Jeff Gannon a.k.a. James Gluckert

I keep coming up with questions: How did Jeff Gannon, a.k.a. James Gluckert, pass the FBI's investigation in order to get daily press passes into the White House?

Since he obviously did not have a "normal" regular press pass, who wrote the authorization for him to be allowed into the White House press conferences on a daily basis?

Is it true that he had authorization from the Secret Service?

Is he being questioned by anyone in the media?

Easy to understand that a "shill" was put into place during the press briefings, especially when W was on the dais and was expected to answer questions. W needs rehearsal time, doesn't he, so it would make sense that a little theatrical foreplay, so to speak, would make sense?

But Gannon/Gluckert's involvement with various gay-male escort service websites, using the professional name Bulldog (check it out folks, he's got a good body) raises various questions. However, opponents take issue with the fact that Gluckert makes statements in articles that could be perceived as anti-gay or homophobic. During the 2004 election, he wrote that John Kerry "might someday be known as ‘the first gay president,’" and that Kerry had supported "the pro-gay agenda." A bit hypocritical, wouldn't you say?

But then, during Hitler's time in Germany the SS could have been accused of being hypocrites as well as far as homosexuality was concerned. They placed many homosexuals into concentration camps but it was well known that many of them were, indeed, homosexuals.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Gannon for all the facts, as we know them today.

An average of 287 contaminants found in cord blood of U.S. infants

Reported at MSNBC Health News online:
WASHINGTON - Unborn U.S. babies are soaking in a stew of chemicals, including mercury, gasoline byproducts and pesticides, according to a report released Thursday.

A report by the Environmental Working Group, based on tests of 10 samples of umbilical-cord blood taken by the American Red Cross, found an average of 287 contaminants in the blood, including mercury, fire retardants, pesticides and the Teflon chemical PFOA of infants just born. Although the effects on the babies are not clear, the survey prompted several members of Congress to press for legislation that would strengthen controls on chemicals in the environment. “Of the 287 chemicals we detected in umbilical-cord blood, we know that 180 cause cancer in humans or animals, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 208 cause birth defects or abnormal development in animal tests,” the report said. The blood tests did not show how the chemicals got into the mothers’ bodies, or what their effects might be on the babies.

Among the chemicals found in the cord blood were methylmercury, produced by coal-fired power plants and certain industrial processes. People can breathe it in or eat it in seafood and it causes brain and nerve damage. Also found were polyaromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, which are produced by burning gasoline and garbage and which may cause cancer; flame-retardant chemicals called polybrominated dibenzodioxins and furans; and pesticides including DDT and chlordane.

“These 10 newborn babies ... were born polluted,” said New York Rep. Louise Slaughter, who spoke a news conference about the findings Thursday. “If ever we had proof that our nation’s pollution laws aren’t working, it’s reading the list of industrial chemicals in the bodies of babies who have not yet lived outside the womb,” Slaughter, a Democrat, said.

Slaughter had similar tests done on her own blood. “The stunning results show chemicals daily pumping through my vital organs that include PCBs that were banned decades ago as well as chemicals like Teflon that are currently under federal investigation,” she said in remarks prepared for the news conference. “I have auto exhaust fumes, flame retardant chemicals, and in all, some 271 harmful substances pulsing through my veins. That’s hardly the picture of health I had hoped for, but I’ve been living in an industrial society for over 70 years.”

The Government Accountability Office issued a report Wednesday saying the Environmental Protection Agency does not have the powers it needs to fully regulate toxic chemicals. The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, found that the EPA’s Toxic Substances Control Act gives only “limited assurance” that new chemicals entering the market are safe and said the EPA only rarely assesses chemicals already on the market. “Today, chemicals are being used to make baby bottles, food packaging and other products that have never been fully evaluated for their health effects on children — and some of these chemicals are turning up in our blood,” said New Jersey Democrat Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who plans to co-sponsor a bill to require chemical manufacturers to provide data to the EPA on the health affects of their products.

End of the report by MSNBC

Dear Friends, Out there in the netherworld, I have been anxious for many years about the effects of the pollution industry on our environment. I suppose this is the first sign of what will ultimately destroy the human race, much as the meteorite that destroyed the dinosaurs 65 Million years ago. Leukemia in young children is on the rise, as is Autism and Diabetes. Perhaps one day the corporations in America will realize that they’re not going to make as much money as in the past because they’ve killed off half the population by polluting the environment with harmful chemicals.

For those of you who don’t have children yet – but who hope to one day bless this polluted planet with your progeny – and you do nothing to change the policies that are polluting this planet, good luck. It’s a time bomb – I'm glad I won’t be here to see it.

Guess what book I'll be looking for...

Prelude to Terror: The Rogue CIA and the Legacy of America's Private Intelligence Network

By Joseph J. Trento

Format: Hardcover

Pub. Date: April 2005

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"After two decades of writing about American intelligence and eight years of unprecedented research, Joseph Trento has written the authoritative expose of CIA splinter groups and their private intelligence network. America began to experience the result of this reckless intermingling of intelligence with business and politics on the morning of September 11, 2001, a legacy which continues to play out in today's headlines." "Trento reveals the history of a corrupt group of spymasters - led by Ted Shackley - who were marginalized during Jimmy Carter's presidency, but who maintained their intelligence portfolio, using their contacts to effectively create a private intelligence network. After this rogue group helped engineer Carter's electoral defeat in 1980, they began implementing a further agenda. Allied with William Casey and George H. W. Bush, these former CIA men helped plan and conduct the arms-for-hostages plan that became the Iran-Contra scandal and, through the Saudis, allied the United States with extreme elements in Islam. Trento shows how the CIA's number-one front man, Edwin P. Wilson, was framed by Shackley and his cohorts so that Wilson's operations could be taken over. For the first time the story of how former CIA director George H. W. Bush was recruited into this network, and brought it into the bosom of the Saudi Royal Family, is told in great detail. Most shocking of all is how this group's manipulation of the CIA bureaucracy allowed Osama bin Laden's fundraising to thrive, as al Qaeda flourished under Saudi and CIA protection." The blowback from their reckless actions has been nothing less than 9/11 and the prospect of unending threats of attack our nation now faces.

You be the Judge

US Lied to Britain over Use of Napalm in Iraq War

By Colin Brown, The Independent UK
[For the complete article see: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article226119.ece]

Excerpts from the article:
American officials lied to British ministers over the use of "internationally reviled" napalm-type firebombs in Iraq.

Mr Ingram admitted to the Labour MP Harry Cohen in a private letter, obtained by The Independent, that he had inadvertently misled Parliament because he had been misinformed by the US. "The US confirmed to my officials that they had not used MK77s in Iraq at any time and this was the basis of my response to you," he told Mr Cohen. "I regret to say that I have since discovered that this is not the case and must now correct the position."


Rove Unfit for Public Office

By Juan Cole, Professor of History at the University of Michigan
[For the complete article see: http://www.juancole.com]

Excerpts from the article:
Ambassador Joe Wilson, who once dared Saddam to hang him while wearing a rope around his neck while acting ambassador in Baghdad in fall of 1990, was the first to let the American people know that the Bush administration lied about Iraq's alleged attempt to purchase uranium yellowcake from Niger. Wilson went to that country, investigated the structure of the uranium industry (which is mainly in French hands anyway), and concluded it was impossible. Bush and Cheney had believed a set of forged documents manufactured by a former employee of Italian military intelligence. (In the US, the only major public intellectual with close ties to Italian military intelligence is pro-war gadfly Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute).

In revenge, Rove tried to discredit Wilson and perhaps also punish him and his family. The purpose of such punishment is always to bully and terrorize other employees, as well as to shut up the whistleblower. Since the Bush administration has done so many illegal things, if Washington insiders started blowing the whistle, there could be a hundred Watergates. Rove let everyone in Washington know that he would destroy anyone who dared step forward. The White House also dealt with former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil when he blew the whistle on the Bush planning for and Iraq War in January of 2001 (look at the date). They threatened O'Neill with jail time for revealing classified information, even though O'Neill had never been given any. He subsequently fell quiet. It is also said that the Bushies tried to prevent Anthony Zinni, a retired Marine Corps general, from getting any consulting gigs in Washington because he opposed the Iraq war.

The Gitmo Experiment
by Jane Mayer

Article featured in the July issue of the New Yorker magazine.

Please buy the magazine and read it.

Radical Radio: Or, how I learned to hate, loathe and detest War Mongers.

It’s a rainy 5th of July in Prague. Today and tomorrow are national holidays (don’t ask, I don’t get involved) and I’m laughing at all the Czechs who left their warm and dry city apartments to go out to nature, which is how they refer to their country chatas. A chata, in most cases, is not heated, which is why they don’t use them in winter months; may or may not have running water, which is why so many of them return from their weekends smelling of cabbage, onions and vinegar; and may or may not have electricity, which is why Czech get used to waking and sleeping with the orbit of the Earth around the Sun.

I’m in my nice, warm, dry city apartment listening to Radical Radio on the Internet, thinking about a theory I came up with upon moving to Prague 10 years ago, to whit there are three kinds of Czechs: lions, lambs and jackals.

The lions have always been the Czechs who left when they found that things here didn’t agree with their philosophy of life. It takes a lot of gumption to walk away from home and family and not many people can do this without much regret. My father-in-law was one of these: He left at a time when it was still the Austro-Hungarian Empire and his options were to become a farmer, like his father, or be apprenticed to a shoemaker. He got himself to America, worked his butt off and became a dentist. During World War I he joined the American Navy and, thereby, became a U.S. citizen for life.

The lambs are the people who stay. They find they cannot leave home and family and, no matter what they have to put up with, put their heads down and walk through life trying to keep a low profile so that no one will notice them. These are the people who voted in the socialist government after World War II, wanting to be taken care of, thinking that their lives would be better off with the promises that were made by the so-called communists who ascended to power in 1948.

The jackals are the people who are lions in sheep clothing who learn early on how to bend the rules and take advantage of anyone who is less assertive, or aggressive, than they are. These were the people who came to power in 1948 and sustained their power base, with the help of the Soviet Union, until November 1989.

Of course, my argument has always been that it was never Communism in Czechoslovakia. Having read the Communist Manifesto, I always knew what Communism was supposed to be. Simply look at the similarities between Communist ideology and the words of Jesus, or read Utopia by Thomas More – Marx was a rip-off artist on a grand scale, and you will certainly see that what happened here was not communism; it was more akin to slavery in the buffer states that surrounded Russia. These buffer states of the Warsaw Pact were raped by Russia, and the people lived a minimal existence with shortages of this or that, the only thing consistent throughout the entire reign.

But I digress. Listening to Radical Radio (I’ve chosen that over CNN or the BBC because I want to really know what’s going on in the land that I love and the NY Times doesn’t totally get it either) I’ve decided that it’s not just Czechs who are lions, lambs and jackals.

True, I’m a whacko in my own way (just ask Max, she knows the truth). I played the role of mother for so long that I almost started believing my own act, worrying about my reputation to some extent, as though anyone gives a damn. However, I am willing to own up to the fact that I’ve always been a closet radical.

I really hate what’s going on in the United States since W became president. I really hate that my peers have become so complacent and no longer question, as we did in the past, the true motives of our political leaders. But most of all I hate the War Mongers. We were the generation who brought down a president who may not have been guilty of wrongdoing, but who helped cover up a wrongful act. Now we have a president who, along with his top aides and the vice-president, has committed a crime. It boggles my mind that nothing is being done by the people, (lambs?), and the media (also lambs?) under the control of corporate groups. Are we, those of us who live outside the U.S., the lions? But, like the Czech Socialist government of the past, our politicians are now the jackals!

The question now becomes: “What can I do about it?

I have the distinct feeling that this is going to be a lot more difficult than fixing my bed. We always suspected, but had no proof that he orchestrated the war against Iraq. Now we have proof in the Downing Street Memo. Congressman Conyers has called together members of Congress to begin an investigative process, and there are lawyers who are already calling for an impeachment proceeding.

Well, I’ll start small, by writing this blog. Then I shall copy and paste this blog to send, by email, to all my American friends – asking them to write their congressmen and senators to investigate this travesty of justice. Over 1,700 young men and women have died, and many more have been maimed, because of the deceptions disseminated by this administration. I’ve heard him say that this is a Crusade (he did actually use the word) and that he’s the War President. Well, I don’t see him going off to fight a war, as they did in the Crusades a thousand years ago. Instead, he’s sending young Americans off to fight a war that will, inevitably, cause Armageddon.

Make no mistake, we shall all be held accountable in the future if we allow this to continue. Stop the War Monger now! If you love your country, and the principles we have always admired, stop him now – before he causes us all to suffer.

Ode to a Hammer

Or, how my bed fell apart and I fixed it.

I bought my bed two years ago with the limited funds I had upon my return to Prague. It was the least expensive bed I could find. I knew when I bought it that nothing lasts forever and, in this instance, forever would never come.

A year ago two of the slats under the mattress broke, and I fixed them with tape. They've held up because I moved those slats to the foot of the bed. For the last month I've heard the wood groan each time I turned over in bed and I knew it was only a matter of time before it would all fall apart. This morning it did. I ended up half on the floor and, because I got into bed at around 4 a.m. having been out with Max and others 'til the wee small hours, I knew I could not deal with it. I picked myself up and went to sleep on the couch. I had about 5 hours sleep and started to think about how to fix my problem. I called Max.

When I told Max about my problem, being the great friend she is - she laughed herself silly. She said she'd call Monkey, who said he'd come over tomorrow to help with fixing it. I want to thank you, Monkey, for the offer.

Being a girl with an independent streak, I decided to try on my own. Went through the tool kit and found two old hammers (and wondered where my new one went to but figured out that my fire wielding daughter had probably taken it when she left Prague), a gaggle of very long nails (which I always keep on hand for emergencies, girl/guy that I am), a couple of pieces of wood to reinforce the structure with, started singing "If I Had a Hammer" and went to work.

It took me a total of three hours, ascertaining the basic problems, unscrewing the slats so that I'd be able to work inside the frame, hammering away at the headboard to reinforce the part of the bed that broke, and then screwing in the slats once I had nailed in the slats to the center wood frame. It's done and I'm quite tired. Scraped one finger and hit another one twice, but I accomplished what I set out to do.

I well understand why men appreciate physical labor. You can close your mind to every thought but the problem at hand. You situate your legs in such a way that you won't fall over while standing in an awkward position, your left hand holds the nail and the right hand strikes the hammer to the nail. If you are not a trained carpenter, and you're not a total klutz and break your toe by dropping the hammer on your foot, consider yourself lucky to be satisfied with a job well done.

I always liked doing the guy jobs as opposed to the girl jobs. There's nothing really exciting about dusting or washing windows, you know. I used to watch my stepfather as he did chores around the house and always offered help. I learned the difference between a regular screwdriver and a Philips. After he died I stayed with my mother for a month and she was surprised that I knew how to fix things. My years of experience being single, and using logic, helped me to repair mechanical problems with the old plumbing in her house and fixing the clothes dryer when the professional tried to talk my mother into merely buying a new one.

All the years that I was single, in between marriages, I kept a tool kit. I liked having my own tool kit because it meant that I didn't have to call a guy friend to come over to get me out of a fix. Frank was very impressed, when we first got together, that I had so many tools. It has delighted me no end to know that my elder daughter, the Last Muse, has acquired her very own tool kit earlier this year. And younger daughter, the Escape Artist, is the creative welder. I think that cross gender knowledge is great. Men are often more creative with cooking then women (many great chefs are men) and it's a great help if you're a working mom to have a hubby who knows how to wash clothes and get the dinner started. I'm happy to have been born into an enlightened age, and that our daughters will continue the tradition. I only wish I’d had a son to influence as well.

I'm going to bed now. I'm looking forward to it for the first time in a month.