Sunday, Dec 07th
Last update10:34:05 AM GMT
When I traveled to Gaza last week, everywhere I went, a photo haunted me. I saw it in a brochure called "Gaza will not die" that Hamas gives out to visitors at the border crossing. A poster-sized version was posted outside a makeshift memorial at the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. And now that I am back home, the image comes to me when I look at children playing in the park, when I glance at the school across the street, when I go to sleep at night.
From October 2003 until May 2005, I was illegally detained by the U.S. government and held in CIA-run "black sites" with no contact with the outside world. On May 5, 2005, without explanation, my American captors removed me from my cell and cuffed, hooded, and bundled me onto a plane that delivered me to Sana'a, Yemen. I was transferred into the custody of my own government, which held me -- apparently at the behest of the United States -- until March 27, 2006, when I was finally released, never once having faced any terrorism-related charges. Since my release, the U.S. government has never explained why I was detained and has blocked all attempts to find out more about my detention.
Mesothelioma has long been linked to the inhalation and exposure to asbestos fibers and dust, so when scientists uncovered an additional potential cause for this incurable form of lung cancer, the unthinkable became a reality.
According to researchers based out of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington D.C., the early 90’s development of carbon nanotubes has been an amazing feat for technological applications, however, it has not gone without its price. Specifically, carbon nanotubes may be causing harm to the human body in the form of mesothelioma cancer.
Israel is assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists as part of a covert war against the Islamic Republic's illicit weapons program, the Daily Telegraph on Tuesday quoted Western intelligence analysts as saying. The British daily said Israel's Mossad espionage agency was rumored to be behind the death of Ardeshire Hassanpour, a top nuclear scientist at Iran's Isfahan uranium plant, who died in mysterious circumstances from reported "gas poisoning" in 2007.
Other recent deaths of important figures in the procurement and enrichment process in Iran and Europe have been the result of Israeli "hits", intended to deprive Tehran of key technical skills at the head of the program, according to the analysts.
"UBS admitted to conspiring to defraud the United States by impeding the IRS," the Justice Department announced late Wednesday.
The statement says that UBS, "in an unprecedented move" based on an order by Swiss authorities, has agreed "to immediately provide the U.S. government with the identities of, and account information for, certain U.S. customers of UBS's cross-border business."
TVNL Comment: This story broke in June of 2008, when a 'disgruntled employee' blew the whistle on UBS. At that time Sen. Leahy 'demanded' that the bank be closed down until the 'cleaned up their act.' Yeah, right.
The Food and Drug Administration put patients' lives at risk by halting enforcement of 30-year-old requirements that medical device makers meet federal laboratory standards prior to testing their products on humans, a watchdog group charges in a new report.
The rules at issue cover studies on an array of devices, including life-saving products such as defibrillators, pacemakers, coronary stents and heart valves.
he U.S. Department of Homeland Security tracked an anti-war group's plans for peaceful protests and passed the information on to the Maryland State Police, according to documents released to The Washington Post and reported in Tuesday's editions.
The documents are the first indication that the state police had federal partners during their widely condemned spying on activist groups, which went on in 2005 and 2006. The revelation has alarmed Maryland's U.S. senators, who are asking DHS for more details about how it obtained the information it shared.
State police have apologized for spying on peaceful activists and for classifying 53 people as terrorists in an internal database. Police have said the names were not put on federal anti-terrorism lists.
Children have been used as 'lab rats' in GM rice trials that were carried out in breach of ethics rules drawn up in response to the medical crimes of Nazi Germany, it is claimed.
Critics are furious that the GM rice was not put through animal feeding trials to ensure it was safe before being given to children.
The decision to use the children has been condemned as 'completely unacceptable' by a group of 22 scientists - all GM critics - from Britain and around the world.
They claim it is indicative of moves by the biotech lobby, led by the USA and biotech firms, to force GM food into the mouths of the world without proper assessment.
From today, it is illegal to photograph the police, despite the fact that they use increasingly aggressive techniques to record us.
On the day that it becomes illegal to take pictures of police engaged in counter-terrorist operations – in practice a ban on taking pictures of the police – it is worth noting events in Brighton recently where police set up outside a cafe and photographed people attending a meeting about the environment.
The local MP, David Lepper, agrees that the police operation was designed to scare activists rather than prevent crime, and has written to the divisional commander for Brighton and Hove demanding to know why officers were photographing people engaged in a political activity. The police have refused to comment other than to produce the usual assertion that this was a normal police operation.
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