"It’s amazing how well the economy is doing,” she said, "but the mainstream media has a vested interest in not pointing out how well the economy is doing.Yup, stupid Americans can't tell how well the economy is doing from their own personal finances, they need the media to tell them, right Ann? People with empty pocketbooks and wallets, struggling to get by, just need the media to enlighten them on the how wonderful Bush's economy is, and that's what they'll believe. A right-wing fantasy. See my podcast about this.
"As someone else has pointed out in the past," she continued, "whenever a Republican president is elected, suddenly the media notices homeless people again.”
Campaign groups have warned of a surge in homophobic killings by state security services and religious militias following an anti-gay and anti-lesbian fatwa issued by Iraq's most prominent Shia leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.Yet more freedom and democracy, Bushian-style. I wonder if the right-wing pseudo-Christian homophobes approve.
Ali Hili, the co-ordinator of a group of exiled Iraqi gay men who monitor homophobic attacks inside Iraq, said the fatwa had instigated a "witch-hunt of lesbian and gay Iraqis, including violent beatings, kidnappings and assassinations".
...Grand Ayatollah Sistani recently issued a fatwa on his website calling for the execution of gays in the "worst, most severe way".
...Another fatwa from the late and much revered Ayatollah Abul Qassim Khoei allows followers to kill gays "with a sword, or burn him alive, or tie his hands and feet and hurl him down from a high place".
...A number of public homophobic murders by the Badr militia have terrified Iraq's gay community. Last September, Hayder Faiek, a transsexual, was burnt to death by Badr militias in the main street of Baghdad's al-Karada district.
Torture and inhumane treatment are 'widespread' in U.S.-run detention centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba and elsewhere despite Washington's denials, Amnesty International said on Wednesday.Building good will all over the globe, that's the Bushian way!
President Evo Morales of Bolivia ordered the military to occupy energy fields around the country on Monday as he placed Bolivia's oil and gas reserves under state control.Don't you just feel so sorry for the "foreign producers," AKA plundering multinationals?
Surrounded by soldiers at an oil field operated by the Brazilian energy giant Petróleo Brasileiro, or Petrobras, Mr. Morales ordered foreign producers to relinquish control of all fields and channel future sales of hydrocarbons through the state-owned energy company.
He gave foreign companies 180 days to renegotiate existing contracts with the government, or leave the country.
"The time has come, the awaited day, a historic day in which Bolivia retakes absolute control of our natural resources," Mr. Morales declared, according to The Associated Press. "The looting by the foreign companies has ended."
The decree is the latest step by Latin America governments from Venezuela to Ecuador to assert greater control over the energy sector, moves that have sent shivers through foreign producers.
Searching for energy supplies and allies against Iran, the Bush administration is reaching out to leaders who rule countries that are rich in oil and gas but accused of authoritarian rule and human rights violations.What's the big deal about supporting governments that torture, we do it as well. And their lack of freedom of the press, etc? The Bushians are jealous, not condemnatory.
The presidents of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Equatorial Guinea are all getting special attention. The effort sometimes seems at odds with President Bush's stated second-term goal of spreading democracy.
"If those countries were not oil producers, we would probably not be meeting with their leaders," said Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign policy analyst with the Brookings Institution. "There is some tension with Bush's democracy-promotion agenda. They are pulling in different directions."