Labels: Blackwater Mercenaries, iraq, iraq war, The Truth Is Out There
posted by Gandolfo at 6/09/2007
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Labels: The Truth Is Out There
posted by Gandolfo at 6/09/2007
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Labels: aaron russo, aftf, america freedom to fascism, ed brown, Elaine Brown, The Truth Is Out There
posted by Gandolfo at 6/09/2007
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Labels: ed brown, Elaine Brown, The Truth Is Out There
posted by Gandolfo at 6/09/2007
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Tim Webb
London Independent . March 15, 2007
Paying for goods with notes and coins could be consigned to history within five years, according to the chief executive of Visa Europe.
Peter Ayliffe said that, by 2012, using credit and debit cards should be cheaper and more convenient than cash.
Some retailers could soon start surcharging customers if they choose to buy products with cash, because of the greater cost of processing these payments, he warned.
Visa Europe briefed the British Retail Consortium last month on new "contactless" cards that can be waved in front of a scanner to make small payments.
However, the consortium dismissed this vision and claimed that card processing fees, which regulators are investigating, are still too high.
One member of the consurtium said that the estimated "interchange" fee charged to retailers amounts to some 4p for each transaction.
Nick Mourant, treasurer at Tesco, said: "There is a duopoly between Mastercard and Visa in the UK. Their setting of fees is anti-competitive."
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6:09 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment -Labels: The Truth Is Out There
posted by Gandolfo at 6/09/2007
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Labels: Death of a President, dick cheney, george bush, The Truth Is Out There
posted by Gandolfo at 6/09/2007
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Lt General Martin Dempsey, who testifies before Congress next week, said in an interview he remained cautiously optimistic that the Iraqi security forces could continue to build on progress they've made in developing self-sustaining institutions. He seemed somewhat less optimistic about the performance of the Iraqi government as a whole.
Dempsey is leaving his post as head of the Multinational Security Transition Command to become deputy commander of U.S. Central Command.
First deployed here as commander of the 1st Armored Division, he's spent three of the last four years here – making him currently the longest-serving general officer in Iraq and one of those with the longest experience in the Middle East. He previously served in Saudi Arabia.
The National Police, seen as a participant in sectarian violence rather than part of the solution, has been one of his biggest challenges.
The Iraqi Ministry of Interior has so far removed seven of the force's nine brigade commanders and 14 of its 24 brigade commanders for human rights abuses, corruption or ineffectiveness. An entire brigade was taken off the streets for retraining after its leaders and some of its members were linked to Shiite death squads.
"I'm optimistic that NATO will come in with the Italians as a lead nation to turn the National Police in Carabinieri and that has a lot of potential," Dempsey said.
He said the Carabinieri – similar to the Gendarmerie in other countries - would provide more equipment and training – such as in crowd control and the rule of law – an area where the National Police are 'far, far less sensitive that they need to be."
He said another key element in reforming the National Police would be removing up to half of them from Baghdad and sending them to other parts of the country to serve as an interim force between the local police and the Army.
"Baghdad's tempo is such and the level of violence is such and the pressures are such and the scrutiny is such that we've got to get some of them into a part of the country where they can develop because it's very difficult to develop when you're in knife fight every day of your life."
Dempsey said tactical performance of the Iraqi security forces – their ability to fight – had been a 'roller coaster" in the midst of the sectarian violence. But he said the Defense Ministry and Interior Ministry had made steady institutional progress.
"There is genuine accountability - they feel themselves responsible for the caring and equipping of their soldiers. They don't always do it to standard but they feel responsible now which is a huge step."
He said they were also spending more of their budgets than other ministries – one of the biggest problems with Iraqi ministries which have spent just a small fraction of the money available to them in providing services. And for the most part he said, the Defense and Interior ministries were allocating the resources equitably.
The Iraqi forces are an integral part of the surge in U.S. troops in Baghdad, which is intended to stabilize the capital to allow the Iraqi government to better function. Iraqi soldiers and police are intended to move in to maintain security in neighborhoods that U.S. forces have cleared of insurgents.
Dempsey said though he did not believe the Iraqi government would make substantial progress by the time the Commander of US forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus , is to update Congress in September on the new strategy.
"I'm not sure the government's functioning is going to change dramatically in the 120 days . They are rather novice in what they're doing and they have some huge issues to tackle so I don't think you're going to see an exponential change in the performance of the Iraqi government," he said.
"They are not the most smoothly functioning collegial collaborative group that I've ever met - they are more or less accommodating each other. I'd like to report that it's a government of reconciliation and national unity but it's not yet – it might not even be reasonable to expect that it could be yet but I think that they can find ways and must find ways to accommodate each other."
A key part of the plan to hand over security to Iraqi forces relies on increasing the number of Iraqi soldiers available. Dempsey said they intended to add about 20,000 men by the end of the year to about 170,000 soldiers. He said he believed they should eventually be at about 190,000 soldiers, achievable by next year.
Dempsey said the regular police were the appropriate size. "We just need to make them better not bigger."
As for what he would have liked to accomplish: "If there is an area I wish we were further along it's leader development."
Saddam Hussein, he said, "culled out leaders of the kind we're looking for now - and then they went to war with Iran and they lost a lot of leaders in some very difficult fighting, and then we went to war against them and they lost some leaders, and now they've been in a fight for three years against al-Qaeda and some others and they're losing leaders."
"We've been at it for two years so we've generated 4,800 new officers but we've had mixed results," he said. "Some of them are extraordinarily brave and some of them are extraordinarily timid and corrupt and it's a constant process of weeding them out." .
Labels: The Truth Is Out There
posted by Gandolfo at 6/09/2007
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A new leaked video of the execution of Saddam Hussein shows chief prosecutor Munqith Al-Faroon carried on shoulders and chanting sectarian slogans in a large impromptu demonstration near the Council of Ministers inside the Green Zone, where Saddam's corpse was waiting in an ambulance.
The two-minute video, which was published yesterday on Iraqi websites, shows guards in military uniforms and others in plainclothes carrying weapons, chanting, "The Shia of Haider are victorious," as Iraqi officials watched, according to Al-Hayat newspaper. Haider is a nickname of Imam Ali bin Abi Talib, the cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Mohammed and the first Shi'ite Imam.
Chief prosecutor Munqith Al-Faroon was assigned to transport Saddam Hussein's corpse from the Military Intelligence Headquarters in Kadhimiya, where the execution took place, to the Green Zone in an ambulance, before it was handed over to relatives from Hussein's tribe, Al-Bu Nasir. Some demonstrators are seen in the video trying to storm into the ambulance where Hussein's corpse was kept wrapped in a white shroud, as they chant, "Where is the scoundrel who waged war against us?"
Al-Faroon, the chief prosecutor of the Iraqi High Tribunal in the Anfal trial, had told the press that he objected to the manner of Hussein's execution last December, and was heard in the cell phone video from the execution chamber protesting the slogans that were shouted during the execution by Shi'ite guards.
Labels: saddam hussein, The Truth Is Out There
posted by Gandolfo at 6/09/2007
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Labels: cartoon, cartoons, libby, scooter, The Truth Is Out There
posted by Gandolfo at 6/09/2007
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Rudy Giuliani in Drag Smooching Donald Trump
Category: News and Politics
Buck Redstone's Comments On Rudy/Trump sex video:
Shocking News!
The man, "Pretty Rudi" the sociopathic transvestite mob boss and former gun-grabbing, Nazi mayor of New York, is gay as a three dollar bill. The bit about this being shocking is a tad sardonic. In fact, I would have almost thought it should be assumed that sugar-tits here was involved in some sort of twisted homosexual transvestite affair with Donald Trump. Remember, this is the man who was widely implicated by a large portion of the New York populace of kidnapping the peaceful homeless residents of New York, many of whom were obviously Nam vets who sacrificed their fucking sanity for this Great Country, and transferring them to secret underground military and corporate facilities to be tested on and eventually terminated.
He is also the first of the front-line, TV personality member of the GOP to declare himself "pro-choice"; this is rather fitting and reasonable, as I see no reason the bastards should continue to pretend to have any type of moral standards.
I anxiously await the day when Dick Cheney can shuffle out to the TV cameras, to the tune of Ozzy Osbourne's "Mister Crowley", naked and covered in goats blood, with a beaten and abused 6-year-old little girl handcuffed to him, chanting what the black robed and facially tattooed satanists who live in the historic service tunnels beneath all American cities chant, greet the American people with a "Fuck You, You Filthy Shit-Eating Sons of Doggish Whores!", to which the hoard would cheer as they do for Titties on Spring Break, and then he would just stand there and eat fetuses off of the podium, tossing pieces into the audience, where the denizens of the most decadent fuck-up of a Burning Empire that's ever existed in history, scream and claw each other for a taste of the fine flesh of an unborn child.
For when that day comes, brothers and sisters, know that the Lord's Wrath cometh swiftly thereafter.
Stay up.
–Buck
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5:53 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add CommentLabels: donald trump, Rudy Giuliani, The Truth Is Out There
posted by Gandolfo at 6/09/2007
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Labels: 9-11, 9/11, 9/11 Press For Truth, 9/11 Truth, flight 93, GLOBAL GUARDIAN 9/11, matrix, The Truth Is Out There
posted by Gandolfo at 6/09/2007
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Just a good old country boy raised in the city. I am an escapee from the concrete jungle.
