FBI counterterrorism officials continued to use flawed procedures to obtain thousands of U.S. telephone records during a two-year period when bureau lawyers and managers were expressing escalating concerns about the practice, according to senior FBI and Justice Department officials and documents.
FBI lawyers raised the concerns beginning in late October 2004 but did not closely scrutinize the practice until last year, FBI officials ack... (more)
A new survey paints a pessimistic picture of Iraqis' confidence in their own government and in coalition forces.
Only 18% of Iraqis have confidence in US and coalition troops, while opinion is almost evenly split on whether to have confidence in Iraq's government.
About 86% of those questioned expressed concern about someone in their household being a victim of violence.
Individual freedom is the dream of our age. It's what our leaders promise to give us, it defines how we think of ourselves and, repeatedly, we have gone to war to impose freedom around the world. But if you step back and look at what freedom actually means for us today, it's a strange and limited kind of freedom.
Politicians promised to liberate us from the old dead hand of bureaucracy, but they have created an evermor... (more)
She was the 12-year-old girl filmed crying alongside her father and siblings as they lay dying - victims of an explosion at a family picnic. But what happened to Huda Ghalia next? Rory McCarthy meets the shy, teased girl who became a symbol of Palestinian despair
It was a Friday afternoon in June. The sky over Gaza was a broad wash of purple blue, and along the seafront the surf was breaking into small whitecaps. Ali Ghalia was on a day off from his work as a farmer and dec... (more)
The stock market is about to crash. The only question is whether it will quickly drop down the elevator shaft or follow the jerky flight-path of a man pushed down a stairwell. Either way, the outcome will be the same; stocks will nose-dive, the dollar will plummet, and the bruised US economy will be splattered on the canvas like George Foreman in Rumble in the Jungle.
Troubles in the sub-prime market have just begun to materialize and already 38 main sub prime lenders have gone ka... (more)
For four decades there have been rumours that Marilyn Monroe's death was not a simple suicide. Now a Los Angeles-based Australian writer and director, Philippe Mora, has uncovered an FBI document that throws up a chilling new scenario.
BOBBY KENNEDY'S affair with the screen idol Marilyn Monroe has been documented, but a secret FBI file suggests the late US attorney-general was aware of - and perhaps even a participant in - a plan "to induce" her suicide.
BALTIMORE (AP) - Baltimore police arrested a 7-year-old boy, handcuffed him, then hauled him off to the station house where they took his mug shot and fingerprints.
The youngster's offense?
He allegedly rode a dirt bike on a sidewalk.
"They scared me," Gerard Mungo Jr. told The Baltimore Examiner before breaking down in tears.
The incident brought new heat on a department already under fire for making what critics call frivolous or un... (more)
Seven-year-old Saud Bugti's father was picked up by secret police on a street corner in Karachi last November. No one has heard from him since. He has joined the ranks of Pakistan's 'disappeared' - victims of the country's brutal attempts to wage war on both al-Qaida and those who fail to support the government. But how many innocent people are being caught up in this? And what is America's connection to the barbaric torture of suspects?
They vanish quietly and quickly. Some are ... (more)
The first confession released by the Bush regime’s Military Tribunals – that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – has discredited the entire process. Writing in Jurist, Northwestern University law professor Anthony D’Amato likens Mohammed’s confession to those that emerged in Stalin’s show trials of Bolshevik leaders in the 1930s.
That was my own immediate thought. I remember speaking years ago ... (more)
According to the March 9 International Herald Tribune, “most of the [foreign currency] reserves China now accumulates are conservatively invested in U.S. Treasury bonds and other government securities, which earn little return for China yet help to keep interest rates in the United States and other countries low.”
It noted, ‘But the investment agency being established will allow China to... (more)
The sweeping Guantanamo "confessions" of al Qaeda leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed rival the scope of those made in the Stalinist purge trials of the 1930s, and should equally prompt us to question the legal process in which they were made...
Students of the Stalinist purges of the 1930s will recall the astounding confessions made in open court by the accused persons. They had been severely tortured over weeks and months. But they showed up in court without external marks of torture.... (more)
Jeremy Scahill reports on the Bush Administration's growing dependence on private security forces such as Blackwater USA and efforts in Congress to rein them in. This article is adapted from his new book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Pow... (more)
The first official trials of pay-as-you-throw rubbish technology have started, paving the way for wheelie bin taxes.
Nearly 250,000 households have had microchips fitted to their rubbish bins in a test of the equipment necessary for sending families bills according to how full their bins are.
The Government has paid for the chips to be installed in three areas of Northern Ireland, now regularly used as a testing ground for Labour's plans for the rest of the country... (more)
As ThinkProgress noted earlier this week, on Jan. 18, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee, under oath, that the Bush administration never intended to take advantage of a Patriot Act provision that allows the President to appoint “interim” U.S. attorneys for an indefinite period of time, without Senate confirmation.
Dr. James Knodell, director of the Office of Security at the White House, revealed today that to his knowledge the White House has never ordered a probe, report, or sanctions as a result of the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame. “I have no knowledge of any investigation in my office,” he said.
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) said he was “shocked” by Knodell’s testimony, adding that the White House’s lack of action was a “breach on t... (more)
After going public this week with her skepticism over the official story of 9/11, Rosie O'Donnell has continued to address the issue in a Q&A with her readers on her website.
We reported yesterday that O'Donnell, who has for weeks now been tentatively trying to raise the issue of 9/11 truth on her ABC show The View, wrote a blog entry encouraging her readers to research 9/11,... (more)
The Bush administration’s greatest success is its ability to escape accountability for its numerous impeachable offenses.
The administration’s offenses against US law, the US Constitution, civil liberties, human rights, and the Geneva Conventions, its lies to Congress and the American people, its vote-rigging scandals, its sweetheart no-bid contracts to favored firms, its political firing of Republican US Attorneys, its practice of kidnapping and torturing people in fo... (more)
THURSDAY, March 15 (HealthDay News) -- Exposure to a class of chemicals commonly found in soap and plastics could be fueling the obesity epidemic by contributing to abdominal obesity and insulin resistance in men, a new study suggests.
The chemicals, known as phthalates, have already been implicated in male reproductive problems including low sperm counts and low testosterone levels. However, it's too soon to know whether they are actually causing these health problems, cautioned ... (more)
Aerial of Al Gore's family Zinc mine. September 26, 2006. (Mandy Lunn/ The Tennessean)
Former vice-president and global warming guru Al Gore Jr. received more than $500,000 in royalties from the owners of zinc mines, according to a report on Tennessean.com.
The mine owners held mineral leases on Gore's farm near Carthage, Tenn.
Before being shut down in 2003, the mines emitted thousands of pounds of toxic substances.
