Torture, Secrecy, and the Bush Administration I want to give a bit of pre-constitutional history, and share with you the story of John Lilburne, an Englishman born in the early 1600s because his story—the story of an agitator who directly challenged the English legal system—has a great deal to tell us about the issues we're facing today. Lilburne's story explains why these matters—torture and secrecy—were not issues to the Founding Fathers, and it helps us understand the true nature of a government which, like the cu... (more)
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VA Massacre Proves Government Can't Protect YouThe loudest message sent by what happened at Virginia Tech yesterday is that government cannot and will not protect you.
Contrast the events at VA Tech with the 1966 UT Tower shooting, which was until yesterday the deadliest shooting massacre on a University campus in America.
The shooter was Charles Whitman, an army sniper who carried out his killing spree enjoying "a nearly unassailable vantage point from which he could select and dispatch victi... (more)
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Trouble in SquandervilleTwo years ago, anyone who wrote about the housing bubble was dismissed as a conspiracy nut. Now hardly a day goes by that the headlines aren't splattered with the details of the massive meltdown in the real estate market.
What changed? The facts are essentially the same today as they were back then. In fact, the "Economist"--as well as many independent journalists--had already shown that the Fed's low interest rates had inflated the biggest equity bubble in history which could pot... (more)
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Children to help launch Norwich's talking CCTV A new weapon is to be introduced in Norwich's battle to combat anti-social behaviour in two of the city’s best-known parks - talking CCTV cameras.
Loud speakers will be used to directly challenge people caught on camera engaging in vandalism, graffiti-spraying, littering or other forms of anti-social behaviour in Eaton and Waterloo Park.
Offenders will hear a voice warning them they are on camera and asked to immediately stop what th... (more)
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The Party of Brownshirts Neoconservatives have turned the Republican Party into a Brownshirt Party.
Look at the evidence. While real patriots flee the party, the remaining supporters cling to power by asserting dictatorial dominance for President Bush. The Republican Attorney General denies that the US Constitution provides habeas corpus protection to American citizens. Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, Republican candidates for the 2008 presidential campaign, believe the president has the power to impri... (more)
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Gonzales Hearing Postponed: "Proceedings would be inappropriate in light of the Virginia Tech shootings"WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate Judiciary Committee postponed Tuesday's questioning of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the firings of eight federal prosecutors, saying the proceedings would be inappropriate in light of the Virginia Tech shootings.
Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy made the decision to postpone the long-awaited hearing, said Tracy Schmaler, spokeswoman for the Vermont Democrat. The hearing is considered Gonzales' last chance to quiet a controversy that has prompte... (more)
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Ex-Justice Official's Statements Contradict Gonzales on Firings The former Justice Department official who carried out the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year told Congress that several of the prosecutors had no performance problems and that a memo on the firings was distributed at a Nov. 27 meeting attended by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, a Democratic senator said yesterday.
The statements to House and Senate investigators by Michael A. Battle, former director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, represent another poten... (more)
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'Cops help kill 32 Students', claims furious blogger Blogs written by students at Virginia Tech University have expressed fury at how police and university authorities dealt with the shooting there yesterday.
Yesterday morning a man shot 32 students at the Virginia campus before killing himself. A male and female student were shot at a hall of residence early in the morning. Two hours after the initial shooting the man returned and went on the rampage. It has been reported that the original shooting resulted... (more)
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Gun Control Law Helped Campus Killer In January 2002, a student at the Virginia Appalachian School of Law, Peter Odighizuwa, shot three people dead before other students were able to retrieve guns from their cars and put an end to the carnage before there was more bloodshed. Over thirty victims at VA Tech yesterday were denied that right as a result of a campus gun control law that helped the shooter pick off his targets at will.
A bill in the Virginia legislature last ye... (more)
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Ban People — They KillThe tragic murders of Virginia Tech students, apparently by an insane person, will prompt new attempts to ban private ownership of guns. Once guns are banned, crime will explode. Households and vulnerable members of society will lose the ability to defend, which will invite more intrusions and attacks. Knife cr... (more)
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Virginia Tech Shooting -- Gun Bans Are The Problem, Not The Solution "When will we learn that being defenseless is a bad defense," asked Larry Pratt, Executive Director of Gun Owners of America?
"All the school shootings that have ended abruptly in the last ten years were stopped because a law-abiding citizen -- a potential victim -- had a gun," Pratt said.
"The latest school shooting demands an immediate end to the gun-free zone law which leaves the nation's schools at the mercy of madmen. It is irresp... (more)
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The Inexplicable Enrichment of Bush Cronies It's time for Americans to face the cold hard truth that nothing will be accomplished by allowing the daily carnage in Iraq to continue, and if Bush has his way, our young people will be dying in this war profiteering scheme until hell freezes over. Congress needs to authorize funding to pull our troops out of that deathtrap and not one dime more.
It apparent that Bush is a madman who will listen to no one. After Bush's speech on January 10, 2007, about the plan to send more troop... (more)
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Federally Funded Boffins Want To Scrap The Internet Researchers funded by the federal government want to shut down the internet and start over, citing the fact that at the moment there are loopholes in the system whereby users cannot be tracked and traced all the time.
Time magazine has reported that several foundations and universities including Rutgers, Stanford, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon and the Massachusetts In... (more)
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Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.
They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some ... (more)
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September 11, 2001: The French Knew Much About It It's an impressive mass of documents. From a distance, one would imagine a doctoral thesis. On closer inspection: nothing of the kind. Red stamps "Confidential-Defense" and "Strictly National Usage" on every page. At the top on the left, a royal blue logo: that of the DGSE, Direction générale des services extérieurs [General Directorate for Foreign Services], the French secret services. In total, 328 classified pages. Notes, reports, syntheses and summaries, maps, graphs, o... (more)
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Bush administration pushes for expansion and deepening of police state The George W. Bush administration seized the White House in 2000 by way of an openly stolen election, then cemented its criminal power into place with the unprecedented 9/11 mass murder, and its two resulting abominations: the fabricated “war on terrorism” (the pretext for endless global war), and the USAPATRIOT Act (the full-scale destruction of the Constitution, and the militarization of the US homeland).
The deepening of the war and security state continues unabate... (more)
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Chavez calls 9/11 gift for Bush Venezuelan President has labeled 9/11 attacks on US as "a gift for Bush," saying it enabled the US government to wage wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Hugo Chavez made the statement during a news conference to mark the fifth anniversary of his return to power two days after a 2002 US-backed coup against his rule, AP reported.
"If there were another aggression against us, there wouldn't be another drop of oil for the United States ... We're prepared for it," he said out... (more)
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Kansas: Big Rigs Equipped with Ticket CamerasThe Kansas Highway Patrol last week began spying on motorists from privately owned big rig trucks. As part of a new, federally funded effort, a state trooper sits in the passenger seat of each truck and operates a set of five video cameras and a radar gun to identify motorists to ticket. The trooper will then contact a patrol car hidden nearby to issue the citation. The program is expected to generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in ticket revenue over the next six weeks.
"I w... (more)
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Photos of 'tortured' Iraqi's corpse released Photographs showing the severe beating suffered by an Iraqi civilian who died in British custody were released today as the House of Lords begins a hearing into whether human rights law should apply to British forces abroad.
The pictures of 26-year-old Baha Mousa were unveiled by his lawyer and human rights group Liberty, who are calling for an "independent, effective investigation into the big systemic issues" raised by the case. Baha Mousa's case is one o... (more)
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Virginia Tech Killer Identified We now know the identity of the killer at Virginia Tech.
He is Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old resident alien of the United States, as first reported by ABC News.
Cho is a South Korean national, a Virginia Tech senior majoring in English and the man who killed 33 people -- including himself -- on the Virginia Tech campus Monday.
Sources tell ABC News that Cho killed two people in a dorm room, returned to his own dorm room where... (more)
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A lovers' tiff in the dormitory... then the university killer began his rampage Terrified students lined up against the wall of their classroom and shot, execution-style.
Doors chained shut by the killer to keep his victims in and police out. Blood-soaked bodies piled on top of each other.
These were the scenes of almost inconceivable horror at Virginia Tech University yesterday as a gunman claimed at least 32 lives before killing himself.
He was said to have quarrelled in a dormitory with his ... (more)
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Fewer "keeping the nation afloat" (aka paying taxes to the fed)SUE Carpenter pays about $6,100 a year in federal income taxes. But she might owe just half that amount if she had a mortgage, and nothing at all if she had minor children.
The fact that Carpenter doesn't have these deductions makes her part of a dwindling group: U.S. taxpayers. An estimated 50 million Americans won't pay any federal income tax this year. That's nearly a third of all adults, up from 18% in 1980.
To many, the shrinking tax base is not a big deal. Mos... (more)
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Virginia School Shooting: Another Government Black-Op?Early details about the horrific school shooting at Virginia Tech strongly indicate that these events represent a Columbine-style black-op that will be exploited in the coming days to push for mass gun control and further turning our schools into prisons.
Eyewitness Matt Kazee told the Alex Jones Show that it was a full two to three hours after the shootings began that loudspeakers installed around the campus were used to warn students to stay i... (more)
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