Despite police claiming that an ambiguous section of the UK Counter Terrorism Act of 2008 would not outlaw taking photographs or film of police, a man was detained as a terror suspect this week simply for taking a photograph of a police car in order to document police misconduct.
62-year-old Malcolm Sleath, who is chairman of his local park society, saw a police car driving erratically down a North London park footpath, despite the fact that by law police are supposed to investigate on foot in such circumstances.
He began filming the police car to document the misconduct so that he could later present it to the chief sergeant.
Rescue Me is back from its 18-month hiatus, and the early episodes of Season 5 prove the show is again firing on all its raucous and raunchy cylinders. But it’s also turning a more focused eye back on 9/11 and its impact on the men of 62 Truck.
In doing so, this season brings mainstream attention to widespread conspiracy theories that suggest the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job.” Fireman Franco Rivera — played by Daniel Sunjata, who in real life subscribes to these same beliefs — becomes the mouthpiece for these ideas on the show, something Sunjata admits he wasn’t expecting to see on his script pages.
Since fatuously declaring his to be a “change” administration, President Barack Obama has quickly donned the blood-spattered mantle of state secrecy and executive privilege worn by the Bush regime.
On Friday April 3, the Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss one of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) landmark lawsuits against illegal spying by the National Security Agency (NSA).
That suit, Jewell v. NSA, was filed last September against the NSA, NSA Director Keith B. Alexander, President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Mike McConnell, Director of National Intelligence. But with the departure of the Bush gang, the defendants now include President Barack Obama, NSA Director Keith B. Alexander, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Dennis C. Blair, Director of National Intelligence.
The excellent work by Niels Harrit, Farrer, Jones and Ryan et. al in the recent journal article (Thermitic Material Discovered in WTC Dust) has paved the way for some very good media coverage in Denmark. At around 10:30 pm on Monday April 6, Harrit was interviewed for 10 minutes during the late news program on one of the two most respected Danish television channels (TV2). On Wednesday April 8, Harrit was interviewed for 6 minutes at 8:45 am during a live news and entertainment program on the same channel. In both cases, Harrit, and the claims of the article, were treated with refreshing seriousness and respect.
The first interview has been subtitled in English and loaded onto youtube (direct link), and should appear (embedded) below:
This week, the New York Review of Books released the full version of an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report detailing US Central Intelligence Agency torture of 14 “high value” terrorist suspects at prison “black sites” from 2001 until 2006. Earlier, it had produced excerpts of the report and an analysis by author Mark Danner.
The report makes explicit that the CIA violated the laws of war and basic human rights in its treatment of the prisoners, which included beatings, humiliations, sleep deprivation, and suffocation by water (“waterboarding”), among dozens of specifically named acts of brutality.
At several points, the 40-page report refers to CIA actions as illegal according to international law. The ICRC, based in Geneva, Switzerland, is the body tasked with overseeing observance of the laws of war. That it has declared acts carried out by US intelligence personnel as torture carries enormous legal weight.
