Former Russian PM Gaidar Says Enemies of Kremlin Poisoned HimFormer Russian premier Yegor Gaidar thinks the strange illness he caught while in Dublin last month may be a try by enemies of the Kremlin to kill him, Reuters news agency reported Thursday. The symptoms of a mysterious illness that maid him bleeding from the nose and mouth pointed to poisoning, he said.
He collapsed at an Irish university conference on Nov. 24, the day after former Russian security agent Alexander Litvinenko, a Kremlin critic, died in a Lon... (more)
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The Pavlovian State (You're the Dog)There's been much talk about the Rumsfeld memo written before his departure, the one that recommended change in the Bush administration's Iraq war policy. But there's been little talk of the strange specifics in the memo, specifics which provide profound insight into the workings of the imperial state. For the naïve among us, here is your education.
In particular, I'm thinking of the following chilling passage:
Stop rewarding bad behavior, as was done in Fa ... (more)
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Man's anti-Bush Christmas light creates furor A New Mexico man is drawing the ire of neighbors--and his homeowners association--after putting up a politically-charged, lighted sign on his house to go with his holiday decorations. Roberto Vasquez of Albuquerque said his sign, showing George Bush's name crossed over by a red bar as though banning it, has caused people to shoot at the projector, try to pull out its bulb, and even threaten to "blow up the house," he tells local TV station KOAT.
Vasquez says ... (more)
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Legislators may reconsider suspending habeas corpus for detaineesPresident Bush's victory in getting the rules he wanted to try suspected terrorists could be diminished. The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee signaled this week that he'll join prominent Democrats in seeking to restore legal rights to hundreds of suspected terrorists confined at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere.
While the measure to restore the right of habeas corpus has almost no chance of passing before Congress adjourns later this week... (more)
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Iran replaces dollar with euro in most oil dealingsTEHRAN, Dec. 5 (MNA) — Iran has started replacing dollar with euro in majority of its crude oil exchanges in the last several months, an informed source with Iran’s Oil Ministry said here on Tuesday.
Oil Ministry has taken the policy to substitute dollar with euro, and begun to implement it for most of its oil dealings, the source who spoke on the condition of anonymity told the Mehr News Agency.
“This can maintain the real value of Iranian oil,&rd... (more)
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The Peasant Who Stood Up to HitlerWhen a leader allows himself to break the rules of humanity, it is the duty of every citizen to break the leader's rules.
So wrote Franz Jagerstatter.
Chances are that you haven’t heard of him. If you’ve seen or heard his name, it more than likely wasn’t in a textbook or classroom. I learned of his courage and integrity in a seemingly unlikely place: the introduction to an anthology of poetry.
... (more)
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High school in Irvine drops plan to scan fingerprintsA plan to scan the fingerprints of 2,200 Irvine high school students to ease lunch lines was scrapped this week after angry parents argued it would violate teens' privacy rights.
A spokesman for the Irvine Unified School District said district administrators had been unaware of University High School's proposal and had halted its implementation.
"This is not something we will be using at our schools," said Ian Hanigan, district spokesman. "It's sa... (more)
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Israel destroying homes of Palestinian BedouinsThe Israeli Interior Ministry ordered the demolition of more than 42,000 homes of Palestinian Bedouins in the Negev desert.
Speaking at a session for the Israeli parliament's interior committee, Interior Minister, Roni Bar-On, claimed that all these buildings were "illegal" and warned that any new homes built in what Israel calls "unrecognized" villages in the Negev desert would be razed, the Palestinian Information Centre (PIC) reported.
Palestinian security sou... (more)
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Senate Banking Comm Member Denounces RFID Credit Cards A member of the Senate Banking Committee denounced RFID "no-swipe" credit cards at a press conference Sunday. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) said contracts for the cards should have warning boxes disclosing "the known weaknesses of the technology." He cautioned cardholders about their vulnerability to identity thieves, commenting you "may as well put your credit card information on a big sign on your back."
"No-swipe" or "contactless" credit cards contain RFID microchips that com... (more)
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Can RFID Invade Your Privacy? "RFID in your underpants," said radio talk show host Keith Larson, and the comic accusation has stuck to privacy discussions about radio frequency identification ever since. As long as RFID tags were kept in the warehouse or distribution center, the public had no immediate need for concern. They were out of sight and out of mind, or underpants. RFID tags and their readers help identify with greater detail, and from a distance, thousands of pallets and cartons. Their use... (more)
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Carleton students bar anti-abortion groupsCarleton University's student council has voted to deny funding to campus anti-abortion groups.
A carefully worded policy amendment, passed on Tuesday night during a council meeting, also bars student groups with anti-choice mandates from council-managed spaces. "What we were speaking out against is those anti-choice behaviours that the majority of students feel are very discriminatory towards women," said Shawn Menard, president of Carleton University Students' Association (CUSA)... (more)
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Fine Print in Defense Bill Opens Door to Martial LawIt’s amazing what you can find if you turn over a few rocks in the anti-terrorism legislation Congress approved during the election season.
Take, for example, the John W. Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2006, named for the longtime Armed Services Committee chairman from Virginia.
Signed by President Bush on Oct. 17, the law (PL 109-364) has a provocative provision called “Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies.”
The ... (more)
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Hero of 9/11 won't stop speaking out against BushOne minute he was going about his business, the next he was looking at a vision from the depths of hell. Still reeling from a blast which rocked the World Trade Center, William Rodriguez could hardly believe what he was seeing."A man came running into the office shouting 'explosion, explosion!'" Mr Rodriguez soon saw a third of his body had been badly burnt by the blast. "When I realised, I started screaming. I looked at his face and it was missing parts."
It was the start of a da... (more)
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Say Hello to the Goodbye WeaponThe crowd is getting ugly. Soldiers roll up in a Hummer. Suddenly, the whole right half of your body is screaming in agony. You feel like you've been dipped in molten lava. You almost faint from shock and pain, but instead you stumble backwards -- and then start running. To your surprise, everyone else is running too. In a few seconds, the street is completely empty.
You've just been hit with a new nonlethal weapon that has been certified for use in Iraq -- even though critics arg... (more)
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Another bloodbath in Lebanon?“The Lebanese government has nearly doubled the size of its security forces in recent months by adding about 11,000 mostly Sunnis and Christian troops, and has armed them with weapons and vehicles donated by the UAE, a Sunni state.” --Lebanon Builds Up Security Forces, Megan Stack, LA Times
“The army’s conclusion is that a war in the near future is a reasonable possibility . . . the IDF’s operative assumption is that during the coming summ ... (more)
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Democrat Senator Calls for 30,000 More Troops to be Sent into the Iraqi Meat GrinderAs the so-called Iraq Study Group “recommendations” hit the street, dubiously entitled “The Way Forward: A New Approach,” Texan Democrat, soon-to-be chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, has called for sending more “dumb, stupid animals,” as Henry Kissinger once fondly called our soldiers, into the Iraqi meat grinder.
Reyes “wants to see an increase of 20,000 to 30,000 U.S. troops,” according to Newswe... (more)
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Memo: Administration tried to cut payouts to nuke workersWASHINGTON — The Bush administration repeatedly sought ways to limit payouts to nuclear weapons workers sickened by radiation and toxic material, according to a memo written by congressional investigators and obtained by USA TODAY.
The investigation focuses on a federal program created in 2000 to compensate people with cancers and other illnesses tied to their work at government and contractor-owned facilities involved in Cold War nuclear weapons production. About 98,000 cas... (more)
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Penalty for unwrapping gifts early: ArrestA mother convinced Rock Hill police to arrest her 12-year-old son after he unwrapped a Christmas present early.
The boy's great-grandmother had specifically told him not to open his Nintendo Game Boy Advance, which she had wrapped and placed beneath the Christmas tree, according to a police report.
But on Sunday morning, she found the box of the popular handheld game console unwrapped and opened. When the boy's 27-year-old mother heard about the opened gift, she cal... (more)
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US and Israel targeting DNA in Gaza? Part 2 of 3: The DIME bomb, yet another genotoxic weapon“Horrific” wounds in Gaza may be warfare of the future
In early July, shortly after the beginning of Israel’s bloody military siege of the Gaza Strip, reports began to appear that Israeli forces were using a new weapon that inflicted strange and untreatable wounds, and significantly increased the death tolls of Israel’s attacks. [1] [2]
Italian investigators have reported evidence that the unidentified Israeli weapon is probably Dense Inert M... (more)
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Bring the civilians home now!The United States is now locked in a debate over when and how to bring its troops home from Iraq. However, these military forces are only the tip of the spear that the U.S. government has plunged into the heart of the Arab world. The political debate has failed to address the disposition of the principal instrument for the lasting imposition of American interests on the government of Iraq: the largest “embassy” in the diplomatic history of the world, now rising over the banks of the ... (more)
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'Students should face pre-exam security tests to stamp out fraud' Pupils taking exams should be forced to take biometric security tests to cut down on cheating, the exam watchdog said. A Government-backed report is recommending tougher measures such as fingerprint or retina scanning to prevent students drafting in friends to take exams in their place.
Exam boards are forced to disqualify candidates every year for passing off others as themselves in GCSE and A-level exams.
The report, commissioned... (more)
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O'Reilly: "Do I care if the Sunnis and Shiites kill each other in Iraq?"On the December 5 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, discussing the then-impending release of the Iraq Study Group's conclusions and reports that it would recommend substantial troop withdrawals by early 2008 (read report here), Bill O'Reilly claimed that the redeployment of U.S. troops is "necessary," adding, "I don't care" if "the Sunnis and Shiites kill each other in Iraq." O'Reilly then stated:... (more)
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East Texas authorities say informant fooled themAll charges are being dismissed in a high-profile drug roundup in East Texas after it turned out the key informant in the case made up a bunch of information, authorities said Monday.
Harrison County District Attorney Joe Black has dropped charges against 33 people arrested this past October in Operation Trick or Treat.
"Information came forward to our office that the informant utilized in this undercover operation had possibly misled and lied to officers during the... (more)
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