. But the line is growing more difficult to hold.

Last night, Senate Democrats planned to block for a second time a floor vote to confirm John Bolton as the next US ambassador to the United Nations, until the White House releases more information on its embattled nominee.Other Republicans are demanding closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison, although the White House says it is vital for security.

Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) issued this statement in advance of his hearing on the Downing Street documents:

Few issues are more important under our constitutional form of government than the decision to go to war and place our soldiers lives at risk.

It is no insignificant matter when in the fall of 2002 President Bush told us that war would be his last resort. It is not unimportant when on March 6, 2003, the president promised us, "I've not made up [my] mind about military action."

Over the last two months, the veracity of those statements has - to put it mildly -- come into question:

• On May 1, the London Times released the now infamous Downing Street Minutes, in which the head of Britain's intelligence agency reported "military action [by the U.S.] was now seen as inevitable ... and "intelligenc e and facts were being fixed around the policy." A former senior U.S. official subsequently told Knight Ridder that the minutes were "an absolutely accurate description of what transpired."
• On May 29, further documents were released revealing that in the summer of 2002, British and U.S. aircraft had doubled their rates of bombing in Iraq, in an apparent attempt to provoke an excuse for war.
• Last Sunday, the London Times released six new British documents corroborating the Downing Street Minutes and indicating that as early as March of 2002, our government had decided it would be "necessary to create the conditions" to justify war.
• Today Newsweek is reporting that two high ranking