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Venuela Information center Sign on line : http://vicuk.org
Pétition: Join with leading figures opposed to ExxonMobil action against Venezuela
In a letter published in the Guardian (28 Feb), over 50 prominent figures representing a wide section of British society have signed a statement, organised by the Venezuela Information Centre, raising concern over legal action taken by oil giant ExxonMobil to prevent the Venezuelan government from exercising its right to control its natural (…)

A Ship’s Smoke on the Horizon By David Glenn Cox
The lost and stranded are always grasping for survival, it is human nature. Ernest Shackleton, lost in the Antarctic in 1914, gave his men a speech promising them only survival. And to emphasize the point he tore a single page from the Bible, a page that promised salvation, and threw down the rest of the book into the snow. Banished were any other ideas, only certain salvation was to be contemplated. It was a masterstroke of leadership, (…)

Firm Wants to Build Military Training Facility in Louisa
By Christina Mora, NBC 29
A private military training firm has its eyes on 1,000 acres of Louisa County land. The group wants to build a training center equipped with firing ranges, driving courses, and shooting houses.
It could boost the county’s economy, but there are still a lot of hurdles to jump. The Cincinnati-based O’Gara Group currently has a training facility in Danville, but they want to expand it. That’s where Louisa (…)

By Ben Hall in Paris and Simeon Kerr in Dubai
French armed forces will take part in large-scale war games in the Gulf next week, underlining France’s growing military presence in the region as heightened tensions persist over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
France will deploy 1,500 personnel, two frigates and eight Mirage fighter jets to the defence exercises, held in conjunction with the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
Paris has long-standing defence co-operation agreements with the two (…)

mdmorrissey, Feb. 28, 2008 (www.mdmorrissey.info/sunrise )
Hail, Sol Invictus.
Pray tell what mortal hand or eye
could frame such irony,
read from the inside:
Jedem das Seine.
We will not tolerate
outrageous conspiracy theories.
Preemptive war
and torture
will set you free.
On this drizzle of a day
the old god struggles
across cluttered cyberskies
fortunately returning
but still the iron stands.
It does not melt like buildings
struck by airplanes
or (…)

“The Lady doth protest too much, methinks. “ - William Shakespeare
It pains me to agree with that ranter Richard Cohen of the Washington Post. But, every once in a while, like that insufferable Neocon, Jonah Goldberg, he gets it right. On Feb. 25, 2008, Cohen ripped Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), a veritable new you-know-what. At the moment, she running very badly for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Her negative, attack-dog campaign tactics are also dragging the party down (…)

One fundamental right Americans enjoy is the right to be free from “double jeopardy.” As described in the Fifth Amendment to the Bill of Rights, double jeopardy means that no person shall “for the same offense . . . be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.” Court rulings dealing with double jeopardy issues ultimately developed the “merger doctrine.” This doctrine has two prongs.
One prong states that when a person is found guilty of a criminal offense all lesser offenses that were—or (…)

Appearing before a packed auditorium at the University of Wisconsin Tuesday on the night of his victories in the “Potomac primaries,” held in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., Illinois senator and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama delivered a speech that was notable for its populist demagogy, not only on the war in Iraq but also social conditions in America.
The Wisconsin rally is the latest in a series of campaign events that have drawn large and predominantly younger (…)

The Mother of All Dumb Ideas By David Glenn Cox We’ve all had dumb ideas in our past and I don’t exempt myself from this. I once threw Gunk engine degreaser on the floor to degrease it. Just one thing, I forgot to turn off the pilot light on the water heater first. Dumb? Man, that was dumb. After I got the fire put out my boss asked me, "Did you learn anything today?" I slowly shook my head and humbly answered, "Yes, yes I did." But my mistake was an error, not of comprehension but of (…)

I’m not normally someone who becomes incapacitated by fear. Whenever I have to address something that frightens me, I do so without hesitation and usually discover that the object of my fright is not as frightening as I feared.
For the last few years, however, I’ve been increasingly incapacitated by my growing fear about the rapidly approaching future. What scares the hell out of me? Total economic collapse, for one, which will make the Great Depression of the 1930s seem like a picnic in (…)