27 people have been killed and 352 wounded when two bombs exploded within minutes of each other outside separate mosques in Lebanon’s northern city of Tripoli on Friday, state news and private television networks reported.
One of the bombs exploded near the Taqwa mosque as worshippers spilled out of the religious center following Friday prayers. Minutes later a second explosion struck the Salam mosque in the Mina area near the waterfront.
Lebanon: Twin bombing kills 27 and wounds 352 in Tripoli
9/11 trial lawyer: CIA had its finger on Guantánamo’s mute button
Mystery solved, if there was any doubt: It was the CIA that hit the mute button in the war court earlier this year when a defense lawyer for the accused 9/11 mastermind began talking about the CIA’s secret overseas prisons, the lawyer said Monday.
The Jan. 28 episode so embarrassed Army Col. James Pohl, the judge in the Sept. 11 terror case, that he ordered the kill switch unplugged, an order the agency apparently honored because no outside entity has censored the court since.
Texas drought: frack the water + frack the climate = “dear God help us”
The state of Texas is in a state of pain.
We almost have to invent a new word to convey the sense of a drought this devastating: 98% of the state is experiencing drought, with areas of “severe” and “exceptional” drought.
Farmers and ranchers are selling their herds. Yet in some towns, the fracking industry is being allowed to use 50% of the water. You can call Texas Governor Rick Perry to ask him why: (512) 463-2000.
Chris Hedges: Bradley Manning and the Gangster State
The swift and brutal verdict read out by Army Col. Judge Denise Lind in sentencing Pfc. Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison means we have become a nation run by gangsters. It signals the inversion of our moral and legal order, the death of an independent media, and the open and flagrant misuse of the law to prevent any oversight or investigation of official abuses of power, including war crimes.
The passivity of most of the nation’s citizens—the most spied upon, monitored and controlled population in human history—to the judicial lynching of Manning means they will be next. There are no institutional mechanisms left to halt the shredding of our most fundamental civil liberties, including habeas corpus and due process, or to prevent pre-emptive war, the assassination of U.S. citizens by the government and the complete obliteration of privacy.
Guantanamo lawyer floats possible defense argument: 9/11 attack justified
The accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks has a right to justify the worst terror attack on U.S. soil at his death-penalty trial, and that requires exchanging material about jihad with his defense team, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's lawyer told an Army judge Wednesday.
Veteran criminal defense attorney David Nevin invoked "recent history, ancient history" and "impressions throughout many areas of the world of Western oppression" in an argument to bring Guantanamo prison's legal-mail handling policy in line with what he cast as American Bar Association standards.
FBI granted power to delay citizenship for Muslims, ACLU report says
A covert national security programme allows the FBI and US immigration authorities the power to indefinitely delay immigration benefits to Muslims and those from Muslim countries, according to an investigation by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The previously unknown programme, which began in 2008 under George W Bush to identify those with links to terrorism, has continued under President Obama to blacklist law-abiding applicants and profile Muslims as "national security concerns", according to the ACLU.
Secret Court: NSA Surveillance Program Was Unconstitutional
A secret federal court found that the National Security Agency violated the civil rights of Americans when it collected thousands of emails and other digital messages between Americans, according to a 2011 opinion released Wednesday.
The FISA court ruled parts of the program to be unconstitutional and ordered them to be revised. The government made changes and the court signed off on the program in November of 2011.
The release of a key opinion from October 2011 (pdf) and other documents was authorized today by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, in response to requests from privacy advocates.
Bradley Manning's sentence: 35 years for exposing us to the truth
As of today, Wednesday 21 August 2013, Bradley Manning has served 1,182 days in prison. He should be released with a sentence of time served. Instead, the judge in his court martial at Fort Meade, Maryland has handed down a sentence of 35 years.
Of course, a humane, reasonable sentence of time served was never going to happen. This trial has, since day one, been held in a kangaroo court. That is not angry rhetoric; the reason I am forced to frame it in that way is because President Obama made the following statements on record, before the trial even started:
TVNL Comment: This is breaking news. It is also a black mark on our system of military 'justice.' Despite their crimes, George Bush, Dick Cheney and their murderous cohorts go free, while a man who dared to reveal the atrocities committed by his own country is imprisioned.
How The NRA Built A Massive Secret Database Of Gun Owners
The National Rifle Association has rallied gun owners — and raised tens of millions of dollars — campaigning against the threat of a national database of firearms or their owners.
But in fact, the sort of vast, secret database the NRA often warns of already exists, despite having been assembled largely without the knowledge or consent of gun owners. It is housed in the Virginia offices of the NRA itself. The country’s largest privately held database of current, former, and prospective gun owners is one of the powerful lobby’s secret weapons, expanding its influence well beyond its estimated 3 million members and bolstering its political supremacy.
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