The Plug Nickel Times is proud to bring you website links to select opinion articles that you may not find through your local media. All links are offsite unless otherwise noted - followed links should open in another browser window. Links can become dated or otherwise fail to function, for this reason we quote the actual headline of an article. This may allow you to find an alternate copy of the article through a news index or search engine. Some sites we link to may require a registration process to view an article - this website may be useful to you in those instances. Comments, corrections and submissions are welcome - an email link is at the bottom of the page.
April 16-30, 2005
April 29, 2005
FBI Linguist Won’t Deny Intelligence Intercepts Tied 911 Drug Money To U.S. Election Campaigns by Tom Flocco
"Former FBI contract translator and whistleblower Sibel Edmonds and her attorneys were ordered removed from the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse so that a three-judge U.S. Court of Appeals panel could discuss her case in private with Bush administration lawyers.
In an exclusive interview on Saturday, we asked Edmonds if she would deny that laundered drug money linked to the 911 attacks found its way into recent House, Senate and Presidential campaign war-chests, according to what she heard in intelligence intercepts she was asked to translate.
"I will not deny that statement; but I cannot comment further on it," she told TomFlocco.com, in a non-denial denial."
This is our Guernica by Jonathan Steele and Dahr Jamail
"Ruined, cordoned Falluja is emerging as the decade's monument to brutality."
Whose hemisphere is it anyway? by Jeff Wells
Bush-backed drug marketing schemes by Evelyn Pringle
"In July 2003, the Bush appointed New Freedoms Commission on Mental Health (NFC) recommended screening all children for mental illness and designated TeenScreen as a model program to ensure that every student receives a mental health check-up before finishing high school.
The NFC also has a preferred drug program in place, modeled after the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP), that lists what drugs are to be used on children found to be mentally ill.
The list contains every drug that people complained about at the FDA hearing, including Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, Wellbutron, Zyban, Remeron, Serzone, Effexor, Buspar, Risperdal, Zyprexa, Seroqual, Geodone, Depakote, Adderall, and Prozac."
April 25, 2005
"I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society. I am not the son of the engineer. I perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other. If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man."
Henry David Thoreau
Gut Check by Chris Floyd
"With fresh indictments last week, the UN oil-for-food scandal took an unexpected turn into the Labyrinth -- the tangled skein of war profiteering and state terrorism that has seen the Bush Family's lust for blood money emerge in three of the darkest criminal episodes in modern American history: Iran-Contra, Iraqgate and the BCCI affair."
Globalization and Its Discontents by Bill Bonner
"There are times when civilization goes forward. And there are times when it goes in the other direction. Woodrow Wilson slammed the United States into reverse in 1917. It has been backing up ever since, in the sense that Americans rely more on force and fraud to get what they want. Gun-toting soldiers now defend America’s many supposed interests all over the world - even in places where America seems to have no interests. The U.S. government takes far more of its citizens’ money than it did in 1917...and provides detailed instructions to Americans on such a wide variety of matters that one can scarcely toss a chicken out the window or blow up an outhouse without asking permission of the authorities."
U.S.: Investigate Rumsfeld, Tenet for Torture
"The United States should name a special prosecutor to investigate the culpability of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and ex-CIA Director George Tenet in cases of detainee torture and abuse, Human Rights Watch said in releasing a new report today.
The report, Getting Away with Torture? Command Responsibility for the U.S. Abuse of Detainees, is issued on the eve of the first anniversary of the publication of the Abu Ghraib photos (April 28). It presents substantial evidence warranting criminal investigations of Rumsfeld and Tenet, as well as Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, formerly the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Gen. Geoffrey Miller the former commander of the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba."
April 21, 2005
Waco as Metaphor: Mass murder and U.S. foreign policy by Justin Raimondo
"To this day, the media promulgates the official myth about the Waco assault, and you'll note that the anniversary is being eclipsed, as least in the mainstream outlets, by observance of the Oklahoma City bombing. We avert our eyes from the corpses of incinerated children - in Waco and Iraq - convinced that if we pay too much attention we court the danger of turning into a Tim McVeigh. So forget about state terrorism - the government wants you to pay attention to the alleged danger of the free-lance variety, and it just so happens that a 'top secret' report on the danger of 'domestic terrorism' has been leaked to ABC News in time for the April 19th anniversary."
Waco, Oklahoma City, and the Post-9/11 Left-Right Dynamic by Anthony Gregory
The shadow Iraqi government by Pepe Escobar
Forget Osama and Abu: We are Threatened by the Black Helicopter Crowd by Kurt Nimmo
"According to the Bushzarro world corporate media, white supremacists and 'eco-terrorists' take solace in a lawless internet and history runs back in time about fifteen minutes. Rex 84, of course, is not the first time the government has plotted to use the Bill of Rights and the Constitution as a doormat. Problem is most people are too distracted by the hobgoblins of ter’ism, continually splashed across our collective consciousness, thanks to the likes of Fox News where felons convicted of plotting against the Constitution hold down cushy jobs, perpetually distracting us from the real criminals in the White House and the Pentagon. It is no mistake the same Iran-Contra criminals who entered into a criminal conspiracy with Oliver North are now running things."
Outsourcing Is Good for What Ails You by Bill Walker
Extra! Extra! Al-Jazeera Banned From . . . Iran by Mike Tennant
"Go, Al-Jazeera! Any news organization that has gotten itself banned by two governments--especially two antagonistic governments--must be doing its job well."
A paleo’s-eye view at the Star Trek convention of the American Right by Marcus Epstein
Crossing Borders: The Stark Differences between the US and Canada by Loretta Nall
Loretta Nall of the US Marijuana Party writes of her recent trip to Canada and of her treatment by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on her return to the US
April 18, 2005
totalitarian filth by the SaltyPig
"according to a semi-sacred document of US folklore, it is my right to alter or abolish this stinking government. so a question for you goons [here, let me get your attention: bomb, kill, ricin, anthrax, poison, contaminate, water supply, terror, civilian, iraq, bin laden, OKBOMB, ANFO, ruby ridge, waco, assasinate, horiuchi, ashcroft, TSA, reno. okay, you all there? good, now fucking pay attention]: how do you propose i do it? what avenue is left those who savor liberty? shall we become 'terrorists', as the founding fathers did? shall i join with the .00001% of modern like-minded folk, dress up like arabs, and raid a shipment of government cheese?"
The Boy in the Rubble by Paul Simon
looks like someone at paulsimon.com changed the title a bit...? (most sources still refer to this song as 'boy in the bubble')
