This is an interesting article about what is wrong at the FBI. “The Bush administration has been happy to pick fights with the American Civil Liberties Union. But the White House has only tip-toed up to critically needed reforms at the FBI and other intelligence and counterterrorism agencies.” Joshua Micah Marshall
It is time to cut off the flow of weapons to Israel, which is the top recipient of U.S. military aid at $3 billion a year. According to a November 2001 Congressional Research Service report, “Israel: U.S. Foreign Assistance,” American aid to Israel in the past half century has totaled a whopping $81.3 billion. The [...]
“After more than a decade of trial and error and about $30 million in R&D, the 63-year-old Norris may be on the verge of changing the world as we hear it
True? The Guradian thinks that the failure of Abdullah’s peace plan may have something to do with it. “Saudi Arabia is teetering on the brink of collapse, fuelling Foreign Office fears of an extremist takeover of one of the West’s key allies in the war on terror.” Guardian Unlimited
“In the war on terror, the US is careful to show how fairly it’s treating the hundreds of orange-suited Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters locked behind the razor-wire of the US base at Guantanamo, Cuba. But what the US isn’t trumpeting is a quiet practice of shipping key Al Qaeda suspects to the Middle East [...]
“Lara Stemple, executive director of the non-profit human rights group Stop Prisoner Rape, told UPI, "Rape and HIV in prison is eight to 10 times as high as in the general population." Her group views AIDS as an unadjudicated death sentence because people who receive only a short sentence for their crime but contract AIDS [...]
“Yet many people who might have been entitled to file claims and share in settlements have received nothing, some lawyers say, because they were unaware of the suits. In other instances, they say, deserving consumers might have been turned away from joining a suit, although they could have qualified for another had they known of [...]
Why the Cuban trade embargo might be lifted: “"I feel at some point that the farm state politics will overwhelm the Florida politics," Mr. Flake said. Mr. Flake said he believed that his position would ultimately prevail because the needs of farm state lawmakers would trump White House concerns about losing favor with Florida voters.” [...]
“The South African prisons department has been forced to reinstate a governor who was sacked for resisting official pressure to destroy a secretly made video showing warders selling convicts weapons, drugs and juveniles for sex. Tatalo Setlai, the governor of Grootvlei prison, was sacked a fortnight ago, after the presentation of the video to a [...]
“According to statistics released by British de-mining agency the Halo Trust, Afghanistan is the most mined country in the world. The agency, whose operations in Angola drew a great deal of international attention when they were visited by the late Princess Diana, has estimated that over 500,000 landmines could still lie dormant. Other agencies estimate [...]