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April 3, 2004 - 1:35pm -- jim
News
The State

"Papers on 1964 Brazil Coup Declassified"

Tom Murphy, Associated Press, Sat Apr 3, 2004


SAO PAULO, Brazil — Newly declassified U.S. documents show the extent of American willingness to provide aid to Brazil's generals during the 1964 coup that ushered in 21 years of often bloody military rule.


The National Security Archive, a non-governmental Washington-based research group, posted the documents on its Web site this week to coincide with Wednesday's 40th anniversary of the coup.

April 2, 2004 - 11:04am -- jim
News
News

"Georgia On Their Mind"

John Laughland, The Guardian

In 1918, when Lord Balfour was foreign secretary, he said: "The only thing which interests me in the Caucasus is the railway line which delivers oil from Baku to Batumi. The natives can cut each other to pieces for all I care." Little has changed in world geopolitics since the end of the first world war, when the Black Sea port of Batumi in Georgia was briefly under British rule. Although an oil pipeline from Baku to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan in Turkey is planned, it will take years to complete. When it is built, it will deliver oil exclusively to the American market, but for the time being Caspian oil still trundles across the Caucasus to Batumi in trains.

April 2, 2004 - 8:03am -- jim
News
Mainstream Media

"US Knew al-Qa'ida Would Attack Cities With Airplanes"

The Whistleblower the White House Wants to Silence

Andrew Buncombe, The Independent, UK


A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened.


Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds said the claim by the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was "an outrageous lie".

April 1, 2004 - 8:48pm -- jim
News
News

PARIS (AFP) — Haiti’s ousted president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, has lodged a lawsuit in Paris claiming coercion involving US and French officials forced him from power, his lawyer and legal authorities said Wednesday.

The suit, for "threats, death threats, abduction and illegal detention" was lodged Tuesday, Aristide’s lawyer, Gilbert Collard said.

It designates the defendant as "X" — a French legal term for persons unknown — but specifically makes mention of the French and US ambassadors in Haiti, Thierry Burkard and James Foley, as well as a French writer, Regis Debray, and the sister of French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, Veronique Albanel, in the deposition.

April 1, 2004 - 3:18pm -- jim
News
Electoral Politics

"Antiwar Activism?"

Michael Kranish, Boston Globe

Senator John F. Kerry said through a spokesman this week that he has no recollection of attending a November 1971 meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War at which some activists discussed a plot to kill some US senators who backed the war.


"Senator Kerry does not remember attending the Kansas City meeting," Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan said in a statement to the Globe in response to written questions about the matter. "Kerry does not remember any discussions that you referred to," the statement added, referring to the assassination plot.

April 1, 2004 - 12:24pm -- nolympics
News
The State

Summary of Finucane Report

The Belfast based Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ), a human rights NGO, has just published the following summary of the findings of Canadian Judge Peter Cory (appointed by the British and Irish governments) in his investigation into the circumstances surrounding the murders of Pat Finucane, Robert Hamill, Rosemary Nelson and Billy Wright. The full report into the murder of Pat Finucane is now available on the Pat Finucene Centre's website: www.serve.com/pfc

 

April 1, 2004 - 12:08pm -- hydrarchist
News
Independent Media

hydrarchist writes:

"Make Media, Make Trouble:

Hacking the Infocalypse"

Luther Blisset

The cold rain lightens passing the small twice-weekly farmers market, down the corridor past the Italian class for migrants, the bookshop, a meeting, the circus class. Entering into one room a web of cables crawls above converging in a loft. Upstairs a small group chatters in front of computers, editing, uploading, downloading, emailing; organising a 24 hour pirate TV station. This is the Xmercato24 social centre in Bologna, Italy, home of “TeleImmagini?” part of the Italian TeleStreet movement of around 80 pirate micro-TV stations, most of which have grown in less than 2 years.

March 31, 2004 - 1:10am -- nolympics
News
Mainstream Media

US Chose to Ignore Rwandan Genocide
Rory Carroll, the Guardian, Wednesday March 31, 2004

President Bill Clinton's administration knew Rwanda was being engulfed by genocide in April 1994 but buried the information to justify its inaction, according to classified documents made available for the first time.

Senior officials privately used the word genocide within 16 days of the start of the killings, but chose not to do so publicly because the president had already decided not to intervene.

Intelligence reports obtained using the US Freedom of Information Act show the cabinet and almost certainly the president had been told of a planned "final solution to eliminate all Tutsis" before the slaughter reached its peak.

It took Hutu death squads three months from April 6 to murder an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus and at each stage accurate, detailed reports were reaching Washington's top policymakers.

March 30, 2004 - 6:25pm -- nolympics
News
The State

Oread Daily writes


UNARMED BLACK MAN KILLED BY POLICE


Shootings of unarmed Black men by police seem to go on without end in America. Portland is our latest stop.


Preliminary investigations show that a 28-year-old black man shot by Portland police after a routine traffic stop was unarmed. It was the second time in a year that Portland police have shot and killed an unarmed black person after a traffic stop. A May 5, 2003, incident ended with the death of Kendra James, 21.

March 30, 2004 - 10:02am -- amanda
News
Mainstream Media

Anonymous Comrade writes "In Army Survey, Troops in Iraq Report Low Morale



By Thomas E. Ricks

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, March 26, 2004; Page A18

A slim majority of Army soldiers in Iraq -- 52 percent -- reported that their morale was low, and three-fourths of them said they felt poorly led by their officers, according to a survey taken at the end of the summer and released yesterday by the Army.

In addition, seven in 10 of those surveyed characterized the morale of their fellow soldiers as low or very low. The problems were most pronounced among lower-ranking troops and those in reserve units.

"Nearly 75% of the groups reported that their battalion-level command leadership was poor" and showed "a lack of concern" for their soldiers, said an Army report accompanying the data. "Unit cohesion was also reported to be low."

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