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POPSPELOSI: Buy a $15,000 Policy or Go to Jail Or you could pay a fine for, you know, being alive. I had joked before about them eventually taxing you for breathing to cut down on CO2 emissions, but I never though they would really tax you for doing nothing more than being alive.
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POPSDanger--America Becoming Statist: First Bush, Now Obama Note: First the Security or Police State then the Nanny State. This is a must-read article, and hopefully an eye-opener to those still stuck in the "left" or "right" paradigm of thinking of partisan politics, both of which pick and chose which parts of the Constitution they want to dismantle for desired ends. Put the Bush and Obama policies together, sprinkle in a couple more terrorist attacks, and one or two more state-caused financial calamities, and you have a recipe for . . . * The destruction of American liberty * The blossoming of a Leviathan State
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POPSAmerican Evangelicals Role In Uganda Effort To ‘Wipe Out’ Gays This barbaric legislation stifles free speech by threatening anyone who is accused of “promoting” homosexuality with five to seven year prison sentences. Snitching on gay friends and family members is strongly encouraged because “failure to disclose the ‘offence’ within 24 hours of knowledge makes somebody liable to a fine or imprisonment of up to three years.” Sadly, this witch-hunt has the blood stained fingerprints of leading American evangelicals. The Fellowship, (aka The Family) one of America’s most powerful and secretive fundamentalist organization’s, converted Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni (pictured top) to its anti-gay brand of Christianity, which is the “intellectual” impetus behind the anti-gay crackdown. The clandestine organization’s leader, Doug Coe, calls Museveni The Fellowship’s “key man” in Africa. Jeff Sharlet, author of “The Family”, writes of the African strongman’s conversion:
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POPSGalileo's Spyglass Using ever-more powerful telescopes over the next year, Galileo observed that the Moon was not perfectly smooth, as claimed by Aristotle, but cratered and mountainous. He spotted hundreds of stars previously untouched by human eyes. More critically, he discovered the four inner satellites of Jupiter - still known as the "Galilean moons" in his honour - and learnt that Venus, Earth's closest planet, goes through a full range of phases. Put together, his observations validated the revolutionary theory of Nicolaus Copernicus that Earth orbits the Sun, and not the other way round. Galileo understood the implications of what he had seen, but the Catholic Church was not ready to accept such heresy. Only in 2000 did the Holy See apologise for putting Galileo on trial in 1633, forcing him to recant his ideas lest he face imprisonment or worse. The Vatican also pays tribute to him in an exhibition that opened this month. I never knew that it was only in 20
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POPSUS Press Freedom Improves At the bottom of the list were Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea "where media are so suppressed they are nonexistent," said Reporters Without Borders. Iran dropped to No. 172 from No. 166, with Reporters Without Borders saying the disputed reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had fostered a paranoia about journalists and bloggers. "Automatic prior censorship, state surveillance of journalists, mistreatment, journalists forced to flee the country, illegal arrests and imprisonment -- such is the state of press freedom this year in Iran," the group said. The ranking was compiled from hundreds of questionnaires completed by journalists and media experts around the world and reflecting press freedom violations that took place between Sept. 1, 2008 and Aug. 31, 2009. The complete ranking can be seen at www.rsf.org/en-classement1003-2009.html Read more at source.
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POPSoff duty cop, driving drunk, randomly assaulting someone, beating them with a gun, If you're an off duty cop, driving drunk, randomly assaulting someone, beating them with a gun, shooting them, and threatening to execute them is "inappropriate, imprudent and ill-advised," but not criminal.
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POPSNeda Agha-Soltan's Fiance Has Been Released From Evin Prison in Iran Amnesty International had been calling for Makan's release, claiming he had been ill treated in prison and subject to coercion and torture. The circumstances of his release and his imprisonment are not immediately clear, and Amnesty International has apparently suspended its appeal but is continuing to monitor Makan's situation. Others involved in the circumstances surrounding the now-famous videotaped death of the young Neda Agha-Soltan have fled Iran in fear for their own lives, including Dr. Arash Hejazi, who attended to Neda after she was shot, and the television journalist who interviewed Caspian Makan after Neda's untimely death.
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POPSBuried at Wounded Knee - Fasting for Leonard Leonard who? Leonard Peltier was a mover and shaker in the American Indian Movement. He was THE SCAPEGOAT for a government operation designed to discredit AIM as a quasi-terrorist, criminal group, in the same way they suppressed black consciousness by criminalizing the Black Panthers and killing Huey Newton. Leltier was not killed but has been in prison for years for supposedly shooting and killing an FBI agent with a broken rifle and the lies (now admitted) of someone who was there. What would it feel like to be invisible? Read this and find out.
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POPSBagram: The sham of closing Guantanamo
Yesterday, the Obama DOJ -- as expected -- filed a legal brief (.pdf) which adopted the arguments originally made by the Bush DOJ to insist that detainees whom they abduct from around the world and then ship to Bagram (rather than Guantanamo) lack any constitutional rights whatsoever, including habeas review. The Obama administration is appealing from a decision (.pdf) by Bush-43-appointed District Court Judge John Bates which, applying Boumediene, held that detainees at Bagram who are originally detained outside of Afghanistan have the right to habeas review (Afghan citizens detained in Afghanistan have none, he found). In other words, after Obama praised Boumediene as "defending the freedom that violent extremists seek to destroy," he's now attempting to make a complete mockery of that decision by insisting that it is inapplicable as long as he decides to ship detainees from, say, Thailand to Bagram rather than Guantanamo. Obama apparently sees "our core values" as nothing more th
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POPSPassport Proxy It’s a good idea to not flash your official passport in situations where a copy will do. It’s as wise as keeping your real social security card under lock and key until you need it for official purposes. A copied passport is not a forged document. One commenter said: In NZ, it is illegal (you could be fined $10,000 or 3 months imprisonment) for colour copying a passport, bank notes or other offical documents.
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POPSSayed Pervez Kambaksh: Free At Last full story at source: Only a handful of people were aware of the intensive diplomatic negotiations which took place behind the scenes to get Mr Kambaksh out of jail, details of which cannot be revealed to protect those, Afghans and foreigners, who were involved. Hardline Islamists, including a number of political figures close to the government of President Karzai, have repeatedly called for Mr Kambaksh's execution and were fiercely critical when an appeal court reduced the original death sentence to 20 years' imprisonment. One senior diplomatic source said: "The danger is very real and we are well aware that there will be a reaction when it becomes clear that Pervez had gone. It was imperative he was safely out of the way before attempts could be made to block that."
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POPSTexas DNA exonerees find prosperity after prison More: Two who served about 26 years in prison for rape will receive lump sums of about $2 million apiece. Another, Steven Phillips, who spent about 24 years in prison for sexual assault and burglary, will get about $1.9 million. The biggest compensation package will likely go to James Woodard, who spent more than 27 years in prison for a 1980 murder that DNA testing later showed he did not commit. He eventually could receive nearly $2.2 million but first needs a writ from the state's Court of Criminal Appeals or a pardon from the governor. McGowan and the others are among 38 DNA exonerees in Texas, according to the Innocence Project, a New York legal center that specializes in overturning wrongful convictions. Dallas County alone has 21 cases in which a judge overturned guilty verdicts based on DNA evidence, though prosecutors plan to retry one of those.
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POPSAppeal for a worldwide reading for Democracy and Freedom in Iran But the men of God had hardly seized power when they began liquidating a large section of the opposition, executing thousands of dissenters and destroying the indigenous culture in favour of so-called Islamisation, downgrading women as second-class citizens and subjecting art and literature to strict censorship. With the exception of brief uprisings by individuals or small groups, the population remained patient for a long time – for thirty years. But now the scandalous manipulation of the Presidential elections of June 12th has proved too much to bear.
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POPSCool Jobs for Ex-Patriates Even though thiswork is temporary, I can't understand why no citizens wanted these jobs, unless of course they aren't posted anywhere. Also, these are not Chinese nationals. They all have Arabic names.
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