This should give you pause: Iraq War veterans are already showing up at homeless shelters, including some in Los Angeles, UPI reports.

PTSD, ill-treated war injuries, substance abuse problems - all the classic wounds that drive vets out of society and onto the streets - are being cited by young men landing at shelters across the U.S. after rotating out of Iraq, according to the piece.

Cannon fodder. Used up. discarded. Not the Army’s problem now. But they weren’t homeless when they joined, now were they?

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Pinochet indicted on human rights charges

A Chilean judge has ordered the house arrest of the country’s former dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, on human rights charges.

The judge charged Pinochet over the kidnapping of nine dissidents and the killing of one dissident during his brutal 17 year regime.

The ruling follows a recent admission from Chile’s armed forces that it systematically tortured and murdered during Pinochet’s dictatorship which began after a coup against the Marxist government of President Salvador Allende in 1973.

A US-backed coup, it was, engineered by Henry Kissinger, a war criminal if there ever was one.

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Aerosmith sells you a Buick
 
In which the rock icons waste their finest song, and rock n’ roll finally gasps its last

Maybe rock n’ roll finally died, really and truly and once and for all, roughly a decade ago, when Microsoft shelled out a whopping and still quite ludicrous $10 million to Jagger & Co. for the use of the Stones’ classic “Start Me Up” for the massive overblown launch of the utterly awful and terrifically bug-addled Windows 95.

Did you cringe at all when you heard Iggy Pop’s fabulous “Lust for Life” during that commercial for the utter dystopian nightmare that is Royal Caribbean cruises? Did you laugh in a bitter and dejected sort of way when you read about that PR firm that wanted to use Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” to market a hemorrhoid cream?

Because make no mistake, there is no longer any even the remotest argument that says cool rebellious artistic integrity still exists as any sort of separate and distinct category from crass commercial whoredom.

No. There’s still plenty of political dissent out there, still numerous musicians making powerful statements - System of a Down, Dead Presidents, Ministry, Rage Against the Machine, Green Day, to name just a few. Hey, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore has dozens of current antiwar songs on his website available for free download!

Aerosmith, the Rolling Stones, and Led Zep may mindlessly whore themselves to the highest bidder. But their best days were decades ago and they’ve been running on fumes ever since. They make millions but matter not. More importantly, don’t judge current bands based on the actions of faded geezers.
 
Rebellion didn’t go away. Not everyone sold out. Political dissent through music is thriving.

Don’t want to be an American idiot.
Don’t want a nation under the new media.
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mindfuck America.

Green Day, American Idiot

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A 10-year-old girl was placed in handcuffs and taken to a police station because she took a pair of scissors to her elementary school.

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by Angry Girl
Nightweed.com

Did you know….

1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies:  Diebold and ES&S.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

2.  There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

3.  The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_company.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

4.  The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886

5.  Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S.  He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitrakis/031004fitrakis.html

6.  Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=26
http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.php

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush’s vice-presidential candidates.
http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.htm
http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel27.html

8.  ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.
http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

9.  Diebold’s new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes.  In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates/pfindex.html

10.  Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.diebold.com/solutions/default.htm

11.  Diebold is based in Ohio.
http://www.diebold.com/aboutus/ataglance/default.htm

12.  Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as senior managers and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301469.shtml

13.  Jeff Dean, Diebold’s Senior Vice-President and senior programmer on Diebold’s central compiler code, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree.
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf

14. Diebold Senior Vice-President Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a “high degree of sophistication” to evade detection over a period of 2 years.
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf

15.  None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.
http://www.globalexchange.org/update/press/2638.html
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/10/26/loc_elexoh.html

16.  California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad.  Despite Diebold’s claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it!  (See the movie here http://blackboxvoting.org/baxter/baxterVPR.mov. )
http://wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63298,00.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4874190

17.  30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml

18.  All — not some — but all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html
http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm
http://www.rise4news.net/extravotes.html
http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=950
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00227.htm

19.  The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President’s brother.
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/local/7628725.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10544-2004Oct29.html

20.  Serious voting anomalies in Florida — again always favoring Bush — have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.
http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm
http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/policy/story/0,10801,97614,00.html
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/tens_of_thousands.html
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/110904.html
http://uscountvotes.org/

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