Tonight at 7, I will be speaking at a screening of WMD at the Hudson Guild in Chelsea in New York. For more info, call Chuck at 212-726-1385.

FREE AT LAST: BREAKING NEWS THIS MORNING
News Alert 6:29 a.m. ET Thursday, March 30, 2006

Journalist Jill Carroll Released in Iraq

American journalist Jill Carroll, who had been held hostage by insurgents in Iraq, was freed Thursday in Baghdad after nearly three months in captivity. Carroll, 28, was turned over to an Iraqi political party and seen by Washington Post reporters.

SC MANDATES IRAN’S COMPLIANCE
JACK ABRAMOFF CONVICTED
RIVERBEND WATCHES TV IN BAGHDAD

Yesterday, it was reported that Australia agreed to sell enriched uranium to the People’s Republic of China, once considered a “red menace” threatening the world. To critics of China, this is a modern day example of an observation attributed I believe to Lenin who believed that capitalists would sell the rope that could later be used to hang them with or some such.

Now, there’s the question of uranium going to Iran, and the US, the world’s #1 nuclear weapons power is going apoplectic about the bomb in Iranian hands. There have been weeks of threats and a build up of tension culminating with a U.N. Security Council demand Wednesday that “Iran suspend uranium enrichment”.

This is the first time the Security has directly urged Tehran to clear up suspicions that it is seeking nuclear weapons. Iran remained defiant, maintaining its right to nuclear power but insisting that it was committed to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and had no intention of seeking weapons of mass destruction.”

So where are we? On the edge of a new war or more sabre rattling and bluster while the US works behind the scenes to get Tehran to rein in some of the Shiite politicians in Iraq.

Is this another “shadow play” in the Indonesian sense or a replay of the march to war in Iraq. Many Iranians in fact believe that old saw attributed to none other than Chairman Mao that The US is more and more a “paper tiger” incapable of sustaining another war.

At the UN, Tehran is hanging tuff. “Pressure and threats do not work with Iran. Iran is a country that is allergic to pressure and to threats and intimidation,” Iranian Ambassador Javad Zarif said. He later added that “Iran insists on its right to have access to nuclear technology for explicitly peaceful purposes. We will not abandon that claim to our legitimate right.”

REGIME CHANGE IN AMERICA?

If US police aims at regime change in Iran, more and more Americans seem to want regime change in America. Editor & Publisher reports:

Gallup: In Shift, More Americans Now Call Themselves Democrats

”NEW YORK In a (perhaps) historic shift, more Americans now consider themselves Democrats than Republicans, the Gallup organization revealed today. Republicans had gained the upper hand in recent years, but 33% of Americans, in the latest Gallup poll, now call themselves Democrats, with those favoring the GOP one point behind. But Gallup says this widens a bit more “once the leanings of Independents are taken into account.” Independents now make up 34% of the population. When asked if they lean in a certain direction, their answers pushed the Democrat numbers to 49% with Republicans at 42%. One year ago, the parties were dead even at 46% each. This shift indicates, Gallup says, why its polls show Democrats leading in this year’s congressional races.

And speaking of American elections, the Brad Blog carried this:

AP: FLORIDA ATTORNEY GENERAL SUBPOEANAS ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINE COMPANIES!

Investigation Into Refusal by Companies to do Business with Leon County, FL Election Supervisor Who Discovered Diebold E-Voting Security Flaw!

Just out from AP, the Florida state Attorney General has subpoenaed the three Electronic Voting Machine companies who have all now refused to do business with Leon County, FL Election Supervisor Ion Sancho since he discovered that Diebold’s optical-scan voting system was vulnerable to hackers. Sancho’s discovery, revealed via a mock election test last December, showed in no uncertain terms that Diebold’s systems could be hacked, the results of an election flipped, without a trace being left behind.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/3756945.html

OTHER ISRAELI ELECTION RESULTS

Panet – An Internet website and offshoot of the weekly Arabic newspaper, Panorama reports 1. The United Arab List has won 4 seats, the Communist Party won 2, and the National Democratic Party also won 3 seats in yesterday’s election.”

MASSIVE WORK STOPPAGES IN UK AND FRANCE

Spring is here with political struggle intensifying across the pond in Europe. There have been massive work stoppages in England and France:

PARIS, March 28, 2006 France has been earning its reputation as European capital of strikes and demonstrations in recent weeks, but on Tuesday it shared that dubious honor with London, where unions proclaimed the biggest labor stoppage since the general strike of 1926.

“On both sides of the Channel, the protests have erupted over what are seen as government attempts to remove entrenched rights.

“French unions called a one-day stoppage to oppose a law that enables employers to dismiss workers under the age of 26 without cause within two years of their hiring….

“In Britain, meanwhile, more than one million staff who work for local governments walked off the job, causing widespread disruption and leaving large parts of the country without public transport.

“Unions there are protesting a plan by Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government to abolish a rule that allows municipal and district workers to retire at 60 if their age and length of service add up to 85 years.

http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=58&story_id=28818&name=A+tale+of+two+strikes%3A+work+stops+in+France+and+UK

ITALIAN ELECTIONS: FRAUD THREATENS

Giuliana Tiripelli files this report for us from Italy:

“Italy is going through a difficult situation because of a potential danger of fraud in the election due April 9th. “Diario”, an Italian left magazine, published a report about possible fraud linked to the use of electronic voting machines. The report is published on line (in Italian):

http://www.disinformazione.it/aprile_elezioni_private.htm

Gianni Barbacetto and Mario Portanova, the authors of this report, consider the involvement of Telecom Italia, Eds e Accenture which is organizing the electronic vote represents a real danger for italian democracy.

Why? Because they are private agencies and because Accenture is the same agency which organized the vote in Florida.

But there is more. These agencies have been chosen by a private contract: there has not been any public announcement or bidding process.

Maybe one of the the real reason is that that Gianmario Pisanu, a partner of Accenture, is the son of Italian minister Giuseppe Pisanu? Many fear that in this way, Berlusconi will obtain the votes to win?

One problem: while Berlusconi and the Left in Italy continue to argue over his references to boiled Chinese babies, only a few courageous reporters are investigating this threat. One of them is Beppe Grillo, who writes: “There’s a strange smell in the air.” (in English)

http://www.beppegrillo.it/eng/politics/

BIZARRE: MORE ON GIUILIANA SGREGNA INCIDENT
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/

LIBERIA’S CHARLES TAYLOR FINALLY BEHIND BARS

South Africa’s Mail & Guardian reports

”United Nations peacekeepers escorted the captured former Liberian president Charles Taylor into jail on Wednesday at the Sierra Leone tribunal where he is wanted for trial on war-crimes charges. Taylor, handcuffed and looking dejected, was led behind a razor-wired gate into the holding penitentiary where nine other defendants in Sierra Leone’s brutal 1989-2002 civil war are held.

NEW FILM FROM IRAQ

A powerful film follows a group of former US soldiers who have returned from Iraq deeply affected by the experience. Its on BBC’s Newsnight Broadcast O3/29/06

Click here to watch
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12552.htm

Click here to download
http://www.videos.informationclearinghouse.info/ichnewsnight_nb.rm

WHY WE WENT TO WAR?

Pentagon Whistleblower Describes a Neocon Take Over of the US War Policy Apparatus. Retired Lt.Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski Pentagon Whistleblower

VIDEO Scroll down to the “Clinton Chronicles” Section (28 min)
http://www.heartbone.com/various/RedPillVideos.html#D25

JACK TO THE CAN, LOBBYISTS UNRESTRAINED

Disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff has been sentenced to five years and 10 months in prison for illegal activities. The response on the Hill, reports The Washington Post, was NOT a call for tougher ethics laws:

” The Senate voted yesterday to require lobbyists to provide far more information about their dealings with lawmakers, responding to the Jack Abramoff political corruption scandal with a plan for more disclosure rather than tougher enforcement of ethics laws.”

Following up on an Abramoff story I revealed some weeks back, RawStory reports:

“Abramoff ashamed of own film he produced”

According to a biography of Jack Abramoff crafted by his lawyers in an appeal for leniency, “Hollywood politics” triumphed over his pious attempts to keep offensive language out of an action film he produced in the late eighties, RAW STORY has found. But left unmentioned in the appeal is any hint that the film was shot in South African-occupied Namibia during apartheid, and may have even been partly funded by the South African military.

Abramoff’s memorandum in aid of sentencing (pdf link) is an attempt to fight back against the “caricature” foisted upon him by the media that “has distorted a lifetime of accomplishments beyond recognition.”

“As large a figure as he has been painted in the media, he is an even larger figure in matters of family, faith, generosity and remorse,” reads the introduction.

“All four elements - “family, faith, generosity and remorse” - are on display in Abramoff’s account of the making of the anti-communist “Red Scorpion.

“As he worked on the movie, Abramoff attests to steadfastly observing the rules of Orthodox Judaism by working only Sunday through Thursday, before returning each Friday to his wife and son to spend the Sabbath. Before filming started, according to Abramoff’s account, director Joseph Zito made an “unprecedented informal agreement” with him to shy away from “obscenity and profanity” but went back on his word by shooting on Sabbath days, no less, scenes that contained “language that he felt should shame even the most hardened street thug.”

“But though an “appalled” Abramoff did his best to get the “offending language” stricken from his movie, he lost out to “Hollywood politics,” since “the distributor thought changing the film for that reason would be crazy.

“In an article written in February for RAW STORY, Danny Schechter wrote that the “idea was to make anti-communist films that could denigrate the anti-apartheid movement.” Schechter also wrote that while “for years, Abramoff publicly denied South African financing…the Mail & Guardian quoted one-time apartheid spy Craig Williamson as now admitting that the money came directly from the South African military.”

http://www.rawstory.com/admin/dbscripts/printstory.php?story=1720