The Housing Crash Recession of 2007 As we approach the end of 2006, the economy's prospects for next year appear more gloomy with each new piece of economic data. And, just like President Bush in his assessment of the situation in Iraq, the economic forecasters are gradually revising their forecasts downward, as it no longer appears credible to present the rosy pictures that they had been trying to sell. The trouble began early in the year, when the housing boom that was supposed to continue forever tur... (more)
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FCC Chair Schemes to Undermine Net NeutralityThe Federal Communications Commission is supposed to be made up of five independent members who serve in the public interest.
But FCC chair Kevin Martin, a Bush White House retainer who reportedly entertains notions of running for the governorship of his native North Carolina with a campaign war chest full of telecommunications-industry contributions, is now attacking the basic structures of the FCC in order to deliver for the corporations he hopes will someday be his political be... (more)
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Iran-Contra Criminal Gates Gets Warm and Fuzzy Treatment in Senate and Corporate MediaFrankly, I was astounded to see an OpEd News commentary piece prominently displayed above the fold on the Google News site.
“Brushing aside questions about Robert Gates’ past involvement in the Iran-Contra debacle, and ignoring his role in the funneling of intelligence to Saddam during the Iraq/Iran war, and overcoming their own hesitance 15 years ago to advance him to the position of CIA director, the Senate Armed Forces Committee voted unanimously for the former an... (more)
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Bush Crime Family Crony Robert Gates a Shoo-In“Robert Gates, the former CIA director and Texas A&M University president, is expected to easily win nomination as President Bush’s next defense secretary following a hearing today that is likely to focus on strategies in Iraq,” reports Express-News.
Easy nomination, no matter the guy is a criminal, not to mention a blood-thirsty warmongering psyc... (more)
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Chipping away at freedomAs the build-up towards ID cards implementation nears, the British public is increasingly sceptical of government claims on the usefulness and security of both the cards themselves, and the ID database. Today's poll by YouGov and The Telegraph demonstrates that not only are millions prepared to face fines and jail, rather than submit to scanning and fingerprinting, they're also a lot more clued up on the damage errors on the ID database may cause. Identity theft is problematic if the ID thief cl... (more)
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Industry group urges caution on U.S. plan for RFID-enabled ID cards A government plan to use radio frequency identification (RFID) chips in a proposed passport card program for U.S. citizens is drawing fire from some quarters. The identification cards would be needed by residents who don't have passports for verifying their identity at land and sea border crossings. The Smart Card Alliance, a nonprofit industry body representing several large vendors of smart-card and RFID technologies, this week formally urged the government to recons... (more)
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Leading Democrat Wants More Troops In Iraq In a surprise twist in the debate over Iraq, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, the soon-to-be chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he wants to see an increase of 20,000 to 30,000 U.S. troops as part of a stepped up effort to “dismantle the militias.” The soft-spoken Texas Democrat was an early opponent of the Iraq war and voted against the October 2002 resolution authorizing President Bush to invade that country. That dovish record got prominently cited l... (more)
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Richest tenth own 85% of world's assetsThe richest 2 per cent of adults own more than half the world’s wealth, according to the most comprehensive study of personal assets.
Among the largest economies, Britain boasted the third-highest average wealth of $126,832 (£64,172) per adult, after the United States and Japan, a United Nations development research institute found.
Those with assets of $500,000 could consider themselves to be among the richest 1 per cent in the world. Those with net ass... (more)
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Georgia foreclosures jump 99%; rate is nation's 3rd highestHundreds of Georgians lost their homes Tuesday.
The houses, taken from debt-laden homeowners, were sold to bidders on courthouse steps statewide.
The increasingly busy monthly auctions show that not all of the residential market is in decline.
Foreclosures are rising.
More than 115,000 properties across the country were in the foreclosure process in October — up 42 percent from the same month a year earlier, according to RealtyTra... (more)
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Heathrow begins biometric trials Passengers at Heathrow airport are being invited to sign up for a trial of the most advanced passenger screening equipment in the world.
Travellers will be able to bypass long queues if they have their fingerprints biometrically scanned, while face and eye scans will be introduced soon.
Those trying the miSense system have the scans at the same time as their passport is scanned at check-in.
It is designed to make travelling easier, while maintaining security... (more)
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Germans seek to repeal Nazi-era forced chimney sweeps law: "They broke in and officers had to handcuff me and press me against the wall as the sweep went about his business"Thousands of Germans want to sweep away a Nazi-era law that authorizes chimney sweeps do regular chimney checkups by force if necessary.
The 1937 law, introduced by Interior Minister Heinrich Himmler, makes chimney sweeping compulsory, London's Sunday Telegraph reports.
It also gives a sweep, or Schornsteinfeger, the right to enlist police and firefighters to break down people's doors if residents do not let them in.
"They broke in a... (more)
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Fighting the Iraq War ... At Home I had just gotten to the gym yesterday, and had started on the treadmill, when a barrel-chested young former marine recently returned from a second tour in Iraq walked past. Looking at my shirt, which sports the slogan "No US War on Iraq" on the front, and a peace sign on the back, surrounded with the number of U.S. dead in the war, he stopped and said coldly, "If I see you here again in that shirt, I'll tear it off you myself." Momentarily taken aback, I looked him in... (more)
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The War on Terror claims doughnuts Airport security is a serious business, but why was a Reg reader refused a Krispy Kreme doughnut at Heathrow airport?
Admittedly, the sugared snacks contain enough cooking oil and sugar to power a trailer park, but who knew they could be fashioned into bombs?
On Saturday afternoon a Reg reader was dropping some friends at Heathrow and stopped off at Krispy Kreme doughnuts outside Terminal 3.
But the reader was directed to the unstuffed... (more)
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Putin wanted Blair to gag poisoned spyTHE Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has expressed his anger at Britain’s failure to gag Alexander Litvinenko in the final hours of his life, the cabinet has been told.
Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, told ministers that the Russian government had “taken exception” to the poisoned former spy’s deathbed letter accusing the Putin regime of murdering him.
This weekend a potential suspect — Andrei Lugovoi &... (more)
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Everyone must love the EU... says Tony Blair A multi-million pound propaganda war to force the British people to love the European Union and Brussels bureaucrats is to be launched by Tony Blair as part of his legacy as Prime Minister, it has been revealed. The operation to overcome strong opposition to the EU in Britain and soften them up in the event of fresh moves to forge closer links with Brussels was secretly agreed by Mr Blair and his Ministers at last week's Cabinet meeting.
Details of the pl... (more)
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Corporate Media Uses Fuzzy Math to Minimize Size of Lebanese DemonstrationsAs usual, here in America, the corporate media has a problem counting. “A siege on Lebanon’s American-backed government continued Saturday with tens of thousands of demonstrators sympathetic to the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah militia and its allies packing downtown Beirut and calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and his cabinet,” reports the Mercury News.
Meanwhile, closer to the “siege,” actually a widespread call for the neol... (more)
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Millions may resist database, says poll The first signs of a significant popular revolt against the Government's identity card scheme have been uncovered by a YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph.
click to enlarge
It suggests that hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even millions, would refuse to register on the proposed database that will underpin ... (more)
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Held in darkness for the rest of his natural life Five years ago this month Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, tried to blow up a transatlantic flight. Here Jacqui Goddard gives an exclusive account of his days in the Alcatraz of the Rockies At six feet four inches tall, Richard Reid makes a forbidding figure, even from behind the iron grates, steel doors and automated locks that separate him from his prison guards in this place they call Terrorist Central.
Hunched on a stool that is moulded to the floor of h... (more)
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Sixth Grader Tasered At Middle School JONESBORO -- Officials at Jonesboro Middle School say police tasered an 11-year-old student Wednesday as a last resort. The incident immediately prompted an internal police investigation.
Channel 2 was told the incident began after something happened at lunch to spark a verbal argument between two 6th graders. The verbal argument turned physical and a school resource officer with the Jonesboro Police Department says she had to resort to using a taser.
Channel 2 came... (more)
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Mind Control, Prisoner Experiment OkaysHeads up, Navy scientists! If you want to perform "severe or unusual intrusions, either physical or psychological, on human subjects," you're going to need approval from the Under Secretary of the Navy.
According to a memo unearthed by Secrecy News, that goes for "consciousness-altering drugs or mind-control techniques," as well. Ditto for experiments on "prisoners" -- even though the document says earl... (more)
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Media Cranks Up Hard Sell of Biometric and RFID Microchipped FutureI don’t watch a lot of television. But no sooner did I flip on MSNBC last night a coiffured talking head appeared gabbling about the insecurity of ATM machines.
If we are to believe Algorithmic Research, an Israeli company, there is a flaw in the average ATM regarding PINs, account numbers, encryption, and decryption, that is to say there is a window of opportunity to snatch this information—over the internet, of course—by an unscrupulous hacker.
... (more)
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Newsweek: Gov't. motion to silence Padilla defenseU.S. citizen Jose Padilla was infamously accused by John Ashcroft of wanting to set off a "dirty bomb" for Al Queda. After being held incommunicado in solitary confinement for three years, and tortured, the government dropped the bomb charge and now wants to put him away on vague charges of supporting terrorism.
But, as Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball report, the government wants to silence Padilla's attorneys, not allowing them to bring up Padilla's treatment by the govern... (more)
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KILLING HABEAS CORPUS: Arlen Specter’s about-face.President Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in Maryland on April 27, 1861, two weeks after the Confederate attack on the Union garrison at Fort Sumter. “Lincoln could look out his window at the White House and see Robert E. Lee’s plantation in Virginia,” Akhil Reed Amar, a professor at Yale Law School and the author of “America’s Constitution,” said. “He was also facing a rebellion of so-called Peace Democrats in Maryland, meaning there was a real ... (more)
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Why The Quiet Release Of The Doubletree 9/11 Video? There has been a total media blackout on the release of the Doubletree Hotel video that shows the explosion at the Pentagon on 9/11 but does not reveal any footage of the impact. This may suggest that the corporate media has adopted a new strategy of ignorance towards questions concerning the official 9/11 story.
View Two versions of the video below, the second has a close up zoom in on the explosion.
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