01/12/10

Permalink Iraq invasion violated international law, Dutch inquiry finds

Investigation into the Netherlands' support for 2003 war finds military action was not justified under UN resolutions. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a violation of international law, an independent inquiry in the Netherlands has found. In a damning series of findings on the decision of the Dutch government to support Tony Blair and George Bush in the strategy of regime change in Iraq, the inquiry found the action had "no basis in international law". The 551-page report, published today and chaired by former Dutch supreme court judge Willibrord Davids, said UN resolutions in the 1990s prior to the outbreak of war gave no authority to the invasion. "The Dutch government lent its political support to a war whose purpose was not consistent with Dutch government policy. The military action had no sound mandate in international law," it said.


Permalink Military Resistance 8A8: This Sgt Brings Our Future Closer

Dear Traveling Soldier, I was promoted to Sergeant less than a year ago. Although I am thoroughly opposed to the Army as a whole, and the war in the Middle East (I spent 15 months over there for no good reason), I decided that I could take advantage of the system and become one of the few Non-commissioned Officers that refuses to buy into the Army BS. Goodness knows we could use more of those...


Permalink US-sponsored terror: Blackwater/Xe mercs arrive in Somalia

There are also allegations of US-sponsored bomb plots in the capital. The bombings will be carried out in order to create a pretext to launch a campaign against Al-Shabab, a spokesman of the group, Sheikh Ali Mohammed Rage, told Reuters. "We have discovered that US agencies are going to launch suicide bombings in public places in Mogadishu," he told reporters. "They have tried it in Algeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan... We warn of these disasters. They want to target Bakara Market and mosques, then use that to malign us." At a meeting with tribal elders in Mogadishu on Monday, the Al-Shabab spokesman said that mercenaries of the Xe private security firm -- formerly known as Blackwater -- have arrived in the Somali capital, the Press TV correspondent in Mogadishu reported on Monday.


Permalink Over 3,000 Killed as Pakistan "Violence" Soared in 2009

A report issued today by the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies detailed something everyone in Pakistan was already painfully aware of: that the number of state terrorist attacks in the nation soared in 2009 compared to the previous year.


Permalink People and The Land: The Story of a People Under Occupation

56:43 - 3 years ago -People and The Land airdrops viewers into the universe of an occupied people, unreeling images of a new form of apartheid based on ethnicity. Challenging U.S. foreign policy and the conventions of the documentary form itself, People and The Land examines the concrete realities of Israel's conduct in the West Bank and Gaza, the level of U.S. support for that conduct through foreign aid, and the human cost of that aid in Palestine and the U.S. Irish4Palestine: Meet the people of Gaza who were made homeless by Israel -Two Short Videos.


Permalink Palestinian official: Israel razed 150 Arab homes in West Bank

Israelis use clever 'Catch-22' ruse to put thousands of Palestinians between a rock and a hard place, then destroy their homes and schools to make room for an Israeli Military 'training area' in an 'occupied territory' outside of Israel's own border.


Permalink Israel does not like the killing of Palestinians children on TV series, but prefers when this happen regularly in Real Life

Israel has issued a "stern rebuke" to Turkey's ambassador over a television series which depicts Israeli intelligence agents as baby-snatchers. Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon was caught on camera urging cameramen to note the ambassador's low seating position at a meeting on the issue. The incident has been widely seen in Israel as an intentional humiliation.


Permalink REFILE-Sea icy off part of Antarctica despite fear of melt

First drilling tests under Fimbul ice show near freezing. No sign of melt; unlike thaw on Antarctic Peninsula. Sea water under an East Antarctic ice shelf showed no sign of higher temperatures despite fears of a thaw linked to global warming that could bring higher world ocean levels, first tests showed on Monday. Sensors lowered through three holes drilled in the Fimbul Ice Shelf showed the sea water is still around freezing and not at higher temperatures widely blamed for the break-up of 10 shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula, the most northerly part of the frozen continent in West Antarctica. "The water under the ice shelf is very close to the freezing point," Ole Anders Noest of the Norwegian Polar Institute wrote in a statement after drilling through the Fimbul, which is between 250 metres and 400 metres (820-1,310 ft) thick. ICE: The ocean beneath the Fimbul Ice Shelf is cold. WUWT: Antarctic sea water shows ‘no sign’ of warming. Daily Mail: Now tests show the ice ISN'T melting: Sea water under shelf in the East Antarctic is still freezing.


Permalink Copenhagen Summit Turned Junket?

We're All Skeptics Now: CBS Evening News Jumps Ship! 'Failed Copenhagen Summit Turned Junket? Congress Made Trip using two 737's and a Gulfstream Five -- traveling in luxurious comfort'.


Permalink Carbon trading fraud in Belgium – “up to 90% of the whole market volume was caused by fraudulent activities

Belgian prosecutors highlighted the massive losses faced by EU governments from VAT fraud today after they charged three Britons and a Dutchman with money-laundering following an investigation into a multimillion-pound scam involving carbon emissions permits.


Permalink Stop-and-search powers ruled illegal by European court

Police powers to use terror laws to stop and search people without grounds for suspicion are illegal, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled. The Strasbourg court has been hearing a case involving two people stopped near an arms fair in London in 2003.


Permalink Bomb blast kills Iranian professor

An Iranian nuclear physics professor has been killed in a bomb blast in the north of the capital, Tehran, state media has reported. Massoud Mohammadi, a professor at Tehran University, was killed on Tuesday when a bomb strapped to a motorcycle was triggered by remote control outside his home. "The explosion took place near the professor's home in Qeytariyeh neighbourhood, in northern Tehran," the state-run Press TV said. Khaleej Times: Tehran bomb kills university scientist. Reuters: A remote-controlled bomb killed a Tehran University nuclear scientist on Tuesday. Iran blames U.S., Israel.


Permalink 6 NATO, US troops killed on deadly Monday

Foreign troops in Afghanistan have had another deadly day as a new wave of attacks caused the deaths of six NATO forces, mostly American. A British bomb disposal expert was killed in an explosion in the Musa Qaleh area in northern Helmand province on Monday.


Permalink US protesters criticize Obama's Gitmo policy

US activists have marched outside the White House to protest against Guantanamo Bay detention center on the eighth anniversary of the prison. Organized by human rights groups, the demonstrators on Monday urged the Obama administration to close the notorious jail. They complained President Barack Obama's broken promise to close the prison in southern Cuba within the first year of his mandate. Al Jazeera: Call to throw out Guantanamo case. The Hill: ACLU sues Library of Congress over firing employee who criticized Gitmo. BBC: Guantanamo guard reunited with ex-inmates -VIDEO


Permalink Sarah Palin To Be Fox News Commentator

"By joining Fox News in a deal announced Monday, the former Republican vice presidential nominee gains instant access to an audience that gives Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly the highest ratings in cable news — and a clear boost if she attempts another run for national office. “This gives her a platform she can use to stay relevant, to stay in the public eye and to flush out some of her policy positions,” said Republican strategist Todd Harris.


Permalink Britain: Alastair Campbell had Iraq dossier changed to fit US claims

Fresh evidence has emerged that Tony Blair's discredited Iraqi arms dossier was "sexed up" on the instructions of Alastair Campbell, his communications chief, to fit with claims from the US administration that were known to be false. The pre-invasion dossier's worst-case estimate of how long it would take Iraq to acquire a nuclear weapon was shortened in response to a George Bush speech. As Campbell prepares to appear before the Iraq inquiry on Tuesday, new evidence reveals the extent to which – on his instructions – those drafting the notorious dossier colluded with the US administration to make exaggerated claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Al Jazeera: Former Blair aide faces Iraq probe.


Permalink America Slides Deeper Into Depression as Wall Street Revels

The labour force contracted by 661,000. This did not show up in the headline jobless rate because so many Americans dropped out of the system. The broad U6 category of unemployment rose to 17.3pc. That is the one that matters. Wall Street rallied. Bulls hope that weak jobs data will postpone monetary tightening: a silver lining in every catastrophe, or perhaps a further exhibit of market infantilism.


Permalink Senate Democrat calls for vast expansion of “no-fly” list

A leading Democrat in the US Senate called Sunday for a huge expansion of the federal no-fly list and a series of other repressive measures, including stepped-up procedures for denial of US visas on the basis of “reasonable suspicion” and an effective halt in the release of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.


Permalink President Obama, the CIA and the Master of the Cover-Up

The Obama administration quietly announced Friday the appointment of John McLaughlin, former deputy CIA director, to head the internal investigation of the intelligence failures that led to the Christmas Day attempted bombing of a Delta airliner headed for Detroit as well as the events leading to the shootings at Fort Hood in November. With this appointment, President Barack Obama has assured that the culture of intelligence cover-up will continue.


Permalink CIA Planned to 'Rendition' Suspects in Germany: Report

The CIA had 25 agents in Germany after the September 11 attacks and planned to "rendition" illegally kidnap al-Qaeda suspects without informing the German government, Spiegel magazine reported Sunday. --- "It was about grabbing people without the Germans knowing about it," the German weekly magazine cited an unnamed former CIA agent as saying. "We were planning stuff that was totally illegal." --- The plan went so far that other parts of the Central Intelligence Agency were in the loop, but in the end it was scrapped because of objections by the agency's German section, Spiegel cited its source as saying. -- "We said 'no' because we were of the opinion that you just couldn't do a thing like that in a friendly country where there were so many US soldiers based," the source is cited as saying.


Permalink The college admissions scam

“The Price of Admission,’’ the so-called “best’’ schools give heavy preferences to the wealthy; as many as one-third of admissions, he writes, are flagged for special treatment at the elite universities, one-half at the elite liberal arts colleges, and the number of open spaces for the non-privileged is reduced accordingly. As Golden puts it, the privileged take so many spots that the “admissions odds against middle-class and working-class students with outstanding records are even longer than the colleges acknowledge.’’


Permalink Uphill battle for academic freedom in US universities

In 2009, Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, became the first American higher educational institution to successfully pressure its Board of Trustees to divest from Israel-tied mutual funds. The victory came three decades after the college similarly disinvested from funds linked to apartheid South Africa. Working alongside discriminatory academic administrations are right-wing Zionist groups, such as the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) and Campus Watch. Campus Watch in particular has been a strong force behind smear campaigns against university professors.


Permalink Drug firms made 'false H1N1 claims'

The severity of the H1N1 outbreak was deliberately exaggerated by pharmaceutical companies that stood to make billions of dollars from a worldwide scare, a leading European health expert has claimed. Wolfgang Wodarg, head of health at the Council of Europe, has accused the makers of vaccines for the virus of influencing the World Health Organisation's (WHO) decision to declare a pandemic. Global Research: Swine flu: "They Organized the Panic". Inquiry into the Role of Big Pharma and WHO by Council of Europe -Bruno Odent interviews Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg.


Permalink A Letter to the President:...

READ the Constitution................Government can't control/ nor tell a person in the United States that THEY have to take your HEATH CARE PROGRAM~~~~~~AGain, read the constitution...................So...........that ends your battle with health care.......Trust me it will not happen with the US citizens............Several states right now are not going to, and listen to FOX NEWS as they are reading the constitution to Thousands of people..........
Go back and figure out how government can HELP with the health care progrom............
This is going to come to a head soon........You will be figured out very soon my friend!!!!!!!!!!


Permalink Skewed China birth rate to leave 24 million men single

More than 24 million Chinese men of marrying age could find themselves without spouses in 2020, state media reported on Monday, citing a study that blamed sex-specific abortions as a major factor. The study, by the government-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, named the gender imbalance among newborns as the most serious demographic problem for the country's population of 1.3 billion, the Global Times said.


Permalink In Britain you can now be arrested for writing an email you did not write, because it contains a word that rhymes with another word that some official thinks is racist, but no one complained about.

A wealthy businessman was arrested at home in front of his wife and young son over an email which council officials deemed ‘offensive’ to gipsies – but which he had not even written. The email, concerning a planning appeal by a gipsy, included the phrase: ‘It’s the 'do as you likey' attitude that I am against.’ Council staff believed the email was offensive because ‘likey’ rhymes with the derogatory term ‘pikey’. The 45-year-old IT boss was held in a police cell for four hours until it was established he had nothing to do with the email, which had been sent by one of his then workers, Paul Osmond. But police had taken his DNA and later confirmed they would be holding it indefinitely.


Permalink Italians fight back against surveillance society by publicizing the location of CCTV cameras – and to "out" those set up illegally

The "Anopticon" project, which was launched earlier this year, is a deliberate parody of the "panopticon" – an ideal prison first put forward by Jeremy Bentham in 1791. Its inhabitants were forced to conform to social standards, as even the slightest action they take is watched by "all-seeing" guards.


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