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Latest Articles: Dead Constitution
President Bush and ‘Madame Rice’: A Personal Bond Helps Align Policy (BUSH HAS TO MEDIATE BETWEEN RICE AND CHENEY)
Post Date: 2007-11-26 15:51:45 by aristeides
3 Comments
President Bush and ‘Madame Rice’: A Personal Bond Helps Align Policy By ELISABETH BUMILLER Published: November 26, 2007 WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 — Condoleezza Rice and President Bush are often described as opposites, but their closest advisers say they are remarkably alike. Both are products of their own elites — Mr. Bush from the old East Coast establishment, Ms. Rice from Southern black professionals — who are supremely self-confident on the surface but harbor resentments underneath. Ms. Rice, like Mr. Bush, has been underestimated her entire life, as an African-American, as a woman and often as the youngest person in the room. Ms. Rice’s unusually tight bond ...
IRAQ VETERAN VICTIM OF GOVERNMENT ABUSE
Post Date: 2007-11-26 14:40:25 by robin
3 Comments
IRAQ VETERAN VICTIM OF GOVERNMENT ABUSEBy Charlotte Iserbyt
November 23, 2007
NewsWithViews.comA day rarely passes when Americans don’t read about crimes being perpetrated not only by citizens, but by the very law enforcement officials whose duty it is to protect citizens. We all read about these shocking incidents, be they the tasering of old ladies, the arrest and hand-cuffing of female concert pianists who may be exceeding the speed limit by one mile an hour, or to use a word we all love to use: “whatever.” This morning an email brought me news of another atrocity to be added to the list of law enforcement abuse: On Sunday, October 21, 2007, Billy Miller was arrested by the ...
US Police preparing for Domestic Spying on US Citizens? -- US Police Secrecy Behind Unmanned Aircraft Test
Post Date: 2007-11-26 12:17:05 by Ferret Mike
1 Comments
WALLER COUNTY, Texas. Houston police started testing unmanned aircraft and the event was shrouded in secrecy, but it was captured on tape by Local 2 Investigates. Neighbors in rural Waller County said they thought a top-secret military venture was under way among the farmland and ranches, some 70 miles northwest of Houston. KPRC Local 2 Investigates had four hidden cameras aimed at a row of mysterious black trucks. Satellite dishes and a swirling radar added to the neighbors' suspense. Then, cameras were rolling as an unmanned aircraft was launched into the sky and operated by remote control. Houston police cars were surrounding the land with a roadblock in place to check each of ...
Bush’s ‘Sixteenth Century Concept of Judicial Conduct’
Post Date: 2007-11-25 19:19:00 by robin
2 Comments
No, it’s not a remake of the movie. This is the sad but true story of Al-Timimi and Omar Khadr, and the desecration of justice under Bush.Reports have begun to circulate that the Administration has put together a group of scholars headed by a right-wing activist judge to craft legislation to introduce a new court of Star Chamber, perhaps to be floated in the coming year. As we see in the public pronouncements of the Bush Administration, accusations leveled at detainees in the war on terror are leveled for political effect, and often to parallel partisan political campaigns. If those accusations are rejected by a court, it therefore undermines confidence in the Administration and the ...
Dept of Homeland Security wants Firefighters to look for terrorists while in the line of duty
Post Date: 2007-11-25 17:13:39 by robin
8 Comments
News Corp. is reporting that firefighters are being asked by the Department of Homeland Security to spy inside people’s homes and businesses while in the line of duty of putting out fires. The following video is from FOX’s FOX Report, broadcast on November 25, 2007 Posted November 25th, 2007 at 12:02 pm By Michael Aivaz
Welcome to the Jackboot State, Ann Arbor Division - The Ordeal of Catherine Wilkerson, M.D.
Post Date: 2007-11-25 13:43:51 by Zipporah
16 Comments
Welcome to the Jackboot State, Ann Arbor Division The Ordeal of Catherine Wilkerson, M.D. By ALEXANDER COCKBURN Welcome to the jackboot state, not to mention the jackboot campus, anno domini 2007. A doctor gives verbal advice to protect the life of an unconscious man and she duly gets hit with attempted felonies by vindictive campus cops, with the connivance of the University of Michigan. Jury selection for her trial starts on Monday in a county courthouse in Ann Arbor. This case began with an on-campus talk about Iran last November 30 by Raymond Tanter, a former Reagan administration foreign policy advisor and nutball cofounder of the Committee on the Present Danger. More recently ...
Tasers a form of torture, says UN
Post Date: 2007-11-25 10:53:16 by aristeides
21 Comments
Tasers a form of torture, says UN From correspondents in Geneva November 24, 2007 04:44pm TASER electronic stun guns are a form of torture that can kill, a UN committee has declared after several recent deaths in North America. "The use of these weapons causes acute pain, constituting a form of torture,'' the UN's Committee against Torture said. "In certain cases, they can even cause death, as has been shown by reliable studies and recent real-life events,'' the committee of 10 experts said. Three men, all in their early 20s, were reported to have died in the United States this week, days after a Polish man died at Vancouver airport after being ...
Congress and the Disappeared
Post Date: 2007-11-25 08:46:37 by Ada
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Congress and the Disappeared Still waiting for our representatives—and presidential candidates—to address criminal U.S. kidnappings Human-rights history was made on February 7 of this year when, in Paris, 57 nations signed an unprecedented new international treaty prohibiting any of these countries from engaging in what the CIA calls "extraordinary renditions": secretly snatching terrorism suspects and sending them to countries known for their expertise in torturing the people in their custody. The new treaty also forbids holding suspects in secret prisons—a continuing CIA specialty—or otherwise making people disappear. Though invited to sign the treaty, the ...
Flight logs reveal secret rendition
Post Date: 2007-11-25 07:51:08 by Zipporah
1 Comments
Stephen Grey THE secret flight plans of American military planes have revealed for the first time how European countries helped send prisoners, including British citizens, to the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. Despite widespread criticism of alleged human rights abuses and torture at the US base in Cuba, a Sunday Times investigation has shown that at least five European countries gave the United States permission to fly nearly 700 terrorist suspects across their territory. Three years ago, The Sunday Times published flight logs of CIA civilian jets in Europe, setting off a controversy over the whether countries across the continent have been secretly involved in America's rendition of ...
Casualties of the Corrupt Drug War
Post Date: 2007-11-24 22:25:01 by winston_smith
3 Comments
It was one year ago this week that narcotics officers in Atlanta, Georgia broke into the home of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston. They had earlier arrested a man with a long rap sheet on drug charges. That man told the police officers that they'd find a large stash of cocaine in Johnston's home. When police forced their way into Johnston's home, she met them holding a rusty old revolver, fearing she was about to be robbed. The police opened fire, and killed her. Shortly after the shooting, the police alleged that they had paid an informant to buy drugs from Ms. Johnston's home. They said she fired at them first, and wounded two officers. And they alleged they found marijuana ...
Pistol-Packing Positivists: Our Enemy in Blue
Post Date: 2007-11-24 21:31:06 by winston_smith
8 Comments
How would you react if you were waylaid by an armed and bellicose stranger who has the means to kill you and your family and the power to get away with the crime? Very few of us would react with the self-possession displayed by 28-year-old Jared Massey when his SUV was stopped by John Gardner of the Utah Highway Patrol (UHP) last September 14. [Follow link to original article to see dash cam video] Whether or not Massey was speeding through a construction zone, he was entirely within his rights to demand clarification of his supposed offense before affixing his signature to the traffic ticket. There was no need for Massey's signature. Had Gardner been interested in enforcing the law ...
AP chief: Iraqi photographer detained indefinitely by US simply for doing his job
Post Date: 2007-11-24 16:50:50 by robin
6 Comments
AP chief: Iraqi photographer detained indefinitely by US simply for doing his job11/24/2007 @ 2:22 pm Filed by RAW STORY Associated Press President and CEO Tom Curley is highly skeptical of the U.S. military in its treatment of Pulitzer Prize-winning AP photographer Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi native who has been imprisoned for 19 months under suspicion of "links to insurgents." In his Washington Post Op/Ed Railroading A Journalist In Iraq, Curley says that, despite Hussein never being charged with a crime, the military has kept him detained with claims, some trumped-up and others false; Curley believes that the real reason Hussein is being detained is because he was "taking ...
Don't punish the private sector for helping defend national security
Post Date: 2007-11-23 22:18:53 by kiki
0 Comments
When I was director of central intelligence during President Clinton's first term, I had occasion to go hat in hand to the private sector several times. In one case, it was over a detail that, if made public, could have caused a valuable source to be captured or killed; in another, there was a technical feature of a system in production that, slightly modified, was of great help to the nation. In these several cases, executives of American companies heard me out and willingly met my requests, to the substantial benefit of our national security. They had no legal requirement to do so, and they knew it. They were helping solely out of a sense of patriotism and an understanding that some ...
A Novella For Our Times (ZWEIG'S "SCHACHNOVELLE" & ISOLATION TORTURE AT GITMO)
Post Date: 2007-11-23 16:50:42 by aristeides
1 Comments
A Novella For Our Times Over a year ago a reader recommended that I read Stefan Zweig's Schachnovelle (available in English as Chess Story or The Royal Game). I don't know why it took me so long to pick up, but when I finally did, I read the entire novella (barely 100 pages) in one sitting. It is so gripping. This was Zweig's last work, written shortly before his suicide in Brazil in 1942. The novella can be enjoyed on many levels, as a psychological thriller, an allegory of the Third Reich, or as a masterpiece of chess strategy. I don't want to spoil the story for anyone who hasn't read it, but key scene involves a chess match between the world champion chess master ...
Lawyers raise a voice in Pakistan: Barristers vow to fight on against emergency rule. But with protests tightly suppressed, they wonder what to do next.
Post Date: 2007-11-23 14:24:47 by aristeides
2 Comments
Lawyers raise a voice in Pakistan Barristers vow to fight on against emergency rule. But with protests tightly suppressed, they wonder what to do next. By Laura King, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer November 21, 2007 ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- They were a soft-spoken group, these men in business suits, perched decorously on plastic chairs in a shabby courtyard outside the Islamabad Bar Assn. But nearly all had raw, hoarse voices. "It's because we're shouting every day," Mohammed Tayyab, the association's secretary, said half-apologetically, clearing his throat. "We prefer to talk, but in these days, we have to shout." FOR THE RECORD: Pakistan justice: An ...
I Have Been Denied A Visa To Australia By The State Department, Probably For Posting On 4um - tom007 [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2007-11-23 12:05:41 by tom007
57 Comments
I just tried to purchase air tickets to Nadi, Fiji, then to Brisbane Australia to see my eighty three year old father, and as the agent for Air Pacific put it "you have been bitten by the crocodile". He ran my passport numbers in their system and it came up No Fly. It has to be the US State Department, because Australia knows nothing about me. The only thing I can think of is my political posting here at 4um. How they could get my identity is easy enough to see given the news of Yahoo and google . The Australian Embassy in Los Angles is closed today, but on Monday I hope to clear it up. Our society is closing around us daily. And They Hate Us Because Were Free.
Paulson now wants to create a VAT and chop corporate taxes
Post Date: 2007-11-23 10:34:48 by aristeides
0 Comments
Paulson now wants to create a VAT and chop corporate taxes by Chris in Paris · 11/21/2007 09:22:00 PM ET Good grief, no. The Republicans are always looking at new ways to punish the middle class and give a free ride for corporate America and here's their latest plan. Slap a VAT on who knows what and then slash corporate taxes, because the US is already known as such a tough place to do business. Uh huh, the world business community is always talking about what a tough place it is to do business. Who buys this nonsense? The Treasury document is partly an attempt to counter a proposal by Charles Rangel, the Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, to cut the ...
Cellphone Tracking Powers on Request: Secret Warrants Granted Without Probable Cause (MORE FED SNOOPING, WITH CELLPHONES)
Post Date: 2007-11-23 09:45:59 by aristeides
26 Comments
Cellphone Tracking Powers on Request Secret Warrants Granted Without Probable Cause By Ellen Nakashima Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, November 23, 2007; Page A01 Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers. In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime. Privacy advocates fear such a practice may expose average ...
Paper: Federal prosecutors granted cellphone tracking powers 'upon request'
Post Date: 2007-11-23 08:08:54 by robin
1 Comments
Federal prosecutors are being granted the right to reach out and find someone by 'pinging' cellphones "upon request", according to a front page article in Friday's Washington Post. "Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers," Ellen Nakashima reports for the paper. "In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry ...
Treason is Not Old News
Post Date: 2007-11-23 07:26:27 by robin
0 Comments
"I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors." George Herbert Walker Bush, CIA dedication ceremony, April 26, 1999. When Bush administration officials I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Karl Rove, Richard Armitage and Ari Fleischer betrayed Valerie Plame Wilson's identity as a covert CIA operations officer, they fell into the category of "the most insidious of traitors." Now we learn from the president's former press secretary, Scott McClellan, that the president himself "was involved" in sending him out to lie to the American public ...
MxClellan's Dish: Impeachment is Back on the Table
Post Date: 2007-11-23 05:51:25 by Zoroaster
4 Comments
Subscribe Online November 22, 2007 McClellan's Dish Impeachment is Back on the Table By DAVE LINDORFF The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White House briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby. There was one problem. It was not true. I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing ...
Waiting for the Guards- reenacts CIA stress-position torture
Post Date: 2007-11-23 01:09:36 by Zipporah
4 Comments
Amnesty International have just released a truly powerful film to coincide with the official launch of the unsubscribe campaign. This film shows a performance artist undergoing, for real, interrogation techniques permitted in the CIA handbook. Warning: Some viewers may find this disturbing. Unsuitable for under 14s. Please turn your speakers up Waiting For The Guards is the first of 3 films commissioned by Amnesty to highlight the enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA in the “War on Terror”. The Directors approached the making of the film in a way that has never been done before, choosing to show the reality of Stress Positions in ...
Nov. 22, 1963: A Magic Bullet, a Grassy Knoll, an Enduring Mystery
Post Date: 2007-11-22 16:01:07 by tom007
8 Comments
Nov. 22, 1963: A Magic Bullet, a Grassy Knoll, an Enduring Mystery By Tony Long 11.22.07 | 12:00 AM President John F. Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Connally ride in a motorcade in Dallas Nov. 22, 1963, moments before a sniper' would shoot the two men, fatally wounding Kennedy. Photo: Bettmann/Corbis 1963: President Kennedy is assassinated as his motorcade passes through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas. Texas Gov. John Connally, riding in the same car as Kennedy, is seriously wounded. The Warren Commission, set up by order of President Johnson to investigate the assassination, concluded that Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, firing from the sixth floor of the Texas ...
U.S. Seeks to Prosecute Pulitzer Prize-Winning A.P. Photographer (PENTAGON USES RIGHT-WING BLOGGERS)
Post Date: 2007-11-22 10:01:15 by aristeides
34 Comments
U.S. Seeks to Prosecute Pulitzer Prize-Winning A.P. Photographer Reports out since Monday note that the United States Department of Defense will seek to have criminal charges brought against Bilal Hussein, an Associated Press photographer who belonged to a team that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for photographs of the war in Iraq. Hussein’s contribution to the package included a series of arresting photographs of close up fighting from the assault on Falluja. The story was first broken by a right-wing blogger who has has been used as a regular dissemination point for information about the case by senior Pentagon figures. That fact is one of the dead give-aways of the case. This ...
Buchanan: Freedom vs. Equality
Post Date: 2007-11-22 08:01:33 by robin
0 Comments
VDARE.COM - http://www.vdare.com/buchanan/071121_freedom.htm
November 21, 2007Freedom vs. Equality
By Patrick J. Buchanan
"Our Enemy, the State" was the title of libertarian Albert Jay Nock's classic that was once widely read by conservatives.
Nock was not an anarchist but a Jeffersonian. Government was necessary, but in its centralization lay the roots of tyranny.
And in 21st century America, Leviathan is indeed rising—and, oddly, being welcomed by people who talk incessantly of freedom.
Consider the front-page story in The New York Times of Nov. 8, "House Backs Broad Protection for Gay Workers."
It began thus: "The House on Wednesday approved a bill granting ...
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