WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, announced Monday that he will seek the GOP presidential nomination.
Paul, who ran for president in 1988 as the Libertarian Party nominee, made his announcement on C-SPAN's call-in program "Washington Journal." The congressman established a presidential exploratory committee with the state of Texas in January, and will create a federal campaign committee today, according to his campaign.
“The abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and money began to play an important part in determining elections. Later on, this process of corruption spread to the law courts. And then to the army, and finally the Republic was subjected to the rule of emperors.” --Plutarch (c. 46 A.D.-127 A.D.)
“An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.” --Plutarch (c. 46 A.D.-127 A.D.)
With reports coming in about a scourge affecting honeybees, researchers are launching a drive to find the cause of the destruction. The reasons for rapid colony collapse are not clear. Old diseases, parasites and new diseases are being looked at.
Over the past 100 or so years, beekeepers have experienced colony losses from bacterial agents (foulbrood), mites (varroa and tracheal) and other parasites and pathogens. Beekeepers have dealt with these problems by using antibiotics, mit... (more)
I read with growing dismay each successive paragraph of David Carr's fawning New York Times business section piece on Bono, the Red Campaign and Vanity Fair yesterday morning. Later, I read the more interesting piece from Advertising Age that shows that all the sturm and drang from Red has generated $18 million for African relief-I wonder if that'll even be enough to replace the condoms Bono's "effective" friend the Shrub refuses to allow U.S. government-supported agencie... (more)
"We are, after all, for the first time in the history of a liberty-loving nation, creating a national identification card … with all the ramifications of that. … Real ID was stuffed into the supplemental appropriations bill for Hurricane Katrina and the troops in Iraq, so of course, we had to vote for the bill, but we had no chance to amend it — no debate, no hearing, and no consideration of other alternatives, And now we impose on the states an $11 b... (more)
Ivan Safronov did not die immediately, despite falling four floors from a window in his Moscow apartment block. Witnesses say he tried to get to his feet after hitting the ground, but then collapsed for the final time.
The police say the death of the well-respected journalist, who worked for the daily Kommersant newspaper, has all the hallmarks of suicide - though they are willing to consider the possibility that he was "driven" to kill himself. B... (more)
WASHINGTON — American military planners have begun plotting a fallback strategy for Iraq that includes a gradual withdrawal of forces and a renewed emphasis on training Iraqi fighters in case the current troop buildup fails or is derailed by Congress.
Such a strategy, based in part on the U.S. experience in El Salvador in the 1980s, is still in the early planning stages and would be adjusted to fit the outcome of the current surge in troop levels, according to military offic... (more)
Paying for goods with notes and coins could be consigned to history within five years, according to the chief executive of Visa Europe.
Peter Ayliffe said that, by 2012, using credit and debit cards should be cheaper and more convenient than cash.
Some retailers could soon start surcharging customers if they choose to buy products with cash, because of the greater cost of processing these payments, he warned.
The wife of a jailed Chinese cyber-dissident has travelled to the US to sue Yahoo! for its role in facilitating his prosecution.
Wang Xianoning was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in 2003 for posting what Beijing claimed were subversive materials on the net. His wife, Yu Ling, flew into the US this week with the aim of suing Yahoo! for damages and forcing the net giant to apologise for the actions of its Hong Kong division, which passed on email account i... (more)
Hanan Anami. No one told her not to go there. (Photo by Miki Kratsman)
At 6 A.M. the shepherd girl wakes up, grabs a bite to eat, readies the sheep and heads for the pasture, together with her grandmother and her cousin. Two hours from Tel Aviv, 2,000 years from Tel Aviv, there are two tents in the middle of nowhere, made out of old bags of plaster, a family of horses, a makeshift sheep pen and a water tank. Every morning the three shepherds - the grandmother, Fadiya Anami,... (more)
On 28 February 2007, during the Israeli invasion of Nablus, the IOF kidnapped 11-year-old Jihan Tahdush from her home in the Old City of Nablus. She was used as a human shield while... (more)
Once upon a time, our offshore prison at Guantánamo was the sort of place where even an American National Guardsman, only pretending to be a recalcitrant prisoner "extracted" from a cell for training purposes, could be beaten almost senseless. This actually happened to 35 year-old "model soldier" Sean Baker, who had been in Gulf War I and signed on again immediately after the World Trade Center went down. His unit was assigned to Guantánamo and he volunteered to b... (more)
RESEARCHERS last night revealed fresh evidence suggesting that subliminal advertising - the deeply controversial practice said to influence viewers without their knowledge - can be medically proven to work.
Scientists at University College London said they have brain-scan evidence that the human brain "logs" images whether people are aware of seeing them or not.
The discovery suggests that subliminal advertising has a basis in medical fact. It follows experiments i... (more)
Are you green? How many flights have you taken in the last year? Feeling guilty about all those unnecessary car journeys? Well, maybe there's no need to feel bad.
According to a group of scientists brought together by documentary-maker Martin Durkin, if the planet is h... (more)
It is shameless, but wholly typical. “Fears about U.S. job losses from globalization are driving the debate over renewing the White House’s fast-track trade negotiating authority and may require legislative action on a number of fronts, a top Senate Democrat said,” reports the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post. “The White House wants a renewal of fast-track trade legislation—also known as trade promotion authority—to finish the five-year-... (more)
Children's medicines contain a cocktail of additives which are banned in food and drink aimed at under-threes, says a report out today from the Food Commission.
Dyes, preservatives, and sweeteners were found in cough syrups, paracetamol tablets and teething gels. One product contained eight E numbers.
The campaign group looked at 41 medicines for children under three. Only one, Superdrug children's dry cough syrup, was totally free of colourings and preservatives. S... (more)
“Ring around the rosy
A pocket full of posies
Ashes, ashes,
We all fall down” --Children’s lyric
US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is sweating bullets right now.
In fact, a shrewd investor could probably make a fortune just figuring out what type of high-blood pressure medication he’s on and then betting the farm on the manufacturer.
Last week the stock market bull plopped down on an I.E.D. and wound up in... (more)
With its embracing of former male prostitute and gay porn star turned Marine Corporal, Matt Sanchez, the Neocon media has, willingly or unwillingly, caused a firestorm of attention focused upon nothing more than a perverted sideshow.
For his supposed courage in the face of liberal cruelty, Cpl. Sanchez was presented with the Jeanne Kirpatrick Academic Freedom Award at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
While skimming through some of the files I downloaded from the 9/11 archive that was posted last week I found these. I included the filename and approximate time so you can look them up for yourself (if you were lucky enough to download the files from archive.org before they took them down). Please note that times are approximate, based on the times that were provided by archive.org.
BAGHDAD: Iraqi children are haunted by dreams of bad guys wielding knives or kidnapping relatives. For some, like 13-year-old Zaman, the nightmares become reality. She was abducted, beaten and threatened with rape.
“Zaman suffers from shaking, nervousness, a stutter and sleep disorder,” said Haider Abdul-Muhsin, a psychiatrist at Baghdad’s Ibn Rushd hospital who treats children suffering the consequences of war, four years after the US invasion.
WASHINGTON – Claims that the FBI’s reported Patriot Act abuses were the “unintentional” result of outmoded computer systems and human error are not credible, the American Civil Liberties Union said today, citing evidence that agents contracted with phone companies to obtain customer records and later sought to cover up the illegal requests.
The report also shows that the FBI is issuing hundreds of thousands more National Security Letters than ever imagine... (more)
The United States has been defeated in Iraq. That doesn’t mean that there’ll be a troop withdrawal anytime soon, but it does mean that there’s no chance of achieving the mission’s political objectives. Iraq will not be a democracy, reconstruction will be minimal, and the security situation will continue to deteriorate into the foreseeable future.
The real goals of the invasion are equally unachievable. While the US has established a number of military bases... (more)
