contributions

By EDUARDO GALLARDO
SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet was stripped of his legal immunity Friday to face charges of diverting public funds to personal bank accounts.
Judge Juan Escobar, president of the Santiago Court of Appeals, said his tribunal voted 21-3 to remove the immunity Pinochet enjoys as a former president.
Friday’s decision is part of a wider corruption-related legal process in which Pinochet also lost immunity against charges of tax evasion and (…)

By Jim Loney
MIAMI (Reuters) - Haiti’s constitution is being violated by both the U.S.-backed interim government and by the candidacy of a Haitian American millionaire running strongly in the polls in a long delayed election, analysts say.
"The government has not been paying much attention to the constitution," said Brian Concannon, a U.S. lawyer who worked in Haiti and helped prosecute military leaders accused of a peasant massacre.
The first round of voting in the troubled Caribbean (…)

by Andy Coates
According to two recent articles, one in the New York Times and one in the Wall Street Journal, the federal Governmental Accounting Standards Board has begun to require municipalities — states, counties, cities — to account for how much it will cost them to provide all the health care promised to present and retired public employees. This process, to be completed over the next 3 years, has already started in states like Alaska, Delaware, and Maryland and cities like Duluth, (…)

The U.S. plan for leaving Iraq is in trouble, with more than 10,000 Kurds in the Iraqi army prepared to seize control of northern Iraq for an independent state.
BY TOM LASSETER
Knight Ridder News Service
KIRKUK, Iraq - Kurdish leaders have inserted more than 10,000 of their militia members into Iraqi army divisions in northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city, and secure the borders of an (…)

Letter to President George W. Bush
December 27, 2005 Office of the President The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear President Bush, I am writing to you with respect to multiple Israeli announcements of its plans to continue expanding settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). This directly contravenes international law and Israeli commitments under the Road Map. You recently reiterated Israel’s obligations to stop expanding (…)

By Joe Quinn
After the release of the QFG Pentagon Strike Flash Animation on August 23rd, 2004, a veritable onslaught of new articles were published that sought to dismiss the "no plane at the Pentagon" theory. One such article, that is frequently referenced by certain ’9/11 reseachers’ was authored by a member of the forum at the "Above Top Secret" (ATS) website. Interestingly, the article was written just a few weeks after the release of the Pentagon Strike Flash animation, which by (…)

WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 - The Justice Department said on Friday that it had opened a criminal investigation into the disclosure of classified information about a secret National Security Agency program under which President Bush authorized eavesdropping on people in the United States without court warrants.
The investigation began in recent days after a formal referral from the security agency regarding the leak, federal officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the (…)

I wish an enterprising journalist would ask Mr. David Corn ,The Washington Editor of Nation Magazine , to answer the folowing questions :
1) Mr. Corn , have you been contacted by the Office of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald ?
2) Mr. Corn , in your article published in the Nation Magazine on July 16, 2003 ( 2 days after the infamous Robert Novak article identified CIA agent Valerie Plame as an Operative on weapons of mass destruction ) you quote an unidentified source (…)

By Sheila Samples
Folks at the White House stay pretty busy these days just trying to untangle the lies George Bush keeps telling every time he opens his mouth. For example, back in April 2004, Bush explained to a cheering audience and an unchallenging press corps in Buffalo about "eavesdropping" on Americans — "When you think ’Patriot Act,’ constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because," he said earnestly while leaning (…)

Posted by: Prissy Patriot http://prissypatriot.blogspot.com
Domestic Spying & Incident of Intimidation of Military Families Submitted by Bob Fertik on December 20, 2005 - 11:55pm.Military
Letter from a Military "Mom":
I am sending this letter to you in hope of finding a source to hear my concerns. It is something that has bothered me since the occurrence, and I know it is not something that should have happened, and I worry for my family’s safety as I step out to speak about this. (…)