Historian 'pinned to ground by US police and beaten for jaywalking' A distinguished British historian claims he was knocked to the ground by an American policeman before being arrested and spending eight hours in jail — because he crossed the road in the wrong place.
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto said he had been the victim of "terrible, terrible violence" after he inadvertently committed the offence of "jaywalking" in Atlanta, Georgia, last week and failed to realise the man telling him to stop was an officer. The slight, bespe... (more)
|
|
Distracting Congress from the Real War Plan Is the surge an orchestrated distraction from the real war plan?
A good case can be made that it is. The US Congress and media are focused on President Bush’s proposal for an increase of 20,000 US troops in Iraq, while Israel and its American neoconservative allies prepare an assault on Iran.
Commentators have expressed puzzlement over President Bush’s appointment of a US Navy admiral as commander in charge of the ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The... (more)
|
|
U.S. behind reign of terror sweeping PhilippinesJan. 8—Our trip coincided with the scheduled meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) which was to take place the first week of December in Cebu City. ASEAN’s main role is to facilitate economic and political penetration of the area for imperialism. However, the Philippine government announced that the ASEAN meeting would be cancelled due to a reported typhoon that was to hit the island at the same time. It was evident, however, that the summit of 25 Asian countr... (more)
|
|
Blair defiant over road pricing row Tony Blair insisted he would press ahead with pilot road pricing schemes yesterday despite more than 40,000 people signing a petition against them in less than 24 hours.
Mr Blair's official spokesman sounded a defiant note as the number of opponents to the proposals on the Downing Street website climbed. More than 250,000 names are now listed at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/traveltax/.
He said: "The Government accepts that there is an argum... (more)
|
|
Super Soldiers: Tomorrow's 'Army of One' Technology Within three years, soldiers could begin testing futuristic devices that make them each "an army of one" by granting them unprecedented capabilities, such as the ability to see through walls thanks to advanced radar scopes and super-protection and super-strength conferred by high-tech armor.
Although some of the technologies could take years to reach actual battlefields, novel devices developed by the U.S. Army's Future Force Warrior initiative such as advanced sound equipment and... (more)
|
|
Mondo Apocalypto: Somalis Sacrificed for Bush's SpeechAs the U.S. bombing of Somalia enters its third day (see earlier post here), Tom Raum of AP offers a telling insight as to why at least 27 Somali citizens have been killed: to give some extra ... (more)
|
|
Olbermann video: Bush 'flip-flopped' on US troops being under foreign control In this clip, Keith Olbermann reviews various Bush Administration plans and slogans that have failed to secure Iraq.
"Before Mr. Bush was elected, he said he was no nation-builder, nation-building was 'wrong for America.' Now, he says, it is 'vital' for America," Olbermann says.
He adds, "[Bush] said he would never have put U.S. troops under foreign control; today, U.S. troops observe Iraqi restrictions."
Olbermann's... (more)
|
|
Democrats Beef Police State With 9/11 Commission BillHouse Democrats have passed a piece of legislation that was crafted on the back of recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission in their 2004 final report. The bill is a tonic for big government, increased federalization of America, and mandates expansion of no fly lists, terror watch lists and further government surveillance of American citizens.
While the HR 1 bill contains some welcome provisions, including a redress of grievance process for passenge... (more)
|
|
Ex CIA Analyst: Saddam Did Not Gas The KurdsDid Saddam Gas the Kurds? Retired Army War College professor and CIA analyst Stephen Pelletiere answers questions about Saddams alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction and about the gassing of the Kurds in Halabja. [Iraq was not responsible, nor was it genocide by the Iranians] ... (more)
|
|
US forces storm Iranian consulate US forces have stormed an Iranian consulate in the northern Iraqi town of Irbil and seized five members of staff.
The troops raided the building at about 0300 (0001GMT), taking away computers and papers, according to Kurdish media and senior local officials.
The US military had no immediate comment on the raid, which comes amid high tension between Iran and the US.
The Bush administration accuses Iran of helping fuel violence in Iraq, as well as tryin... (more)
|
|
Technology giving police more power to spy on us Tucson police have a new law-enforcement tool: a car-mounted license-plate scanner. Similar to a radar gun, it reads the license plates of moving or parked cars — 250 or more per hour — and links with remote police databases, immediately providing information about the car and owner.
On the face of it, this is nothing new. Police have always been able to run a license plate. The difference is they would do it manually, and that limited its use. It simply wasn't feasibl... (more)
|
|
WSJ: CIA Blocking Cunningham InvestigationThe CIA is refusing to cooperate with federal prosecutors investigating the Duke Cunningham scandal, the Wall Street Journal's Scott Paltrow reports today.
Before getting caught in 2005, Cunningham was involved in a sprawling corruption ring between Congress and the national security community. The scandal allegedly enjoyed the participat... (more)
|
|
FDA runs protection racket for Big PharmaWhy would Americans trust the FDA to regulate the pharmaceutical industry? Since the Bush administration took office the FDA has become the industry's partner in crime.
The most notorious protection scheme put in place by the FDA and Big Pharma is the preemption policy that bans private lawsuits against drug companies in state courts once a drug and its label have been approved by the FDA.
On January 18, 2006, the FDA issued new rules for the labeling of prescriptio... (more)
|
|
New York Firefighters Outraged by Ban on American Flags, Pictures of Fallen Colleagues on LockersIn a stunning crackdown, the FDNY has demanded that all personal decorations, including flags and pictures of colleagues killed on Sept. 11, 2001, be removed from lockers.
The controversy began two weeks ago when a sexually explicit slogan was reported at Engine 230 in Brooklyn. In response, FDNY Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta banned all decorations, including American flags, "Support Our Troops" stickers, pictures of family and Mass cards.
Stephen Cassidy, the pre... (more)
|
|
MI5 rejected Hitler suicide missionA BRITISH secret agent who offered to blow up Adolf Hitler at the height of World War II was dissuaded from carrying out the assassination by MI5, according to newly released wartime archives.
The offer to kill Hitler in a suicide mission was made by Eddie Chapman, a professional criminal and safe-breaker who was trained by the Nazis as a spy and went on to become one of Britain’s most successful double agents, codenamed Agent Zigzag.
Chapman was serving a sen... (more)
|
|
FBI seminar hosts H'wood scribesFBI memo to Hollywood: If it's not too much trouble, could you please portray our counterterrorism efforts with a bit more realism?
Hoping for an answer in the affirmative, the FBI hosted its first workshop for screenwriters Wednesday at the Federal Building in Westwood.
"FBI -- Crime Essential for Writers" played well with the standing-room-only audience of executives and writers from several major and minor studios. Enthusiastic attendees had mo... (more)
|
|
Uranium 'killing Italian troops'Italian soldiers are still dying following exposure to depleted uranium in the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, their relatives say.
Troops who served during the wars in the 1990s believe they have contracted cancer and other serious illnesses from extended exposure to the munitions.
The US says it fired around 40,000 depleted uranium rounds during the Bosnian and Kosovo conflicts.
A pressure group says 50 veterans have died and another 200 are seriously il... (more)
|
|
Somalia terror 'funded in Britain' The Foreign Office is investigating reports of British casualties in US air strikes on al Qaida suspects in Somalia.
The attacks came amid claims that support for the Islamic militant movement had come from the UK.
Meanwhile, the United Nations' new secretary general Ban Ki-moon voiced fears on Wednesday that the air strikes could increase hostilities and harm civilians.
Following days of fierce fighting in the African country, the... (more)
|
|
A Somali Jihadist: We're Not Al-QaedaSaid Ali, 21, is a volunteer fighter for the Shabab militia, the feared enforcers of the Islamic Courts Union. The U.S. brands the organization as an ally of al-Qaeda; in reality, it is also a nationalist anti-warlord movement that contains many Muslim moderates and has no international ambitions. He was 11 when he left his village in southern Somalia and traveled to Mogadishu to look for an education. But all public education had collapsed with the last functioning government in 1991, leaving p... (more)
|
|
Somali raids miss terror suspectsThe US air strikes in Somalia failed to kill any of the three al-Qaeda suspects they targeted, a top US official says.
The three were wanted in connection with the 1998 bombing of US embassies in East Africa and a 2002 attack on Israeli targets in Kenya.
Somali officials had earlier reported that one of the men had been killed.
The US accused Somalia's routed Islamist group of harbouring the three - charges they denied. The air strikes have been stron... (more)
|
|
British MP Asking More Questions About BilderbergA British MP, who previously asked Prime Minister Tony Blair to reveal details of any Bilderberg meetings he has attended, has now officially asked the current Chancellor of the Exchequer, and most likely next Prime Minister, to reveal details of his own attendances at Bilderberg. Norman Baker, MP for Lewes, has officially requested... (more)
|
|
Did Saddam Die For Our Sins?The disappearance of Saddam Hussein means that a lot of current and former top officials in the United States and other Western governments can breathe easier. The story of the West’s complicity in many of the tyrant’s most horrific crimes will remain untold, at least by the one man who could have spelled it out most clearly.
The purpose of the Special Iraqi Tribunal was supposedly, like the Nuremburg Tribunal, to educate Iraqis and the world about Saddam and his barba... (more)
|
|
Media Misleading Americans By Using "Surge" To Describe Bush PolicyResearch compiled by ThinkProgress shows that when “surge” was first adopted by the mainstream media in November 2006, the term was specifically defined as a “temporary,” “short-term” increase in U.S. forces.
In fact, we now know that the Bush administration and the most prominent advocates of escalation all reject a short-term increase in U.S. forces. Rather, they advocate a long-term increase of forces lasting at least... (more)
|
|
Cloning opens door to 'farmyard freaks'Moves to clone and genetically modify farm livestock have opened the door to the creation of "Farmyard Freaks", experts have warned.
News that the daughter of a US clone cow has been born on a British farm has moved the issue from science fiction to consumer reality.
A former government adviser has painted a nightmarish picture of "zombie" and fast-growing supersize animals.
Professor Ben Mepham, of Nottingham University, said the i... (more)
|
|
| 
