The Shrub administration did a double about face this week in its hostile psuedo negotiations with North Korea announcing that it would not and then that it would talk to Korea aboout a nonaggression pact.

The war in Iraq dominated the news. The US Senate trimmed the Shrub’s $87 billion request for Iraq by voting to require that Iraq eventually pay back $10 billion. (WashingtonPost.com)

But it turns out that as the Congressional Research Service reported the US military doesn’t need this “emergency” appropriation. CRS claims that the military operations are aleady funded through May, 2004. Could the Shrub be promoting something less than the truth?
(daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp&|=649)

At the UN, the Security Council approved a resolution authorizing a US-led multinational force in Iraq. They added, despite secretary Powell’s objections, the stipulation that the Iraqi governing council present a timetable for sketching a blueprint of a new constitution by December 15. (New York Times)

Have they no sense of shame?...More embarrassments for the White House. According to NY Times reporters Eric Schmitt and Joel Brinkley, the State Department, in a major study begun in April 2002, anticipated most of the problems now being confronted in Iraq. Apparently, the
Defense Department simply refused to listen.

A poll by the Stars and Stripes, a newspaper for the military, showed that half of the US troops sampled reported their unit’s morale as low. One-third said that their mission there was unclear to them, and 40 percent said the jobs they were doing had little or nothing to do with their training. (Washington Post)

Law professor, Jonathan Turley, writing in the Los Angeles Times, that Attoney General John Ashcroft is “pulling out all stops to prosecute protestors.” Greenpeace was charged under an 1872 law of “sailor mongering”and a Plowshares action by three nuns resulted in their being charged with obstructing national defense. Charges are felonies with potentially serious implications.

Sez who....One member of the Pentagon who should not have been talking was Lt.General William G. Boynton who spurred US-Muslim relations by announcing that his god was bigger than their god. (www.aolsvc.news)

On the environmental front...The Navy has agreed to limit its use of a high intensity sonar which has been responsible for the mass deaths of whales and dolphins. (www.truthout.org)

Lobotomies for Republicans...it’s the law.....As Senate Democrats filibuster three of President Shrub’s judicial nominees, he threw another unacceptable candidate on the fire. Janice Rogers Brown was nominated for the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia despite a record
hostile to abortion, civil rights legislation and affirmative action and favorable to the death penalty and limits on corporate liability (Associated Press)

On the B’more scene....The Progressive Action Center and its parent organization, Research Associates Foundation, held a mortgage burning celebration at its second Ric Pfeffer memorial lecture. The PAC is the home of the IndyMedia Center.

Black home buyers in Baltimore have their loan applications rejected three-and-one-half times more often than whites. The study was conducted by Maryland ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now).

This week in history.....John Brown raids Harper's Ferry Arsenal (1859); John Reed, journalist and author of the classic account of the Russian Revolution "Ten Days That Shook the World," was born (1887); Emma Goldman learns to dance, giving John Reed a few spins on the dance floor (1895); Deportation Act directed at foreigners who were anarchists (1919); The War Resisters League founded (1923); two million people march in the first moratorium against the Vietnam War (1969)