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Monday
30th April 2007: -
-
Did
MI5 miss the London bomber? - Britain's
biggest terrorism trial has just ended with the conviction of men who
conspired to build a massive homemade bomb. But
with the lifting of reporting restrictions, Panorama reveals the truth
about what MI5 really knew about the July 2005 London bombers. The
public has never been told the full story about the links between the
fertiliser bomb plot, known as Operation Crevice, and two of the 7
July suicide bombers. But was there an opportunity to identify them in
advance? Did the security services make a serious mistake and was an
opportunity missed? Panorama believes the evidence clearly indicates
there was - but that it does not necessarily mean that the attacks
could have been prevented.
(COMMENTARY:
We aren't expecting anything too 'ground-breaking' from the BBC
tonight - not least because we have already broken the ground on this
one... we have been on the 7/7 bombings from day
one.
Learn how 7/7 was a false flag terror attack, see our 7/7
London bombings
archive for more info)
-
Rice
ignored 9/11 warnings from George Tenet - Former
CIA Director George Tenet says he warned then-National Security
Adviser Condoleeza Rice in the summer of 2001 that "multiple,
spectacular attacks" from the al Qaeda terrorist network were
imminent and urged a pre-emptive strike on the terrorist network. In
an interview aired Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes," Tenet said
he told Rice that the United States needed "to consider immediate
action inside Afghanistan," where al Qaeda was based before the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. "Essentially,
the briefing says there are going to be multiple, spectacular attacks
against the United States. We believe these attacks are imminent. Mass
casualties are likely," he said. But he said Rice delegated his
request to subordinates. And Tenet said he never brought the issue up
with President Bush, whom he briefed nearly every day on the threats
facing the United States, "because the United States government
doesn't work that way."
-
COVER-UP
FEARS GROW WITH DELAYS FOR DIANA INQUEST - The
fight for the truth about the death of Princess Diana was hit
yesterday by fears of a new Establishment plot to delay the inquests. A
highly-placed insider warned that the hearings will not go ahead until
next year, 11 years after the death of Diana and her lover Dodi Fayed
in a Paris car crash, causing Princes William and Harry further
anguish. Legal sources warned that last week’s decision by Baroness
Elizabeth Butler-Sloss to quit as coroner will almost certainly
prevent the hearing taking place before a jury this year.
(RELATED:
See our popular Diana
Assassination
archive)
-
Australia,
U.S. behave tyrannically, says ex-PM - Australia's
government and close ally the United States behaved in a tyrannical
way and for "evil purpose" by jailing militants at
Guantanamo Bay, former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser said
on Monday. Fraser,
a conservative and mentor to current Prime Minister John Howard, said
Australia seemed to have lost its democratic path under the man who
served as his treasurer and centre-right Liberal Party deputy before
becoming leader in 1996. In an election year criticism of U.S.
influence over political direction in Australia, Fraser said Howard
should never have agreed to a citizen and accused Taliban fighter,
David Hicks, being locked up for five years at Guantanamo Bay awaiting
trial.
-
Payments
Pioneer Launches Voice Pay - World's First Voice-Verified Payment
Processing System:
WorldPay Founder Nick Ogden Revolutionises Mobile and Internet
Transaction Safety and Security for Consumers and Retailers - Voice
Pay, the world's first voice-verified payment processing system,
launches today and is set to change the way that mobile and Internet
payments are conducted. In a move that will substantially reduce the
threat of credit and debit fraud, the Voice Pay system uses the
customer's own voice as a means of digitally signing and authorising
payments. It incorporates VoiceVault voice biometric authentication
technology which is already in use by global banks, insurers and
public sector organisations.
(RELATED:
See our Cashless
Society Control Grid
archive)
-
Britain's
first war criminal jailed - The
first British soldier ever to be convicted of a war crime was today
jailed for a year and dismissed from the army. Corporal
Donald Payne brutally mistreated Iraqi hotel worker Baha Mousa, who
died of his injuries at the hands of British soldiers, and other
civilians held at a detention centre in Basra. He punched and kicked
the civilians when they were hooded and handcuffed and conducted what
he called "the choir" striking the prisoners in sequence,
their groans or shrieks making up the "music".
-
Big
Brother runs up £350,000 police bill - THE
cost of police investigations linked to the reality TV show Big
Brother came to about £350,000 over the last six years, it emerged
yesterday. A
freedom of information request to Hertfordshire Police also revealed
that the inquiry into racism allegations in the latest Celebrity Big
Brother series cost more than £14,500. In March, police said that no
arrests would be made in connection with the racism row. The Crown
Prosecution Service decided what occurred was "clearly
offensive" but "not criminal".
-
Rogue
drivers warned: Hat's your lot - Abuse
towards lollipop patrol wardens in Oxford has got so bad they could be
given special 'camera hats' to film offensive motorists. The
suggestion comes after years of harassment of the men and women whose
job is to get children safely across busy roads before and after
school. Sian Gibbons, the school crossing patrol supervisor for
Oxfordshire County Council, said: "We're interested in using the
camera hat in an area in Blackbird Leys, where the abuse our lollipop
lady receives is particularly bad. We're hoping the cameras could be a
way of tackling this problem."
Sunday
29th April 2007: -
-
Tenet
says Cheney had eye on Iraq long before 9/11: In his
book, former CIA director says aides to Cheney and Rumsfeld inserted
'crap' into public justifications for war - White
House and Pentagon officials, and particularly Vice President Dick
Cheney, were determined to attack Iraq from the first days of the Bush
administration, long before the Sept. 11 attacks, and repeatedly
stretched available intelligence to build support for the war,
according to a new book by former CIA director George Tenet. Although
Tenet does not question the threat Saddam Hussein posed or the
sincerity of administration beliefs, he recounts numerous efforts by
aides to Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to insert
"crap" into public justifications for the war. Tenet also
describes an ongoing fear within the intelligence community of the
administration's willingness to "mischaracterize complex
intelligence information."
-
Box
of condoms leads to evacuation - Several
classrooms at Des Moines Area Community College were evacuated after
college officials became nervous about a suspicious package. College
officials called police and postal inspectors after the box was
delivered Thursday. What they found inside wasn't a bomb — it was a
box containing 500 condoms. The package was sent to a teacher of a
human sexuality class, and was sent by a person who had been a
previous speaker at the class, said Rob Denson, the college's
president.
-
Four
students arrested for heckling FBI director -
Police arrested four Harvard University students last night for
heckling FBI Director Robert Mueller prior to his speech on the
"Balance of National Security and Civil Liberties,"
witnesses said. Harvard
spokesman Joe Wrinn confirmed that four Harvard students were arrested
outside the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He could not verify
their identities or the circumstances under which they were
apprehended.
-
Fingerprint
is school-lunch ticket: Pine
Crest Elementary is testing scanners that eventually could be used in
all Seminole schools -
Fingers are meal tickets for students zipping through the lunch line
at Pine Crest Elementary School in Sanford these days. Technology that
uses fingerprints to tell who is buying lunch is being tested at the
school. Early indications are the finger scanners that record a
digital image are speeding up cafeteria operations, which is the goal.
-
Saddam's
Biometric Spy Files Re-Used by New Iraqi Democracy -
Like any dictator worth the title, Saddam Hussein kept good records on
his people -- dossiers that included fingerprints. Now
the occupying forces in Iraq have digitized his fingerprint files in
order to screen potential recruits for the Iraqi police force using
Automated Fingerprint Identification System technology, according to
reporter David Axe's post at Aviation Week's ARES blog, cross-posted
to Wired's DANGER ROOM. AFIS is a widely used technology to compare
one print against a database of prints, and is used by local, state,
national and foreign law enforcement agencies.
-
Worldwide
protests over Darfur 'apathy' - Protests
are taking place around the world to demand urgent intervention to end
the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region. Celebrities
such as Bob Geldof and George Clooney are backing the Global Day for
Darfur campaign, and have signed a statement accusing the
international community of apathy. The UN says some 200,000 people
have died since the conflict began four years ago.
-
False
tales of heroism: Pentagon's
lies dishonor service of Lynch, Tillman - It
comes down to a question of trust. For the most part, Americans trust
the U.S. military. The question is, why doesn't the military trust us?
Two incidents in our overseas conflicts, and the Pentagon's spin of
each, have us wondering. First came Pfc. Jessica Lynch, the West
Virginia soldier rescued from Iraq after she was injured in a 2003
firefight. The story first came out that she went down with guns
blazing before she was captured, then heroically rescued. But after
she returned home, Lynch was quick to dispel that tale. She didn't
fire on the enemy, and was hurt when the truck she was riding in came
under attack. Her hospital rescue, in fact, was delayed so that video
could be shot and played back home for maximum effect.
-
Cop
convicted for Taser attack - An
Edmonton police officer who zapped a man twice with a Taser after
stopping him for jaywalking downtown was convicted of assault with a
weapon yesterday. Provincial
court Judge Brian Fraser ruled Const. Aubrey Zalaski was not justified
and used an "excessive" amount of force when he used his
Taser on Paul Cetinski Jr., 35. Court heard Zalaski had spotted
Cetinski, the son of a retired city police detective, as he jaywalked
downtown. The Taser zapped Cetinski twice in the back, resulting in
Cetinski defecating in his pants.
-
Pilots
spot giant UFOs over Britain -
Two UK airline pilots flying in separate aircraft reported seeing a
large UFO hovering over the Channel Island of Alderny, in between
mainland Britain and France, local newspaper This Is Guernsey has
reported. The
object was described as being up to a mile wide, with the pilots
having spotted it at around the same time, location and altitude 10
miles west of the island and 2,000 feet up. Captain Ray Bowyer of
local airline Aurigny, described the UFO. "It was a very sharp,
thin yellow object with a green area. It was 2,000ft up and
stationary. I thought it was about 10 miles away, although I later
realised it was approximately 40 miles from us. At first, I thought it
was the size of a [Boeing] 737. But it must have been much bigger
because of how far away it was. It could have been as much as a mile
wide."
Saturday
28th April 2007: -
-
Rosie
Hosts First Responders On The View - It
was refreshing to see this issue get some prime time attention, but it
appears that the fact of the EPA deliberately endangering the 9/11
heroes and then engaging in a cover-up in concert with Condi Rice was
not stressed strongly enough, but well done to Rosie for getting this
past the Neo-Con gatekeepers at ABC: -
Friday
27th April 2007: -
Thursday
26th April 2007: -
-
School
toilets 'to be observed' to tackle bullying -
School toilet facilities should be unisex and open to observation from
teachers to stop them being colonised by bullies, the Government
recommended today.
Fear of bullying leads some children to refuse to go to the toilet all
day, causing bladder problems, while others do not drink to avoid
using the loo. New design guidelines from the Department for Education
set out to make school toilets safer and more attractive.
-
Anger
over Church abuse cover-up - Campaigners
have called the Church of England's failure to tell police about an
ex-choirmaster who sexually abused children "totally
irresponsible". Peter
Halliday, 61, from Farnborough, Hants, was jailed for 30 months after
admitting sex offences from the 1980s. BBC News has learned he
admitted the abuse 17 years ago, but left the Church quietly on
condition he had no further contact with children. Church officials
say they now have "robust" child protection policies.
-
ABC
Told Rosie Not To Talk About Dead U.S. Troops: O'Donnell
censored on The View right from the start - Rosie
O'Donnell was ordered by ABC not to talk about U.S. casualty figures
on The View and was continually censored and blocked in her attempts
to feature prominent members of the 9/11 Truth Movement as guests on
the show. O'Donnell had met with 9/11 truth crusader and World Trade
Center hero William Rodriguez before she went public with her comments
on The View questioning the suspicious collapse of Building 7.
-
US
Senate votes for Iraq pull-out -
The US Senate has voted to approve a bill which requires US troops to
be withdrawn from Iraq within 11 months.
It follows a vote in the US House of Representatives which makes
further funding of the war in Iraq conditional on a timetable for a US
troop pullout. The Democrat-sponsored bill will now go before
President George Bush, but he has said he will veto it immediately. He
says he is committed to the "surge" strategy, under which
more US troops are being poured into Baghdad.
-
New
ID card for kids: Scotiabank
provides $20,000 in funding for project - A
new identification card for children will speed up the process of
finding missing children, the assistant director of the Montreal
police department said at the card’s unveiling yesterday morning in
Beaconsfield. The new ID card, about the size of a medicare card,
features the child’s photo, a fingerprint and other vital statistics
for police who might be trying to track down a missing child.
-
Blair
'unable to pick up US medal due to poodle claims' - Tony
Blair has not picked up his US Congressional Gold Medal of Honour,
awarded four years ago, partly because of those who claim he is a
poodle to the more powerful US president, according to the British
ambassador in Washington. In
an interview with the Times Sir David Manning said that should the
prime minister pick up his congressional award, those who argue he is
the puppy dog of US president George Bush will feel their claims have
been proved correct. "For those who are convinced that the prime
minister is …some sort of poodle, it does not matter what he
does," Sir David told the paper.
-
Clinton:
US might have to confront Iran - Democratic
presidential candidate and New York Senator Hillary Clinton said
Tuesday that it might be necessary for America to confront Iran
militarily, addressing that possibility more directly than any of the
other presidential candidates who spoke this week to the National
Jewish Democratic Council. Clinton
first said that the US should be engaging directly with Iran to foil
any effort to gain nuclear weapons and faulted the Bush administration
for "considerably narrowing" the options available to
America in countering Iran.
-
Are
Rove's missing e-mails the smoking guns of the stolen 2004 election? -
E-mails being
sought from Karl Rove's computers, and recent revelations about
critical electronic conflicts of interest, may be the smoking guns of
Ohio's stolen 2004 election.
A thorough recount of ballots and electronic files. preserved by a
federal lawsuit, could tell the tale. The major media has come to
focus on a large batch of electronic communications which have
disappeared from the server of the Republican National Committee, and
from White House advisor Rove's computers. The attention stems from
the controversial firing of eight federal prosecutors by
Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales.
-
Straw
rejects calls for inquiry into anti-terror leaks - Jack
Straw today rejected opposition demands for a full Whitehall inquiry
into claims that officials leaked details of an anti-terror operation
to the media before arrests were made. Meanwhile,
it emerged that the home secretary, John Reid, had denied earlier this
year that officials from his department were involved in the leaks.
-
Sick
miners lose 'millions' to solicitors -
Millions of pounds earmarked to help sick miners has been siphoned off
by unscrupulous solicitors, a report has claimed. The
£3.4bn compensation scheme was set up to support 760,000 former
British Coal workers, many of whom had suffered chronic lung disease
and other injuries as a result of working in the pits. Today, Lord
Lofthouse, an ex-Labour peer, will show a report to Government which
claims solicitors handling the compensation have exploited the scheme.
-
Medical
students' personal details leaked - An
investigation was announced last night after a serious security breach
on the website used by medical students applying for junior doctor
positions. A
Channel 4 news reporter was able to access applicants' confidential
details, including their addresses, telephone numbers, criminal
convictions, sexual orientation and religion, following a tip-off from
a doctor.
-
Fascist
America, in 10 easy steps: From
Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps
that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional
freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration
seem to be taking them all - Last
autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup
took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a
shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days,
democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law,
sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV
stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on
travel, and took certain activists into custody.
-
Ron
Paul: Government Cannot Protect Us
- The senseless and horrific killings last week on the campus of
Virginia Tech University reinforced an uneasy feeling many Americans
experienced after September 11th: namely, that government cannot
protect us. No
matter how many laws we pass, no matter how many police or federal
agents we put on the streets, a determined individual or group still
can cause great harm. Perhaps the only good that can come from these
terrible killings is a reinforced understanding that we as individuals
are responsible for our safety and the safety of our families.
Wednesday
25th April 2007: -
-
Scientists
find Earth-like planet:
European astronomers say it orbits in a 'sweet spot' zone where life
could exist - European
astronomers announced Tuesday that they had discovered the first
planet beyond our solar system that orbits in a "sweet spot"
zone where life could exist. The planet, about five times as massive
as Earth, orbits Gliese 581, a red dwarf star about 20 light-years
from our solar system. The team of Swiss, French and Portuguese
scientists who found the planet estimate its surface temperature at
freezing to 104 degrees Fahrenheit, a range in which water can exist
as a liquid.
-
Soldier:
Army ordered me not to tell truth about Tillman - The
last soldier to see Army Ranger Pat Tillman alive, Spc. Bryan O'Neal,
told lawmakers that he was warned by superiors not to divulge --
especially to the Tillman family -- that a fellow soldier killed
Tillman. O'Neal
particularly wanted to tell fellow soldier Kevin Tillman, who was in
the convoy traveling behind his brother at the time of the 2004
incident in Afghanistan. "I wanted right off the bat to let the
family know what had happened, especially Kevin, because I worked with
him in a platoon and I knew that he and the family all needed to know
what had happened," O'Neal testified. "I was quite appalled
that when I was actually able to speak with Kevin, I was ordered not
to tell him."
-
Dollar
slumps as data points to slowing U.S. growth -
The dollar fell on Tuesday to a two-year low against a basket of major
currencies after soft data on housing and consumer confidence
underscored a trend of slowing U.S. economic growth. Reports
on existing-home sales and consumer sentiment both came in lower than
expected and pushed the dollar down against the basket for the 10th
time in the past 11 sessions. The dollar also dropped closer to a
record low against the euro.
Tuesday
24th April 2007: -
-
THE
LATEST ON THE ED BROWN CASE: Convicted
tax evaders due in court Tuesday - A federal judge sentenced a
convicted tax evader to 63 months in prison on Tuesday morning and was
likely to do the same for her husband in the afternoon. Ed
and Elaine Brown skipped the court appearances in favor of remaining
holed up in their fortress-like Plainfield home. The Browns say
federal tax laws don't exist; prosecutors say their theories are
"contrary to common sense." "(Elaine Brown) is an
intelligent person ... a person of means," Assistant U.S.
Attorney Bill Morse said. "She had no excuse for not paying her
taxes." Her husband was scheduled to be sentenced in the
afternoon. The two were convicted in January of plotting to conceal
their income and avoid paying federal income tax. They say they will
stay there despite convictions or arrest warrants.
-
Coroner
in Diana inquiry steps down as sensitivities grow - A
senior former judge appointed to lead an inquest into the death of
Princess Diana and her boyfriend, Dodi al-Fayed, withdrew from the
task Tuesday, dashing all hopes of a detailed British investigation
being completed before the 10th anniversary of Diana's death in August
this year. Baroness
Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, who would have come out of retirement to sit
as coroner for the inquest, said she had taken her decision to step
down after 'a great deal of thought and reflection.' The 73-year-old
former top woman judge, who was head of the Family Division at the
High Court in London, said she 'lacked the experience' of dealing with
an inquest in which a jury was involved.
(RELATED: See our
popular Diana
Assassination
archive)
-
IRELAND:
Call for ID card to combat underage drinking -
A national ID card should be compulsory for everyone over the age of
18, according to a leading alcohol-abuse awareness group. Mature
Enjoyment of Alcohol in Society (MEAS) welcomed the launch today of a
voluntary new tamper-proof garda age card, but called for the roll-out
of a compulsory identification card to combat under-age drinking. The
group has also criticised the €10 levy on the card, which it argues
will discourage young people from applying.
-
Cashless
toll tunnel - In a few months time, there will be no
fumbling with change for drivers who use the Sydney Harbour Tunnel as
it becomes the latest of the city's toll roads to be totally cashless.
The New South Wales Government says more
than 83 per cent of drivers who currently use the tunnel have E tags
and soon motorists who want to pay cash will be forced to use the
Harbour Bridge. But there are also plans to make the Bridge a cash
free zone. The NRMA says the process of making crossing the harbour
with cash not an option, could be accelerated if E tags, which cost
about $30, were free.
-
If
You're a Truther, Go and See Shooter: 9/11,
JFK parallel movie is packed with strong anti-government sentiment,
feeds into mass awakening cultural zeitgeist - Shooter,
starring Mark Wahlberg, is the latest in a burgeoning trend of recent
movies that carry a strong anti-government sentiment - the film is
both political commentary and a damning expose of how the state stages
black-ops in order to achieve political agendas. The film centers
around a character called Bob Lee Swagger, played by Mark Wahlberg, a
Marine sniper who retires from the military after his friend is killed
while fighting in Ethiopia.
-
Steven
Jones Answers 9/11 Questions About His Research In a Reply to 'Screw
Loose Change' - An
Open Letter to Dr. Steven Jones by James Bennett, with replies by
Steven Jones
-
IN
PLACE OF 'AL-QAEDA, READ 'CIA & MI6': Al-Qaeda
‘planning big British attack’ -
AL-QAEDA leaders in Iraq are planning the first “large-scale”
terrorist attacks on Britain and other western targets with the help
of supporters in Iran, according to a leaked intelligence report.
Spy chiefs warn that one operative had said he was planning an attack
on “a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki” in an attempt to “shake
the Roman throne”, a reference to the West. Another plot could be
timed to coincide with Tony Blair stepping down as prime minister, an
event described by Al-Qaeda planners as a “change in the head of the
company”. The report, produced earlier this month and seen by The
Sunday Times, appears to provide evidence that Al-Qaeda is active in
Iran and has ambitions far beyond the improvised attacks it has been
waging against British and American soldiers in Iraq.
-
Teacher
whose spy camera showed class misbehaviour faces tribunal - A
supply teacher who covertly filmed her pupils swearing, fighting and
attempting to access pornography on the internet was misusing her
professional position, a tribunal was told yesterday. Angela
Mason recorded footage in late 2004 and early 2005 at 18 schools in
London and the North of England for Classroom Chaos, a documentary
shown on channel Five. She arrived at classrooms with a miniature
camera disguised as a button that allowed her to record pupils
smashing furniture and making false accusations that teachers had
touched them.
-
Children
under three 'should not watch TV' -
Children under three should see no television and it should be
severely rationed for older youngsters, an expert told MPs yesterday. Parents
should restrict them to a recommended daily allowance, said Dr Aric
Sigman. He believes too much watching increases the risk of health and
learning problems and said the Government must take action. He also
believes there should be no sets in children's bedrooms and new
mothers should be warned of the possible effects of too much
television.
-
Cancer
clusters at phone masts -
SEVEN clusters of cancer and other serious illnesses have been
discovered around mobile phone masts, raising concerns over the
technology’s potential impact on health. Studies
of the sites show high incidences of cancer, brain haemorrhages and
high blood pressure within a radius of 400 yards of mobile phone
masts. One of the studies, in Warwickshire, showed a cluster of 31
cancers around a single street. A quarter of the 30 staff at a special
school within sight of the 90ft high mast have developed tumours since
2000, while another quarter have suffered significant health problems.
-
Brain's
clock is key to putting on weight -
SCIENTISTS today revealed they have identified the part of the brain
which co-ordinates the annual biological clock that affects how we
deal with seasonal change. The
research from Edinburgh University will help our understanding of
seasonal affective disorder (SAD), as well as the working of the
metabolic mechanisms that make us put on weight. Light could also be
shed on the physiological changes that occur when we fly across time
zones into different seasons. Dr Gerald Lincoln, of the university's
centre for reproductive biology, said: "Our daily body clock is
an amazing system. Most of the cells in the body have their own
internal clocks - whether in the liver or the brain - yet they are all
co-ordinated and nicely synchronised with the outside world.
Monday
23rd April 2007: -
-
John
Kerry: Building 7 Was Deliberately Demolished: Massachusetts
Senator's conclusion directly contradicts 9/11 official story,
multi-billion dollar insurance lawsuit - At
a recent speaking engagement in Austin Texas, Senator John Kerry
responded to a question about WTC Building 7 by concluding that
according to his information, the building was brought down as a
result of a controlled demolition, directly contradicting the official
line that the structure fell as a result of fire and debris damage.
WTC Building 7 was a 47-story building in the WTC complex that
collapsed at 5:20pm on September 11. The building had been
structurally reinforced and was not hit by a plane yet collapsed in a
uniform implosion within its own footprint in a matter of seconds
after sustaining relatively light debris and fire damage following the
collapse of the twin towers. News networks like BBC and CNN were
reporting that the building had collapsed before it fell, indicating
that the media were being handed a script of events that had yet to
even unfold. Ground zero EMT's, firefighters and police were all told
hours in advance to clear a collapse zone for Building 7 as it was
going to be "brought down." Questioned on WTC 7 by members
of Austin 9/11 Truth Now at a Book People event in Austin Texas, Kerry
responded, "I do know that that wall, I remember, was in danger
and I think they made the decision based on the danger that it had in
destroying other things, that they did it in a controlled
fashion."
-
Chertoff
in Washington Post admits 9/11 truth has gone mainstream -
Michael Chertoff: "Since Sept. 11, a conspiracy-minded fringe has
claimed that American officials plotted the destruction. But when
scholars such as Zbigniew Brzezinski accuse our leaders of falsely
depicting or hyping a "war on terror" to promote a
"culture of fear," it's clear that historical revisionism
has gone mainstream." The
rest of the article can be summarized thus: "al-Qaeda... terror
network... Osama Bin Laden ... kill Americans... islamist
ideologues... al-Qaeda... al-qaeda and the Taliban... Sept. 11...
Sept. 11... Islamic extremists' plot... horrific consequences... Sept.
11... al-Qaeda... al-Qaeda trained killers... " I think this has
to be seen as a measure of how far the 911truth movement has come. For
the head of the department of Orwellian irony department to write this
article in an attempt to shore-up the crumbling 9/11 myth shows just
and how much the perpetrators fear the truth. The tide has turned. The
truth will out. It cannot be stopped. Keep up the pressure.
-
Are
meds to blame for Cho's rampage?:
Experts say psychiatric drugs linked to long list of school shooting
sprees - Cho
Seung-Hui's murderous rampage – during which he killed 32 students
and faculty members at Virginia Tech – is prompting research into
gun laws, resident aliens and graphically violent writings.
Investigators also may want to check his medicine cabinet, because
psychiatric drugs have been linked to hundreds of violent episodes,
including most of the school shootings in the last two decades. The
New York Times has reported the killer was on a prescription
medication, and authorities have said he was confined briefly several
years ago for a mental episode. They also have confirmed that the
"prescription drugs" found among his effects related to the
treatment of psychological problems.
-
Airlines
push for biometric scans:
'Enhance security while improving the passengers' experience' - A
coalition of Canadian airlines and airports is putting pressure on
Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon to adopt a biometric travel
screening program that would allow passengers to "fast
track" through airport security and avoid hassles such as taking
off their shoes and coats and removing laptops from their cases before
boarding planes. The voluntary program, which is in place at several
major U.S. airports, relies on iris and fingerprint scans to identify
passengers and quickly move them through airport security.
-
Former
Russian Pres. Yeltsin dies - Former
Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who dismantled seven decades of
totalitarian rule has died, the Kremlin says. Mr
Yeltsin, who won two elections as president, had a history of heart
trouble. He had a quintuple heart bypass operation following his
re-election in 1996. The exact cause of his death, however, was not
immediately available. Mr Yeltsin was 76. He became the first
president of the Russian Federation from 1991 to 1999, after Mr
Gorbachev resigned as Soviet leader in December 1991. Kremlin
spokesman Alexander Smirnov confirmed media reports that the former
Russian leader had died but refused to give further details.
|

|
Man
subdued by stun gun, dies -
A 26-year-old man subdued with a stun gun after police say he was
raging out of control, died about an hour after a Hamden officer
used the Taser, police said.
David Mills was talking about demons, speaking incoherently and
told police he was high on drugs when they found him on Helen
Street early Saturday, police said. Officers found Mills fighting
on the ground with his friend, Adrian Teddington, police said.
Police tried to intervene by separating the two, but Mills
resisted by kicking, punching and biting officers, so they called
for medical assistance and hit Mills with the Taser. |
-
Sainsbury's
own-brand drinks plan - SAINSBURY'S
will remove all artificial colours and flavours from its own-brand
soft drinks, it said today. The
move will affect some 120 varieties of squash, cordials, mixers and
fizzy drinks. Low calorie drinks will contain sucralose - which is
made from sugar - instead of the sweetener aspartame. The use of
natural ingredients comes in response to customer demand and concerns
about the effect of E numbers on young children. Sainsbury's will use
fruit and vegetable extracts as colourings and flavourings.
-
Teachers
want wi-fi risk research - Teachers
want an investigation into whether there are any health risks from
wireless computer networks in schools.
The PAT teachers' union is writing to the education secretary for a
clarification on wi-fi safety. "There's a concern the potential
health risk of this technology hasn't been investigated fully,"
says the union's general secretary, Philip Parkin. The Health
Protection Agency says "wi-fi devices are of very low power, much
lower than mobile phones".
-
McAfee:
RFID chips exposing users to danger: As
use expands, the technology becomes a very tempting target for hackers
- The current
generation of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is
vulnerable to eavesdropping, cloning and forging. That's according to
an April security trends report (download PDF) from security software
vendor McAfee Inc. The Sage report is issued semiannually by McAfee
Avert Labs based on its research into high-tech threats. The report
warns that as RFID technology becomes more pervasive, the risk for
users increases dramatically. The study notes that the technology is
increasingly embedded in clothing, food and health care products and
that some companies are even embedding RFID chips into the bodies of
employees. Some states have already passed laws to prohibit forced
implantation of the chips.
-
Breakfast
TV show phone-in 'conned millions of viewers' -
Millions of viewers who tried to enter a TV breakfast show's
premium-rate phone competitions have been conned, a documentary will
claim tonight. Some
callers and texters to GMTV stood no chance of winning because
shortlists of potential winners were finalised "long before"
phone lines closed, according to an investigation by BBC's Panorama.
The programme claims the amount of money these people spent trying to
enter was an estimated £45,000 a day or £10m a year.
(INFORMATION:
Panorama will be broadcast tonight on BBC1 at 8.30pm.)
-
Scientists
want to put hormones in baby food 'to beat obesity' -
FEEDING babies a special infant formula containing hunger-suppressing
hormones could stop them getting fat later in life, researchers
believe. Scientists
are currently studying the prospect of adding leptin to baby and
children's foods as part of the solution to obesity. They admitted
that their work was still in the very early stages, and larger studies
were needed. Concerns have also been raised over the repercussions of
tampering with babies' brains - essentially programming them not to
overeat.
Sunday
22nd April 2007: -

-
9/11
FIREFIGHTER LUNG AILMENTS ON THE RISE - Twenty-six
firefighters who toiled at Ground Zero came down with sarcoidosis, an
inflammatory illness that often attacks the lungs, in the five years
after 9/11 - a significant increase, a new study has found. The
study has angered the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, which
complains that the NYPD has refused to acknowledge that 9/11 caused
sarcoidosis in cops. Half the firefighter cases were diagnosed in the
first year after 9/11 - a rate six times higher than the average for
the Bravest in the 15 years before 9/11, according to a paper to be
published in CHEST, a medical journal. The results "strongly
argue for improved respiratory protection" at future fires,
disasters and toxic sites, says the report, whose authors include FDNY
top doctors David Prezant and Kerry Kelly. The PBA, which has its own
registry of ailing WTC responders, counts 19 cops with sarcoidosis.
-
AWOL
After 9/11: A Skeptical Press? -
There's a simple principle underlying "Buying the War," said
television journalist Bill Moyers: Be skeptical. "People
should read and watch the news with a raised eyebrow," said
Moyers, a writer, executive editor and narrator of the 90-minute
documentary about U.S. media coverage of claims and information
leading to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The "phenomenon of
terrorism" and the events of Sept. 11, 2001, shaped press
coverage, he said. The film notes: "As the administration
organized to strike back at the terrorists, there was little tolerance
for critical scrutiny from journalists."
-
'50%
good' rule is bad news for Russian radio -
AT THEIR first meeting with journalists since taking over Russia's
largest independent radio news network, the managers had startling
news. From now
on, at least 50 per cent of reports about Russia must be
"positive". Journalists working for the Russian News Service
were told by the new managers, allies of the Kremlin, that opposition
leaders could not be mentioned and the US was to be portrayed as an
enemy.
-
Venezuela:
thousands march in support of freedom of speech -
Thousands of Venezuelans from the opposition marched Saturday downtown
Caracas in support of the oldest private television station Radio
Caracas Televisión, RCTV, which is threatened with removal from the
air if the government of President Hugo Chavez does not renew its
license next May 27. Waiving
Venezuelan flags and placards in support of RCTV marchers called for
freedom of speech and democratic rights. Meantime hundreds of Chavez
supporters in red caps and T-shirts mounted a rival gathering nearby
backing the government`s decision not to renew the license of the
station which they accuse of backing a 2002 coup that briefly ousted
Chavez. Chavez`s opponents charge that the former paratroop commander
has decided not to renew RCTV`s broadcast license when it expires May
27 in an attempt to silence a fierce government critic and also as a
warning to other media outlets.
-
Texas
Senate waves through cell phone wiretapping bill:
Harder to buy pre-paid cell phones, easier to bug - A
bill extending wiretapping provisions to cell phones and covering a
wider range of crimes - including kidnaping, human trafficking and
money laundering - has been approved by the Texas Senate. Only murder,
drug-related crimes and child pornography investigations are covered
by existing lawful interception laws in Texas, AP reports. Wiretaps
authorised by the proposed laws could be used to authorise the
tracking of suspect's mobile, land line and online activities in
multiple locations; unlike current laws which are location specific.
Saturday
21st April 2007: -
-
Suits
banned over touting of 9/11 air -
An appeals court ruling could spell trouble for New Yorkers suing the
Environmental Protection Agency and its former chief for saying that
sooty lower Manhattan air was safe to breathe after the Sept. 11
terror attacks. A
three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has
declared that then-EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman and other
agency officials can't be held constitutionally liable for making rosy
declarations about air quality in the days following the World Trade
Center's destruction. The opinion, written by the court's chief judge,
Dennis Jacobs, said opening EPA workers up to lawsuits for giving out
bad information during a crisis could have a catastrophic side effect.
-
MORE
'PROBLEM > REACTION > SOLUTION' IN THE WAKE OF THIS WEEKS
SHOOTINGS IN THE USA:
Smart surveillance could help tighten campus security - Technology
certainly could not have stopped the tragic events at Virginia Tech
from ever happening, but some developers insist their high-tech
creations might have been able to lessen the severity of the tragedy.
Take, for example, surveillance cameras that use sophisticated
software to spot, on their own, when something's just not right. That
technology is being offered by a few companies like NICE Systems, Inc.
Company spokesman Ian Ehrenberg said 98.8 percent of all security
video is useless, and humans don't need to analyse every second of
tape. “Smart technology will look at a scene and determine what is
considered normal, dwell or standard. From there, it will identify
exceptions that you want to be detected and that will immediately be
brought up in real time to make an assessment on,” Ehrenberg said.
But just what is an exception?
-
Fed
breach leaks Social Security numbers - The
Social Security numbers of 63,000 people who received Agriculture
Department grants have been posted on a government Web site since
1996, but they were taken down last week. Free
credit monitoring is being offered to those affected. The security
breach was only noticed last week and promptly closed, the Agriculture
Department and Census Bureau announced Friday. The Agriculture data
that included Social Security numbers were removed from the Web on
April 13 and similar data from 32 other agencies were taken down April
17 as a precaution, said Agriculture spokeswoman Terri Teuber.
-
Huge
Credit Card Chip n Pin Scam linked to Tamil Tigers -
Motorists across the UK have fallen victim to a huge oraganised credit
card skimming scam, that allegedly aims to fund the activities of the
separatist Tamil Tiger group in Sri lanka. The
scam operates via customers having their cards skimmed when they pay
for petrol using chip n Pin cards. The skimming process copies the
card and keeps a copy of the pin entered onto the Chip n Pin
terminals. These are then duplicated to a new card and used in small
purchases or withdrawals over a period time. According to the Sri
Lankan High Commission, Maxwell Keegel, the skimmed information is
sent to Tamil Tiger operatives via the significant Tamil expatriate
community in the UK, who may have been forced by Tamil Tiger agents to
operate the fraud. Some 200 petrol stations are under suspicion out of
a total base of some 10,000.
-
Venezuelan
Crime Blimps Patrol Caracas Air Space With Cameras - Venezuela's
capital city will be patrolled by three bullet-proof blimps equipped
with video and still-photo cameras to survey and stop crime on the
ground. The
first of the $1.4 million blimps, launched yesterday to patrol
high-crime and central neighborhoods of violence-wracked Caracas, will
transmit high resolution images to a central police command post and
directly to patrol cars. Caracas Mayor Juan Barreto, whose office
installed 3,000 security cameras in crowded city plazas, bus stations
and high- theft areas last year, said the increased aerial
surveillance will bring ``greater tranquility, quiet, peace and
security to Caracas homes.''
-
Cameras
‘won’t stop’ cab crime -
STRONGER policing and not CCTV is what is needed to hit back at the
violence against taxi drivers, according to one cabbies' group. Bill
Williams, of Bolton Taxi Drivers Association, said he would hand over
his cab to police for a night so they can see the problems first-hand
- and make some arrests. Two of the town's other taxi organisations
had called for CCTV to be introduced in cabs. But Mr Williams said
CCTV would not stop violence committed outside the vehicle.
"There's no way on earth CCTV is going to stop someone throwing
bricks at you," he said.
Friday
20th April 2007: -
-
We
complain about weather on Earth, but what about Space Weather?: Space
weather concerns various environmental conditions that occur in outer
space. But, does it affect us on the Earth? - Yes,
space weather affects us here on the surface of the Earth. According
to the National Academy of Science, “Space weather describes the
conditions in space that affect Earth and its technological systems.
Our space weather is a consequence of the behavior of the sun, the
nature of Earth’s magnetic field, and our location in the solar
system.” Space weather deals with weather within planetary
atmospheres such as on the planets Mars and Saturn, but also involves
radiation and matter within interplanetary space (existing between
planets) and sometimes from interstellar space (existing between
stars).
-
Brown
backs off ID card scheme - The
momentum whipped up by the government to arm every Briton with an
identity card has been setback by an unlikely opponent – the Prime
Minister-in-waiting, Gordon Brown. Disclosures
obtained by The Times reveal that the chancellor has refused to
approve the overall budget for the scheme, thereby leaving the option
open to scrap it if he becomes PM. By saying the Home Office can only
spend a limited amount to develop it, John Reid, the Home Secretary,
will need to seek permission before the issuing of cards can begin.
The total price tag for the project, which will exceed the spending
limit tabled by the chancellor, is an estimated £5.4billion, with 15%
of the costs devoted to IT to run the scheme. Under Section 37 of the
Identity Cards Act, the government is required to spell out the
programme’s likely cost every six months, over its 10-year life
span.
-
ADHD
drugs concern judge -
ATTENTION Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is the most over-diagnosed
condition in the community, according to a Wollongong District Court
judge. Judge
Paul Conlon yesterday questioned whether enough was known about the
long-term effects of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
drugs like Ritalin, while issuing his judgment for a 20-year-old man
convicted of assault and an indecent act. "I know there are those
with the appropriate medical qualifications who are concerned about
the effects of these drugs on the mental health of young
persons," he said.
Thursday
19th April 2007: -
-
Scottish
schools set for cashless payments: Scotland
to install an extra 3,000 smartcard readers - Scottish
councils are to extend their use of smartcards to allow cashless
payments in schools, libraries and at leisure facilities. The National
Entitlement Card Programme (NECP), funded by the Scottish Executive,
began last year when one million pensioners were given smartcards for
concessionary travel. Scotland’s 32 councils are now expanding the
use of the cards with the introduction of 3,000 smartcard readers over
two years, significantly adding to the 1,000 installed so far.
Councils are in various stages of implementing smartcard
infrastructures, says Sid Bulloch, NECP programme manager. ‘Some
councils will be getting kitted out for the first time with this new
phase and others are building on the smartcard infrastructure they
have, using applications such as cashless catering, registration and
controlled access in schools,’ he said. ‘We are always trying to
roll out new applications. For example we are considering allowing
people to use smartcards to access cultural events.'
(RELATED:
See our Cashless
Society Control Grid
archive)
-
Cashless
zones ... in 30 seconds: Cashless
initiatives around the world -
In Hong Kong, more than 13 million Octopus smart travelcards have been
issued since 1997. The cards can be used to make cashless payments for
goods and services at more than 300 locations, including fast-food
outlets and parking operators. In Japan, RFID-enabled mobile phones
can be used to settle up at restaurants and petrol stations. The
scheme is to be extended to include payment for taxis. The phones can
also receive a signal from advertising posters and be used to make a
purchase immediately. Nottingham University Hospital’s NHS Trust has
introduced smartcards that can be used to buy items in its restaurants
and staff canteens (Computing, 29 March). The money is automatically
deducted from employees’ pre-tax salaries.
-
Seung-Hui
Cho Was a Mind Controlled Assassin:
Deadly accuracy, disturbing revelations suggest outside involvement in
VA Massacre, cocktail of brainwashing from prozac, violent video games
contributed to carnage - Seung-Hui
Cho was a mind-controlled assassin, even aside from clear evidence of
influence from outside parties, the fact is that the cultural
brainwashing of violent video games and psychotropic drugs directly
contributed, as it does in all these cases, to the carnage at Virginia
Tech on Monday morning. Gun grabbers are already exploiting the
tragedy to disarm future students from the opportunity of being able
to defend themselves against deranged killers, but the media circus is
completely silent when it comes to the laying blame at the feet of a
deadly cocktail of mind-warping drugs and bloodthirsty shoot-em-ups.
-
TOTAL
PSY-OP!: Virginia
gunman sent final video - The
student who shot dead at least 30 people at Virginia Tech sent a
package to the US TV network NBC News on the day of the shootings,
police said. The package contained "disturbing" photographs,
video and writings, NBC said, posted from the college campus between
the two rounds of killings. Cho Seung-hui is shown pointing guns at
the camera, and ranting angrily.
-
Tag
vulnerable aged, says minister - Elderly
people should be "tagged" to enable the authorities to keep
tabs on them, a government minister has suggested. Science
minister Malcolm Wicks said satellite technology could be used to
allow families to monitor frail or elderly relatives, it was reported.
According to the Mirror newspaper, Mr Wicks said many families worried
about elderly relatives or "what's happening about an 80 or
90-year-old who may have Alzheimer's", and using the technology
could let them know their loved one was safe. Mr Wicks said:
"Satellites currently monitor the planet in a variety of
different ways. "I'm raising this as an issue for discussion. Are
there other uses of technology that could benefit society?
-
Gregoire
signs bill rejecting national ID card: Governor
calls it too expensive, threat to privacy - Gov.
Chris Gregoire, who is developing a high-tech state driver's license
that can serve as a border-crossing document, signed legislation
Wednesday rejecting Real ID, a federal identification requirement that
would essentially create a national ID card. The legislation is part
of a growing rebellion against an expensive federal mandate that the
American Civil Liberties Union says would threaten personal privacy.
The new state law says Washington will not implement the new Real ID
system unless: Uncle Sam foots the bill, the government takes steps to
ensure that privacy and data security concerns are addressed, and the
system doesn't place unreasonable costs or record-keeping burdens on
the average citizen.
-
Lawyer
outlines a broader conspiracy in search for FBI documents on Oklahoma
City bombing - A
Utah attorney alleges informants gathering information on Timothy
McVeigh or his associates warned the FBI about the plot to bomb the
Oklahoma City federal building but the agency took no action to stop
the 1995 attack.
Jesse Trentadue also says there were others involved in carrying out
the bombing besides McVeigh and Terry Nichols, despite investigators'
conclusion that they were the only ones responsible for the crime. The
allegations are made in a brief filed Monday in a lawsuit by Trentadue,
who believes his brother s death in a federal prison was.
Wednesday
18th April 2007: -
-
Secret
Iraq memo leaked by civil servant -
A secret Downing Street memo detailing talks between US President
George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair was leaked by a civil
servant, the Old Bailey has heard. David
Keogh passed the memo to a friend, Leo O'Connor, at a local dining
club in Northampton. But police were called in when political
researcher O'Connor placed it in papers for his boss, Anthony Clarke,
Labour MP for Northampton South, to see, the jury was told. David
Perry QC, prosecuting, said the reason the memo was leaked was to
bring its contents into the public domain. But the record of the April
16, 2004, meeting in Washington was sensitive and was concerned with
the US and UK policy towards Iraq.
-
'Families
Need Answers' - An
investigation will be held into claims that nuclear workers had body
parts removed and stored without the knowledge of their families, the
Government has confirmed. It
is claimed 65 workers at the Sellafield plant in Cumbria in the 1960s
and 70s may have had tissue, bones and body parts removed. The
investigation will be led by Michael Redfern QC who carried out the
inquiry into the Alder Hey children's body parts scandal.
-
School
row over Al Gore film - Parents
who claim that an award-winning film on climate change is inaccurate
and politically motivated are threatening a legal challenge over the
Government's decision to send it to every secondary school. The
film by Al Gore, the former US vice-president, won an Oscar for the
best documentary this year and Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary,
says he wants teachers to use it to stimulate children into discussing
climate change and global warming. But a group of parents in the New
Forest say the circulation of the film by the Government amounts to
political indoctrination and is in breach of the Education Act 2002.
Derek Tipp, their spokesman, has urged Mr Johnson to stop the film
being sent out.
-
Gunman
'had been in mental unit' - The
gunman involved in the deadliest shooting in modern US history had
previously been accused of stalking two female students and had been
taken to a mental health facility in 2005, but no charges were filed,
police said.
Cho Seung-hui worried one woman enough with his calls and emails in
2005 that police were called, said police chief Wendell Flinchum. He
said the woman refused to press charges and Cho was referred to the
Virginia Tech disciplinary system. The case was then outside the scope
of the police department, he said.
-
Police
knew of Virginia killer's troubled history -
The gunman who went on a deadly rampage at Virginia Tech had been
accused of stalking women students and was taken to a psychiatric
hospital in 2005 because of worries he was suicidal, university police
said today. The
new details added to an already chilling portrait of Cho Seung-Hui, a
23-year-old student from South Korea who massacred 32 people and then
took his own life on Monday in the bloodiest shooting spree in modern
US history.
-
Neo-Cons
To Spin VA Massacre As Terrorist Attack:
Propaganda junkies may milk "Ismail Ax" to say bloodshed was
spurred by militant Islam -
Neo-Con media cheerleaders for the Bush administration's war on terror
are set to connect killer Cho Seung-Hui with militant Islam as an
excuse to propagandize the notion that Monday's VA Tech Massacre was a
terrorist attack. Reports state that Seung-Hui wrote two words on his
arm in red ink before carrying out the bloodbath - "Ismail
Ax." Explanations as to the meaning of the words vary but
according to a Chicago Tribune report, "One popular theory
spreading across the web comes from a story in the Koran, the holy
book of Islam, about Ibrahim and his son, Ismail. This theory picked
up speed because many bloggers wondered if the actions at Virginia
Tech could be related to terrorism."
-
University
'warned about gunman' -
A professor who taught a student whose gun rampage at Virginia Tech
left 32 people dead says she warned university officials about his
behaviour. Lucinda
Roy said she became concerned after Cho Seung-hui wrote disturbing
pieces for a creative writing class. The 23-year-old South Korean has
been described as a loner and an introvert. Virginia's governor has
vowed to review authorities' handling of the shootings amid claims
that the US university did not do enough to protect students.
-
Brown
is accused of £100bn raid on pensions -
Gordon Brown was last night accused by the Tories of having
"raided people's retirements" to the tune of £100bn by
scrapping tax relief on pensions. Moving
a rare motion of no confidence in the Chancellor's handling of
occupational pensions, George Osborne, his Conservative shadow,
accused him of building a reputation on "stealth and
dishonesty" and claimed the abolition of dividend tax credits in
New Labour's first Budget in 1997 was Mr Brown's "first and worst
stealth tax".
-
They’re
disturbing and addictive, but game violence is no threat -
Players of violent video games claim that they recognise the
difference between brutality meted out on screen and violence in real
life and play mostly to escape the humdrum, according to a new study.
The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), the body responsible
for rating new releases, commissioned the research in response to
public concern over violent games. Interviews with gamers, parents and
industry figures revealed that players often revel in violent
scenarios and find killing a character in a game more exciting than
passively watching a character being killed in a film. Young boys
report that they become addicted to games that they will play from the
moment they wake. But gamers told researchers that they rejected the
suggestion that playing games makes them violent in real-life or
desensitises them to the impact of real scenes of violence.
-
Patients
'at risk of malnutrition' - Patients
are at risk of malnutrition because there are not enough nurses to
make sure they are properly fed, according to a new poll. Almost
half (46%) of nurses said there were not enough staff to help patients
who may need help with eating and drinking. A similar number (42%)
said they do not have enough time to make sure patients eat properly.
A report last August from the charity Age Concern revealed that 60% of
older patients - who occupy two thirds of general hospital beds - are
at risk of becoming malnourished or seeing their health get worse.
-
Mom:
Baby not the same after Taser incident -
A woman whose husband was shocked by a Taser last week while holding
the couple's newborn child is considering suing The Woman's Hospital
of Texas and the Houston Police Department. "The
hospital was irresponsible (and) the officer was irresponsible,"
attorney Sadiyah Evangelista, who represents Jacqueline Gray, said
Tuesday. The couple's infant fell to the ground after Gray's husband,
William Lewis, was hit with the Taser fired by D.M. Boling, an
off-duty HPD officer working security at the hospital. Lewis, 30, was
later charged with child endangerment. "I'm very upset and I'm
distraught," Gray said at a news conference organized by the
Millions More Movement Ministry of Justice. Hospital personnel checked
the baby out and determined she appeared unharmed. But Gray said her
daughter, Carla, hasn't been the same.
Tuesday
17th April 2007: -
-
More
guns, not fewer, would have saved lives - In
the wake of the horrific massacre that occurred at Virginia Tech,
newspapers throughout the country wasted no time in reporting that
Virginia has some of the most lenient gun laws in the United States - According
to the International Herald Tribune, "Ownership requires only
passing criminal background checks, which can be bypassed by buying
from an unlicensed dealer. And unlicensed dealers can sell their wares
at gun shows without requiring criminal checks. Guns need not be
registered unless the owner wants to carry a concealed weapon."
We can expect more of this type of intellectual laziness as reporters,
politicians, soccer moms and everyone else who is convinced that guns
are bad lines up to offer up the latest "proof" that school
shootings are "caused" by the lack of "gun
control."
-
State
Police may hunt for a suspect using kin's DNA:
Critics say innocent targeted -
The State Police crime laboratory is considering expanding the use of
its DNA database to search for close relatives of suspects whose DNA
is recovered from crime scenes, a controversial crime-fighting
technique that prosecutors say would help them solve more cases but
that critics say would target innocent people, many of them members of
minority groups. Currently, the lab takes DNA found at crime scenes
and compares it with DNA samples from convicted felons in hope of
finding a perfect match and a suspect. The lab does not permit
employees to seek or report close matches, which could give
investigators an important lead by indicating the suspect may be
related to a felon in the database, according to officials at the
state's Executive Office of Public Safety.
-
Boots
to ban chequebook payments -
Boots will ban cheque payments at its 1,500 UK and Republic of Ireland
stores, starting from 1 May. The
High Street chemist, and health and beauty products retailer said that
the move followed a successful trial of the ban in Surrey and Sussex.
Boots added that the use of cheque books had now fallen to around 0.1%
of all purchases at its stores. Shell brought in a similar ban in 2005
as customers increasingly used chip-and-pin credit and debit cards.
-
Virginia
Tech Shooting: Gun
Bans Are The Problem, Not The Solution - "When
will we learn that being defenseless is a bad defense," asked
Larry Pratt, Executive Director of Gun Owners of America? "All
the school shootings that have ended abruptly in the last ten years
were stopped because a law-abiding citizen -- a potential victim --
had a gun," Pratt said. "The latest school shooting demands
an immediate end to the gun-free zone law which leaves the nation's
schools at the mercy of madmen. It is irresponsibly dangerous to tell
citizens that they may not have guns at schools. The Virginia Tech
shooting shows that killers have no concern about a gun ban when
murder is in their hearts.
-
Anger
over US shooting warnings -
Survivors of the worst shooting rampage in US history have criticised
authorities for waiting too long to alert people a gunman was on the
loose. The
rampage at Virginia Tech university killed 33 including a suspected
gunman. There were two hours between the two separate attacks, the
second of which saw 31 deaths, and students have asked why the campus
was not locked down.
Monday
16th April 2007: -

-
Bush
administration pushes for expansion and deepening of police state -
The George W. Bush administration seized the White House in 2000 by
way of an openly stolen election, then cemented its criminal power
into place with the unprecedented 9/11 mass murder, and its two
resulting abominations: the fabricated “war on terrorism” (the
pretext for endless global war), and the USAPATRIOT Act (the
full-scale destruction of the Constitution, and the militarization of
the US homeland).
The deepening of the war and security state continues unabated and
relatively unopposed, in spite of meager posturing of (largely
complicit) congressional Democrats. Nothing has been done to stop,
reverse or undo the Bush administration’s boundless criminality, its
wide open corruption, or the absolute and systematic rape of law
itself. Few if any of Bush’s criminals have been brought to justice.
-
Children
to help launch Norwich's talking CCTV - A
new weapon is to be introduced in Norwich's battle to combat
anti-social behaviour in two of the city’s best-known parks -
talking CCTV cameras. Loud
speakers will be used to directly challenge people caught on camera
engaging in vandalism, graffiti-spraying, littering or other forms of
anti-social behaviour in Eaton and Waterloo Park. Offenders will hear
a voice warning them they are on camera and asked to immediately stop
what they are doing by staff working in Norwich City Council’s CCTV
control room... Norwich City Council is inviting schools to design a
poster to be put up next to the camera. The winning child or group of
children in each area will be rewarded by visiting the Talking CCTV
control room and being the voice that ‘tells off’ the adults. They
will also receive a cinema voucher for the film of their choice.
-
Parents
Object To Child Fingerprinting For School Biometrics -
Parents in Taunton, Conn. have objected to schools fingerprinting to
speed up lunch lines, according to The Taunton Gazette in Taunton,
Conn. The
biometric technology may also be used for taking attendance, using
school transportation, and/or library access. The parents are angry
they were not asked for permission to obtain their children's
fingerprints.
-
Time
for taxis to be fitted with cameras -
IT is surely a question of when, not if, CCTV cameras will be
installed in taxis in Bolton. Every
night drivers face possible abuse, violence or vandalism when they
pick up customers who have been out drinking in the town. Hackney and
private hire drivers say weekends are the worst when drunks hammer at
windows, kick door panels, refuse to pay and shout abuse at them. When
confronted with such behaviour, there is not much a driver can do
other than attempt to drop the passenger off without coming to any
harm. Bolton Council has now agreed to revisit the idea of installing
cameras in cabs, a move that was a success when it was tried in a
pilot scheme five years ago, but abandoned due to cost and legal
implications.
-
U.S.
food imports rarely inspected: FDA
lacks resources to assure safety of fish and other products, experts
say - Just 1.3
percent of imported fish, vegetables, fruit and other foods are
inspected — yet those government inspections regularly reveal food
unfit for human consumption. Frozen catfish from China, beans from
Belgium, jalapenos from Peru, blackberries from Guatemala, baked goods
from Canada, India and the Philippines — the list of tainted food
detained at the border by the Food and Drug Administration stretches
on.
-
MPs
to debate mental health plans - Controversial
plans to allow mentally ill people to be detained against their will,
even if they have not committed a crime, are due to be discussed by
MPs. The Mental
Health Bill, rejected by the Lords in February, is expected to face
heavy criticism in the Commons. Ministers say the proposals will help
to keep the public safe.
-
Benn
questions 'War on Terror' slogan -
Hilary Benn, the Development Secretary, will today risk angering
George W Bush by claiming that the US President's phrase "War on
Terror" strengthens extremist groups. Mr
Benn is to tell an audience in New York that the term, coined by the
White House after the 9/11 attacks, makes small, disaffected groups
feel that they are part of something bigger. He will also confirm that
British ministers and civil servants no longer refer to the "War
on Terror".
-
A
9/11 "Smoking Gun" Hidden In Plain Sight -
Let's face it, if the 9/11 attacks were "legitimate", they
would have been accompanied by "legitimate" statements and
claims of responsibility. You
don't pull off the most spectacular "terrorist" attack in
history, especially against largely symbolic targets, and then hide.
-
Cashless
parking signals end of the meter -
The days of the parking meter are numbered as town halls across the
country draw up plans to rip them out. Even
the equally unloved pay-and-display machine is facing a bleak future
as Britain moves towards cashless parking. They are set to be replaced
by equipment which will accept credit card payments. For motorists the
demise of the meter will end the frustrating routines of fumbling for
the right change and pumping money into a broken machine which merely
swallows the cash.
(RELATED:
See our Cashless
Society Control Grid
archive)
-
Paper
or plastic? Might need your ID -
I was in the store the other day doing my usual five-minute, afterwork
shopping extravaganza when I was stopped dead in my tracks. “Can I
see your ID?” I
quickly looked over the four items I was trying to purchase. No
alcohol. No tobacco. There was no way I was getting “carded” for
cooking sherry. What was up? Apparently, my grocer now needs to see my
ID before I can purchase something with my credit card. Despite the
fact that I am at that store at least three times a week and the
afternoon staff knows me, the management still deemed it necessary for
me to cough up some form of ID. The cashier apologized and shrugged,
so out I ran into the driving rain to fetch my driver’s license.
-
Accused
Pentagon hacker prosecution could backfire - Analysis
Accused Pentagon hacker Gary McKinnon is continuing to fight against
extradition to the US after losing an appeal last week.
Only the Law Lords now stand between the Scot and a US trial for
allegedly breaking into and damaging 97 US government computers
between 2001 and 2002 and causing $700,000 worth of damage, in what US
authorities have described as the "biggest military"
computer hack ever. He allegedly infiltrated networks run by the US
Army, US Navy, US Air Force, Department of Defense and NASA. US
authorities described McKinnon as an uber-hacker who posed a threat to
national security in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack.
Sunday
15th April 2007: -
-
Chavez
calls 9/11 gift for Bush: Venezuelan
President has labeled 9/11 attacks on US as "a gift for
Bush," saying it enabled the US government to wage wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq - Hugo
Chavez made the statement during a news conference to mark the fifth
anniversary of his return to power two days after a 2002 US-backed
coup against his rule, AP reported. "If there were another
aggression against us, there wouldn't be another drop of oil for the
United States ... We're prepared for it," he said outright.
Venezuelan leader noted the insatiable US thirst for oil resources led
the imperialist regime to attack Iraq and also stage an abortive coup
attempt against his leadership.
(FLASHBACK:
MARCH 2006 - Venezuelan
Government To Launch International 9/11 Investigation)
-
A
conspiracy theorist's paradise:
Cheap editing software and an online audience are changing documentary
films, says Chris Stevens - Documentary
filmmakers used to edit their footage by manually cutting up giant
reels of celluloid with a razor blade. The price for entry was high,
and the chances of an audience ever seeing your film were staggeringly
low. But now fledgling directors equipped with cheap editing programs
such as iMovie have found a new outlet on the internet, and an
audience of millions who just can't get enough. The new wave of
internet documentaries deal with everything from 9/11 conspiracy
theories to skiing in Iran. Young directors have taken advantage of
the distribution power of video sites like YouTube and the
availability of capable and cheap computers to produce finished films
that, at least on the surface, look factual, watchable and
authoritative.
(RELATED
EXTERNAL WEBSITE: loosechange911.com)
-
Hundreds
hit in drive for roadside fingerprints:
Fingerprint checks have raised 'Big Brother' fears -
HUNDREDS of motorists have had their fingerprints checked at the
roadside in a controversial pilot scheme that has raised fears of a
growing Big Brother culture. Drivers and passengers are among the
4,200 people who just in the past four months have been asked to use a
hand-held fingerprint reader. The device checks their identity against
6.5 million recorded prints of convicts and crime suspects. On average
60 per cent of those stopped so far in the voluntary pilot are not on
the fingerprint database. In West Yorkshire, which is part of the
scheme, 223 drivers and three passengers in Bradford and Wakefield
have been checked since it was launched in December. Just three
arrests were made for drugs offences and theft.
-
Britain
steps closer toward a biometric ID card - Toward
the end of 2009, the United Kingdom hopes to have a national identity
card scheme up and running for citizens and residents. The
personal information of millions of people will be included in a
computer database, along with biometric details such as fingerprints
and facial characteristics. At the beginning, the new scheme will be
voluntary from 2008. It will be developed and problems worked out as
more people join. The government is estimating that approximately 60%
will obtain the card during this phase. Then by 2014 it is planned
that it will be compulsory for people to own a card. One of the
reasons for the card is that people will be required to present it
when obtaining various services.
-
Prozac
maker introduces drug to calm pets' separation anxiety - Eli
Lilly and Co., which built its reputation on insulin and
antidepressant Prozac, launched its first prescription medicine for
pets on Friday.
The company will market Reconcile, a beef-flavoured chewable tablet
that helps treat dogs for separation anxiety, in the United States.
The medicine is supposed to be used in combination with behaviour
management training to help dogs that have difficulty being separated
from their owner or family members. "It basically calms the dog
and makes it more receptive to the training that's supposed to go
along with it," said Steve Connell, a Lilly veterinarian. Lilly
estimates that more than 10 million dogs suffer from some form of
separation anxiety. Some may whine or bark. Others chew up or destroy
things when left alone.
-
Property
boosts Tesco profits - Tesco,
Britain's biggest retailer, will this week announce that full-year
profits from its fledgling property division are as high as £135m,
three times the profitability of entire retail chains such as WH
Smith. The
huge increase in Tesco's property profit - which will coincide with
the company announcing record group pre-tax profits of £2.5bn -
underlines how important an asset property has become for retail
chains. Tesco's bumper property earnings come one year into a
five-year £5bn property joint venture programme. Analysts expect the
profit from property to be between £113m and £135m, up to 40 per
cent higher than last year.
(RELATED
EXTERNAL WEBSITE: boycotttesco.com)
-
9/11
Truth: Daniel
Sunjata - Alex
welcomes Daniel Sunjata, co-star of the critically-acclaimed FX
Network television series, Rescue Me and Tony Award nominated actor
who has performed in film, television and in the theater and has
recently come forward with his support of the 9/11 Truth Movement.
-
Coal
burning having a devastating impact on rural Chinese -
Zhang Huaixiang's thin wasted frame dangles from his wooden crutches,
his bowed legs swelled by a disease contracted from a lifelong
reliance on coal. Zhang,
57, a farmer in Guizhou province in the nation's mountainous
southwest, has been near bed-ridden for a year, unable to walk
properly due to the rotting of his bones and joints from fluoride
poisoning. "My knees just hurt too much," Zhang told AFP
outside his grey-walled concrete room subsidised by the government. He
also receives 50 yuan (6.45 US dollars) a month for food, but his
brother-in-law, Li Xiaoxin, also a farmer, said it was not nearly
enough. "I work and live one day and then take care of him the
next," said Li, 65. Zhang is one of 42 million people in China
with fluorosis, a condition caused by ingesting too much fluoride,
which corrodes the teeth, pitting them and turning them a rusty brown,
in cases of excessive, prolonged exposure. In severe cases like
Zhang's, the mineral also weakens the bones and stiffens the joint
ligaments, eventually making movement difficult and painful, much like
osteoarthritis does. In many developed countries, fluoride, which is
often naturally occurring in water and also coal, is added to
toothpaste and drinking water. Since the 1960s many medical experts
have believed that small amounts of fluoride helps prevent tooth decay
and strengthen bones. However, the claimed benefits have increasingly
drawn fire from medical experts who say that there are no tangible
health advantages to the human body.
(RELATED:
See our Compromised
Health
archive)
Saturday
14th April 2007: -
-
Scholars
and Family Members Submit Request for Correction to 9/11 NIST Report -
A group of scientists, researchers and 9/11 family members challenging
the official reports of the destruction of the World Trade Center
Towers on 9/11/01 has filed a Request for Correction (RFC) with the
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The Request asserts that the NIST Final Report violates information
quality standards, draws inferences that are inconsistent with its own
computer simulations and physical tests, and exhibits a significant
bias toward a preordained conclusion while ignoring available evidence
contrary to it. The Request also says that if this bias is corrected,
the NIST simulation clearly indicates that the Towers should not have
collapsed due to plane damage and fire. The obvious alternative, which
the group says should have been studied by NIST, is explosive
demolition.
-
Nephew
of 9/11 Mastermind Denies Involvement in the Attacks - An
alleged high-level al-Qaeda operative who is the nephew of the
mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States told a
military tribunal that he had no ties to the plot and is being held
because of his family connection, according to a transcript released
yesterday. Ammar
al-Baluchi, nephew of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, told a Combatant Status
Review Tribunal last month at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that he was a
businessman who helped his uncle's affiliates but said he did not know
they were part of a terror network. In an unusual witness statement
entered at the March 30 tribunal, Mohammed said that Baluchi "has
never had association with al-Qaeda, Taliban or associated
organizations" and that his nephew "had no knowledge of al-Qaeda
links."
-
One
man's legal fight for justice over bank fees - He
is the ultimate bank rebel. After months of controversy, Britain's
banks face a landmark court challenge over charges as a result of a
one-man campaign waged by a barrister who is risking his professional
career to prove they are acting illegally.
Tom Brennan believes that if he wins his case for exemplary damages
against NatWest, the bank will have to reduce penalty fees for all its
customers - paving the way for hundreds of thousands of other high
street bank customers to launch claims. Banks could lose a chunk of
their estimated £4.7bn a year earnings from penalty fees for
unauthorised borrowing. But if he loses the case, Mr Brennan risks
having to pay the bank's costs, which would make him bankrupt and
would disqualify him from working as a barrister. He has been flooded
with messages in support of his campaign which he is conducting
himself.
-
Dollar
slide accelerates - The
dollar's slide against most of the world's currencies gained pace
today as dealers worried over the outlook for the US economy.
Sterling and the euro are leading the charge against the embattled
dollar, as interest rates are still expected to head higher in both
Europe and the UK. After a string of rate increases in the US in the
past two years, the Federal Reserve has recently indicated it may
pause or even cut borrowing costs. The Bank of England and the
European Central Bank, on the other hand, are still widely expected to
raise interest rates.
-
75,000
Voter Registration Cards Found in Trash Bin in Atlanta -
The Georgia Secretary of State's office has begun an investigation
into who threw more than 75,000 Fulton County voter registration cards
into a trash bin.
The cards contained a voter's full name, address and Social Security
number. The office says a random sampling showed many of the cards
were for active voters. In a statement, Secretary of State Karen
Handel said the finding "represents a significant and serious
breach of the personal information of Fulton County voters and an
outrageous violation of the trust and integrity of Fulton County's
elections."
-
China's
Big Brother: World's Biggest ID Database: Public
Security database with 1.3 billion entries -
In a modest 200-square meters enclosure, the National Citizen Identity
Information Center (NCIIC) in Beijing hosts the world's biggest ID
database, with over 1.3 billion entries. "By collecting the
identity information of China's 1.3 billion population in five years,
through an investment amounting to tens of millions yuan, we have
succeeded in collating the world's biggest ID database in full
compliance with international standards," said Lu Subing, vice
director of NCIIC.
-
Wolfowitz
dictated girlfriend’s pay deal:
World Bank president who led push for Iraq war assailed for arranging
raise - World
Bank President Paul D. Wolfowitz personally dictated the terms under
which the bank gave what it called his "domestic partner"
substantial pay raises and promotions in exchange for temporarily
leaving her job there during his tenure, according to documents
released by the bank's executive board yesterday. The board issued a
statement saying it will "move expeditiously to reach a
conclusion on possible actions to take," amid rising speculation
over whether the embattled Wolfowitz will resign or be asked to step
down. Board deliberations over his future were suspended yesterday
morning as the bank began its spring meeting, an annual rite attended
by finance ministers and central bank presidents, and one now being
overtaken by the controversy surrounding Wolfowitz.
-
Tons
of Food Spoiled As FEMA Ran Out Of Storage Space - As
many as 6 million prepared meals stockpiled near potential victims of
the 2006 hurricane season spoiled in the Gulf Coast heat last summer
when the Federal Emergency Management Agency ran short of warehouse
and refrigeration space, according to agency officials. In
all, hundreds of truckloads of food worth more than $40 million are
being thrown away or scavenged for unspoiled contents to be offered to
domestic hunger-relief groups, FEMA officials said. Most of the meals
were commercial versions of the military's Meals Ready to Eat, which
were ruined despite being engineered to withstand the demands of
desert and jungle climates.
-
Consumer
Alert: Massive Virus Outbreak: A
quick test by PC World shows that many antivirus programs fail to
catch today's nasty Storm Worm variant - A
huge virus surge of a new Storm Worm variant is flooding e-mail
inboxes and evading many antivirus programs. In my tests of 31
programs, only four reported a virus. Postini, an e-mail security
company, says that over the last 24 hours it has seen about 55 million
virus e-mails, about 60 times the daily average. The first e-mails had
romance-themed subjects: "A kiss so gentle," or "I
dream of you," for instance. The latest batch attempts to fool
readers--with subjects like "Worm Alert!" or "Virus
Alert!"--into thinking they are already infected and need to
apply a supplied patch--an attached virus. We received one such virus
e-mail here at PC World, titled "Worm Alert!" The e-mail
included a text message embedded in an image, which makes it easier to
evade antispam tools. The attachment was a password-protected archive
named 'patch-7594.zip,' with the password contained in the image's
text.
Friday
13th April 2007: -
-
Former
Bush Speechwriter Hints at 9/11 Inside Job: Says
Neo-Cons would have created a false flag to justify war had it not
been for WTC attack, questions official story - A
GOP insider, former Bush 41 speechwriter and close friend of the Bush
family writes in his new book that before 9/11, the Neo-Cons in
control of the Bush administration were eager to seize upon a
manufactured provocation to go to war - just as LBJ had done with the
Gulf Of Tonkin in 1965, and questions the official 9/11 story. Victor
Gold is a veteran GOP campaign operative who worked closely with
George H.W. Bush on his presidential campaign and also co-wrote his
autobiography. He was also tasked with writing the profiles for Dick
and Lynn Cheney for the official Inauguration program in 2001.
-
Imus-Gate:
Tom DeLay To Rosie O'Donnell: 'We're Gonna "Destroy" You!' -
The right wing attack dogs have been unleashed.
Rosie O'Donnell is about to join Don Imus on the unemployment line, if
former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has anything to say about it.
"The Hammer" has fired a salvo which has already been
answered by The View's Rosie O'Donnell. In a posting on his blog at
TomDeLay.com, entitled "If the Left takes Imus, We'll take
Rosie," the controversial DeLay has issued a call-to-arms on
conservatives to "protest and demand" that Rosie get the
Imus treatment at ABC.
-
Leahy
Says Bush Aides Lied About E-Mails - President
Bush's aides are lying about White House e-mails sent on a Republican
account that might have been lost, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman
Patrick Leahy said Thursday, vowing to subpoena those documents if the
administration fails to cough them up. 'They
say they have not been preserved. I don't believe that!' Leahy shouted
from the Senate floor. 'You can't erase e-mails, not today. They've
gone through too many servers,' said Leahy, D-Vt. 'Those e-mails are
there, they just don't want to produce them. We'll subpoena them if
necessary.'
-
Man
charged in gym room shower video - A
Roseland man has been charged with secretly videotaping a Monmouth
University student who was showering in the locker room of the
school's community gym. Anthony
Amato, 43, has been charged with invasion of privacy, eluding a police
officer and criminal trespass in the April 6 incident at the West Long
Branch college.
-
Easter
Bunny visits Child I.D. Day -
It's every parent's worst nightmare. One minute a child is there, the
next and he or she is gone.
It is not a pleasant topic but the unfortunate and disturbing fact is
that 800,000 children are missing in the United States each year,
according to the National Child Identification Program. Law
enforcement and social service organizations nationwide have
increasingly promoted child identification techniques to assist
authorities in locating children if the worst should happen, and the
Aberdeen Crime Watch Program recently sponsored an event to help local
parents record vital characteristics from fingerprints to DNA, all
with the goal of making local kids safer.
-
Expert
says scans should be embraced - The
debate over fingerprint scanning technology in city schools has boiled
down to simple slice of paper - a permission slip. Two
weeks ago, Chairwoman Christine Fagan stood up for enraged parents who
have felt their parental and civil rights have been overlooked. She
said she had to sign a permission slip for her high school-aged son to
participate in an Ides of March celebration, where students wore togas
to school. The fact that district schools were going ahead with plans
to implement the fingerprint scanning technology, to speed up school
lunch lines, without a permission slip-policy, baffled her. There seem
to be some discrepancies in promises made by the district
administration to an inquiring American Civil Liberties Union
attorney, and the actual disclaimers sent home to parents regarding
the soon-to-be-initiated program. Parents worry fingerprint image
gathering is the first step of a distressing trend in American
culture. More than the $52,000 program itself, the parents are angry
they were not given a choice, prior to last week's School Committee
intervention.
-
Kindergarten
Girl Handcuffed, Arrested At Fla. School -
Police arrested a 6-year-old Florida girl and even handcuffed her when
she acted out in class. Police
officers said Desre’e Watson, a kindergarten student at Avon
Elementary School in Highlands County, had a violent run-in with a
teacher on Thursday. “I was scared,” the little girl said. Police
claim the little girl got angry and began kicking and scratching. She
even hit a teacher attempting to intervene in the disturbance.
However, the girl’s mother doesn’t believe the story. “She never
fell out. She is very respectful. If I tell her to do anything, she
will do it,” Lateshia Wilson said.
-
Military
Spending Now 40% Of Every Income Tax Dollar -
As taxpayers prepare to meet this year's April 16th tax deadline, they
may want to consider that almost 40 cents of every tax dollar is spent
on past and present military spending, according to a newly released
publication by the National Priorities Project (NPP), a non-profit
research organization that examines the local impact of federal
spending policies.
In Where Do Your Tax Dollars Go?, NPP offers breakdowns of how the
federal government spends the median household's tax payment in each
state and over 200 cities. In 2006, according to the National
Priorities Project, current military spending accounted for 27 cents
of every income tax dollar paid. Additionally, NPP determined that
nine cents of every federal income tax dollar paid today could be
attributed to borrowing to pay for past wars and military build-ups.
Finally, disability payments, health care and other benefits accrued
to veterans made up a little over three cents of the federal income
tax dollar, bringing total military spending up to close to 40 cents
of every tax dollar.
Thursday
12th April 2007: -
Wednesday
11th April 2007: -

-
"New
9/11 crisis catalyst to merge U.S., Mexico and Canada":
North American Union leader says merger just crisis away -
Leading intellectual force behind effort toward EU-style unity
looks at future - Robert Pastor, a leading intellectual force in
the move to create an EU-style North American Community, told WND he
believes a new 9/11 crisis could be the catalyst to merge the U.S.,
Mexico and Canada. Pastor, a professor at American University, says
that in such a case the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North
America, or SPP – launched in 2005 by the heads of the three
countries at a summit in Waco, Texas – could be developed into a
continental union, complete with a new currency, the amero, that would
replace the U.S. dollar just as the euro has replaced the national
currencies of Europe.
-
Right
Wing Uses Cropped Photo To Downplay Size Of Iraq Protest -
After thousands of demonstrators gathered in Najaf, Iraq, yesterday to
protest the U.S. occupation, the Bush administration was quick to
downplay the size of the gathering. State
Department official David Satterfield said, “I think the small size
of those demonstrations is an indication of the limited appeal of
Muqtada al-Sadr’s rhetoric at this moment.” The right-wing has
quickly echoed these talking points, circulating a U.S. Army aerial
photo of the protest to support the military’s low-ball estimate
that only 5,000-7,000 attended the rally. Gateway Pundit claims
“proof” that “Al Sadr and the mainstream media missed the mark
on this one” by claiming that the “aerial shot from Najaf, Iraq
yesterday shows a protest of 5,000-7,000 Al-Sadr devotees.”
-
Google
Censors China Olympics Criticism - The
motto of next year’s Olympic games in China is “one world, one
dream.” Online,
the world is actually split up into several countries, each with their
own limited view, made possible through national censorship of the
web. Human Rights Watch asks: How will China’s pervasive censorship
and control of domestic and international media and the Internet play
out when thousands of international journalists descend on Beijing?
How are the Olympic Games being used to justify the violent forced
evictions of thousands of people from their homes? (...) Human Rights
Watch hopes that the 2008 Olympics will be an impetus for China to
demonstrate greater respect for the human rights guaranteed to all
under international law. You got one answer right there on Google when
you compare the search results for the query china olympics: the page
I quoted from above is available on Google.com’s Chinese search
engine, but censored on Google.cn.
-
Professor
who criticized Bush told added to terrorist 'no-fly' list -
A top Constitutional scholar from Princeton who gave a televised
speech that slammed President George W. Bush's executive overreach was
recently told that he had been added to the Transportation Security
Administration's terrorist watch list. He
shared his experience this weekend at the law blog Balkinization.
Walter F. Murphy, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Emeritus,
at Princeton University, attempted to check his luggage at the
curbside in Albuquerque before boarding a plane to Newark, New Jersey.
Murphy was told he could not use the service. "I was denied a
boarding pass because I was on the Terrorist Watch list," he
said. When inquiring with a clerk why he was on the list, Murphy was
asked if he had participated in any peace marches. "We ban a lot
of people from flying because of that," a clerk said.
-
RINF.COM
Film Screening: A World Without Cancer -
The Story Of B17: 13 APRIL, 7.30PM, GREGSON ARTS AND COMMUNITY CENTRE,
LANCASTER - There
are isolated tribes and peoples around the world who do not have
cancer. These include the Abkhazians, the Hopi and Navajo Indians, the
Hunzas, Eskimos and the Karakorum. What they have in common is that
their diet is rich in vitamin B17. Foods such as wild blackberries and
apricot seeds can contain high amounts of the B17 vitamin.
-
Not
enough youth prescribed Ritalin for ADHD: study - Ritalin
may not be prescribed enough to Atlantic Canadian youth who may need
it, a new study from a researcher at Dalhousie University suggests. The
study by Dr. Christiane Poulin, an associate professor of community
health and epidemiology, contradicts the widely held belief that
Ritalin is being overprescribed to treat attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder in children and teenagers. Her study was made
available in March in the online version of the journal Addiction. The
research was funded by the Canadian Institute of Health Research and
the Canadian Population Health Initiative.
Tuesday
10th April 2007: -
-
UK
Big Brother's Holiday Campaign April 10 2007: Term-time
holidays will be logged…even if they're authorised - Under
new government plans, the next time you take your child out of school
during term time – even if the school has given you permission –
your details will be logged on a special register. It all sounds a bit
Big Brother, but the government insists that their new campaign is
needed to prevent the growing problem of non-attendance of pupils.
Schools are now expected to log all details of holidays taken by
pupils, both with and without permission, and submit it in an annual
report to the government together with reasons for the absences. News
of the new register comes as increasing numbers of families took their
Easter holidays earlier to save money. Sean Tipton, a spokesman for
the Association of British Travel Agents, said; 'I suspect that most
families went on holiday last weekend. They think that they are being
penalised by higher prices.'
-
Schumer
proposes employment ID card:
Senator, in Queensbury, seeks to reduce illegal immigration -
U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer on Tuesday called for a national employment
identification card system that would include modern technology such
as fingerprint- or retina scanning. Schumer, speaking at an assisted
living community in Queensbury, said such as system would reduce
illegal immigration by 95 percent. "Everyone who applies for a
job has to show the card," Schumer said. "No illegal
immigrant will get the card. The only people who will be are citizens
or people who are here legally."
-
ID
replacement costs will rise to $20 - Students
who lose their student identification cards will now have to pay an
extra $10 for a replacement and need to report the theft immediately.
The cards serve as both identification and debit devices for students
and can be targets for theft and abuse. Campus Dining Facilities
offers an E.Z. Charge function that allows students to use a student
ID as a debit card. Students can choose to either deposit money into a
prepaid account or charge expenses to the account to be reconciled by
a monthly statement.
-
Warning
on school fingerprinting -
The vast majority of local education authorities allow children to be
fingerprinted by their schools, new figures have revealed. Data
released to the Conservatives under the Freedom of Information Act
show that only 39 of the 171 LEAs say they do not allow the practice.
This means that up to 17,000 thousand schools covering 5.9 million
children may be allowed to request fingerprints, said the party. And
it warned that some schools are doing this without asking permission.
-
Tommy
'the Chip' Thompson -
I won't be voting for recently announced presidential candidate Tommy
Thompson for two reasons. The
first? Former Health and Human Services Secretary Thompson wants
unborn children to be used for spare parts. Slapping pro-lifers who
supported him in the face, Thompson promoted embryonic stem cell
"research" to the point of insubordination – publicly
opposing the policy of his former boss, the president. Destroying the
donor. If we did that with blood drives, there wouldn't be a Red
Cross. And the research scoreboard at a glance? Adult stem cells
success: treating 72 conditions (and counting); embryonic stem cells:
zero. It's actually a negative number since embryonic stem cells have
a propensity to form cancerous tumors, but that doesn't seem to bother
those blinded by their desire to cannibalize the very young. Even Mitt
Romney says he "gets" that. (he just wants abortion as a
"health benefit.") And, as I've written in previous columns,
Rudy Giuliani wants to force us to pay for killing kids up until their
birthday. After that, we're supposed to buy them a present. But there
is another reason I won't be voting for Tommy Thompson: He wants us
all to be "chipped" with Radio Frequency Identification and
sits on the board of the VeriChip Corp., a company currently talking
to the Pentagon about inserting the grain-sized microchip into
American citizens, beginning with our soldiers.
Monday
09th April 2007: -
-
1984
COMES TRUE: ORWELL'S
NIGHTMARE IS NOW A REALITY - BIG
Brother really is watching you. Last week the government unveiled
talking CCTV cameras that allow operators to reprimand anyone
misbehaving in the street. Human rights groups complained that the
nightmare vision George Orwell laid out in his novel Nineteen
Eighty-Four has become reality, with five million cameras, one for
every 12 people, now monitoring our every move. Simon Davies of
Privacy International says: "If something is not done soon to
reverse this trend, privacy will be extinct within a decade."
Orwell's book depicted a world where free speech was illegal,
subversive thoughts got you killed and everyone was under constant
surveillance from the all-seeing Big Brother.
-
Schoolchildren
to be fingerprinted in Big Brother-style shake-up - Up
to 5.9million children face having their fingerprints taken by schools
in another move towards a 'Big Brother' society.
Pupils will have to hand over their biometric details simply to borrow
library books or gain access to school dinners. A million children's
fingerprints are believed to have been taken already, some without
parental approval and even by 'con tricks' such as pretend spy games.
Freedom of Information data obtained by the Tories reveals a further
4.9 million sets of prints could now be added to school computers
after the vast majority of local education authorities sanctioned the
practice.
-
Shopping
list could make you 'a terror suspect' -
The European Union's privacy watchdog has given warning that new
access for Europol to personal data could lead to individuals being
labelled as terror suspects based on hearsay or records of their
shopping habits. The
warning, from the head of the European Data Protection supervisor,
comes amid moves to allow the EU police agency to process so-called
"soft data" in search of relevant information for its
criminal investigations. Peter Hustinx said that moves to give Europol
the power to gather intelligence on "people who have not (yet)
committed a crime" are without privacy safeguards.
-
Revolution,
flashmobs, and brain chips: A
grim vision of the future -
Information chips implanted in the brain. Electromagnetic pulse
weapons. The middle classes becoming revolutionary, taking on the role
of Marx's proletariat. The population of countries in the Middle East
increasing by 132%, while Europe's drops as fertility falls.
"Flashmobs" - groups rapidly mobilised by criminal gangs or
terrorists groups. This is the world in 30 years' time envisaged by a
Ministry of Defence team responsible for painting a picture of the
"future strategic context" likely to face Britain's armed
forces. It includes an "analysis of the key risks and
shocks". Rear Admiral Chris Parry, head of the MoD's Development,
Concepts & Doctrine Centre which drew up the report, describes the
assessments as "probability-based, rather than predictive".
(RELATED:
See also Government
Report: Bio-Weapons Could Be Used To Combat Overpopulation - MoD
dossier outlines nightmare vision of new world order, ethnic
cleansing, class warfare, brain chips by 2035)
-
Police
order boy, 5, to stop chalking hopscotch 'graffiti' on the street -
A boy of five playing hopscotch with friends looked up to find himself
confronted by two police officers. They
ordered Ryan Badland and his five playmates to stop because chalking
the grids on the road in their quiet cul-de-sac was
"graffiti". "I couldn't believe it," said Ryan's
mother Lisa, 30, at their home in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset.
-
Britain
delivers damning verdict on Blair's 10 years:
Exclusive poll: public says PM has failed to improve country - A
remarkable picture of the way Tony Blair has lost the faith of British
voters over his 10 years in power is revealed today by a comprehensive
study of public attitudes towards the Prime Minister. As Blair
prepares to leave office, the poll of more than 2,000 adults shows
that people believe the country is a more dangerous, less happy, less
pleasant place to live. There was a negative response to nearly all of
more than 40 questions the public was asked about trust in politics,
how they felt about their own lives and whether public services had
got better.
-
Schwarzenegger
to guest star at Tory conference - David
Cameron is to add some Hollywood glitz to this year's Tory Party
conference with a guest appearance by film star-turned-politician
Arnold Schwarzenegger, it was announced today. Mr
Schwarzenegger, now the Republican governor of California, will join
Tories gathering at Blackpool to deliver a keynote address on climate
change. Under the governorship of the Terminator star, California
became the first state in the US to pass laws imposing a mandatory cap
on environmentally damaging "greenhouse gas" emissions.
(COMMENTARY:
Kill me now! Seriously though, if you haven't done so already,
check out Arnies dark background in our Schwarzenegger
archive or go to the external website arnoldexposed.com)
-
Self-defense
no longer a British hallmark -
...But Britons aren't just expected to refrain from their own
self-defense; they are actively prevented from engaging in such.
Since there's obviously no Constitution with a Second Amendment
protecting the right of citizens to bear arms in Britain,
home-invasion robberies are frighteningly common. By contrast, home
invasions in America are relatively low. The logic here is that in
America, where anyone could potentially have a gun in his or her
house, criminals are less likely to break into a house that is
occupied. But in those rare cases when a homeowner in Britain breaks
the law by keeping a gun and then uses it to defend himself against
robbers, he, not the assailants, is more at risk for prosecution.
(RELATED:
See our Disarmed
and Enslaved
archive)
-
Lewisville
DNA testing lab offers child ID cards among many services -
Lewisville residents in need of DNA testing do not have to go out of
town in order to find such a service. Bio-Synthesis
Inc., located at 612 East Main Street, is one of only two DNA
accredited testing labs in North Texas. It offers DNA testing to
people of all regions, races and classes, and offers the services for
a wide variety of reasons. Dr. Miquel Castro, who runs the service
with a staff of qualified personnel, recently took a much stronger
interest in offering child identification cards, complete with DNA
information. “With more and more children being kidnapped, it has
become increasingly important for children to have all the information
possible to prove their identities,” Castro said.
-
VeriChip
Corporation Installs its 30th Infant Protection System in Puerto Rico
- VeriChip
Corporation, a provider of RFID systems for healthcare and
patient-related needs, announced that it has installed its 30th infant
protection system in Puerto Rico. VeriChip's
Hugs or HALO infant protection systems are in use in 30 of the 42
birthing hospitals in Puerto Rico listed by the American Hospital
Association. Achieving over 70% market share in Puerto Rico is a
reflection of VeriChip's strong distribution network on the island,
and the high level of awareness of the infant abduction threat.
Electronic infant protection systems are now the norm for hospitals of
all sizes, encouraged by legislation enacted by the Puerto Rico
legislature in 1999 to require hospitals to invest in infant
protection measures. Dan Gunther, president of VeriChip, commented,
"We applaud the proactive approach to infant protection taken by
so many hospitals in Puerto Rico, and we are proud to partner with
these hospitals to help protect their smallest patients. Puerto Rico
is setting a strong example for infant protection, not only for the
United States, but countries around the world."
-
What
is the point of an ID card at all? -
Home Office minister Joan Ryan would be well advised to check her
facts in future. Her
response on Friday to Geraint Bevan's letter (April 6) not only
attempts to put words into Mr Bevan's mouth - a classic politician's
move, to fight a "straw man" rather than the facts - but
fails to address his key point. The government proposes spending
billions of pounds compelling everyone in the UK to register their
personal details with the Home Office, fining them or denying them
services, benefits or a passport if they fail to comply. Schedule 1 of
the Identity Cards Act 2006 lists the personal information that may be
recorded on the National Identity Register (NIR), which includes your
name and any other names you are known by or have been known by, your
address and every other address that you have lived at.
-
‘Millions
to rebel’ over ID cards -
The government is predicting that some 15m people will revolt against
Tony Blair’s controversial ID card scheme by refusing to produce the
new cards or provide personal data on demand. The
forecast is made in documents released by the Home Office under the
Freedom of Information Act. The papers show ministers expect national
protests similar to the poll tax rebellions of the Thatcher era, with
millions prepared to risk criminal prosecution. Opposition MPs said
the new documents proved their case that the programme would never
work. David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: “This will
cripple the system. Fifteen million is a massive number. What the Home
Office is accepting in private, but refuses to accept in public, is
that a massive number of ordinary law-abiding citizens simply will not
go along with their scheme.”
-
Religion
on Indonesian ID cards blamed for deaths - Indonesia's
small, plastic identity cards may seem innocuous enough but
campaigners who are trying to have the compulsory religion category
dropped say they are behind many sectarian killings. "People
have been killed in sectarian conflicts because religion is mentioned
on the cards," said activist Maya Safira, who heads a non-profit
group that seeks to embrace Indonesians of different backgrounds.
Safira's National Integration Movement wants religion removed from the
cards because Muslim-majority Indonesia has a history of religious
conflict.
-
Fingerprint
foreboding - I WAS
JOLTED to read last week that public schools in Taunton are planning
to use a fingerprint scan as a way to enable students to pay for
lunch. At the
cash register, the student will simply tap a finger on an electronic
reader, and a pre-stored mathematical formula derived from a
fingerprint will bring up the student's account. Some parents, as well
as lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union, raised objections;
in some other states, fingerprints-for-lunch have already been banned.
The explicit concern is articulated in terms of worries about identity
theft, but a more visceral reaction to fingerprints may account for
the skepticism.
-
IT
workers back 'Nasa hacker' McKinnon:
Community service or a fine a better sentence, survey claims - Fewer
than half of IT professionals questioned in an online survey want
'Nasa hacker' Gary McKinnon jailed for hacking. A poll carried out by
security company Sophos found that 48 per cent feel that jail is the
most appropriate sentence if McKinnon is found guilty, while 42 per
cent suggested community service and 10 per cent a fine. McKinnon
looks set to be extradited to the US to face trial for allegedly
hacking into computers belonging to the US Army, US Air Force,
Department of Defense and Nasa, having lost his appeal to remain in
the UK earlier this week.
-
New
Memory Implants Make Large Strides:
The BrainGate implantCuring debilitating cerebral problems may just be
a memory chip away - A
new brain implant that could potentially solve a number of
brain-related problems, ranging anywhere from Alzheimer’s to memory
loss. The research for the brain implant is being headed by Ted Berger
from the University of Southern California Los Angeles. A pioneer of
his field, Berger earned his Ph.D. in 1976 at the age of 26. From
there, though, he parted ways with the thinking of many of his
colleagues. “The idea was that you could solve every brain problem
with a drug or surgery,” said Berger to Stephen Handelman from
Popular Science. Berger instead chose to look at the brain itself as a
source to solve brain-related issues.
-
YouTube
latest victim of Thailand censors - Thailand’s
decision to ban the video-sharing site YouTube highlights how
aggressively the kingdom has tried to rein in the media since the
military coup last year, analysts said. YouTube
has been unavailable in Thailand since Wednesday, after Thai
authorities blocked it over videos deemed offensive to the nation’s
revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej. In the nearly seven months since the
ouster of prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the military has also
blacked out international news broadcasts, seized a private television
station, and blocked political websites.
-
Five
more years in Iraq, say defence papers -
Britain's "overstretched" armed forces will fight in Iraq
for at least another five years.
A confidential planning document drawn up by defence chiefs called the
Operational Tour Plot, parts of which have been disclosed to this
newspaper, reveals that troops will be serving on operations in the
Gulf until at least 2012. News of the future operations can be
revealed just three days after four soldiers, two of them women, were
killed in a carefully planned ambush in Basra, taking the British
forces death toll in Iraq to 140.
-
Ban
the Bulb?: "If
all 4 billion incandescent sockets were filled with CFLs we'd have
nearly 50,000 pounds of mercury spread around every single US
household" - In
a few weeks the US Congress is likely to vote to phase out the
standard incandescent lightbulb within a decade. The frantic race to
see who can best appease the global warming alarmists will claim
another victim, the friendly glow of the direct descendant of Thomas
Edison's filament-based light bulb. Why would the humble lightbulb, a
staple commodity that has raised the standard of living throughout the
world, be in the bullseye? It was the incandescent electric light bulb
that abolished the tyranny of the night. Our 19th and 20th century
ancestors believed it one of the greatest gifts of civilization
because they had directly experienced life before electric lighting
changed everything. In 2002, former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld
briefly reminded us of this blessing when he commented on the
satellite imagery revealing the nighttime darkness in North Korea, but
other than this brief moment, we seem to have forgotten what we owe to
Edison's first invention.
Sunday
08th April 2007: -
-
Secret
paper reveals Labour's lies over ID cards -
The Government faces damaging claims of misleading voters over ID
cards after documents revealed it always planned to make the
controversial scheme compulsory.
Whitehall papers, which the Government has fought for two years to
suppress, disclose that Labour intended to force the public to sign up
to the programme. They appear to contradict commitments given by
Labour in its 2005 Election manifesto, which pledged that the cards,
and the national identity register containing people's names,
addresses, fingerprints and other information, would be 'on a
voluntary basis'.
-
9-11
Truth on The View: Rosie
O: Another Unexpected Hero -
The Truth will not change. Perception of the Truth continuously grows.
While Rosie may not get www.911Truth.org on the View, some great
nuggets of truth have been leaking out to the people. Rosie O'Donnell
is a small test case for the 9-11 Truth movement. If right-wing
pressure succeeds in getting Rosie villainized, kicked off the View,
and blacklisted for simply asking questions about what really happened
on September 11th, then it could have a chilling effect on some other
Truth tellers and embolden the real rightwing enemies of freedom and
liberty.
-
The
Eleventh Day of Every Month: The Third Stage -
An 84% majority of the American people believe the Bush administration
has engaged in a cover-up surrounding 9/11. At least one third of
Americans believe the attacks were an inside job. Small groups of
vocal individuals have been the only ones in history that have
fundamentally changed history. 9/11 truth is alive and kicking!: -
-
Hotel
hands customers' credit card details to phoney cops - BLUNDERING
staff at one of Britain's biggest budget hotel chains handed over
thousands of customers' credit card details to conmen posing as
police. Some
guests at Travelodge - which boasts "Your details are 100 per
cent secure" - then became fraud victims. The astonishing bungle
happened after a man claiming to be "Detective Constable
Sharma" phoned up and demanded all recent credit card invoices.
Staff at Travelodge in Skipton, North Yorks, assumed the request was
linked to a guest who had fled without paying.
-
Pawns
in a losing game: Britain's policy in tatters: Fifteen
British hostages are freed, at cost unknown. Meanwhile, six soldiers
pay with their lives in Basra. Raymond Whitaker, Anne Penketh and
Angus McDowall ask: just what are our soldiers dying for? - If
anything symbolised the degree to which Tony Blair's adventurous
foreign policy has embroiled Britain in dangerous, unpredictable
conflicts and wholly unintended consequences, it was the juxtaposition
of joy and horror last Thursday. The television news channels ran
endless footage of 15 sailors and Royal Marines, freed by Iran after a
two-week hostage saga that had taken almost daily twists and turns.
But scrolling across the bottom of the screens was the news that four
other service personnel, two of them women, and an Iraqi interpreter
had been killed by an explosion in southern Iraq, the worst British
loss of life in a single incident there for several months. A fifth
soldier remains in a critical condition.
-
Brown's
poll ratings down - More
than half of Britons believe Gordon Brown is not fit to be the next
prime minister in light of last week's revelations about the impact
his 1997 tax reforms had on the pensions system, a new poll has shown.
Just 27 per
cent of those questioned in the YouGov poll for the Sunday Times said
they thought the chancellor was capable of replacing Tony Blair at No
10, compared to 57 per cent who said he was not. The disappointing
poll rating comes after it emerged last week that Mr Brown had ignored
Treasury warnings that his 1997 decision to scrap tax relief on share
dividends could create a £75 billion pensions black hole.
Saturday
07th April 2007: -
-
Electronic
payments to get the finger -
Imagine a day when the only item you'll need to take to the
supermarket to complete a transaction is your index finger. The
concept is already a reality in a limited capacity in some places
around the world but observers believe the technology could become
mainstream by 2012. However, using biometric scanning to make
transactions is expected to be one of many new methods that are part
of a revolution in payments technology already taking place.
(RELATED:
See our Cashless
Society Control Grid
archive)
-
ID
Scanners at Bars Raise Privacy Questions -
We're used to giving personal information about ourselves when there's
a security issue, maybe using a credit card in a store or getting on
an airplane. But
new technology tracks us in places we may not even know about. You can
now put "going to a bar" on the list. Now when some places
check your ID, they've got a permanent record of your information. The
next time you request a table or order a round, the bartender might
know your age, height, and eye color before you even make eye contact.
That's thanks to new scanning equipment that's becoming mainstream.
Rockford's Silver Lounge uses scanners to uncover the underage.
General Manager Addison Jun says, "It's just pretty much this
little scanner that's meant to scan drivers licenses, business cards
and it just kind of helps keep track of everybody."
-
Idaho
School Punishes Kids Who Owe Cafeteria Money By Giving Brown-Bag
Lunches - Junior
high school students in this southern Idaho town who owe money on past
cafeteria lunches have received a firsthand lesson in economics and
debt. It came
in the lunch room, not the classroom, when students with outstanding
balances saw their hot food trays publicly dumped into the garbage and
replaced with sack lunches. "It was perfectly legal, and it was
not done to set those students apart from the others," Mary Lu
Barry, secondary programs director for the Twin Falls School District,
told The Times-News. "It was done to send the message to students
that if they want regular school lunch they have to pay the fee."
About 150 students at Vera C. O'Leary Junior High School ended up with
sack lunches on Monday, but were still charged the full price for a
hot lunch. Students at the school have accounts that they use with a fingerprint
identification system* at the cafeteria's cash register. The cost
of lunch is automatically displayed and deducted from a student's
account.
(*NOTE: Our
emphasis on the 'fingerprint identification system' added...
you see how this system works now!?)
-
'Prostate
patients' given drugs just to meet targets -
Thousands of men with prostate cancer are being given unnecessary and
potentially harmful drug treatment to clear hospital waiting lists,
according to a leading cancer specialist.
Oncologist Chris Hamilton claims the "crazy" system of
Government targets means prostate patients often head the queue for
radiotherapy treatment - even when they don't need it - ahead of other
cancer patients. But hospitals face penalties if cancer patients are
not given treatment within four weeks, he said. By giving hormones to
some prostate patients, doctors can tick the box saying they've
started treatment.
(RELATED:
See our Compromised
Health
archive)
-
Shreveport
Regional employees subjected to random screening - Nearly
everyone must subject themselves to airport security checks at
Shreveport Regional Airport.
Even the screeners are being screened. Employees at the airport have
been undergoing random searches by the Transportation Security
Administration for several months as part of the agency's mission to
improve security at airports across the nation. "This has been
happening at every airport behind the scenes for six months,"
said Andrea McCauley, a regional spokeswoman for TSA based in the
Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. "It's part of our
multilayered approach to security."
-
Fight
to save story of 9/11 goes on: State
officials try to resolve what WTC records and items can and should be
preserved - More
than five years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade
Center, archivists are still grappling with how and what to preserve
of public records pertaining to the attacks and recovery efforts.
Officials with the State Archives and State Museum participated in a
recent conference in New York City headlined by U.S. Archivist Allen
Weinstein. "Almost every state government agency was involved in
some way with the response and recovery following the attacks,"
said State Archivist Christine Ward, who attended the conference.
While the State Archives has systems in place for preserving routine
records of each state agency at automatic intervals, some files
pertaining to their work after 9/11 don't fall into that category.
-
Calif.
Woman Sues Patrol, Accuses Officer Of Saying Her 'People' Caused 9-11
Attacks - A woman
of Iranian descent is suing the California Highway Patrol, alleging
that an officer who stopped her for speeding accused her ``people'' of
being responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Zahra
Sedaghatpour, 38, of Fremont, alleges her civil rights were violated
when Officer Jon Schatmeier, 32, berated her after she asked not to be
cited for traveling 79 mph on Interstate 680 last year.
-
9/11
Truth Reaches The Tipping Point:
Exponential growth secured by Rosie O'Donnell's public stance -
9/11 truth has reached its tipping point, with the exponential growth
of the movement secured following Rosie O'Donnell's brave public
stance as well as numerous other high profile individuals, ensuring
our numbers and influence expands on a weekly basis. In early February
we asked who the next 9/11 superhero would be. Rosie O'Donnell has
answered that question and now is the time for more public figures to
step forward and overwhelm the cultural zeitgeist to push 9/11 truth
over the edge and make it go truly supernova. We know of numerous
celebrities by name who have known about 9/11 truth for a very long
time and have considered whether to go public or not. Charlie Sheen
and Rosie O'Donnell are the canaries in the coal mine and they are
still standing. The climate is right for those in the know to flood
the media with 9/11 truth.
(RELATED:
See our 9/11
archive and our affiliated site 911truthskipton.com)

Friday
06th April 2007: -

-
9/11
Physicist Contacted To Appear On The View: Agreement
tentatively made for Steven Jones to discuss towers, WTC 7 collapse - Physicist
Professor Steven Jones has confirmed that Rosie O'Donnell's staff have
contacted him regarding a potential future appearance on The View to
discuss the improbable collapse of the twin towers and WTC 7. During a
debate on The View, O'Donnell promised to feature a physicist as a
guest on the show to discuss the physical evidence and the
impossibility of jet fuel melting steel. "A person from Rosie's
team contacted me by E mail," Professor Jones told the Alex Jones
Show, "so I wrote back to them and said I would be glad to appear
and I named two other physicists who I trust who could also
appear."
(RELATED:
See Steven Jones' website - journalof911studies.com)
-
Big
Country Songwriter Comes out for 9/11 Truth - Dan
Tyler's songs have become hits for LeAnn Rimes, Kenny Rogers, The Oak
Ridge Boys, Eddie Arnold, B.J. Thomas, Eddie Rabbit, The Nitty Gritty
Dirt Band, and many others. Tyler
is based in Nashville. "The importance of the 9/11 truth movement
cannot be overstated. Like me, millions of patriotic Americans
question the official explanation of the attacks. The questions and
the number of citizens asking them will increase until a tipping point
is reached and a new, aggressive investigation initiated. From this
new inquiry truths will emerge which will shake this country to its
foundations and, hopefully, restore our constitutional democracy.
Until that happy day arrives, however, the powerful forces aligned
against 9/11 truth will fight with fury and abandon. We must be strong
and resolute and take inspiration from apostles of peace like Gandhi
and King. At the most basic level, the struggle is love versus fear.
-
Prime
News and Popular Mechanics Attack Rosie and 9/11 Truth - They
promote stoprosie.com and ask people to sign petition to get her
fired. This is
Erica Hill's show on CNN Headline News from 04-04-07. James Miegs and
Ethan Czahor from stoprosie.com are the guests. James Miegs claims
that fire didn't have to melt the steel, it just had to be weakened by
it. But it did melt! Look at the pictures, better yet, look at a
portion of the FEMA report that was conviently left out of the NIST
report. Here is the link: www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_apc.pdf Go
ahead, read how he tested steel from the site and discovered that
steel was "liquefied".
-
'We
Gathered Intelligence' -
The captain in charge of the 15 marines detained in Iran has said they
were gathering intelligence on the Iranians. Sky
News went on patrol with Captain Chris Air and his team in Iraqi
waters close to the area where they were arrested - just five days
before the crisis began. We withheld the interview until now so it
would not jeopardise their safety. And today, former Iranian diplomat
Dr Mehrdad Khonsari said if the Iranians had known about it, they
would have used it to "justify taking the marines captive and put
them on trial".
-
12,000
more Guard troops may be going to Iraq:
Deployment order planned to lessen ‘surge’s’ strain on
stretched-thin Army -
Coming on the heels of a controversial “surge” of 21,000 U.S.
troops that has stretched the Army thin, the Defense Department is
preparing to send an additional 12,000 National Guard combat forces to
Iraq and Afghanistan, defense officials told NBC News on Thursday. The
troops will come from four Guard combat brigades in different states,
the officials told NBC News’ chief Pentagon correspondent, Jim
Miklaszewski. They said papers ordering the deployment, which would
run for one year beginning in early 2008, were awaiting Defense
Secretary Robert Gates’ signature.
-
Nine
Inch Nails: Entire 'Year Zero' Album Available For Streaming -
Nine Inch Nails' entire new album, "Year Zero", is being
streamed at the YearZero.nin.com web site (free e-mail registration
required in top right hand corner of page).
Due on April 17, "Year Zero" is reportedly the first of two
concept albums, the second of which mainman Trent Reznor hopes to
finish next year. Reznor recently told Gigwise.com that the concept
behind "Year Zero" was partially inspired by his feelings
toward the Bush administration. Reznor explained, "I really
wanted to focus on something that was at the forefront of my
consciousness which is, as an American, I'm appalled by the behavior
of our government, the direction that it has taken and the direction
that it's taken everyone else in the world and its arrogance. I
decided to write an essay about where the world might be if we
continue down the path that we're on with a neo-con-esque government
doing whatever it pleases."
-
Dangers
of the Big Brother state -
THE BRITISH government is to introduce security cameras fitted with
loudspeakers to allow security staff to berate people spotted engaging
in anti-social behaviour.
While ministers insist the scheme will help cut crime, critics say
this is another step down the road to a Big Brother state. And it’s
hard to disagree with them. Britain is the most watched country in the
world, with an estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras, or one for every 14
people. Special devices fitted to police cars can scan all number
plates within a given radius at any time and simultaneously match them
to databases identifying anything from a criminal connection to a
parking fine. Millions of shoppers unwittingly have their spending
habits sold to businesses, through software analysing retail patterns
obtained from loyalty cards. In some councils, tiny cameras have been
fitted to recycling bins to catch people putting rubbish in the wrong
bin.
-
Cameras
Being Installed on NLV Police Taser Guns -
Lots of questions have been raised about Tasers and now a new video
camera may answer some of them. Cameras
are being installed on Taser guns to record the situation as it
unfolds. It's actually something the North Las Vegas Police Department
is excited about. Adding video cameras to Tasers is an idea that has
been tossed around among law enforcement agencies for the last year,
but in a couple of days, the NLVPD will start using the cameras, and
many are hoping the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department follows
suit.
-
FCC
Seeks to Reform 911 Call Tracking - People
make more 911 calls from cellular telephones than landlines these
days, and police and firefighters increasingly worry about finding
those callers in distress. Contrary
to what is portrayed on television crime shows, the accuracy of the
technology that guides rescuers to cell phone callers can range from a
few yards to several miles, even though federal law requires providers
to guarantee that their callers can be located in emergencies. Aiming
to improve accuracy, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin
Martin told The Associated Press this week that he will propose
significant changes in the 911 system.
-
Proposed
butt ban reeks of Big Brother -
The Ontario Tobacco-Free Network wants to take the ban on smoking in
public places to a new level - high rise apartment buildings, and
rather than dismissing the idea outright, Health Minister George
Smitherman says he is interested in having the proposed ban debated in
the public forum. The
proposal is to have the provincial government make it illegal for
high-rise apartment dwellers to light up in their own homes. While the
argument against smoking in public places is weak, at best, crossing
the threshold of a person's residence smacks of the Big Brother
syndrome.
-
British
Embassy starts biometric data collection -
The British Embassy has introduced biometric data collection as part
of the visa application process that requires their biometric data for
collection (finger scans and digital photographs) while submitting the
applications. The
British Embassy, in a statement Thursday, said that the embassy has
also opened a new Visa Application Centre at Nagpokhari Road near
Lazimpat, in partnership with VFS Global. The new visal application
centre will start from April 26 and the new visa application process
will also start from the same date. The embassy said that the
collection of biometric data from all applications for UK visas was a
key part of the British Government's five-year Asylum and Immigration
Strategy.
-
Biometric
IDs deserve the finger:
I personally don't feel comfortable with the idea of sharing my
unique, irreplaceable and unchanging physical data for identification
purposes - Nowadays,
hospitals take your finger, toe, hand and footprints sometime between
your entrance into the world and exit from the maternity ward. The
Texas Department of Public Service records your thumbprint when you
get your driver's license, and your booking officer inks your hands
whenever you go to jail. If bills heard this week before the House and
Senate transportation committees pass muster and become law, Texans
could soon be using their "involved and delicate pattern left by
the ball of a finger" for age-verification purposes, i.e. to buy
tobacco, liquor and tickets for the Lotto or R-rated movies. Lobbyists
from biometric company Pay By Touch likened their electronic
fingerprint identification system to having a "virtual
wallet" that can be accessed with the touch of a digit to a
scanner. Rather than getting carded for booze, you get fingered
instead. Even more unsettling is that electronic fingerprints could be
linked to people's bank accounts or credit cards, for the
dissemination of welfare funds from the state or the purchase of a
candy bar at the neighborhood Albertson's (or Piggly Wiggly).
-
European
Union Action Now - David Noakes and
Brian Gerrish founding the Action Now New Battle for Britain project
describes what serious danger their country is in and ... all » how
to fix the situation. This is a recording of a live presentation in
England: -
(David
has a website: eutruth.org.uk)
-
Don't
be too quick to embrace HPV vaccine - The
misconceptions of the HPV vaccine are widespread, not just by families
but doctors who seem to have a never-ending faith in a drug safety
system that brought us Vioxx and 70,000-plus related deaths. It
is disturbing that the maker of the current HPV vaccine, Merck, which
is accused of lying to the FDA and to the medical community about
Vioxx safety, is being given a blank check of trust by professionals.
The Gardasil studies are similar to Merck's Vioxx work - Merck funded
all of them, the authors include patent holders, Merck employees - 41
percent - and those that receive money from Merck - 80 percent.
(RELATED:
See our Compromised
Health
archive)
-
County
clerk: Watch for fraud, absentee voters -
With less than two weeks before Election Day, Cook County Clerk David
Orr forwarded two cases of possible vote fraud in Harvey and Chicago
Heights to the state's attorney's office. The
allegations involve potential improprieties with absentee voting,
which is reserved for voters who cannot get to their polling place on
Election Day. Voters who will be out of town or are homebound often
rely on mail-in absentee ballots, which campaign workers are not
supposed to handle. Voters who would like to vote absentee must apply
for a ballot through Orr's office.
-
New
Jersey School Stages Practice Hostage Drill: Portrays
Killers as Fundamentalist Christians: Superintendent says, “We need
to practice under conditions as real as possible” – On
Thursday, March 22, officials at Burlington Township High School
enlisted the help of two local policemen to carry out a mock
‘hostage situation’ drill at their school. The drill invoked
disapproval from Christian students as the student body was told that
the alleged gunmen were “members of a right-wing fundamentalist
group called the 'New Crusaders' who don't believe in separation of
church and state.” According to a report in the local paper, The
Burlington County Times, the mock gunmen pretended to gun down several
students in the hallways before taking 10 students hostage in the
school’s media center. Given that the drill was intended to test the
disaster response of students, faculty and local emergency personnel,
county officers were dispatched during the drill to realistically
execute an emergency evacuation of the building.
-
Solar
Bursts May Threaten GPS - The
Global Positioning System, relied on for everything from navigating
cars and airplanes to transferring money between banks, may be
threatened by powerful solar flares, a panel of scientists warned
Wednesday. "Our
increasingly technologically dependent society is becoming
increasingly vulnerable to space weather," David L. Johnson,
director of the National Weather Service, said at a briefing. GPS
receivers have become widely used in recent years, using satellite
signals in navigating airplanes, ships and automobiles, and in using
cell phones, mining, surveying and many other commercial uses.
Thursday
05th April 2007: -
-
Some
see scans for lunch as taste of Big Brother: Taunton
schools to use fingerprints - Taunton
schools this spring could become the first in Massachusetts to have
students pay for lunch by scanning their fingerprints, a plan that is
triggering an uproar among parents and ACLU officials worried about
privacy and possible identity theft. Under the plan, which is
voluntary, schools will scan two fingerprints from each student, which
will be converted into an individual number linked to a meal account.
When they buy lunch, students will tap their finger on a reader that
brings up the account. The cashier will enter the items and deduct the
cost. School officials say the new system will speed the cafeteria
line, possibly let parents monitor what children eat, and lift the
stigma from poor students who receive free or reduced-price lunches.
They say the system is secure because the fingerprint image is never
stored, only a numeric representation of it.
-
Officials
defend schoolboy drug tests - Anti-doping
officials have targeted schoolboy rowers in Sydney, sparking anger
from headmasters after students had to strip and provide urine
samples. Australian
Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) officials demanded samples from
Sydney Church of England Grammar School (Shore) rowers three weeks ago
at an inter-school regatta, a News Limited newspaper reports today.
But when the officials returned for more samples last Saturday at
Sydney's Head of the River Regatta they were refused permission to
test the mainly 17-year-old boys.
-
Study:
Police abuse goes unpunished -
More than 10,000 complaints of police abuse were filed with Chicago
police between 2002 and 2004, but only 19 resulted in meaningful
disciplinary action, a new study concludes.
The study contends the Chicago Police Department should not be allowed
to police itself. Instead, an independent civilian oversight board
should monitor and investigate police abuse reports to ensure
accountability for every officer’s conduct. The study was conducted
by University of Chicago law professor Craig B. Futterman and the
Invisible Institute, a Chicago-based company that works on social
justice projects. “The way in which CPD investigates police abuse is
a joke,” Futterman said. “If the CPD investigated civilian crime
in the same way it investigates police abuse, they’d never solve a
case.”
-
Retail
trade groups team up with FBI to launch online data base to fight
organized theft - Two
leading retail industry associations have teamed up with the Federal
Bureau of Investigation to create a national online database that will
allow merchants to share information to fight organized retail theft
in the United States. The
database, scheduled to debut Monday with 40 retailers, consolidates
efforts made by the National Retail Federation and the Retail Industry
Leaders Association. Both organizations had launched their own
password-protected online national crime data bases last year.
Previously, merchants had never shared information, so organized rings
could hit various stores in one area without being detected.
-
Beijing
Female Falun Gong Practitioner Critically Beaten -
On June 14, 2005, Beijing Falun Gong practitioner Zhang Lianying was
kidnapped by a dozen of local police who broke into her home. On
June 30, she was sentenced to two-and-half-year re-education through
labor. From August to mid-October 2005, Zhang suffered ceaseless
beatings, insults, torture and other maltreatment at the 9th Brigade
of the Tuanhe dispatch division in Beijing. On March 20, 2007, for
persisting in practicing Falun Gong, she was beaten to the point of
suffering massive hemorrhage in the bilateral cerebrum of her brain.
As a consequence, she was sent to Renhe Hospital in Beijing's Daxing
District and has been under emergency treatment ever since.
-
Kelly
to unveil anti-extremism plan - An
action plan for forging a new coalition against violent extremism is
to be unveiled by Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly. Proposals
include strengthening governance in mosques, extending citizenship
education in madrasas, and measures to boost civic and theological
leadership. Launching the strategy in London, Ms Kelly will say that
the Government must focus as much on "winning heart and
minds" as on a robust security response.
-
US
Homeland Security chief fears Briton could stage next 9/11 - The
United States fears that the next September 11-style attack on America
could be launched by Muslims from Britain or Europe. According
to a report in The Telegraph, US Homeland Security chief Michael
Chertoff said Washington is determined to build extra defences against
so-called "clean skin" terrorists from Europe. Chertoff, who
arrives in Britain this week for talks with Home Secretary John Reid,
is reportedly concerned about a European threat "We need to build
layers of protection, and I don't think we totally want to rely upon
the fact that a foreign government is going to know that one of their
citizens is suspicious and is going to be coming here," he said.
Wednesday
04th April 2007: -
-
Shouting
CCTV camera scheme extended: Government
spends £500,000 to install cameras with loudspeakers which let
security staff berate people in public for littering and fighting - CCTV
cameras are set to become a little more proactive. A
half-million-pound scheme to fit the ubiquitous devices with
loudspeakers - which let security staff tell-off people on the spot
for littering, fighting or vandalising property - is to be expanded,
the UK government said today. Home Secretary John Reid said the
shouting cameras will help cut crime, but critics countered the idea
is another lurch towards Britain becoming a "surveillance
society". The government has given nearly £500,000 to pay for
the new cameras in 20 areas after trials around the country.
-
'Stop
Rosie' Website, Petition: Because
they can't debate us on the facts, Neo-Con bootlickers use mob
intimidation tactics to shut down free speech - Anti-American
enemies of free speech have launched an official campaign to have
Rosie O'Donnell fired for asking questions about 9/11 and the Iranian
hostage crisis, setting up a website and a farcical poll - a sizable
portion of whose signatories consist of fake names and joke entries.
"We would like to make it very clear that we support Miss
O’Donnell’s right to say whatever she deems appropriate. This is a
free country and she has the right of free speech. We are not
demanding that government or Disney-ABC censor anything she, or anyone
else, says," states the website, obviously worried that if Rosie
were to be fired, legal consequences would inevitably follow.
-
Bill
O'Reilly reports on JFK Assassinations Committee - Bill
O'Reilly, when he was on Inside Edition, reports on Oswald's
association with the CIA. Gee Bill, here you are spouting a conspiracy
theory! That's unamerican. Why do you hate this country, you two-faced
hypocrite? I'm not saying that you should be fired. I'm saying that
Fox News has a BIG problem. Just when was it that you turned to the
dark side?: -
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