On October 23, Mr Jia Jia, the General Secretary of Shanxi Provincial Association of Scientists and Technology Experts in China, left his tourist group after he arrived in Taiwan. Jia has now applied for political asylum. Jia Kuo, Jia's son, who lives in New Zealand made an international phone call to The Epoch Times saying that the main purpose of his dad's trip to Taiwan is to split from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Under the guise of a sightseeing tour overseas, ... (more)
Nicaragua has passed a law banning all abortions, even for rape victims and women who risk dying in childbirth, in a move backed both by conservative and left wing politicians eager to win Catholic votes a week before a presidential election.
Under the new law, which will go into effect in 30 days unless it is vetoed by President Enrique Bolanos, doctors who carry out abortions on rape victims or women who could die at childbirth will face a four-to-eight-year jail senten... (more)
NEW YORK Police and Secret Service agents determined Friday that a suspicious substance found at former President Clinton's office in Manhattan was inert and nontoxic.
A staff member opened a package delivered to the president's office that contained a white powdery substance and a letter, and called authorities, said Secret Service spokesman Richard Staropoli. He described the letter as a "rambling diatribe."
Clinton was not at the office at the time, but was in Ne... (more)
An RAF serviceman saw Iraqi civilians with bags over their heads being shouted at and abused by British soldiers, he has told a hearing.
Senior Aircraftman Scott Hughes spoke at the court martial of seven soldiers charged variously with treating Iraqi civilians inhumanely and manslaughter.
Cpl Donald Payne has already admitted the war crime of inhumanely treating civilian detainees in southern Iraq.
British ministers landing in Aden in the 1960s were told always to make a reassuring speech. In view of the Arab insurrection, they should give a ringing pledge, "Britain will never, ever leave Aden". Britain promptly left Aden, in 1967 and a year earlier than planned. The last governor walked backwards up the steps to his plane, his pistol drawn against any last-minute assassin. Locals who had trusted him and worked with the British were massacred in their hundreds by the fedayeen.
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We realize that when it comes to freedom of the press, the USA has fallen to Number 53 in the world — tied with our fascist homies in Croatia and the islanders of the Kingdom of Tonga! — but do we have to make is so damned obvious?
Another Marine stationed in Iraq has sent us a screenshot of what happens when you need some hot news on Macaca and Foley:
Bush administration efforts to infiltrate, misdirect, regulate and pollute the Internet with Neo-Con propaganda, as well as their openly stated agenda to target American bloggers as terrorists, is now being aped by the British government across the pond as well as other major European countries.
Home Secretary John Reid met with ministers from the six largest European Union countries and, according to a BBC report, "agreed to work together to make the ... (more)
"Stay the course also means don't leave before the job is done. And that's ... we're going to get the job done in Iraq. And it's important that we do get the job done in Iraq." - George W Bush, October 11
Iraq is not simply a US electoral issue. It's a human tragedy of biblical proportions. Hence the urge at this point to situate the tragedy in a historical context.
In AD 750 the Abbasid Dynasty "de-Bedouinized" Islam by defeating t... (more)
Summary: While it cannot definitively be said that the reason the senior Iraqi court in charge of Saddam Hussein's trial postponed its verdict in the case until two days before the November elections so that it would influence the midterms, the postponement suggests several obvious questions, including, most importantly: Given the Bush administration's history of timing national security-related actions to the political calendar, has the date for the verdict's release been set to
An Environmental Protection Agency whistleblower who has long argued that her agency failed to issue proper warnings about air quality at the World Trade Center disaster site, has leveled new accusations against the agency, RAW STORY has learned.
As RAW STORY reported this past August, Cate Jenkins, an EPA biochemist, sent a letter to the New York congressional delegation, alleging that the inconsistent official reports about inhalant alkalinity were part of an intentional cover u... (more)
Eight conservative columnists visited the White House yesterday to interview George W. Bush, and heard the president once again defend his Iraq War policies.
"(T)there are people out there that would like nothing more than to have another spectacular moment by killing the American people," Bush told the columnists, according to a transcript posted on U.S. News & World Report magazine's Web site. "And they're coming. ... That's why we need to be on the offense all the time. I... (more)
Most Americans do not believe the Bush administration has gone too far in restricting civil liberties as part of the war on terror, a new CNN poll released Thursday suggests.
While 39 percent of the 1,013 poll respondents said the Bush administration has gone too far, 34 percent said they believe the administration has been about right on the restrictions, according to the Opinion Research Corp. survey. Another 25 percent said the administration has not gone far enough.... (more)
Long before the war in Iraq, the "War on Terror" began in Afghanistan and the hunt for Al Qaeda leader Usama Bin Laden. So, why then is there not a single reference to 9/11 on the FBI'S '10 Most Wanted' poster of Bin Laden?
First of all, it turns out, Bin Laden has never been indicted for the attacks of September 11th. The FBI poster reads: "Usama Bin Laden is wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998, bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, ... (more)
David Cameron taunted Tony Blair yesterday with the prospect that he could face prison as a result of the police inquiries into the 'cash for honours' scandal.
During a rowdy Prime Minister's Questions in the Commons, Mr Blair came under pressure from Opposition MPs over the embarrassing prospect that he might become the first serving Prime Minister to be questioned by police about party funding.
The Conservative leader called on Mr Blair to answer quest... (more)
WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney has confirmed that U.S. interrogators subjected captured senior al-Qaida suspects to a controversial interrogation technique called "water-boarding," which creates a sensation of drowning.
Cheney indicated that the Bush administration doesn't regard water-boarding as torture and allows the CIA to use it. "It's a no-brainer for me," Cheney said at one point in an interview.
Cheney's comments, in a White House interview on Tuesd... (more)
Several months before a U.S. construction foreman named John Owen quit in disgust over what he said was blatant abuse of foreign laborers hired to build the sprawling new U.S. embassy in Baghdad, Rory Mayberry witnessed similar events when he flew to Kuwait from his home in Myrtle Creek, Ore.
The gravelly-voiced, easygoing U.S. Army veteran had previously worked in Iraq for Halliburton and the private security company Danubia. Missing the action and the big paychecks U.S. contract... (more)
Advocates for civil freedoms are expressing their concerns with the recent rise of DNA databases, National Journal's 'Technology Daily' reports.
Speaking at a Washington, D.C. event hosted by the ACLU, "civil libertarians on Wednesday cited the many perceived risks of DNA databases," writes Winter Casey.
"An over-reliance on these databases could undermine criminal justice," said an ACLU science adviser, who warned of "possible misuses of data related to... (more)
A nine-year-old girl had her half term holiday cancelled because her teeth were showing in her passport photograph, reported The Sun newspaper.
Alys Edwards paid a last minute visit to the passport office to renew her passport with her parents in Peterborough, but was told that a photograph with teeth would overload the machine that read it.
Digital photographs have been stuck on the first generation biometric passports so computers can compare them to ... (more)
The CIA tried to persuade Germany to silence EU protests about the human rights record of one of America's key allies in its clandestine torture flights programme, the Guardian can reveal.
According to a secret intelligence report, the CIA offered to let Germany have access to one of its citizens, an al-Qaida suspect being held in a Moroccan cell. But the US secret agents demanded that in return, Berlin should cooperate and "avert pressure from EU" over human rights abuses... (more)
