Wednesday, Jan 28th
Last update10:16:13 AM GMT
CIA-linked private military contractor Evergreen Defense & Security Services offered to post sentries at Oregon election offices on Tuesday, "detaining troublemakers" and making sure voters "do not get out of control."
According to the News Register, Evergreen "exudes the gung-ho patriotism that is associated with the company founder, a political conservative who enjoys close ties with the federal government and military."
Growing human organs in the laboratory has moved a step closer with the development of a biodegradable material forming a non-living "scaffold" on which beating heart muscle can be grown from stem cells.
The aim is to make three-dimensional organs from scratch, although in the shorter-term scientists will be happy to be able to seed the scaffolding with stem cells in order to mend broken hearts in situ rather than relying on a transplant operation.
A U.S. military tribunal found Osama bin Laden's media secretary guilty of conspiring with al Qaeda, soliciting murder and providing material support for terrorism in a verdict announced on Monday at Guantanamo.
Yemeni prisoner Ali Hamza al Bahlul is the second man to be convicted by a jury in the war crimes court at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He faces life in prison.
The intent, almost always, is to keep folks from voting or to confuse them, usually through intimidation or misinformation. But in this presidential race, in which a black man leads most polls, some of the deceit has a decidedly racist bent.
Complaints have surfaced in predominantly African-American neighborhoods of Philadelphia where fliers have circulated, warning voters they could be arrested at the polls if they had unpaid parking tickets or if they had criminal convictions.
The United States likes to portray itself as the bastion of freedom and champion of democracy, but if this were really true then there would be at least 6 or 8 different parties to choose from at election time, and given that it is now a country of over 300 million people a choice of at least 10 different parties would be more appropriate, but instead there are just two. Why is this? The reason comes down to the "concentration of power" issue that we addressed in an earlier article with respect to corporate America and the systematic disenfranchisement of its population.
In a rush to correct reports of substandard care for wounded soldiers, the Army flung open the doors of new specialized treatment centers so wide that up to half the soldiers currently enrolled do not have injuries serious enough to justify being there, The Associated Press has learned.
Army leaders are putting in place stricter screening procedures to stem the flood of patients overwhelming the units - a move that eventually will target some for closure.
A British newspaper says the commander of the Special Air Service in Afghanistan has resigned over the poor standard of equipment given to troops.
The Daily Telegraph reported Saturday that Maj. Sebastian Morley has quit over what he claims is chronic under investment in armoured vehicles.
It said he blames poor equipment for the deaths of at least four of his troops.
For weeks Republican leaders have warned that widely reported problems with fake voter registrations could result in a flood of phony votes in pivotal states.
But Ronald Michaelson, a veteran election administrator and member of the McCain-Palin Honest and Open Election Committee, said in an interview that he could not name a single instance in which this had occurred.
“Do we have a documented instance of voting fraud that resulted from a phony registration form? No, I can’t cite one, chapter and verse.”
Seems that "our troops" now have trouble voting, when, back in 2000, the GOP kept coming up with still more soldiers' votes for Bush at the 11th hour and after. Many of those ballots were too late, and others were improperly filled in--but, hey, that kind of thing would kill votes only when they would have gone to Gore. (Later, it came out that Rep. Steve Buyer, R-IN, worked closely with the Pentagon to get those iffy ballots rushed to Florida: a bald violation of the ban on partisan activities by the US military.)
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