The Spin; I’m In!

by GEF @ 5:52 PM MST

Remembering Beloved New Orleans…

Back to the Future - Johnny B. Goode

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Brought to you by Tyranny Central

anthony @ 18:20 BST

Handcuffed, Assaulted, Ticketed By Cop For Distributing 9/11 DVD’s

Harassment, unconstitutional search, attempted frame-up of Livonia man for truth movement activism

A Michigan man was harassed, handcuffed, assaulted, branded “unpatriotic” and subjected to an unconstitutional search of his vehicle during which drugs were allegedly planted, before being ticketed by a police officer for the apparent crime of freely distributing DVD’s about 9/11 truth earlier this month.

Anthony says:

“And I thought Livonia’s were used for just minor traffic offences, not the more serious crime of giving out 9/11 truth DVDs!

[Original Article]

13-year-old shot in encounter with Seattle police officer

A 13-year-old was taken to the hospital with leg wounds early this morning after a confrontation with a Seattle police officer during which the officer mistook a cellphone for a weapon.

[Original Article]

Meanwhile, just across the border…

A man in his 40s died early Sunday morning after RCMP jolted him with a Taser at the Vancouver International Airport, police said.

Airport security called the Mounties for assistance after an unidentified man began pounding on windows and throwing chairs and computer equipment in the customs area shortly after arriving on an international flight at 1:30 a.m., Richmond RCMP Sgt. Pierre Lemaitre told CBC News.

“We arrived and tried to calm the man,” Lemaitre said. “We tried through gestures to get him to put his hands down on the desk … to no avail.”

When he ignored orders to calm down, police used a stun gun on the man.

The man dropped to the floor and police said it took three officers to handcuff him. He then lost consciousness and appeared to go into cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead at the airport, the CBC’s Chris Brown reported.

[Original Story]

And now time for a commercial break

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US debates if security contractors are ‘enemy combatants’

anthony @ 17:30 BST

RAW STORY | Published: Monday October 15, 2007

Enemy combatants.

The two words Bush Administration lawyers used to keep Guantanamo Bay terror suspects out of the purview of US or international courts may come back to haunt them: some are now asking whether private security contractors could fall under the same moniker.

According to Julian Barnes, writing in Monday’s Los Angeles Times, federal reviews of shootings by Blackwater USA in Iraq have left officials scratching their heads as to whether the Administration could be accused of violating international treaty obligations. If officials admit the use of guards in war zones is a violation, they may have to limit the use of their massive private mercenary armies in future conflicts.

Lawyers in the State, Defense and Justice departments are examing issues surrounding the contractors, Barnes says.

“I think it is an unresolved issue that needs to be addressed,” an unnamed senior Defense Department official told the paper. “But if that is in fact the case, what the heck are we doing?”

[More…]

Blackwater drew weapons on US troops

Rod Nordland and Mark Hosenball | Newsweek | Sunday October 14, 2007

The colonel was furious. “Can you believe it? They actually drew their weapons on U.S. soldiers.” He was describing a 2006 car accident, in which an SUV full of Blackwater operatives had crashed into a U.S. Army Humvee on a street in Baghdad’s Green Zone.

The colonel, who was involved in a follow-up investigation and spoke on the condition he not be named, said the Blackwater guards disarmed the U.S. Army soldiers and made them lie on the ground at gunpoint until they could disentangle the SUV.

His account was confirmed by the head of another private security company. Asked to address this and other allegations in this story, Blackwater spokesperson Anne Tyrrell said, “This type of gossip has led to many soap operas in the press.”

[More…]

Coming to a Community Near You

Wayne Madsen | OpEdNews | 14-15 October, 2007

Blackwater training police in American cities and towns

The mercenary firm Blackwater USA is well known for the controversy involving its “shoot first, ask no questions” policy in Iraq. It is also known that Louisiana’s Department of Homeland Security contracted with Blackwater to provide public law enforcement services in New Orleans following hurricane Katrina. Blackwater is also planning to establish regional training centers in Potrero, California and Mount Carroll, Illinois, billed as Blackwater West and Blackwater North, respectively.

[More…]

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Energy Shock: Oil Hits $85 Dollars!

by GEF @ 9:02 AM MST

Oil Futures Hit New Record Above $85

Monday October 15, 11:00 am ET
By John Wilen, AP Business Writer

Crude Prices Surge As OPEC Estimates Supplies Are Falling While Demand Is Growing NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices surged above $85 a barrel Monday for the first time after OPEC said crude production by non-OPEC countries is falling even as global demand for oil is rising.Prices were also supported by concerns Turkish forces will pursue Kurdish rebels into Iraq, disrupting oil supplies, and by technical buying by investment funds.

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Bush/Cheney’s Final Coup-De-Etat Plan in Progress..

By GEF @ 6:22 AM MST

Inside the Bush administration’s sweeping, often secretive efforts to expand the power of the presidency

In the days of Vietnam, Americans could watch on their television screens what was happening in the jungles overseas, but only with the passage of time did they see that a second, secret war was being waged here at home – an assault upon the constitutional order. In the end, the attacks on the rule of law became as dangerous to the nation as the quagmire on the battlefield. Are we witnessing history repeat itself today? Not exactly. George W. Bush is no Richard Nixon. But there are enough parallels between then and now that unless we pay close attention, we could badly damage our historic system of governance.That warning emanates loud and clear from a spate of new books on the way the Bush-Cheney administration – largely out of the public eye – has seized upon the war on terror to drive an unprecedented expansion in the powers of the presidency. The best and most comprehensive of the new works is Charles Savage’s “Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy.” Savage, a graduate of Harvard and the Yale Law School, won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage last year of the administration’s efforts to stretch the law. The most illuminating volume is “The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration,” by Jack Goldsmith. Goldsmith is a conservative legal scholar who was recruited to a key position in the administration, courageously tried to rein in his colleagues, and, after repeated clashes, packed his bags. He is now a professor at the Harvard Law School.

As Savage points out, Nixon inherited a presidency whose powers had already been inflated by the Cold War and the early Vietnam years. The president, Savage notes pointedly, “with a young Cheney watching and learning inside his administration, then pushed the power of the presidency to its breaking point.”

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Dead Republic Blues: Bush Illegal Wiretapping Scheme Gets Darker and Dirtier

Sudhan@11:45 CET

urkunet.info, October 15, 2007

Chris Floyd , Empire Burlesque

 

The latest revelations in the Bush Administration’s long-unfolding, ever-growing illegal wiretapping scandal carry with them a multiple string. For not only do they bear upon Bush’s vast system of lawless espionage aimed at the American people, but they also underscore the perversion of the Justice Department into an armed enforcer of partisan thuggery and confirm that that the unprecedented authoritarian powers that Bush has seized have nothing to do with their ostensible justification, the 9/11 attacks, but were part of a pre-planned evisceration of the constitutional republic that began in the first days of his ill-gotten presidency. What’s more, the revelations give strong indications that nothing about the domestic spying program will change under a Democratic administration – because the heart of the scheme was in fact created under Bush’s predecessor, who bears the same last name as Bush’s likely successor. Keep reading . . .

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