A U.S. diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks suggests that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi.
The unclassified cable, which was posted on WikiLeaks’ website last week, contained questions from a United Nations investigator about the incident, which had angered local Iraqi officials, who demanded some kind of action from their government. U.S. officials denied at the time that anything inappropriate had occurred.
But Philip Alston, the UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said in a communication to American officials dated 12 days after the March 15, 2006, incident that autopsies performed in the Iraqi city of Tikrit showed that all the dead had been handcuffed and shot in the head. Among the dead were four women and five children. The children were all 5 years old or younger.
In a Category 4 torrent of official communications during the approach and aftermath of Hurricane Irene, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has repeatedly used the phrase “federal family” when describing the Obama administration’s response to the storm.
The Obama administration didn’t invent the phrase but has taken it to new heights.
One Man's Waste Is Another Man's Bonanza
posted 09/02/2011, 5:14 AM (Robert Higgs) [Category: Politics/Corruption] In a recently released report, the Commission on Wartime Contracting concludes that waste and fraud have consumed at least $31 billion and perhaps as much as $60 billion of the $190 billion or so that the U.S. government has expended in grants and contracts with private individuals and companies for work in Iraq and Afghanistan since fiscal 2002. According to an article in the ... (more)
AE911Truth's new 9/11 documentary Solving the Mystery, the destruction of World Trade Center Building #7, WTC 7 on 9/11/01. Join actor, Ed Asner and Architect Richard Gage, AIA and Architects and Engineers as they narrate an unfolding story that decimates the official account ("collapse due to normal office fires") of this 47 story high-rise which was destroyed on the ... (more)
Teen Says Sheriff's Deputy Made Her Strip
posted 09/02/2011, 5:13 AM (Courthouse News Service) [Category: Tyranny/Police State] SALT LAKE CITY (CN) - A sheriff's deputy made a 17-year-old girl strip for him in his squad car so he could "check for a vaginal piercing" after falsely telling her she was wanted on an out-of-state warrant on a heroin charge, the teen says in Federal Court.
T.R., now 18, says that after she reported what Box Elder County sheriff's Deputy Scott R. Womack had done, a Box Elder County "victim's advocate" told her: "'Don't bother reporting this, because these things happen all t... (more)
WikiLeaks: UN Peacekeepers Traded Food For Sex
posted 09/02/2011, 5:13 AM (Associated Press) [Category: Geopolitics] ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast -- United Nations peacekeepers in Ivory Coast enticed underage girls in a poor part of the West African nation to exchange sex for food, according to a United States Embassy cable released by WikiLeaks.
The cable written in January 2010 focuses on the behavior of Beninese peacekeepers stationed in the western town of Toulepleu, an area that has been at the crosshairs of the nation's 10-year-long conflict.
A random poll of 10 underage girls in To... (more)
In an email to the Tribune, attorney Michael Carin said school officials at Carver Primary School on the Far South Side authorized the on-campus security guard in March 2010 to discipline some first-graders who were being disruptive.
The Rainbow Acres Farm was found to have been smuggling banned unpasteurised milk to customers in Maryland. [...]
The FDA began to look into the farm, owned by Dan Allgyer, when an investigator used aliases to sign up to the farm’s internet group and placed orders for raw milk to be delivered to Maryland.
The amazing thing about this is it appears they're selling the milk in a completely legal way, IE through cow shares (you buy a fraction of a cow, so you become a part owner, then you can do whatever you want with the milk it produces). - Chris
“All meat has gone to Russia,” Alexander Andreyevich, an 82-year-old former tractor-plant worker, said Aug. 25 in Minsk, the capital. “My relatives near the Russian border called me a few days ago and said the shops are empty.”
Belarus is grappling with a balance-of-payments crisis that forced... (more)
Matthew Aid, a writer who's covered the NSA and surveillance policy, requested a copy of a 2001 Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion by John Yoo that discussed the legal grounds for electronic spying without permission from a special federal court. The Department of Justice mostly denied Aid's Fr... (more)