"The conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been the most deadly since the second world war, a new study estimates, with nearly 4 million people having died as a result of the widespread violence and instability. (...) It is the worst humanitarian crisis in the past 60 years, says Richard Brennan, the IRC’s health director. “In terms of absolute numbers,” he says, “there’s nothing that comes close.”

Tragically, most of the deaths could easily have been prevented, the organisation says. “The reason people are dying in east Congo is not because they are being cut down by machetes,” says Brennan. Rather, pervasive violence and instability prevents farmers from tilling their fields, markets from getting food to the hungry, and clinics from providing basic healthcare and vaccines, he says."

Full story in the New Scientist

Great MP3! by Frenz. He's got much more funny stuff on this site.

What is actually happening in Haiti, and the real effects of the Government of Canada's support for the February 29, 2004 coup d'etat that overthrew Haiti's democratically-elected government.

The Hidden State Steps Forward by (infamous Nation author) Jonathan Schell. A quote says it best: The danger is not abstract or merely symbolic. Bush's abuses of presidential power are the most extensive in American history. He has launched an aggressive war ("war of choice," in today's euphemism) on false grounds. He has presided over a system of torture and sought to legitimize it by specious definitions of the word. He has asserted a wholesale right to lock up American citizens and others indefinitely without any legal showing or the right to see a lawyer or anyone else. He has kidnapped people in foreign countries and sent them to other countries, where they were tortured.

Copied from Metafilter

Now, this would be an exciting political action-thriller!

Watch this space!

1984videos.com is a collection of films by folks like Alex Jones or David Icke plus a whole lot more! Via shesaiddestroy.org

"Special to BRAD BLOG by BTC News White House Correspondent Eric Brewer

There have been some interesting recent developments in the CIA's Italian kidnapping caper..."

Especially our american friends should have a look at BRAD BLOG in general.

"Taking a cue from an election speech, this animation outlines the regions where mass detentions were carried out after 9/11. This map is built off a database that viewers can update." via Rhizome

"Patriot Act may be renewed without reforms"

"US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may have left Berlin, but her visit has left all sorts of bad tastes in the mouths of Germans. Nobody seems terribly convinced by her claim that America doesn't torture. And what is 'torture' anyway?" Spiegel International

The news keep coming in and the boys and girls at Spiegel International are working really hard today!

"Campus Anti-War Network is calling for actions around the country to show the federal government that they cannot intimidate schools for kicking out military recruiters. On December 6, the Supreme Court will hear the FAIR v Rumsfeld case (brought by several universities), which will decide whether schools can ban military recruiters without losing federal funding. Currently, the Solomon Amendment allows the government to cut off federal funding from schools that ban military recruiters. This policy forces schools to accept military recruitment, even though the military's anti-gay "don't ask, don't tell" policy violates university anti-discrimination policies."

Mon, December 5, 2005 By AP

"PARIS -- Seven foreigners will likely be deported from France soon for their roles in recent unrest that hit poor French suburbs, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said yesterday.

Other foreigners risk expulsion, the minister said in an interview on French television in which he came down in favour of punishment for rappers whose songs incite hate among youths living on the margins of society.

Sarkozy, known for his tough law and order approach, has been criticized by human rights groups and the opposition left for wanting to deport foreigners -- legal or not -- who took part in the three weeks of unrest in late October and early November marked by thousands of arson attacks.

Sarkozy said on television 83 foreigners had been arrested but 40 of them can't be deported because of their age, their status as political refugees or the lengthy time they had spent in France.

"Seven proceedings are finishing up," he said, and the seven will "likely" be expelled.

Sarkozy voiced support for legislators who want rap singers sanctioned for allegedly inciting hate and violence among youths living in suburban housing projects.

"There are inadmissible phrases and we don't have to accept them," Sarkozy said. "It's not because you're young, you do rap, that you should be exonerated from the risk of sanctions."

Source. London Free Press

Hier bloggt ab sofort die CIA!

I just saw Conspiracy of Silence (1994). The fans of Bittorrent just made it "the banned documentary to watch"! It's sick and disturbing!

"Conspiracy of Silence is a 56 minute documentary film detailing an alleged Lawrence 'Larry' King child sex scandal that involved many children from Nebraska institution, Boys Town. The organized child sex parties implicated the Reagan and Bush White House during the 1980s. King was the ringleader of the sex ring which had links to other fellow political conservatives in Washington D.C. including Republican lobbyist Craig Spence, Sen. Elizabeth Dole's staff, along with members of the financial elite of Nebraska.

Larry King was judged to have been responsible for curtailing Paul Bonacci's civil rights and was ordered to pay him $1 million as compensation. The documentary was produced over the course of ten months by British corporation Yorkshire Television for broadcast in the US on May 3, 1994 on the Discovery Channel. However, threats from Congress of more restrictive television legislation resulted in the documentary never being aired. Most copies of the finished product were destroyed by parties unknown, but a mostly completed work print of the documentary was sent anonymously to former State Senator Nebraska attorney John DeCamp a year after all copies were supposedly destroyed. The movie can be found with various file sharing programs such as BitTorrent or through the Freenet. Adherents to the movie's outlook claim that the case has never been fully brought to justice and that many of the investigators and witnesses have subsequently died under suspicious circumstances."

More at Wikipedia

Free download at vote.org

Please find a caption and click the button!

"As previously noted by British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, 'al-Qaeda' has nothing to do with a terrorist organization, as the neocons and the corporate media tell us over and over, ad infinitum, but is in fact a database." Kurt Nimmo has more.

The president finally tells the truth! Watch or download the video "Bush Completo" here! Quite amazing, isn't it?

Thanks to Sean!

"Badr Zaman Badr and his brother Abdurrahim Muslim Dost relish writing a good joke that jabs a corrupt politician or distills the sufferings of fellow Afghans. Badr admires the political satires in The Canterbury Tales and Gulliver's Travels, and Dost wrote some wicked lampoons in the 1990s, accusing Afghan mullahs of growing rich while preaching and organizing jihad. So in 2002, when the U.S. military shackled the writers and flew them to Guantanamo among prisoners whom Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared "the worst of the worst" violent terrorists, the brothers found life imitating farce.

For months, grim interrogators grilled them over a satirical article Dost had written in 1998, when the Clinton administration offered a $5-million reward for Osama bin Laden. Dost responded that Afghans put up 5 million Afghanis -- equivalent to $113 -- for the arrest of President Bill Clinton.

'It was a lampoon ... of the poor Afghan economy' under the Taliban, Badr recalled.

Full story at unknownnews.org

Unrest reaches French capital

Is that still a "riot" or is it a "civil war" already? Has anyone ever heard of a "riot" like that?

The arms of modern communication are in the hands of the people. The evildoers use military strategies and get organized with cellphones or on the internet. The cops can't handle the situation because they don't have any military training and they're not supposed to "search and destroy". Whatever you think about the cops, that's not what they do. They're not in charge of killing.

So, it's only a matter of time until everyone will cry for the army and the tanks to come in. But that would be an official "civil war"! A lot of folks would get killed. The situation would get completely out of control. Something big is happening in Paris right now.

Welcome to Schwarzenegger Street! Meet all of Arnies right wing friends! Join the fight to defeat Schwarzenegger and the Radical Right!

"Today's revelations in the New York Times about the Bush administration's internal debate over how to treat foreign detainees highlight the unprecedented role that Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff are playing in setting national security policy. In the Constitution, the vice president is the nation's understudy. He is not supposed to be in the chain of command. Cheney knows this better than most: In 1989, when he was George H.W. Bush's secretary of defense, Cheney slapped down Vice President Dan Quayle for calling a meeting of the National Security Council about a coup attempt in the Philippines while the president was out of the country." Tim Naftali over at Slate

The New York Times, the CIA and the White House. The full story in the latest edition of The New Yorker

"Judging from their words, too many policymakers and intelligence officers mistake secrecy for intelligence. President Nixon, for example, once belittled the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in words that capture the common mistake: 'What use are they? They’ve got over 40,000 people over there reading newspapers.' The president’s remarks, reflecting a persistent misperception, echo even now within the Intelligence Community."

CIA.gov

"The Bush administration has missed dozens of deadlines set by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks for developing ways to protect airplanes, ships and railways from terrorists. A plan to defend ships and ports from attack is six months overdue. Rules to protect air cargo from infiltration by terrorists are two months late. A study on the cost of giving anti-terrorism training to federal law enforcement officers who fly commercially was supposed to be done more than three years ago." AP/Yahoo

Bad! The BBC reporting! Click here to begin!

"In the past, investigations, like Watergate, have played a role in helping to uncover some of the criminality and corruption that has developed inside the US government. In the Watergate investigation, the Washington Post played a helpful role in uncovering and publicizing the illegal activities going on within the Nixon White House. In the current probe, however, reporters from the mainstream media were used by White House officials to create a campaign of disinformation about the basis for a war in Iraq, and also to seek to discredit criticism of their disinformation campaign.

Good story in the English section of Heise.de from Germany

"It was billed as a conversation with U.S. troops, but the questions President Bush asked on a teleconference call Thursday were choreographed to match his goals for the war in Iraq and Saturday's vote on a new Iraqi constitution." Full story at ABD News