Link: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/38695prs20090209.html

The Justice Department today repeated Bush administration claims of "state secrets" in a lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen DataPlan for its role in the extraordinary rendition program. Mohamed et al. v. Jeppesen was brought on behalf of five men who were kidnapped and secretly transferred to U.S.-run prisons or foreign intelligence agencies overseas where they were interrogated under torture. The Bush administration intervened in the case, inappropriately asserting the "state secrets" privilege and claiming the case would undermine national security. Oral arguments were presented today in the American Civil Liberties Union's appeal of the dismissal, and the Obama administration opted not to change the government position in the case, instead reasserting that the entire subject matter of the case is a state secret. Change?

Link: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090302/greider?rel=hp_currently

Governing elites in Washington and Wall Street have devised a fiendishly clever "grand bargain" they want President Obama to embrace in the name of "fiscal responsibility." The government, they argue, having spent billions on bailing out the banks, can recover its costs by looting the Social Security system. They are also targeting Medicare and Medicaid. The pitch sounds preposterous to millions of ordinary working people anxious about their economic security and worried about their retirement years. But an impressive armada is lined up to push the idea--Washington's leading think tanks, the prestige media, tax-exempt foundations, skillful propagandists posing as economic experts and a self-righteous billionaire spending his fortune to save the nation from the elderly.

Link: http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/11379/farmers-up-in-arms-at-herb-listing

Farmers and traditional medicine experts have reacted angrily to the listing of 13 widely used herbal plants as hazardous substances, suggesting there is a hidden agenda that favours chemical companies. The Industry Ministry listed the 13 plants as hazardous substances to control production and commercialisation. The plants are widely used among farmers as alternatives for expensive and toxic farm chemicals, pesticides and herbicides. Multinational chemical companies are expected to benefit once production and commercialisation of the alternative substances is curbed, he said. Large numbers of farmers have switched recently from imported chemicals to botanical substances as they are much cheaper and safer, he said.

Link: http://www.usgs.gov:80/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911

U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey Office of Communication: North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation. A U.S. Geological Survey assessment, released April 10, shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency's 1995 estimate of 151 million barrels of oil. Technically recoverable oil resources are those producible using currently available technology and industry practices. USGS is the only provider of publicly available estimates of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and gas resources. The Bakken Formation estimate is larger than all other current USGS oil assessments of the lower 48 states and is the largest "continuous" oil accumulation ever assessed by the USGS.

Link: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6044243.html

Witnesses described dozens of police storming a shocked and unresisting wedding party, shouting profanity and roughly shoving men and women. Michael McMillan, 36, of Houston, said he and Backe walked up to see what the commotion was about and saw O'Balle on the ground bleeding, being shocked with a Taser and handcuffed. Police began shouting at them to back up and they complied, he said. After they backed up as far as they could, McMillan said, officers continued shouting, "and Brandon Backe said, 'Sir, be cool, we're backed up as far as we can go.'" As soon as Backe spoke, several officers wrestled him to the ground, punching him as he went down, McMillan said. "A police officer kicks him right in the face," he said. Backe never used profanity, insults or resisted the officers, McMillan said. McMillan said he moved away and began walking down the hill with his wife when an officer ran at him and struck him with an elbow, knocking him to the ground. Several officers piled on and one put a foot in his back, he said. He was put in a police car with Backe, he said. When they complained about their handcuffs being painfully tight, officers increased the pain by cornering at high speeds and forcing them to slide along the seat, he said. He said officers laughed as they cried out in pain. Describing the experience, McMillan said, "You will feel the most helpless, humiliated, betrayed, that you will ever feel." Chris Cornwell, 26, of Galveston, said police threw him to the ground when he asked them to stop shoving his pregnant wife. An officer put his foot on Cornwell's head until he stopped talking, he said. Matt Goodson, 26, of Galveston, said he was taken down next to Cornwell. One of the officers picked up his head and pepper-sprayed him in the face for no reason, he said. Video showing the brutal and senseless taser torture of the wedding guests. The compliant father of the bride lays prone on the floor screaming in agony as the Texas police officers stand over him tasering him again and again. As He writhes in terrible pain from the electro torture one police officer puts a foot on his spine.

n we are hearing about this case is because Brandon Backe is a famous baseball player. Every year in America some 460 innocent men and women are shot, tasered, beaten, and abused to death, die accidentally, or die from unknown causes while in police custody. Every day in America innocent people are brutalized, stripped naked, tortured, and beaten by the police. America’s government and prison system do not recognize the Geneva Conventions. America’s version of freedom and democracy resembles tyranny and police state.

Link: http://www.cantonrep.com:80/communities/canton/x309570834/Deputies-sue-TV-station-over-reports-about-woman-stripped-naked

those deputies — Kristin Fenstemaker, Laura Rodgers, Tony Gayles, Richard T. Gurlea Jr., Andrea Mays and Brian Michaels — sued reporter Tom Meyer, WKYC and its parent company, alleging defamation and invasion of privacy.

Link: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090223/klein?rel=hp_currently

Watching the crowds in Iceland banging pots and pans until their government fell reminded me of a chant popular in anti-capitalist circles in 2002: "You are Enron. We are Argentina." Its message was simple enough. You--politicians and CEOs huddled at some trade summit--are like the reckless scamming execs at Enron (of course, we didn't know the half of it). We--the rabble outside--are like the people of Argentina, who, in the midst of an economic crisis eerily similar to our own, took to the street banging pots and pans. They shouted, "¡Que se vayan todos!" ("All of them must go!") and forced out a procession of four presidents in less than three weeks. What made Argentina's 2001-02 uprising unique was that it wasn't directed at a particular political party or even at corruption in the abstract. The target was the dominant economic model--this was the first national revolt against contemporary deregulated capitalism.

Link: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/detention/38535prs20090128.html

Former United States Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, former FBI Director William Sessions and numerous former generals, admirals and diplomats joined the American Civil Liberties Union in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reject the president's authority to indefinitely imprison a legal resident of the U.S. without charge or trial. These and other top military and civilian leaders are expected to file friend-of-the-court briefs today in the ACLU case of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who has been detained in solitary confinement at a Navy brig in South Carolina since June 2003.

Link: http://uruknet.info/?p=m50993&hd=&size=1&l=e

Cairo: Doctors operating the only brain-scanning machine at an Egyptian hospital near Gaza have been almost overwhelmed by the number of Palestinian children arriving with bullet wounds to the head. On just one day last week, staff at the Al Arish hospital in Sinai were called to perform CAT scans on a nine year old, two 10 year olds and a 14 year old, each of whom had a bullet lodged in their brain after coming under fire during the Israeli ground assault on Gaza. Israeli officials continued to deny on Saturday that their soldiers had deliberately targeted civilians, blaming Hamas fighters for sheltering in the houses of ordinary Gaza residents and using them as human shields. But there is no disputing the scale of the suffering in Gaza or its heavy impact on the young. Hundreds of victims of Israel's three-week campaign in Gaza have been transferred across the Egyptian border at Rafah for urgent treatment. They are seen first at Al Arish, nearly 40 miles from the border. Among them last week was nine-year-old Anas Haref, who arrived with a bullet in her brain. Dr Ahmad Yahia, head of the trauma team, broke the news to her grandmother that the girl was not expected to live.

Link: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article5484682.ece

Fears that the world is sliding into the worst global recession since the Great Depression multiplied yesterday as figures showed the steepest jump in American unemployment since the Second World War and a slump in manufacturing across Europe. Economists on both sides of the Atlantic were startled by the severity of the latest indications of global economic slump, which further stoked pressure for radical action to stave off economic calamity. A further surge in US joblessness led the litany of bleak developments yesterday. Official figures confirmed that more Americans lost their jobs last year than in any year since 1945, and that unemployment is soaring at the fastest pace seen since then. A total of 524,000 Americans were made redundant by US employers last month alone, the latest official payroll figures showed. The mounting toll of job losses drove the unemployment rate in the world's largest economy up to a 15-year peak of 7.2 per cent, sharply higher than November's 6.8 per cent, amid predictions that it will leap to 9.5 per cent or more by the second half of next year.

Link: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/928/fr1.htm

On Wednesday morning the family of Palestinian officer Ghassan Abu Ayyad, 25, was still trying to find a place to bury the body of their son in the Maghazi refugee camp in the heart of Gaza. The cemetery in Maghazi had already received dozens of burned and mangled corpses alongside the body parts of unidentified Palestinians killed on Saturday when the Israeli air force shelled a graduation ceremony at the police academy. There was no space for more bodies. By the fifth day of Israel's airborne assault on Gaza the tiny Strip's hospitals are in the same position as its cemeteries, unable to receive any more corpses and turning away all but the most critically injured victims of Israel's F16 fighter jets and Apache helicopters.

Link: http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2009/01/remember-that-britains-sas-trained.html

At a time when the USA is supporting Israel's actions in Palestine, we should remember that the USA and UK supported Pol Pot and his murderous Khmer Rouge. The Kmer Rouge killed off around one quarter of Cambodia's population. Vietnam was pro-Russia. Pol Pot was not pro-Russia. The USA and UK supported Pol Pot. In 1970, Cambodia's head of state Prince Sihanouk was toppled by pro-American forces. In the early 1970s, the USA was bombing sections of Cambodia as part of its Vietnam War. This helped win recruits for Pol Pot. Pol Pot ran the government of Cambodia from 1975 until 1979, although he was influential before 1975. In 1972, the Vietnamese intervened in Cambodia against Pol pot's group. "Washington took immediate steps to preserve the Khmer Rouge as a guerrilla movement," according to Jack Colhoun in Covert Action Quarterly magazine, Summer 1990. (US supports Pol Pot)

Link: http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2009/01/opus-dei-tony-blair-fascists-and.html

What might be the connections between CIA-Mossad mind control and politicians like Tony Blair? Professor Denys Turner, a theology professor at Yale, is a former member of Opus Dei which is said to be about sadomasochism and fascist mind control. In 2006, his daughter Ruth Turner was arrested and quizzed by UK police in the UK's cash-for-honours row. This row involved Tony Blair's Jewish friend Lord Levy. Ruth Turner now runs Tony Blair's Faith Foundation, which is active at Yale. "Blair’s foundation is the culmination of his life as a double agent." Blair, his 'sexy' Catholic aide... and new HQ near her Opus Dei father's office.

Link: http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/35342

Saturday marks one year since the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. The former prime minister was killed in a suicide bomb attack after an election rally near the capital, Islamabad. To her supporters, Bhutto's presence and guidance came to symbolise the quest for freedom and equality. Benazir Bhutto’s last speech was so spirited and full of hope that, a year later, her death has still leaves many feeling empty. The small Pakistani community in Moscow is marking the first anniversary of Bhutto's assassination with prayers and speeches. At a ceremony they praised her courage and vision, two qualities that, according to Pakistani Ambassador Mohammad Khalid Khattak, cost Bhutto her life. "Terrorists hate everyone, you don't have to do anything to be hated by them, if you disagree with them they hate you," said Khattak. A year after Bhutto's death, security still remains one of the most pressing issues in Pakistan. Metal detectors are a permanent fixture in the family mausoleum, as are the rose petals on Benazir’s tomb.

Link: http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/23-12-2008/106864-usa_change-0

Is the United States going to put dictatorship into effect under the guise of the anti-terrorist struggle? What may trigger another major transformation in 2009? The answer is obvious: another 9/11 in the USA. Terrible and bloody events are in store for the world in the beginning of 2009. Most likely, the world will witness a reality show with a nuclear blast, which will be used as a reason for the US administration to change the world order again and leave the new Great Depression behind. There is every reason to believe that the Russian Federation may suffer as a result of this possible initiative too. Joe Biden made a sensational statement on October 19, 2008. He said that Barack Obama would have to undergo an ordeal during the first six months of his stay in the White House. It will be the time of a very serious international crisis, when Obama would have to make tough and possibly unpopular decisions both in home and foreign politics.

Link: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21539.htm

Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and other top Bush officials could soon face legal jeopardy. The United States, like many countries, has a bad habit of committing wartime excesses and an even worse record of accounting for them afterward. But a remarkable string of recent events suggests that may finally be changing—and that top Bush administration officials could soon face legal jeopardy for prisoner abuse committed under their watch in the war on terror. In early December, in a highly unusual move, a federal court in New York agreed to rehear a lawsuit against former Attorney General John Ashcroft brought by a Canadian citizen, Maher Arar. (Arar was a victim of the administration's extraordinary rendition program: he was seized by U.S. officials in 2002 while in transit through Kennedy Airport and deported to Syria, where he was tortured.) Then, on Dec. 15, the Supreme Court revived a lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld by four Guantánamo detainees alleging abuse there—a reminder that the court, unlike the White House, will extend Constitutional protections to foreigners at Gitmo. Finally, in the same week the Senate Armed Service Committee, led by Carl Levin and John McCain, released a blistering report specifically blaming key administration figures for prisoner mistreatment and interrogation techniques that broke the law. The bipartisan report reads like a brief for the prosecution—calling, for example, Rumsfeld's behavior a "direct cause" of abuse.

Link: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Whered-the-bailout-money-go-apf-13889514.html?ref=patrick.net

Where'd the bailout money go? $350 billion later, banks won't say how they're spending it. It's something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where's the money going? But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation's largest banks say they can't track exactly how they're spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it. "We've lent some of it. We've not lent some of it. We've not given any accounting of, 'Here's how we're doing it,'" said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in emergency bailout money. "We have not disclosed that to the public. We're declining to." The Associated Press contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion in government money and asked four questions: How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings, and what's the plan for the rest? None of the banks provided specific answers.

Link: http://www.truthout.org/122408R

The US economy shrank in the third quarter, official data confirmed Tuesday, as the IMF's top economist warned of a second Great Depression offering no respite from relentless gloom ahead of Christmas. The abrupt 0.5 percent contraction of gross domestic product (GDP) in the world's largest economy was seen as marking the start of a steep downturn for the United States after GDP growth of 2.8 percent in the second quarter. Stocks on Wall Street rose in early trading, however, as the contraction had been expected and was unrevised from a previous estimate. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.54 percent and the Nasdaq rose 0.60 percent.

Link: http://sovereignsentience.blogspot.com/2008/12/general-george-s-patton-was.html

George S. Patton, America's greatest combat general of the Second World War, was assassinated after the conflict with the connivance of US leaders, according to a new book. The newly unearthed diaries of a colourful assassin for the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, reveal that American spy chiefs wanted Patton dead because he was threatening to expose allied collusion with the Russians that cost American lives. The death of General Patton in December 1945, is one of the enduring mysteries of the war era. Although he had suffered serious injuries in a car crash in Manheim, he was thought to be recovering and was on the verge of flying home. But after a decade-long investigation, military historian Robert Wilcox claims that OSS head General "Wild Bill" Donovan ordered a highly decorated marksman called Douglas Bazata to silence Patton, who gloried in the nickname "Old Blood and Guts".

Link: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/19/us_auto_giants_workers_face_uncertain

GREGG SHOTWELL: Well, you know, I think that we need to advocate for a national industrial policy that supports and sustains the expansion, rather than the destruction, of the middle class. And I would advocate for a policy that strengthens our economy, our national security, and makes the dream of a higher standard of living attainable for a wider number of citizens. You know, the working class is the backbone of this nation. And I think that we need to strengthen the American worker. I would like to see, first and foremost, that we have national healthcare, because this is the one solution that would help everyone. It would help the employers. It would help the employees. It would help the consumers. And that is the biggest factor that takes away our competitiveness. That’s the one factor that would level the playing field, because all of our competitors have national healthcare and stronger pension systems in their country—and by “pension,” I mean government pension—so that when Toyota, you know, imports all these cars, they’re not paying for healthcare, they’re not paying for the pensions on those employees that are working overseas.