Blue Tide Rising is damn right! Again.

None too soon former Congressman Jim Ryun better start running, because he can't hide.

Drive these crazy wingnuts out!

These crooks have no shame and should be imprisoned.

Check it out at: Ryun's "Sweet Deal" about to get sweeter.

Let's start the New Year out with a BANG!

A SINGLE SPARK CAN START A PRAIRIE FIRE!

WE'RE PRINTING AGAIN, IN KANSAS!

The hard gravel road edition of the Flyer is about to fly off our rebuilt 1945 printing press this weekend!

Just in time for the New Year’s Eve celebrations.

You can get it via email as an attachment. Send a request to: bluebarnnewscentral@hughes.net

Watch the teaser for our “Old Time Movie Matinee” on Google video.

It must be done – from Johnson county, Kansas where outgoing state Attorney General Phill Kline is going to pull a salary of $143,000 to the White House in Washington DC.

Impeachment is the popular demand of all active citizens.

Join us in the fun!

Hitler was a Christian. Impossible! Click here.

Kansans in the news.

Rural soldiers more likely to die in Iraq, Afghanistan

Associated Press

WICHITA, Kan. - Christopher Wasser was like a lot of soldiers from rural areas.

The Ottawa native saw the military as a way to pay for college, said his mother, Candy Wasser.

Complete article, click the title line above.

Pull out that magnifying glass and really look at it.

EXPLAIN THIS AWAY ... PLEASE.

Why I considered the slaughter of the innocent Amish schoolgirls the final moment for America’s sanity among our government’s leaders. Note that these words below are the scattered remnants of an article that appeared in the local newspaper after the slaughter. The full text is buried in the archives of this web site, but still available. The denial goes on – even to the Lancet study of the 655,000 dead Iraqis civilians. The United States of Amnesiacs have tossed their “inalienable rights” away into a lost memory hole.

The Intelligencer Journal reports:

Published on July 16, 2004, Lancaster New Era (PA)

Bush quietly meets with Amish here; they offer their prayers

"President Bush met privately with a group of Old Order Amish during his visit to Lancaster County last Friday. He discussed their farms and their hats and his religion.

He asked them to vote for him in November.

The Amish told the president that not all members of the church vote but they would pray for him. Bush had tears in his eyes when he replied. He said the president needs their prayers. He also said that having a strong belief in God is the only way he can do his job. ... At the end of the session, Bush reportedly told the group, “I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.’’

Think I'm crazy? Click the title line or go to:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/293201_amy22.html

"Quaint", "obsolete" Geneva Conventions i.e. writing DoD memos defining "torture."

REF: DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE LEGAL FINDING MEMOS TO CHENEY, RUMSFELD, et. al.

IT IS NOT TORTURE UNLESS IT "CAUSES SUBSTANTIAL AND IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE TO A MAJOR ORGAN OR A FUNCTION OF THAT ORGAN."

As an additional historical footnote I offer this brief reflection from another time when religion and politics played a major consideration in the perpetration of major war crimes, as established by judges (a number American) at Nuremberg, Germany 1945 - 49.


HITLER'S ATTORNEY GENERAL FOUND SALVATION IMMEDIATELY BEFORE HIS WAR CRIME EXECUTION.

Hans Frank

Frank acted as lawyer and senior official for the Nazi party and legal advisor for Hitler. He also served a tenure as Governor-General of occupied Poland for which he was convicted during the Nuremberg trials for his role in perpetrating the Jewish holocaust and found guilty of complicity in the murder of millions of Poles and Polish Jews. A former Protestant (his father was a Protestant and his mother a Catholic), he converted to Roman Catholicism after his arrest where he felt relieved at the prospect of atoning for his evil deeds. [The belief that one can be saved for any atrocious act demonstrates the moral flaw of Christian doctrine.]

"Hitler is lonely, So is God. Hitler is like God."
-Reichminister Hans Frank (FL Schuman, "Hitler and the Nazi Dictatorship," London 1936

"We are under the great obligation of recognizing as a holy work of our Volk's spirit the laws signed by Adolf Hitler's name. Hitler has received his authority from God. Therefore he is champion, sent by God, of German Right in the world." -Hans Frank, Frankfurt-am-Main, 30 October 1935 (Aurel Kolnai, The War Against the West)

"I am thankful for the kind treatment during my captivity and I ask God to accept me with mercy." -Hans Frank, in his last statement before execution (Hans Frank from Wikipedia online encyclopedia)

1000 Armed Service people can't be wrong ...

READERS TAKE NOTE.


Whatever political party you are a member of ... consider what is going on in the link provided above. Go ahead, click the title line above and see.

John Dean throws some legal cold water on the Impeach Bush movement.

I will read and consider anything John Dean publishes.

Is his critique linked below realistic?

What do Flyer readers think?

This article is worth studying, but does little to squelch my desire to have full and open public investigations of the parties involved in undermining American's basic civil liberties, promoting illegal activities; such as torture - and committing war crimes in violation of international treatises. I feel it is imperative that these hearings take place; for the many citizens to understand what the Bush regime has done, the huge national loss of treasure and blood - our children and successive generations must know how the empire fell.

Public hearings, investigations and inquiries with findings and reports are critical and impeachment of those directly responsible should be the proper result. We will see ... read his ideas and arguments below:



Published on Friday, December 15, 2006 by Find Law

Refocusing the Impeachment Movement on Administration Officials Below the President and Vice-President

Why Not Have A Realistic Debate, with Charges that Could Actually Result in Convictions?

by John W. Dean

There is a well-organized and growing movement to impeach President Bush and/or Vice President Cheney. On my bookshelf sit half a dozen books making the case for Bush's impeachment. I myself have no doubt that Bush has, in fact, committed impeachable offenses, and that for each Bush "high crime and misdemeanor," Cheney's culpability is ten or twenty times greater.

At the outset of the 2006 midterm election, Democratic Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi, and Senator Majority Leader-designate Harry Reid, stated on behalf of the Democratic leadership that impeachment of Bush or Cheney would be off the table if they won control of Congress - as they have indeed done. But this position has angered many who want these men impeached.

Click here for the rest of Dean's article:
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1215-25.htm

The Black Agenda Report - support it!

Here is a web site, redesigned and hitting on every cylinder.

Bookmark this web site:

http://www.blackagendareport.com/

The buzz has Saudis Royals scolding Busheviks, covert Iraq intervention.

Yesterday, Air America's Randi Rhodes was agitating her audience with something along these lines as written below by Parry. Her position was that immediate US troop withdrawal's would bring the Saudis into Iraq with even bigger covert weapon shipments to the Sunnis resistence (they most likely are already doing that) and overt troop reinforcements against the Shia majority. Parry's article below puts it into another perspective. Rhodes did point out that the US was ready to get off the teat of oil - massive programs for energy independence.

She misses the full spectrum withdrawal that is necessary to economically create such programs and the corporate opposition it would receive. By making each village "energy independent" and radically steering commuters to extremely high mileage, [electric commuter vehicles] the country can forestall the inevitable powerdown, but would require massive subisdies. The nation has no will to make the sacrifices, yet. Rhodes is on the correct path, just not big enough, closing down all military bases abroad would make a cost effective beginning toward the New Isolationists program.

Read below for a backgrounder briefing on why the whole mess is never going to work out.

A Way Forward, a Look Back

By Robert Parry

12/13/06

"Consortium News"

--- - The abrupt resignation of the Saudi ambassador to the United States and the postponement of George W. Bush’s new Iraq policy speech mark a troubling new chapter for a U.S. strategy for the Middle East that continues to spiral toward catastrophe.
Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to Washington and the former chief of Saudi intelligence, informed the State Department on Dec. 11 that he had resigned after only 15 months on the job and flew home.

The unceremonious departure was seen as another signal of Saudi anger over Bush’s regional policies. In that view, Turki’s resignation was akin to the recall of an ambassador between two hostile states, albeit softened by Turki’s insistence that he was leaving to spend more time with his family.

Two weeks earlier, Saudi King Abdullah summoned Vice President Dick Cheney to Riyadh to express the kingdom’s displeasure with developments in Iraq, as the pro-Iranian Shiite majority gains the upper hand over the Sunni minority that dominated the country under Saddam Hussein.

Complete article at:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15908.htm

Blue Tide Rising is damn right!

Take it straight from Jefferson county, Kansas.

Sen. Pat Roberts home county.

"You can run, but you can't hide."

Click the title line above and read.

South_Dakota_Christmas_1938_(General_Distribution).wmv

The film uses edited clips from Ivan Besse's amateur classic "South Dakota 1938 - 39" at Internet Archive.org featuring in this installment Christmas on Main Street Britton, South Dakota. The clips are edited and timed to two songs by Lawrence, Ks. musician, Bryan Newbury; "Brewster County Breakdown" and "Beatrice" which makes a haunting image of a streetside musician singing of hard times. According to a Dec. 9, 2006 interview with Aileen Besse: Ivan Besse shot the originals for his then struggling Strand Theater as a production technique to "lure patrons" into shows. He then aired each Tuesday and Wednesday the faces of local Brittons during the hard times of the Great Depression. Besse who passed on, Sept. 2, 2005 (born in a Dakota sodhouse July 4, 1907) sold the original 16mm reels during the theater's closure in 1985 for around fifty cents. According to his wife, Eileen Besse, the reels were then donated to the Prelinger Archives which placed some of the estimated 50 reels up on the internet into the public domain. Ivan Besse worked at the Strand Theater for 66 years, starting in 1919 as a coal shoveler in the basement, he purchased it in 1950 and ran it till it closed in 1985. Michael Caddell edited and produced this particular installment. He lives and publishes from Jefferson county, Kansas. He and Bryan Newbury are native Kansans and buddies who decided to make the ten minute tribute to "everyday" people having joy during hard times. Enjoy. Peace and Freedom to all.

Dynastic collapse, palace intrigue, and we should be merciful to the King?

Pity these pigs?

We live in very dangerous times.

Are we to have mercy for these bloody rich pigs?

Is impeachment, "off the table" really?

Will it take mass strikes, bloody demonstrations and mob actions to drive them from public offices?

by Michael Caddell

Eleanor Clift writes to MSNBC a pitiful piece linked in the title line above. Read it.

I refuse to have any empathy whatsoever for George Bush, Sr. (#41, as the beltway lobbyists, political whores in Congress and corporate war profiteers call him) or his sons.

Clift writes the obvious after "#41" broke down sobbing in Florida recently wringing his handkerchief, oblivious to the catastrophic peril his offspring have put this country in. Clift is a writer and journalist known for standing up to conservatives on PBS, but in this case she did not go far enough in portraying the angst and sorrow the "everyday" people in this country feels right now.

A more pertinent question is: What stalled Bush "#43" in his attempt to air bomb Iran?

And, can he be stopped from doing so in the 700-plus days ahead for his outrageous war mongering for Big Energy corporations?

Pity these pigs?

We should have no pity for this "family." No pity whatsoever, or mercy - many of them and their colleagues (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et. al.) should be tried in public courts on national television for violation of international treatises that since WWII and Nuremburg forbade pre - emptive wars of aggression, i. e. vast War Crimes.

Yet, leading Democratic voices moving into key positions of Congress have announced pompously, hypocritically their intentions to avoid any impeachment votes in their chambers. Why is the Democratic Party is so busy betraying the very registered voters that put them into the majority in both chambers of congress?

More than one extremist right wing politician has taunted them, in reality scared them with the prospect of blowing their new majority with public impeachment investigations and hearings. The Democratic Party leadership is committing a treasonous act against the will of the registered voters who brought their party's representatives to power in mid-term elections.

I tell you readers, and I am not exaggerating - the elections last November represent merely the open mouth of a volcano - the true sentiment of the people is fear and anger at a government that is committing international diplomatic disasters endangering the national interests of the remaining world's energy reserves.

The warrior myth of empire is a myth, warring and pillaging other countries in barbaric crusades and deceptive domestic propaganda campaigns have brought down many empires in history. Shall we, ourselves passively witness this horrible end of American Empire?

There are too many citizens of this democratic republic that act helpless, begging for responsible leadership - leadership that has been bought and paid for by what has been now euphemistically called the "military industrial complex." Make no mistake, dear readers, the country and our civil liberties are being systematically dismantled, what our founders guaranteed as our "inalienable" rights are disappearing under a blizzard of special laws, enacted in a phony war, yes, I mean what I write here, a phony "War on Terror."

This is why M.I.T. professor Noam Chomsky has insisted in very understandable language that the USA has dangerously crashed upon the rocks, it is foundering - into a "Failed State" as other dictatorships in the world.

Go out and buy or demand this one book at your public libraries - read it.

I raise again the demands of the "New Isolationists" that offer the ONLY road ahead away from economic and national ruin. It is time for Americans to face this perilous condition and shoulder the energy challenges ahead. We must re-align the national priorities away from a petroleum based civilization and we must do it now.

Only these demands will end this national suicide.

IMMEDIATE TROOP WITHDRAWALS & BASE CLOSURES ABROAD

MILITARIZE OUR BORDERS, IMPEACH THE LEADERS

DEMAND TRUE ENERGY INDEPENDENCE PROGRAMS NOW!

When a people can no longer trust their media or their leaders.

How Many More Will Die For Bush’s Ego?

By Paul Craig Roberts
12/09/06
"Information Clearing House"

-- -- Last July in response to Bush-the-Evil’s enabling of Israel’s gratuitous slaughter of thousands of Lebanese civilians and destruction of the country’s infrastructure, I wrote about “the shame of being an American.” With the ongoing slaughter of our troops and Iraqi civilians in Bush’s war in Iraq, it is time to revisit that theme.

As the Iraqi civil war (euphemistically termed “sectarian violence”) intensifies, both US and Iraqi casualties have sharply increased. Thirty-five US troops have been killed in the first week of December. Iraqis are dying at each other’s hands at about 100 per day, with many more wounded by bombs. Iraqi civilians continue to suffer at the hands of the US military, with the latest news being a US air strike that wiped out two families totaling 32 people.

The report from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group has made it plain as day that the US is accomplishing nothing in Iraq except the destabilization of the entire Middle East. As Middle East expert Anthony Sullivan writes in The National Interest, the ISG report “constitutes a massive repudiation of the policy of the Bush Administration.” The war is lost and cannot be retrieved militarily. “Staying the course” is the path of total folly.

Yet, the White House Moron says that it is better for 100 US troops and 3,000 Iraqi civilians to die every month than for him to admit that he is wrong. To date the cost of Bush being wrong is 25,000 US casualties (dead and wounded) and approximately 650,000 dead Iraqis. No one knows how many have been wounded. How many more will die before America drowns in the shame of the blood that is being shed for no other reason than the American people were so stupid as to elect a president who cannot admit that he made a mistake?

The same stupid American people elected a Congress that is too corrupt to impeach a president who is a liar, a war criminal, and a tyrant. Instead, they are prepared to let Bush off with a mere “mistake,” a courtesy denied to President Clinton. Lying about sex is an impeachable offense. Lying about war is a mere mistake.

Are the American people, Congress, and the American Establishment going to let the death toll continue to mount day by day for the two more years it takes for Bush to become history? How do America’s military families feel about the loss of loved ones for no reason except President Bush cannot admit a mistake? How do the troops themselves feel about it?

On December 8, a US Marine who has spent 7 months fighting insurgents in Anbar province answered this question on lewrockwell.com as follows: “I’m sick and tired of this patriotic, nationalistic and fascist crap. . . . How do you justify ‘sacrificing’ your life for a war which is not only illegal, but is being prosecuted to the extent where the only thing keeping us there is one man’s power, and his ego.” US Marine Philip Martin says he joined the Marines to protect the US Constitution, not to serve as an imperialist storm trooper.

I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard talking heads worrying about Bush’s “comfort level” with the Iraqi Study Group’s unanimous report. Bush’s comfort level? What about the comfort level of the Iraqis and Americans who are losing family members while idiot talking heads worry about Bush’s comfort level with the facts!

Try to imagine the impression the US gives to the rest of the world: The US cannot stop a war that is a catastrophe becoming a calamity because it would interfere with Bush’s comfort level.This disastrous war is a testament to the irresponsibility of the American people and their elected representatives. There were, of course, many dissenters. But the majority were too lazy and irresponsible to take the trouble to be informed. Most Americans allowed themselves to be deceived and emotionally manipulated.

The consequence of this failure of the American people has been brutal for countless people and their families in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon and for the thousands of American families who have suffered because Bush sent US troops on a fool’s mission. The American people are stained with the blood of innocents. Are they still not sufficiently angry with the president who used them for his crimes to demand his impeachment?

As long as Bush remains in office, the neoconservatives will demand more wars. In the current issue of “Foreign Policy,” neocon Joshua Muravchik stridently insists that Bush bomb Iran before he leaves office. Muracvchik urges his fellow neocon warmongers to “pave the way” for the bombing of Iran and to “be prepared to defend the action when it comes.” As Middle East expert Anthony Sullivan writes, the neoconservatives are “fifth columnists” whose “real concern is not the United States but Israel.” Sullivan writes that “it is past time that neoconservatives and their movement be left to drown in the deepest reaches of the ocean.”

Amen! And send Bush and Cheney and Rice with them.

We invaded and air bombed Cambodia after Nixon said it was over.

Published on Saturday, December 9, 2006 by Reuters
Angry Iraqis Bury Victims of U.S. Airstrike
by Ross Colvin

BAGHDAD - Angry residents of a village north of Baghdad fired into the air and chanted "God is greatest" as they buried the victims of a U.S. air strike that the country's Sunni leaders condemned as a massacre.

Click the title line for the latest from the pointless war.

Broadcasting our new video before Xmas!

Stay with the Flyer this weekend as we post through Gooogle our new music video release.

Old Time Movie Matinee Teaser - Fightin' Cock Flyer

Compiled from Public Domain files at Internet Archive.org and edited by our staff - this holiday season Movie Matinee features many old time favorite cartoons and original material about country folk. The featured full length motion picture included is "His Girl Friday" with Cary Grant and Rossaline Russell. Readers can order the full length DVD, (approximately 3hrs., 30min.) which includes a ten minute musical video "South Dakota Christmas 1938" with two songs by Lawrence, Kansas musician Bryan Newbury. His acoustic songs "Brewster County Breakdown" and "Beatrice" provide some contemporary melodies and words to Ivan Besse's classic silent amatuer film of life during America's Great Depression. The songs by Newbury accompany film clips of then local theater owner, Mr. Ivan Besse, Britton, S. Dakota during the holiday winter of 1938. Besse shot the clips from the main street sidewalk "to lure patrons into the theater" and Newbury's haunting songs seem to be from the perspective of a sidewalk musician performing during that tough time. The film is edited and produced by Michael Caddell, Jefferson county, Kansas who considers the included short music video "a reminder to people that there is joy to be found despite the hardship" of "everyday" people in small towns across America today. Theme song to this teaser is the "Missouri Dawg Song" (1912) Bryan G. Harlan and American Quartet (Public Domain). Stop motion animated Horse image is from Wickipedia Commons. We print and publish on our farm, in North Jefferson County, Kansas.

The Iraq Study Group: All the Kings horses, all the King's men ...

Ron Jacobs: A War Washington Can't Win: "Now, I can hear people asking what's wrong with US forces staying nearby to help put in a government friendly to Washington in Iraq and Afghanistan? After all, don't we believe in democracy? Well, let me give you a couple reasons why this isn't okay. For one, the majority of Iraqis don't want us to. That in itself is more than enough reason. For another, any government that must be backed up by a foreign military force is not going to last for the simple reason that it is not a truly national government. The US tried to do exactly this in southern Vietnam and failed miserably. Sure, George Bush and others like him think the reason the US didn't succeed in Vietnam was because the US quit. That is wrong. They didn't quit. They lost. Their project to reshape southeast Asia was never popular with the people that lived there and it failed. Even after millions of deaths and inestimable destruction. There have already been several hundred thousand deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, with unknown numbers yet to come if US and NATO forces continue their murderous attempt to install governments subservient to Washington's interests--which is what politicians, generals and media mouths really mean when they speak so eloquently about freedom and democracy."

Chavez Uses Petro-Dollars to Help the Poor - in America

Kansans Beware. The 'Last Bloody Grasps' before falling from political offices windows

Christian wingnuts out here in North Jefferson county, Kansas are busy forwarding emails in boycott calls against Venezualan petroleum. Some of the dumber are advocating a boycott against the single gas station in most of the villages because there 'might' be some of it mixed in the tankers coming from the refineries.

Dumb gets dumber, even to the point of suicidal tendencies, like other religious death cults - a once proud independent Kansas is brought to her knees by a bunch of hysterical descendants of Know-Nothingism and the Temperance Leagues.


Chavez Uses Petro-Dollars to Help the Poor - in America

Just how crazy do we look?

It is just too damn unbelievable, too damn crazy to not be true.
Click below:

BBC NEWS Americas Flatulence leads US jet to divert

No More Victims!

Narrated by Matt Dammon this 15 minute video is must viewing for every American, of every political persuasion, especially Republicans in rehab who are re-thinking their support of Christian Zionism.

Senator Sam Brownback, your presidential "exploration" committee should all watch this ten times.

You direct aid to Darfur, but omit the obvious.

No More Victims!

APPO Leader Flavio Sosa Arrested and Jailed

Also according to Democracy Now! today Sosa is being held in a federal max facility.

Narco News: APPO Leader Flavio Sosa Arrested and Jailed

The Raw Story | Homeland Security reports massive abuse by government employees

We extend our congratulations to The Raw Story for the successful conclusion to their investigative news units fund drive. Many thanks to the readers of the FCF who gave to this fine independent news organization. Check their headline feed along the left hand margin of the Flyer regularly for good stuff!

Here's just one story among many that makes The Raw Story so good:

The Raw Story Homeland Security reports massive abuse by government employees

I know some Cops who would arrest the Squad Supervisor for issuing the order.

CP News Service: The Arrest of Gerardo Bonilla

Coming to America? Or already here?

APPO supporters endure torture - El Universal - Mexico News

New York Times Ed/Op "Has He Started Talking to the Walls?"

Has He Started Talking to the Walls?
By Frank Rich
12/04/06
"New York Times"

IT turns out we’ve been reading the wrong Bob Woodward book to understand what’s going on with President Bush. The text we should be consulting instead is “The Final Days,” the Woodward-Bernstein account of Richard Nixon talking to the portraits on the White House walls while Watergate demolished his presidency. As Mr. Bush has ricocheted from Vietnam to Latvia to Jordan in recent weeks, we’ve witnessed the troubling behavior of a president who isn’t merely in a state of denial but is completely untethered from reality. It’s not that he can’t handle the truth about Iraq. He doesn’t know what the truth is.

Read the complete article at: Has He Started Talking to the Walls?

Gaia Scientist Lovelock Predicts Planetary Wipeout

Gaia Scientist Lovelock Predicts Planetary Wipeout:

by Jeremy Lovell

LONDON - The earth has a fever that could boost temperatures by 8 degrees Celsius making large parts of the surface uninhabitable and threatening billions of peoples' lives, a controversial climate scientist said on Tuesday.

James Lovelock, who angered climate scientists with his Gaia theory of a living planet and then alienated environmentalists by backing nuclear power, said a traumatized earth might only be able to support less than a tenth of it's 6 billion people.

'We are not all doomed. An awful lot of people will die, but I don't see the species dying out,' he told a news conference. 'A hot earth couldn't support much over 500 million.'"

Click title line for complete article.

Rural America Suffering Higher Death Toll in Iraq, Afghanistan

NEED WE SAY MORE?

THE BUSHEVIKS ARE KILLING OFF THE FARM FOLKS' CHILDREN IN RECORD NUMBERS. READ IT AND GET ACTIVE, BRING THEM HOME NOW!

Rural America Suffering Higher Death Toll in Iraq, Afghanistan

Like Hitler and Brezhnev, Bush is in Denial

WE KNOW WHAT ALMOST HALF OF ALL KANSANS SUFFER FROM - THEIR MAGNIFICENT LEADER'S SAME SICKNESS.

Like Hitler and Brezhnev, Bush is in Denial:

by Robert Fisk

More than half a million deaths, an army trapped in the largest military debacle since Vietnam, a Middle East policy already buried in the sands of Mesopotamia - and still George W Bush is in denial.

How does he do it? How does he persuade himself - as he apparently did in Amman yesterday - that the United States will stay in Iraq 'until the job is complete'?

The 'job' - Washington's project to reshape the Middle East in its own and Israel's image - is long dead, its very neoconservative originators disavowing their hopeless political aims and blaming Bush, along with the Iraqis of course, for their disaster.

History's 'deniers' are many - and all subject to the same folly: faced with overwhelming evidence of catastrophe, they take refuge in fantasy, dismissing evidence of collapse as a symptom of some short-term setback, clinging to the idea that as long as their generals promise victory - or because they have themselves so often promised victory - that fate will be kind. George W Bush - or Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara for that matter - need not feel alone. The Middle East has produced these fantasists by the bucketful over past decades."

Click title line to read the complete article from Fisk.

Gulf Times – Qatar’s top-selling English daily newspaper - Finance & Business

China nearing deal to develop huge Iran field

Published: Thursday, 30 November, 2006, 11:04 AM Doha Time

BEIJING: China’s Sinopec Group is near to clinching one of its biggest overseas deals, to develop Iran’s giant Yadavaran oilfield, a top Chinese industry official said yesterday.

Yadavaran, in southwest Iran, is expected to produce 300,000 bpd, about the same amount Iran now exports to China. Iran is China’s third largest oil supplier after Saudi Arabia and Angola.

“Both sides have agreed on the technical development plans. Parties also reached consensus over the reserve of Yadavaran,” the official close to the negotiations told Reuters, but declined to give a timeline for signing the pact.Sinopec Group, China’s second-largest state-run oil and gas firm, and the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) would each take 50% of the project with an estimated reserve of 3bn barrels, said the official.

Gulf Times – Qatar’s top-selling English daily paper

Socialist Senator to Push Congress From Left

"The American people are entitled to answers about the behavior of the most reactionary and incompetent administration in modern American history," he said.

That firebrand and iconoclast position has made Sanders, a Brooklyn native, immensely popular in Vermont, where a counter-culture streak runs as thick as its forests and where several towns this year passed resolutions to impeach Bush."

Read more at: Senator Bernie Sanders

Bob Herbert | While Iraq Burns

While Iraq Burns:

By Bob Herbert
The New York Times
Monday 27 November 2006

Americans are shopping while Iraq burns.

The competing television news images on the morning after Thanksgiving were of the unspeakable carnage in Sadr City - where more than 200 Iraqi civilians were killed by a series of coordinated car bombs - and the long lines of cars filled with holiday shopping zealots that jammed the highway approaches to American malls that had opened for business at midnight.

A Wal-Mart in Union, N.J., was besieged by customers even before it opened its doors at 5 a.m. on Friday. 'All I can tell you,' said a Wal-Mart employee, 'is that they were fired up and ready to spend money.'

There is something terribly wrong with this juxtaposition of gleeful Americans with fistfuls of dollars storming the department store barricades and the slaughter by the thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, including old people, children and babies. The war was started by the U.S., but most Americans feel absolutely no sense of personal responsibility for it."

Click title line for complete article.