I am not a state secretON NEW YEAR'S EVE in 2003, I was seized at the border of Serbia and Macedonia by Macedonian police who mistakenly believed that I was traveling on a false German passport. I was detained incommunicado for more than three weeks. Then I was handed over to the American Central Intelligence Agency and was stripped, severely beaten, shackled, dressed in a diaper, injected with drugs, chained to the floor of a plane and flown to Afghanistan, where I was imprisoned in a foul dungeon for more than four ... (more)
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Stock Market Bloodbath and Greenspan’s Retreat The contagion in the global markets is spreading like a brushfire and the shakeup that many of us have anticipated for over a year appears to be unfolding. Whether this is the “Big One” or not is irrelevant; a major downturn in the stock market will expose many of the systemic vulnerabilities in America’s “matchstick” economy and, hopefully, trigger greater congressional involvement.
Last night Japan's Nikkei 225 index fell for a fifth day in a row wi... (more)
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Juicing the stock market; the secret maneuverings of the Plunge Protection TeamThe Working Group on Financial Markets, also know as the Plunge Protection Team, was created by Ronald Reagan to prevent a repeat of the Wall Street meltdown of October 1987. Its members include the secretary of the Treasury, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, the chairman of the SEC and the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Recently, the team has been on high alert given the increased volatility of the markets and what Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson calls ... (more)
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The Pentagon Wants TiVo (to Watch You) I always love how the Pentagon, after spending billions of dollars on Rube Goldberg contraptions, suddenly discovers that useful things might actually exist in the commercial sector. And so yet another Pentagon advisory panel has picked up on this fact.
Reuters yesterday reported on a recently issued study on future technologies written by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board. More than anything, it seems these outsi... (more)
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Lieberman's 9/11 police state bill on Senate floor today Before the Presidents' Day recess, Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Israel) quickly and quietly pushed through his Senate Homeland Security Committee the "Improving America's Security by Implementing Unfinished Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007." That bill will be debated by the full Senate this week, beginning today. [OFFICIAL PDF COPY] The 258-page bill is Lieberman's version of the police-state measure which was the first item to pass the ... (more)
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How Did They Know?On September 11th, none of the New York City rescue people thought any of the World Trade Centers would collapse. For example: The battalion chief of the New York Fire Department stated "there was never a thought that this whole thing is coming down" (page 15)
The Emergency Medical Services Division Chief, in charge of planning for the Chief of Departmentâ&... (more)
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Vaccine officials knew about MMR risks Government officials were made aware of some problems with a version of the MMR vaccine in other countries but still introduced it in Britain in the late 1980s, newly released documents show.
The MMR vaccine with the Urabe strain of mumps was first used in Britain in October 1988. It was blamed for the deaths of several children after being withdrawn by the Department of Health in September 1992.
Previously confidential documents released under th... (more)
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Help us spot terrorists - Police POLICE today issued an unprecedented call for the people of Greater Manchester to help spot terrorists who may be living or working alongside them.
With security experts describing the terror threat to Britain as 'severe', officers say they cannot fight the problem without the eyes and ears of every citizen.
In a new anti-terror drive, a tip-off hotline is being relaunched and an advertising campaign will urge people to report any suspicious behaviour... (more)
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The US, the world's hedge fundThere are some strange facts about the asset and trade positions of the US economy in the globalizing economy. The United States runs massive and growing trade deficits, is borrowing at a clip that would arouse the suspicions of a casino pit boss, and has been selling its assets to anyone who will buy. In the past 24 months, the US balance on goods and services comes in just shy of negative-$1.5 trillion. Across the same period, the US has sunk further into debt to the rest of the world.
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MI5 trains supermarket checkout staffSupermarket checkout staff are being trained by the security services in how to detect potential terrorists. MI5 has been secretly advising food retailers, including Asda and Tesco, on how to identify extremist shoppers.
Measures include increasing CCTV in underground carparks to prevent bomb attacks and being alert to mass purchases of mobile phones, which can be used as bomb detonators. The awareness training for staff also covers bulk sales of toiletries which could ... (more)
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Guns Don't Kill People, Gun Control Kills PeopleThe country of Uganda plans to send about 1,500 troops to Somalia as part of an African Union peace-keeping force. The goal is to stabilize the weak government of Somalia, with the hope that the warlords will voluntarily disarm. Hopefully, Ugandan troops will be more successful in Somalia than they have in their own country.
For months now, Ugandan army troops have been garrisoned in the northeast part of the country under orders to disarm the local populace—pastoral, ca... (more)
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Decadence, waste, corruption in the new American Empire [Part I]“An empire is always coercive and autocratic: It is like a cover that presses on a boiling cauldron. At a certain point, the internal pressure is too strong, the cover is blown off and there is a sort of volcanic eruption.” --Umberto Eco, Italian medievalist
“An empire is a despotism, and an emperor is a despot, bound by no law or limitation but his own will; it is a stretch of tyranny beyond absolute monarchy.” --John Adams (1735-1826), 2nd American Presid... (more)
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Top judge charged with indecent exposureOne of Britain's most senior judges was yesterday charged with indecently exposing himself to women on trains in south-west London.
Lord Justice Richards, a court of appeal judge, was arrested by British Transport police in January when a commuter complained he exposed himself to her. The married father of three was released on bail following questioning, but was formally charged with two offences of exposure when he answered bail at Ebury Bridge police station in central London. ... (more)
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Father Of Diana's Beau: Charles And Philip Ordered The MurderMohamed Al Fayed has vowed to make Prince Charles and Prince Philip give evidence at the inquest on Princess Diana.
The Harrods tycoon spoke out after the High Court dramatically backed his demand for the inquest to be heard by a jury.
He declared: "I want Charles and Philip together in court. These are the people who ordered the murder."
Three judges overturned deputy royal coroner Baroness Butler-Sloss's decision to sit alone to... (more)
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Children of 11 to be fingerprintedCHILDREN aged 11 to 16 are to have their fingerprints taken and stored on a secret database, internal Whitehall documents reveal.
The leaked Home Office plans show that the mass fingerprinting will start in 2010, with a batch of 295,000 youngsters who apply for passports.
The Home Office expects 545,000 children aged 11 and over to have their prints taken in 2011, with the figure settling at an annual 495,000 from 2014. Their fingerprints will be held on a datab... (more)
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Texans fear US sovereignty will disappear down superhighway If it were built, the road would be one of the engineering wonders of the 21st century -a trade route a quarter of a mile wide, carving a path from Mexico through the heart of America to Canada.
In its most radical form, it would allow lorry drivers to travel hundreds of miles from the Mexican border deep into the US before reaching customs and immigration controls in Kansas.
Backers of the idea, labelled the "Nafta Superhighway", after the N... (more)
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The Globe Is Warming – and the Sky Is FallingAs with so many other topics, any viewpoint that does not agree with the "mainstream" views is snuffed by the mainstream media. We can find many credible scientists that are not very concerned about human-induced global warming. They may agree that there is some global warming and that part of it could be from industrial emissions; however, they may not feel it is such an urgent issue. Instead of following the data, which there is certainly not en... (more)
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Acclaimed French Scientist Has Second Thoughts On Global Warming Claude Allegre, one of France's leading socialists and among her most celebrated scientists, was among the first to sound the alarm about the dangers of global warming.
"By burning fossil fuels, man increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which, for example, has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century," Dr. Allegre, a renowned geochemist, wrote 20 years ago in Cles pour la geologi... (more)
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Greenhouse effect is a myth, say scientistsResearch said to prove that greenhouse gases cause climate change has been condemned as a sham by scientists.
A United Nations report earlier this year said humans are very likely to be to blame for global warming and there is "virtually no doubt" it is linked to man's use of fossil fuels.
But other climate experts say there is little scientific evidence to support the theory.
In fact global warming could be caused by increased s... (more)
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Sy Hersh: Neolib Disinfo Operative?Last week, New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh, supposedly citing insider sources, told us the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia are working together to fan the flames of sectarian violence in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran by unleashing reactionary Sunni terrorists to go up against the Shi’a, namely Hezbollah.
Elaborating on this “incendiary strategy,” Peter Symonds writes: “The close involvement of Saudi Arabia in the enterprise is particularly sign... (more)
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16 Civilians Die as U.S. Troops Fire on Afghan RoadKABUL, Afghanistan, March 4 — American troops opened fire on a highway filled with civilian cars and bystanders on Sunday, American and Afghan officials said, in an incident that the Americans said left 16 civilians dead and 24 wounded after a suicide car bombing in eastern Afghanistan. One American was also wounded.
The shooting sparked demonstrations, with local people blocking the highway, the main road east from the town of Jalalabad to the border with Pakistan. And ther... (more)
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Russian Journalist Dies in Suspicious Fall From WindowRespected Russian journalist Ivan Safronov, who reported on military affairs, mysteriously plunged to his death from the 5th floor of his apartment building Friday, making him the 14th journalist to die under questionable circumstances in Putin's Russia, according to statistics compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
"They killed Ivan. They killed Ivan," said a distraught former U.S. intelligence staffer familiar with Safronov when he learned the news today. "Another Ru... (more)
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Iran's rich architecture and rare treasures threatened by possible US strikesTourists visit Persepolis, which lies within 50 miles of the Ardakan and Fasa uranium processing plants. Photograph: Vahid Salemi/AP
In his quiet office at the British Museum, among the portraits of long-dead explorers and copies of 3,000-year-old inscriptions, one of the greatest experts on the archaeology of the Middle East has a series of maps of Iranian nuclear installations spread out across his desk.
John Curtis's maps fill him with foreboding: because ... (more)
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Russian stock market plunges on Monday openingMOSCOW, March 5 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian stock market plunged on Monday's opening after the MICEX index dived 4.97%, to 1,512.18 points.
The Russian Trading System (RTS) index sagged 2.24%, to 1,755.73 points.
Global stock markets continued their slide from last week, when a plunge in Chinese shares prompted a fall on Wall Street and other trading floors. Experts said the Russian stock market will continue its downward movement.
The MICEX index, a ... (more)
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