Written by The British government’s proposing a radical new way to punish those who freely swap music and films over the web: cutting off their internet access. File sharing in the UK could be in jeopardy.
Monthly archives for August, 2009
Cindy Sheehan: America needs to wake up
In an exclusive interview with RT’s Anastasia Churkina, anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan talks about the need of accountability, an end to Iraq and Afghanistan, and the American psyche ignoring the truth.
Concern Is High That the Mob May Seek a Cut of the Stimulus Pie
Everybody is looking for stimulus money.
From bridge builders to food stamp recipients, from roofers to subway riders, from teachers to housing project residents, people are eager to feel some part of a tidal wave of federal dollars in their lives.
The mob is eager, too.
Federal and state investigators who track organized crime believe that organized crime figures have geared up to take advantage of the swift and enormous cash influx — if they have not already — looking, as the old Sicilian expression goes, to wet their beaks.
Nimble, innovative and with a seemingly boundless appetite for the taxpayer’s dollar, the mob’s more sophisticated cadre has plundered municipal, state and federal coffers for generations.
So the F. B. I. office in New York has conducted an extensive analysis of the money flowing into the area to create a blueprint of its vulnerabilities, a process, an official said, that is being continually updated.
9/11 Truthers: Return of the Java Jackass
You know the world is really coming to an end when the New York Post lets me, a leading 9/11 Truther, effectively review, and pan, the new anti-Truther documentary, National Geographic Channel’s “9/11: Science and Conspiracy.” But that’s what happened today. Read it online, or see my scan of the print piece. My jaw is still on the floor.
Let’s start with the documentary itself. “Science and Conspiracy” is fundamentally-misconceived, half-hearted, poorly-planned, slapped together, badly written, mis-cast, and self-defeating. It contains four scientific “experiments” pulled off in the New Mexico desert by a bunch of pyrotechnic geeks, the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center (EMRTC).
Should we gloss over EMRTC’s ties to Homeland Security and FEMA? Executive Dennis Hunter is their liaison to defense contractor SAIC. (And yes, that SAIC, the one where right-wing anthrax suspect Steven Hatfill labored away alongside Jerry Hauer, who later became Giuliani’s mysterious “bioterror expert”.) On camera, EMRTC come off as hapless and inept. They can’t get their rocket to hit the broad side of a concrete board structure. When it does, it teaches us nothing about what hit the Pentagon, anyway.
Appropriately enough, EMRTC then blow up the concrete board structure with a powerful bomb they make, to show what a “missile” at the Pentagon might have done (if that missile was a bomb inside a concrete board box in the New Mexico desert. Get it? No?) EMRTC then do “tests” with materials that are purported to be sort-of World Trade Center-related, but they don’t use the right stuff here either.
WHO: Worldwide death toll of A/H1N1 flu rises over 2,100
GENEVA, Aug. 28 (Xinhua) — At least 2,185 people worldwide have died from the A/H1N1 influenza since the new virus was identified in April, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.
All the six WHO regions have reported deaths from the pandemic, with the Americas reporting the largest death number of 1,876, the UN agency said in a latest update of the situation.
In South-East Asia, 139 deaths were recorded, followed by Europe with at least 85 deaths. Deaths in the West Pacific, Africa and East Mediterranean stand at 64, 11 and 10 respectively.
The total number of lab confirmed A/H1N1 flu cases reported worldwide is over 209,438, but this actually understates the real number of cases as countries are no longer required to test and report individual cases, the WHO said.
Lockerbie bomber ‘set free for oil’
The British government decided it was “in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom” to make Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, eligible for return to Libya, leaked ministerial letters reveal.
Gordon Brown’s government made the decision after discussions between Libya and BP over a multi-million-pound oil exploration deal had hit difficulties. These were resolved soon afterwards.
The letters were sent two years ago by Jack Straw, the justice secretary, to Kenny MacAskill, his counterpart in Scotland, who has been widely criticised for taking the formal decision to permit Megrahi’s release.
The correspondence makes it plain that the key decision to include Megrahi in a deal with Libya to allow prisoners to return home was, in fact, taken in London for British national interests.
Doctor admits euthanizing patients during Katrina
A doctor who was working the rounds at New Orleans’ Memorial Medical Center during Hurricane Katrina has admitted euthanizing patients during a crucial shortage of energy and supplies at the hospital.
Despite the revelations, the state prosecution service in Louisiana says it will not re-open an investigation into the matter, the Associated Press reports.
The doctor’s admission comes on the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina making landfall on the Gulf Coast, an event that would lead to the death of more than 1,000 people and the displacement of a city of one million.
Ron Paul on KRIV 2009.08.26: Kennedy Death to Push Reform
Former Republican Presidential candidate and U.S. Representative Ron Paul, who admittedly has never met any of the fabled Kennedy family, suggests that the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy from brain cancer will likely push the Democratically-defended health care reform bill past staunch opposition into law.
Bill would give president emergency control of Internet
Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.
They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.
Former Guantanamo detainee to sue US government – 27 Aug 09
Mohammed Jawad was one of the youngest prisoners ever held at the US prison facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
He has finally been returned to Afghanistan, seven years after he was arrested in Afghanistan on suspicion of throwing a grenade at US forces.
Now, he says he wants compensation from the US government for years of mistreatment and for spending most of his teens in a cell.
Al Jazeera’s James Bays reports from Kabul.
Detroit unemployment rate rises to record 28.9%
The unemployment rate in the city of Detroit rose to 28.9% during July, the highest rate since modern record-keeping began in 1970.
The rate rose from a revised rate of 28.3% in June. Unlike statewide rates, the rates reported for the city are not seasonably adjusted.
Should members of Bush administration also be investigated about CIA’s interrogation tactics?
The attorney general has announced that a federal prosecutor will investigate the CIA’s interrogation tactics. It seems that the CIA has been linked to a lot of questionable activity in recent days including using members of Blackwater to assassinate top Al Qaeda leaders. While all eyes on the CIA, many believe that top officials from the Bush administration who may have had a hand in these policies should also be investigated.
“All Palestinians I met were killed”
Making peace in the Middle East is a very dangerous profession, Uri Avneri, the first Israeli journalist to personally meet and interview the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in July 1982 in Beirut, told RT.
Uprooting the Wild Rose Bush
2009 Leave a Comment
I know that I usually write about politics, but I thought that this week I’d switch gears and write a little something about gardening. I used to have a little garden of my own that I’d take care of, but as life would have it I have lost my home and now live in an apartment, so I have a garden no longer. My mother, on the other hand, still lives on an acre of wooded land out in the country and she has several large and small gardens on her property. A couple times a month I try to get out there and help her maintain her gardens. It is more work than hobby anymore, but there is still a certain amount of satisfaction to be gained from working with the land and growing pretty things. READ MORE »