contributions

By Diet Simon
Anti-nuclear activists fighting waste dumping in north Germany claim to have information from inside the industry that “truckloads” of safety-relevant information have been destroyed.
The group opposes the ‘interim’ storage of highly radioactive waste in a light-construction hall and the later ‘final’ storage in a specially dug salt mine next door at the village of Gorleben, between Hanover and Hamburg.
The media spokesman of the Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Lüchow (…)

Open letter to the Generalbundesanwaltschaft against the criminalization of critical academic research and political engagement.
On 31st July 2007 the flats and workplaces of Dr. Andrej Holm and Dr. Matthias B., as well as of two other persons, were searched by the police. Dr. Andrej Holm was arrested, flown by helicopter to the German Federal Court in Karlsruhe and brought before the custodial judge. Since then he has been held in pretrial confinement in a Berlin jail. All four people (…)

“SPP has three fundamental objectives.to create more advantageous conditions for transnational corporations and remove remaining barriers to the flow of capital and crossborder production within the framework of NAFTA. It wants to secure access to natural resources, especially oil. And it wants to create a regional security plan based on “pushing its borders out” into a security perimeter that includes Mexico and Canada.”- Laura Carlsen, International Relations Centre. (…)

By Brendan O’ Neill
Normally, when one of Britain’s stuffy media watchdogs decrees that some public figure or broadcaster has said something less than honest, it causes a commotion. When the Advertising Standards Authority said earlier this year that Gillian McKeith, TV’s self-styled healthy eating guru, should stop using the title ‘Dr’, the media had a feeding frenzy.
The Office of Communications’ harsh judgement against Channel 4 over the bullying of Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty on (…)

Portland to Host Terrorism Drill “NOBLE RESOLVE 07-2” Aug. 20 to 24 Citizens Warn of Established Pattern for Such Drills to go “live” Contact: Info [at] OregonTruthAlliance dot org Click here for a printable version of this release (PDF)
This is an urgent advisory notice from concerned citizens of Oregon and Washington about an upcoming U.S. Joint Forces Command emergency management exercise known as NOBLE RESOLVE 07-2 that will simulate terrorism or disaster scenarios in the Lower (…)

By climatecamp.org.uk
We hope that the camp will be many things to many people, from exploring what the problems are, and the changes and challenges we face, to gain the skills we will need as we prepare for a future that burns less energy. We’ll also be joining forces with Heathrow residents fighting the third runway, linking a critical local battle to the need for systemic change. And finally we’ll be taking direct action to turn things round, and create lasting communities of (…)

Washington - Army soldiers committed suicide last year at the highest rate in 26 years, and more than a quarter did so while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new military report.
The report, obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its scheduled release Thursday, found there were 99 confirmed suicides among active duty soldiers during 2006, up from 88 the previous year and the highest number since the 102 suicides in 1991 at the time of the Persian Gulf War.
The (…)

Bloody and Bloodier
The subprime-lending crisis is worse than you think, and could crush financial and real-estate markets for years. By James J. Cramer
You’re losing money right now. This very minute. You’re losing money if you own an apartment. You’re losing money if you own a country home. You’re losing money if you own a stock or bond mutual fund. You’re losing money if you have a pension plan. You’re probably losing money here or there, you’re probably losing money everywhere (…)

From ancient Rome’s red-hot irons and lacerating hooks to medieval Europe’s thumbscrews, rack, and wheel, for over 2,000 years anyone interrogated in a court of law could expect to suffer unspeakable tortures. For the last 200 years, humanist intellectuals from Voltaire to members of Amnesty International have led a sustained campaign against the horrors of state-sponsored cruelty, culminating in the United Nation’s 1985 Convention Against Torture, ratified by the Clinton administration in (…)

The US already kills more of its prisoners than almost any other country. Now the White House plans to cut the right of appeal of death row inmates… by Andrew Gumbel
The Bush administration is preparing to speed up the executions of criminals who are on death row across the United States, in effect, cutting out several layers of appeals in the federal courts so that prisoners can be “fast-tracked” to their deaths.
With less than 18 months to go to secure a presidential legacy, President (…)