The United States has 140,000 troops occupying Iraq, a country thousands of miles from its borders. Iran borders Iraq. Which nation has the greater interest in Iraq’s future?
According to the U.S. media, the Bush Administration, and many Democrats, the answer is the country whose borders are thousands of miles away. And while America is free to invade, bomb, and kill thousands of Iraqis, many believe that Iran’s “meddling” in the affairs of its neighbor j... (more)
By the time President Bush finally announced it, his surge strategy was old news. But an unexpected section of the speech jarred the normally somnolent mainstream media: “Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. … And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.” Speculation that Bush was already plotting his next war nearly stole the story of how ... (more)
NEW DELHI -- An American geoscientist has warned that India is "downwind" of Iran and is, therefore, predisposed to the harmful, radiation-laded winds that will blow eastwards if the United States were to attack Iran using depleted uranium in dirty bombs or bunker busters like it did in 2003 in Iraq. A bunker buster is said to contain about two tonnes of depleted uranium.
Ms Leuren Moret, a former employee of the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Laboratory in the US, who now works as an... (more)
The US Department of Justice has implemented a secretive new prison program segregating "high-security-risk" Muslim and Middle Eastern prisoners and tightly restricting their communications with the outside world in apparent violation of federal law, according to documents obtained by RAW STORY.
Quietly implemented in December, the special "Communications Management Unit" (CMU) at a federal penitentiary in Indiana targeting Muslim and Middle-Eastern inmates was not implemented thr... (more)
From petty local scams to international money-laundering, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s political/media/business/religious empire has all the looks of a global “ongoing criminal enterprise,” albeit one with enough powerful friends in Washington to protect it from serious consequences.
Benefiting from relationships with the Bush family and other prominent Republicans, Moon’s Unification Church slips away from one illegal scheme after another &ndas... (more)
In the face of multiple legal and legislative challenges, President George W. Bush this week issued an executive order to allow cases against prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to move forward to trials by military tribunals.
The challenges are to the constitutionality of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA), which Bush signed into law last October. The first three cases to be tried under the law involve an Australian, a Yemeni, and a Canadian, all held at Guantanamo.
... (more)
The Bush foreign policy is predicated on one simple axiom: “We will stop the world’s most dangerous men from getting their hands on the world’s most dangerous weapons”. By that standard, Bush’s dealings with North Korea have been a wretched failure. After 6 years of fruitless saber rattling and belligerence, the North detonated a nuclear bomb in early October and put region on notice that there’s a new member in the nuclear weapons club.
Department of Veterans Affairs doctors are furious over a recent decision by the Pentagon to block their access to medical information needed to treat severely injured troops arriving at VA hospitals from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The VA physicians handle troops with serious brain injuries and other major health problems. They, rely on digital medical records that track the care given wounded troops from the moment of their arrival at a field hospital through their evacuation to the U... (more)
Campaigners against genetically modified crops in Britain last are calling for trials of GM potatoes this spring to be halted after releasing more evidence of links with cancers in laboratory rats.
UK Greenpeace activists said the findings, obtained from Russian trials after an eight-year court battle with the biotech industry, vindicated research by Dr Arpad Pusztai, whose work was criticised by the Royal Society and the Netherlands State Institute for Q... (more)
SAN FRANCISCO — The government was premature in deregulating production of alfalfa that is genetically engineered to resist a weed-killing herbicide, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture should not have acted as it did in 2005 without assessing the environmental effect of crops genetically modified to resist the herbicide Roundup, ruled U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer of the Northern District of California. The suit against the USDA wa... (more)
In the video below, CNN reports on Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani's eye-opening speaking fees.
While charging speaking fees is a regular practice for expert and celebrity speakers, some are criticizing Giuliani for collecting speaking fees from charities. CNN reports on one appearance at a 2005 tsunami fundraiser for which Giuliani received $100,000, and also mentions a contract stipulation that the former New York City mayor be given the use of a "private aircraf... (more)
Police across the EU are to be given free access to Britain's DNA, fingerprint and car registration databases in a move denounced last night as the creation of "Big Brother Europe".
At a meeting in Brussels, the Home Office agreed to a deal that will set up a network of national crime records across 27 states. All member states will have access to other countries' DNA and fingerprint data, as well as direct online access to vehicle registries.
The son-in-law of Vice President Dick Cheney, Philip Perry, has entered and exited the Bush administration twice, and in the process helped shield the chemical industry from upgraded security measures in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, according to an article in the March edition of the Washington Monthly.
Philip Perry is married to Cheney's daughter Elizabeth, also a former executive branch official. An article by Art Levine in the upcoming Washin... (more)
NEARLY a quarter of all people questioned in a BBC poll do not believe former Government weapons inspector Dr David Kelly killed himself.
The poll for the corporation found that 23% of people believed Dr Kelly didn't commit suicide, while 39% believed he did and 39% said they did not know.
Dr Kelly was found dead on July 18, 2003 after being named as the possible source of a BBC story on the Government's Iraq weapons dossier.
Statement at Hearing of the House Financial Services Committee, February 15, 2007
Transparency in monetary policy is a goal we should all support. I've often wondered why Congress so willingly has given up its prerogative over monetary policy. Astonishingly, Congress in essence has ceded total control over the value of our money to a secretive central bank.
After four days of contentious debate, the House on Friday repudiated President Bush's decision to send more U.S. troops to Iraq — the first official challenge by the Democratic majority on Capitol Hill to his management of the war.
The nonbinding resolution expressing disapproval of the troop buildup passed 246 to 182, largely along party lines, with 17 Republicans joining 229 Democrats to back what amounts to a rare wartime rebuke of a commander in... (more)
Face-to-face interviews for passport applicants will help fight fraud, officials insisted today amid claims that the checks posed a threat to individual security.
All new applicants will face compulsory interviews. Anyone requesting a passport for the first time will be interrogated on personal details under new rules coming into effect from April.
Critics claim the policy is a back-door means to gather data for use with the Government's con... (more)
Teenage pupils should start school in the afternoon because making them turn up in the morning is "cruel", a top brain doctor has claimed.
Professor Russell Foster said teens would acheive more if they were allowed to have a lie-in and not start their classes until the afternoon.
The Oxford University neuroscientist said grumpy teenagers like Harry Enfield's comic creation Kevin follow different sleep patterns from adults - making them more alert in the afternoon th... (more)
Not content to wait for Congress to act, a group of Maryland state legislators is backing a smaller-scale attempt at putting a Net neutrality mandate in place.
Delegate Herman Taylor, a Democrat who represents a county just outside of Washington D.C., introduced House Bill 1069 on Feburary 9. As of Friday, more than 20 of his colleagues had signed on as co-sponsors.
Net neutrality is the divisive idea that network operators should not be allowed to prioritize any co... (more)
Bush: We need a temporary worker program so that people don't try to sneak in the country to work. That they can come in an orderly fashion and take the pressure off the Border Patrol agents that we've got out there so that the Border... (more)
THE American military have been operating flights across Europe using a call sign assigned to a civilian airline that they have no legal right to use.
Not only is the call sign bogus — according to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) — so, it appears, are some of the aircraft details the Americans have filed with the air traffic control authorities.
In at least one case, a plane identified with the CIA pract... (more)
