Category: Archive

Deserter life sentences ‘inhuman’

admin /25 May, 2006

Proposals for British soldiers to get life sentences for desertion have been criticised as "inhuman and barbaric".

John McDonnell led Labour backbench calls to scrap the life imprisonment provision of the Armed Forces Bill.
He argued the plan was part of a crackdown on soldiers opposed to the war in Iraq, but his proposal was later rejected by MPs by 442 votes to 19.
Defence minister Tom Watson said life could apply only where desertion was "to avoid relevant service".
The bill aims to create a single system of law for the armed forces.

A Nation in Chains

admin /25 May, 2006

by Chris Floyd
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/floyd4.html
Beneath the thunder of the mighty cataclysms unleashed by the Bush Administration – the war crime in Iraq, the global torture gulag, the epic corruption, the gutting of the Constitution, the open embrace of presidential tyranny – a quieter degradation of American society has continued apace. And this slow descent into barbarism didn’t begin with George W. Bush – although his illicit regime certainly represents the apotheosis of the dark forces driving the decay.

With the world’s attention understandably diverted by the latest scandals and shameless posturings of the Bush Faction – domestic spying, bribes and hookers at the CIA, military units roaring down to the border to scare unarmed poor people looking for work – few noticed a small story that cast a harsh, penetrating light on the corrosion of the national character.

Fruit of the Poison Tree

admin /25 May, 2006

By Charles Sullivan
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13135.htm
05/21/06 " Information Clearing House" — –

 Millions of citizens are rightly calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush due to his criminal and unethical policies. Bush is a cancer not only on the presidency but upon basic human decency. Any sane person, regardless how marginal they are, can see that Bush must go and the sooner the better. However, when Bush is gone the system that produced him will remain in place, as healthy and viable as ever. It will continue to bear a plentiful crop of poison fruit, perhaps even more sinister than Bush.

Web inventor warns of ‘dark’ net

admin /25 May, 2006

By Jonathan Fildes
BBC News science and technology reporter in Edinburgh

The web should remain neutral and resist attempts to fragment it into different services, web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee has said.
Recent attempts in the US to try to charge for different levels of online access web were not "part of the internet model," he said in Edinburgh.
He warned that if the US decided to go ahead with a two-tier internet, the network would enter "a dark period".
Sir Tim was speaking at the start of a conference on the future of the web.
"What’s very important from my point of view is that there is one web," he said.
"Anyone that tries to chop it into two will find that their piece looks very boring."

The rise of the petro-rouble

admin /25 May, 2006

By Mike Whitney
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13141.htm
05/22/06 " Information Clearing House" — — “If one day the world’s largest oil producers demanded euros for their barrels, it would be the financial equivalent of a nuclear strike”. Bill O’ Grady, A.G. Edwards

On May 10, Russian President Vladimir Putin ignited a firestorm that is bound to sweep across the global economy. In his State of the Nation speech to parliament,, he announced that Russia was planning to make the ruble “internationally convertible” so that it could be used in oil and natural gas transactions. Presently, oil is denominated exclusively in dollars and sold through the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMX) or the London Petroleum Exchange (LPE) both owned by American investors. If Russia proceeds with its plan, the ruble will go nose to nose with the dollar on the open market sending several billions of surplus greenbacks back to the United States. This could potentially send the American economy into freefall; triggering a deep recession and an extended period of hyper-inflation.

“The ruble must become a more widespread means of international transactions,” Putin said. “To this end, we need to open a stock exchange in Russia to trade in oil, gas, and other goods to be paid for in rubles."

Police take anti-war banners

admin /25 May, 2006

By Arifa Akbar

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article570949.ece

The veteran peace activist Brian Haw was stripped of his anti-war banners and placards by up to 50 police officers in an early-morning raid in Parliament Square yesterday.

There were chaotic and farcical scenes as police wrestled with nine dishevelled protesters led by Mr Haw, and a 40-metre line of anti-war placards, including two donated by the graffiti artist Banksy, was dismantled and dumped in a metal container. Two demonstrators, Martin McGrath and Maria Gallastegui, who tried to climb the metal container to salvage the placards, were arrested. Mr Haw claimed that officers had seized his "personal belongings" as well, including bedding, clothes and a treasured Bible.

By yesterday afternoon, the 40-metre protest line had shrunk to three metres, with two small placards remaining. The police presence far outweighed that of the protesters, who included a mime artist bearing a thought bubble with the inscription "free speech".