In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.
The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.
To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.
Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.
Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand
Scientists Find Blueberries Reverse Age Related Memory Deficits
Phytochemical-rich foods, such as blueberries, are not only healthy food choices, they may actually be able to reverse age-related memory problems. That's the conclusion of a study by a research team from the University of Reading and the Peninsula Medical School in England.
Bush’s SCHIP policy violates law, report says
The Bush administration’s limits on expansions of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) are unlawful, according to Congress’s investigative arm.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) unlawfully bypassed congressional review when it issued a directive to states in August alerting them that federal authorities would seek to restrict raising the income eligibility level for the program, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded in a report issued Thursday.
“Both GAO and CRS have now confirmed what so many of us have known for some time, that the administration clearly overstepped its legal authority in issuing the Aug. 17 letter,” said Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who requested the GAO report along with Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine).
TVNL Comment: Just add this to the long list of crimes comitted by this administration that go unpunished and are permitted to continue.
Cheerleading Genocide
With spectacular fanfare and a plethora of highlighted events, Israel is planning to celebrate its 60th birthday on 18 May 2008.
Notwithstanding all its success and achievements, Israel remains a state based on racism, apartheid and criminality against the Palestinian people whose homeland it seized and whom it is trying to obliterate to this day.
Congress Quietly Repeals Martial Law Provision
In late 2006, Congress revised the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act to make it far easier for a president to declare martial law. Those changes were repealed at the end of this January as part of Public Law 110-181 (HR 4986), the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 (signed into law by President Bush on January 28, 2008).
Shocking Facts About the Pharmaceutical Industry
Big drug companies have been accused of putting profits above patients, spinning false PR campaigns and more. Here are some of the most shocking facts about the pharmaceutical industry.
Air Force One Guidance Systems Allegedly Sent to Russia
State Department investigators found that a subsidiary of a major defense contractor provided portions of the computer source code of Air Force One to a company in Russia in 1998, according to a little-noticed consent agreement reached earlier this month.
Chaos, Deplorable, Abysmal: The state of electronic record-keeping in the federal government
CREW documents the state of affairs in our new report, Record Chaos: The Deplorable State of Electronic Record Keeping in the Federal Government, concluding that the federal government is severely mismanaging its electronic records. "Record Chaos" is based on months of research and the results of an on-line survey. Released today, the full report and its findings and recommendations are available here.
TVNL Comment: This is by design. We have the most criminal administration in history and they are working very hard to make sure there is little evidence of their crimes. From stolen elections to the attacks of 9/11, the Bush administration has to cover their tracks.
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