Though this campaign season has been marked by wide use of negative campaign ads by both parties, RAW STORY has found that they have not had their intended–and usual–impact this election season.

Both left- and right-wing observers have commented upon the unusual viciousness of this campaign season, usually with disdain. But the tactics have continued, as in every election season, because, typically, they’re remarkably effective.

This year is proving to be the exception. (more…)

Bush crosses the rubicon, the gun has been loaded, the safety is off, when will the trigger be pulled?

The Bush Junta has quietly “tooled up” to utilize the U.S. military in engaging American dissidents after the next big crisis, with a frightening and overlooked piece of legislation that was passed alongside the Military Commissions Act, which greases the skids for armed confrontation and abolishes posse comitatus.

Frank Morales’ recent article, Bush Moves Toward Martial Law, succinctly outlines the nuances of what the bill authorizes and why it is potentially more dangerous to freedom in America than even the Military Commissions Act. (more…)

Conflicting stories make it unclear, yet there are certainly more tapes to come

Rumours have begun circulating today that a video due to be released in one week’s time, just prior to the midterm elections, will show clear and crisp footage of American Airlines flight 77 hitting the Pentagon on September 11th 2001.

Such a release may sway uncertain voters into sticking with the devils they know rather than the devils they don’t as far as the “protection” of America against Al Qaeda goes.

The video in question is the Doubletree hotel video, which government watchdog/ sometime propaganda outlet Judicial Watch says has been promised to them on November 9th. (more…)

Am I missing something or did the Military Commissions Act pass the Senate using fuzzy math?  Please explain to me how 65 votes out of 99 Senate votes cast equals two thirds majority? Seems they missed by one vote.

According to the link at Wikipedia (below) the Torture Bill breezed through the House of Representatives with a passing vote. Such luminaries as Florida representative, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, self-styled critic of Cuba’ s torture regime, voted to continue the US government-sponsored torture sessions at Quantanamo prison in Cuba.  Not content with Gitmo, IRL and her co-conspirators voted to add MORE torture provisions to the US government here in the country that gave her shelter.  From torture.

Then the good old boys in the Senate got to vote on the Torture Bill. Championed by other victims of torture like John McCain, they followed the example of Ros-Lehtinen, figuring that what was good for Communist military dictatorships overseas must be good for America .

So these worthies stomped on the Bill of Rights and pissed on the graves of REAL patriots like Madison, Jefferson and Franklin, and passed a bill into law allowing state security (SS) orgs to arrest anyone, torture them and hold them indefinitely without recourse.

But wait.

Did the law really pass? (more…)

The internet will hold so much digital data in five years that it will be possible to find out what an individual was doing at a specific time and place, an expert said yesterday.

Nigel Gilbert, a professor heading a Royal Academy of Engineering study into surveillance, said people would be able to sit down and type into Google “what was a particular individual doing at 2.30 yesterday and would get an answer”. (more…)

Parliament must act to halt the spread of powers of intrusion and control in the hands of the state and private corporations

Up until now the best ally of governments and big corporations who wish to place every individual under total and unwavering surveillance has always been ignorance. People have simply failed to grasp the threat posed by individual surveillance systems and the way a range of technologies can reach out to each other almost of their own accord to create new pathways of exchange. (more…)

Iran has successfully test-fired three new models of sea missiles in a show of force to assert its military capacities in the Gulf, military officials said Friday.

Television showed footage of the elite Revolutionary Guards firing the missiles from warships and from mobile launching pads on the shore.

Iranian forces have previously test-fired missiles in the crowded Gulf waters, but the new maneuvers, which began on Thursday, appeared to be Iran’s response to a U.S.-led military exercise held earlier this week in the same zone. (more…)

Russia is in a position to minimize the impact of Washington’s deployment of its national missile defense system (NMD) with the help of effective technological solutions, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Gen. Alexei Moskovsky told Interfax-AVN. “Measures are being taken that will help parry U.S. efforts to deploy a NMD system. I cannot go into detail, but what I mean is, let me say, an asymmetric response. It involves quite simple but effective technological solutions we formulated a long time ago,” he said.

Source: Interfax-AVN

A record number of people in England and Wales went insolvent between July and September, official figures show.

The government’s Insolvency Service said 27,644 people went bankrupt or entered into Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs) to manage debts.

Overall, insolvencies are 55% higher than during the same three-month period in 2005 and are widely expected to top 100,000 for the entire year. (more…)

At least one Palestinian woman was killed and another 10 were reported wounded when Israeli forces today opened fire on a group preparing to act as a human shield for militants in a Gaza mosque.

Dozens of women were gathering outside the mosque in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip this morning after an appeal on a local radio station. Up to 60 gunmen had taken refuge in the building after the Israeli army began its largest Gaza offensive in months in an attempt to stop militants launching rocket attacks on nearby Jewish settlements over the border. (more…)

A former US soldier has been charged with the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl and the murder of her family in March.

A civilian grand jury on Thursday charged Steven Green, 21, and four other soldiers who are still in the army.

The case concerns Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi, 14, who was sexually abused and then killed with her father, mother and six-year-old sister.

Green is further accused of trying to burn the bodies to conceal the crime. (more…)

An American general in Baghdad called Iraq a “work of art” in progress yesterday in one of the most extraordinary attempts by the US military leadership to put a positive spin on the worsening violence.
On a day in which 49 people were killed or found dead around the country, Major General William Caldwell, the chief military spokesman, argued that Iraq was in transition, a process that was “not always a pleasant thing to watch.

“Every great work of art goes through messy phases while it is in transition. A lump of clay can become a sculpture. Blobs of paint become paintings which inspire,” Maj Gen Caldwell told journalists in Baghdad’s fortified green zone. (more…)

· US allies think Washington threat to world peace
· Only Bin Laden feared more in United Kingdom

America is now seen as a threat to world peace by its closest neighbours and allies, according to an international survey of public opinion published today that reveals just how far the country’s reputation has fallen among former supporters since the invasion of Iraq. (more…)

A military dog handler convicted for his role in the prisoner abuse scandal has been ordered back to help train the country’s police

As if the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal weren’t bad enough for America’s image in the Middle East, now it may appear to much of the world that one of the men implicated in the scandal is returning to the scene of the crime.

The U.S. military tells TIME that one of the soldiers convicted for his role in Abu Ghraib, having served his sentence, has just been sent back to serve in Iraq.

Sgt. Santos Cardona, 32, a military policeman from Fullerton, Calif., served in 2003 and 2004 at Abu Ghraib as a military dog handler. After pictures of Cardona using the animal to threaten Iraqis were made public, he was convicted in May of dereliction of duty and aggravated assault, the equivalent of a felony in the U.S. civilian justice system. The prosecution demanded prison time, but a military judge instead imposed a fine and reduction in rank. Though Cardona was not put behind bars, he was also required to serve 90 days of hard labor at Ft. Bragg, N.C. (more…)

“The much anticipated release of the Doubletree Hotel security video that has been speculated it will show a Boeing 757 hitting the Pentagon is due to be released by one week from today,” writes the blogger Killtown. “So how much do you want to bet that this Doubletree Hotel security video will be released before this Tuesday (election day) to ’shock & awe’ the voters in hopes to sway the elections, especially if this video finally shows a plane hitting the Pentagon?”

If I was a betting man, I’d bet the farm on it.

However, simply releasing a five plus year old video with a predictable corporate media broadside taking “conspiracy nuts” to task, thus questioning their patriotism and even sanity, and suggesting Republicans were right all along about those cave-dwelling Muslims with their boxcutters, may not be enough to flip the election and keep the House and Senate in neocon hands. (more…)