[ While the problem of homeless veterans pre-dates the current Administration, there is a particularly cruel distance between Bush's rhetoric of support for the troops and our vets and the reality. --BL ]
From the Ranks to the Street
Nearly a fourth of the homeless are veterans. Reasons vary, but many fail to adjust to life’s randomness after [...]
by Brendan Lalor
During the lead-up to war and the more intense phase of post-war searching for the phantom WMDs, Ahmed Chalabi was the point-man for the Administration on Iraq — the man who funneled phoney “intelligence” (from Iran) and led the New York Times‘ “stenographer,” Judith Miller on goose-chases in the desert. To get an [...]
May 30, 2004 | TIME Magazine (Jun. 07, 2004 issue)
By TIMOTHY J. BURGER AND ADAM ZAGORIN
Vice President Dick Cheney was a guest on NBC’s Meet the Press last September when host Tim Russert brought up Halliburton. Citing the company’s role in rebuilding Iraq as well as Cheney’s prior service as Halliburton’s CEO, Russert asked, “Were [...]
Bad Medicine
excerpted from February 2004 | Harper’s Magazine
by Lewis H. Lapham
In early December last year … President Bush signed the amendment to the Medicare legislation that delivers 40 million elderly and disabled American citizens into the custody of the good-hands people operating the nation’s insurance and pharmaceutical factories. The new authorization purports to reduce the [...]
[ From the piece:
a recent study by the University of Uppsala in Sweden suggests [oil] reserves may be far smaller than the 18 trillion barrels the industry presently projects. If the new figure of 3.5 trillion barrels is correct, sometime between 2010 and 2020, worldwide production will begin to decline….
With U.S. consumption projected to increase [...]
[ According to a report completed last fall by the Army's provost marshall, only some of which has been made public,
Iraqis had been held for several months for nothing more than expressing "displeasure or ill will" toward the American occupying forces.
According to the New York Times' report, this appears to be in reference to Abu [...]
FBI Sweep Nets 7 Animal Rights Activists
28 May 2004 | DemocracyNow!
FBI agents have arrested seven animal rights advocates on domestic terrorism charges for taking part in a campaign to stop a British scientific firm called Huntingdon Life Sciences from conducting lab tests on animals. The FBI conducted a coordinated sweep across the country on Wednesday [...]
[ In Florida:
The pitch was that if they joined the Army Reserve, they'd train one weekend a month and two weekends in the summer and maybe be sent over to Iraq at some future date. If they didn't volunteer, they'd soon be deployed involuntarily.
"There was miscommunication," [deputy director of public affairs for the Army [...]
28 May 2004 | Assocoiated Press
by Connie Cass
WASHINGTON – America’s inmate population grew by 2.9 percent last year, to almost 2.1 million people, with one of every 75 men living in prison or jail.
The inmate population continued its rise despite a fall in the crime rate and many states’ efforts to reduce some sentences, especially [...]
[ Documents show the Bush budget proposes to decrease funding for Homeland Security, Education, Veterans Affairs, the EPA, the National Institutes of Health, the Interior Department ... but not the Defense Department. Once again, the Bush Republicans are cutting social spending while maintaining corporate welfare for members of the military-industrial-oil complex, like Halliburton and the [...]