Google News currently has 243 stories on the al-Jazeera bombing story. Less than five are from US media sources. Why is this?

I guess they’re too busy running stories about those zany shoppers at the malls yesterday to worry about a US president threatening to bomb an ally.

Heck, on most any day look at the home page of BBC News vs. CNN, ABC, etc. It’s clear that the BBC covers actual news while the others too often report about fluff.

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Well lookee here, some very big neocon fish indeed are getting implicated in the ever-increasing Abramoff investigations.

(Sen. Dorgan) suggested, and McCain agreed, that the investigation should continue, beginning with a focus on the Sandia Pueblo of New Mexico, a small tribe that was allegedly defrauded of $2.7 million.

Of particular concern, Dorgan said, was the misuse of nonprofit organizations to launder money that was then used for political influence peddling and personal projects.

Among the names mentioned frequently in the hundreds of e-mails released were Republican and Christian Coalition Director Ralph Reed and conservative anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, founder of the political action committee Americans for Tax Reform.

According to the evidence, Reed received hundreds of thousands of dollars from one of Abramoff’s tribal clients to organize “grass-roots” opposition to a proposed casino by a rival tribe. The payments were funneled through a nonprofit organization in order to obscure the fact that Reed, who is publicly against gambling, was taking casino money.

Just another greedy hypocrite hiding behind religion.

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The Abramoff investigations could prove to be the biggest, most explosive of all the investigations currently embroiling the neocons.
GOP House leadership linked anew to Abramoff

Abramoff investigators turn focus to Congress
DeLay is one of at least 6 members being scrutinized

Abramoff used DeLay to fund anti-intifada militia

So Abramoff dangled a carrot in front of his clients, advising them to donate to his philanthropic venture. Why not, it was for a good cause. Plus, he boasted, it would buy them access to Rep. Tom DeLay. It may indeed have bought them access, but what Abramoff’s customers didn’t realize was that a large portion of their money would never be spent on gearing up inner city kids to shoot some b-ball — rather, their dollars were shipped overseas to help arm Israeli settlers in the occupied territories.

More than $140,000 of the foundation’s funds, reports Newsweek, was used to purchase sniper scopes, night-vision binoculars, camouflage suits, thermal imagers and other materiel which Abramoff’s foundation called “security” equipment.

It is hard to stomach the irony. If there is any group in the US that can empathize with the occupation of the Palestinian people — it’s the Native Americans. But here Abramoff’s clients were, unknowingly donating tens of thousands of dollars so that Israeli settlers in the West Bank could continue to occupy defenseless Palestinians. You can bet that DeLay and Abramoff snickered all the way to the (West) bank.

If a Palestinian did this in the US, funneled money from a charity to buy weapons, they’d be indicted immediately. In fact some have been, and for charities that were quite innocent.

Also, check our podcast of American Indian Movement leader Vernon Bellecourt speaking at the Palestinian Right to Return convention on April 14, 2005.

“We Indians know all about biological warfare. They gave us smallpox blankets.”

When he met Yassar Arafat for the first time he said, “We are the Palestinians and you are us.”

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European music and film industries now officially scary

Guardian: “The music and film industries are demanding that the European parliament extends the scope of proposed anti-terror laws to help them prosecute illegal downloaders.”

This from the generally apolitical Adam Curry.

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So, let’s say Tookie is executed. The word spreads, and the rage held by Crips in California prisons is unleashed on the correctional officers. They use every weapon in their arsenal — from razors to shanks to tooth-brushes to attack their captors. And when they attack, it’s going to get ugly, an all-out war.

The African proverb goes “To ask is not to steal.” Well, the question that needs to be asked is, “Can someone please do something to avoid a tragedy of massive proportions?”

The problem is someone can, but they don’t appear poised to. Police unions are asking for Tookie’s death to be expedited, the good Governor is in China trying to drum up business — but getting signatures based on fame instead. So it appears we’re on course for a disaster. Dig in.

I think there’s a reasonable chance Schwarzenegger might commute. Let’s hope so. The above reinforces the rumor all California prisons will go into complete lockdown a week before and after Tookie’s execution, which is scheduled for Dec. 13.

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A group of South Bronx residents will soon receive a large - and inexpensive - shipment of heating oil, courtesy of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, a frequent thorn in the side of the Bush administration.

So why doesn’t the US start selling oil cheap to citizens who need it?

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10% of country’s clergy are sex offenders, says Vatican

Accoring to a Vatican inquiry “10% of Brazil’s priests - some 1,700 clerics - were involved in cases of sexual misconduct, including the physical abuse of children and women.”

Regina Soares Jurkwicz, author of Unveiling the Politics of Silence: Sexual Abuse of Women by Priests in Brazil, said the South American country could now be facing a problem of even greater dimensions than that uncovered in the US in 2002.

She goes on to say how the Church for years blamed the victims and kept transferring priests to other parishes. Sound familiar?

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Occasionally there is a tiny glimmer of hope that our planet might not turn to trash. During next week’s Kyoto Protocol conference, which runs parallel to the UN Climate Change Conference, a Quebec City researcher’s project on the isolation and transformation of industrial CO2 emissions is being presented as one of the few applicable technological solutions to the world’s looming global-warming crisis.

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Malo The Flesh Eating Turtle From Hell is our pet Red Slider turtle. He lives in a tiny pond outside and likes to nibble on carrots and fingers. This week he went missing. Sue and I couldn’t find him, Sandy did though.

Turtles get really annoyed when you uncover the vegetation they’ve buried themselves under to hibernate for the winter. They make a really loud scary hiss. Seriously.

Now that we know where he is, we will allow him to slumber undisturbed until spring.

When he was a wee tyke he lived in a bathtub. But he kept escaping. One day Sue came home to find the cats cowering in the living room and Malo under the bed with a tuft of cat hair in his mouth.

So, I suspect, the cats will let him slumber too.

Here’s another photo of him

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