Deporting Parents of Dead Soldier

Three years after U.S. Army Private Armando Soriano, 20, died fighting in Haditha, Iraq, his father is facing deportation. Soriano is now buried in Houston, Tex., his hometown, where his parents, undocumented workers from Mexico, are currently living.
Before his death Soriano had promised his parents he’d help them get green cards. He only succeeded partially before losing his life. Although his mother was able to obtain a green card, his father did not qualify and is on the verge of being deported.
Enrique Soriano, Armando’s father, is not the only person to have lost a son or daughter in the Iraq war and face deportation. There are more than 3 million people born in the U.S. with parents who came into the country illegally. Those born in the U.S. are automatically citizens and have all the rights and duties enjoyed by Americans. That includes military service with the possibility of losing one’s life.

Deporting Parents of Dead Soldiers is 'Excessive' and 'Harsh' Punishment - NAM

See also Honor the fallen: Army Pfc. Armando Soriano

'Human-animal' embryo green light

Regulators have agreed in principle to allow human-animal embryos to be created and used for research.Scientists say such research is essential

But scientists wanting to use hybrids will still need to make individual applications, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority said.

An HFEA consultation showed the public were "at ease" with the idea when told it could pave the way for therapies for conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. Opponents have said many people would be "horrified" by such a move.

BBC NEWS | Health | 'Human-animal' embryo green light

Also see National Geographic Society
"Animal-Human Hybrids Spark Controversy"

Monks seize troops in Burma town

Buddhist monks have taken about 20 members of the security forces hostage in central Burma, a day after clashes at a protest rally.

On Wednesday the security forces fired shots into the air to disperse some 400 monks demonstrating in Pakokku town. When officials came to the monastery on Thursday, the monks locked them inside and set their vehicles on fire.

The officials had reportedly come to apologise for the clashes at Wednesday's demonstration. But the monks burned four of the vehicles they came in and locked them inside the monastery.

Hundreds of people gathered outside the gates to applaud the monks. "The security forces outside the monastery are too afraid to go near the crowd," one resident told the French news agency AFP. "They won't even show their walkie-talkies."

A series of anti-government protests have been held since the military junta doubled fuel prices last month.

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Monks seize troops in Burma town

US troops ‘thought killing civilians was legal’

  Documents regarding crimes committed by US soldiers against civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan show repeated examples of soldiers believing they were within the law when they killed them.

The documents, released yesterday by the American Civil Liberties Union ahead of a lawsuit, total nearly 10,000 pages of courts martial summaries, transcripts and military reports about 22 incidents.

The killings include the drowning of a man soldiers pushed from a bridge into the Tigris river as punishment for breaking curfew, and the suffocation during interrogation of a former Iraqi general believed to be helping insurgents.

Soldiers covered the man’s head with a sleeping bag, then wrapped his neck with an electrical cord in what they insisted was an approved technique.

Irish Examiner

We are not alone - Featuring David Icke

Where Do i Go?

LaughtersRighthand: "The truth about a world some of us will never know"

All UK 'must be on DNA database'

The whole population and every UK visitor should be added to the national DNA database, a senior judge has said.
The present database in England and Wales holds details of 4m people who are guilty or cleared of a crime.

Lord Justice Sedley said this was indefensible and biased against ethnic minorities, and it would be fairer to include everyone, guilty or innocent.

BBC

Dutch girl serves with Colombian rebels

Colombia expert and former Pax Christi worker Lidwien Zumpolle says at least three Dutch citizens are directly involved with the FARC guerrilla movement in Colombia. She claims the FARC are also recruiting in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Belgium and Greece. Her remarks follow publication in the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo of extracts from the diary of a Dutch woman fighting with the FARC. She is known as "Eillen", but turns out to be ex-student Tanja Nijmeijer who joined the FARC four years ago. Her diaries were found by the Colombian army in a rebel camp which had been abandoned in haste. More on Radio Netherlands Worldwide

From her diary:

23 August 2006: I managed to ring home! But I didn't get permission beforehand and now Frits is mad at me, but I don't care. It was wonderful to hear their voices. Mum started crying and then Dad did too. Now I just have to patiently wait from my punishment. Everyone can ring home, except me. Isn't that ridiculous. Maybe they'll leave me behind in the jungle forever or maybe they'll send me on a foreign mission after this little disobedience. Actually, I don't want to, it doesn't interest me. I might have a new boyfriend, a commandant. He is 30 years old and very special. Maybe it'll work out between us.

2 November 2006: The chief has fallen for a girl with big tits. But it appears she brought some venereal disease with her. The chief says the government sent her to in order to infect and weaken the rebel leaders.

24 November 2006: I'm tired, tired of the FARC, tired of people and tired of living in this commune. I'm fed up of never having anything of my own. All of this would have a purpose if you knew what you were fighting for. I don't believe in it any more. What sort of rebel movement is this? Only a few people have money or cigarettes or sweets and the rest of us have to beg for a share, but you know the higher-ups will just be nasty and say no. It was exactly the same four years ago when I joined, nothing has changed. A girl with big tits and a pretty face can totally undermine a unit that has worked together for ages (...) I don't know if I'll ever get out of this jungle (...) I want to get out of here, at least out this unit. But you know that you're a sort of prisoner here (...) It's not the FARC so much as this unit.(...) but had enough of all that blah blah blah about being a Communist (...) all the commandants are corrupt, traitors, and rabble-rousers and traitors. They've got no sympathy if someone delivers any criticism. I wish I was in a fighting unit (...) But I don't want to leave here, just want to walk, laugh, fight and buy things without any problems. I'll speak to Karel

FAC-EP website
To find out more about the FARC-EP Chain of Command see Wikipedia

Congo rebels seize gorilla park

Rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo have taken control of large parts of the Virunga National Park, home to rare mountain gorillas.
The move has raised fears for the fate of the gorillas. Only 700 remain - half of which are in Virunga.

Meanwhile, the army says it has killed at least 28 troops loyal to rebel General Laurent Nkunda in the latest fighting in eastern DR Congo.
Some 170,000 people have fled the area this year, says the UN refugee agency.

"If anything happens to the mountain gorillas now, there is nothing we can do," said Norbert Mushenzi of the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN).

"As of today, the sector is no longer under my control and we have been rendered powerless by these actions." Nine gorillas have been killed this year, allegedly by Gen Nkunda's men, sparking outrage among conservationists.

Source: BBC

Also see this:
"Karema, a mountain gorilla’s, remains found dumped in human excrement pit" on Primatology.net

Fox Attacks.... The Environment?

Guatemala's child-snatching plague

American couples are flocking to the hotels of Guatemala City, but not to see the country's ancient Mayan remains nor the capital's more limited modern charms. Instead they are flying south in droves in the hope of embracing a bouncing new addition to their families - a baby, priced at about $30,000 (£15,000).

One in 100 Guatemalan children grow up in the US. The Central American country has the highest rate of international adoptions per head of any country in the world, and babies come high on the list of foreign currency earners - just below bananas.

More on telegraph.co.uk

Balkan Beat Box

Bulgarian Chicks

Aaron Russo 1943-2007 : Mad As Hell

We were saddened to hear of the passing of activist, film maker, freedom fighter and all round maverick Aaron Russo, who died Friday after a long battle with cancer at the age of 64.
Russo became involved in politics in the early 1990s when he produced and starred in a video entitled Mad As Hell in which he criticized NAFTA, The War on Drugs, the concept of a National Identity Card, and government regulation of alternative medicine. More at Prison Planet

Radiation Breeding

Though poorly known, radiation breeding has produced thousands of useful mutants and a sizable fraction of the world’s crops, Dr. Lagoda said, including varieties of rice, wheat, barley, pears, peas, cotton, peppermint, sunflowers, peanuts, grapefruit, sesame, bananas, cassava and sorghum. The mutant wheat is used for bread and pasta and the mutant barley for beer and fine whiskey.

The mutations can improve yield, quality, taste, size and resistance to disease and can help plants adapt to diverse climates and conditions.

Dr. Lagoda takes pains to distinguish the little-known radiation work from the contentious field of genetically modified crops, sometimes disparaged as “Frankenfood.” That practice can splice foreign genetic material into plants, creating exotic varieties grown widely in the United States but often feared and rejected in Europe. By contrast, radiation breeding has made few enemies.

Source: New York Times
See also The Institute of Radiation Breeding

U.S. Education

Statists, capitalists, murderers!

Only a few day after the most recent wave of fires, remaining forests fell prey to yet more of them, once again set by arsonists. The country is heading to a snap election and the government's proclamations of de-commissioning forest areas (thus allowing for building construction to take place) gave a golden opportunity to private capital and its arsonists to burn whole areas down to the last leaf.

This frenzy of burned forests has already left 53 dead, tens injured, missing, homeless; hundreds of thousands of burnt accres of land in the Peloponnese, Western Greece alone. The prefectures of Ilia, Arkadia and Messinia are still being destroyed by the fire. Up to this moment there are many still raging fires in the prefectures of Korinthia, Lakonia and Evoia.

The already extremely limited and hence priceless patches of green of Attica did not escape these "accidental" fires (including the neighborhoods of Cholargos, Papagou and Galatsi). Satellite image by NASA.

The whole state apparatus has long abandoned whatever pre-emptive forest protection there ever was. In March, PM Karamanlis falsely claimed that his government was prepared to deal with forests during the summer. With their consciously extremely few resources they limit themselves to the role of a spectator - simply documenting the disaster.

More here

Seven-year-old terrorist Muslim

Seven-year-old Muslim boy stopped in US three times on suspicion of being a terrorist

For seven-year-old Javaid Iqbal, the holiday to Florida was a dream trip to reward him for doing well at school.

But he was left in tears after he was stopped repeatedly at airports on suspicion of being a terrorist.

The security alerts were triggered because Javaid shares his name with a Pakistani man deported from the US, prompting staff at three airports to question his family about his identity.

The family even missed their flight home from the U.S. after officials cancelled their tickets in the confusion. And Javaid's passport now contains a sticker saying he has undergone highlevel security checks.

More in the Daily Mail

The Dualers

George W. Bush should be a dictator for life

Family Security Matters a neo-conservative based think tank has published an article advocating that George W. Bush should be a dictator for life. The organization has since taken the article down, but is still viewable via this cached link.
Conquering the Drawbacks of Democracy: By Philip Atkinson

The article written by Philip Atkinson states that Bush would fail his country by becoming an ex-President or can achieve greatness by becoming President-for-Life Bush in order to bring sense to Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Atkinson is bluntly advocating that Bush should become dictator for life with these outrageously anti-American statements.

From the article:

President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming “ex-president” Bush or he can become “President-for-Life” Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.

Denoucing Intellectuals Statue

This is a fine example of the humulation intellectuals faced at the hands of the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. A magnificent piece of propaganda from Communist China!
Price: US $75
Buy it here!

Fox News needs another 9/11

Bykofsky: "I think it's going to take a lot of dead people to wake America up."

Europe's Roma Outsiders

The Roma are one of Europe's largest stateless communities. Estimates suggest up to eight and a half million people belong to the Roma.

They have no country to live in, and are consequently disadvantaged and marginalised. A significant number of Roma do not have citizenship of the countries they live in.

Emily is 19 and believes she may have tuberculosis. In the ghetto the disease is endemic.
She is pregnant and her family has yet to build the wooden shack where she will give birth and live with her new-born child. The children we meet are undernourished and vulnerable to abuse and disease.
Monika Milanova has five children. Three have pneumonia. Little Lieubeeka, her youngest child, is clearly undernourished. Her health worker says she has rickets.
"The children get sick and we have no supplies to look after them – in the winter it freezes and in the summer we are fried like chickens - we can't stand it," Milonova says.
There have been efforts at re-housing but they came to nothing. The stateless continue to be homeless.

More on Al Jazeera
For background see Wikipedia

US sparks worldwide panic

Worldwide, investors started to panic after yet another financial institution announced it had lost money because of the low-end "subprime" US mortgage market and its widespread effect on the US credit market.

This time the alarm was sounded by France's largest bank, BNP Paribas, which froze three funds with subprime connections. BNP said the funds could not be properly valued because of the "complete evaporation" of liquidity in some parts of the market.

More on theage.com.au

and on CNN-Money:"Wall Street: down but not out!
Major gauges cut losses but still end in the red for day 2 as investors weigh Fed's $38 billion infusion into the banking system. Worries remain about tightening credit, subprime mortgage market."

Canada asserts Arctic sovereignty

>The Canadian prime minister has embarked on a three-day trip across the Arctic region to assert his country's sovereignty over the resource-rich territory. Stephen Harper vowed to pump in billions of dollars and increase military activity in the Arctic Circle to defend what he says is Canadian territory.

The trip, which had been planned for months, comes one week after a Russian research submarine planted a flag on the ocean floor, about 3km below the surface. Canada and the US have dismissed the Russian flag-planting as legally meaningless. Peter McKay, the Canadian foreign minister, said last week: "Look this isn't the 15th century. You can't go around the world and just plant flags and say 'we are claiming this territory'."

more on Al Jazeera

Free Tibet Olympics Protest at Great Wall of China

Six Tibet independence activists from the UK, US, and Canada were detained today after rappelling from the top of the Great Wall of China with a 450-square foot protest banner reading "One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008" in English and Chinese. The dramatic action took place on the eve of the one-year countdown to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Tibet advocacy groups assert that China is attempting to use the 2008 Games as a tool to legitimize its illegal occupation of Tibet. Chinese authorities removed the activists after two hours; their current whereabouts are unknown.