Link: http://www.presstv.ir:80/detail.aspx?id=86597&sectionid=351020105

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Hassan Qashqavi, has said that Hollywood film makers have thirty anti-Iranian movies in the offing. "Hollywood has thirty anti-Iranian movies in the offing with the subject of hostility towards Iran's historical and Islamic identity," Qashqavi told reporters at a weekly news conference in Tehran on Monday. "The subject of making various movies has directly targeted not only Iran's religious and historical identity but also the country's social values including hospitality in an attempt to show hostility towards the Islamic Republic," he added. "There are certain political objectives behind a number of movies under the pretext of creating art," he explained. The controversial anti-Iranian Hollywood film '300', made by Zack Snyder, is an example of such films. 300 was severely criticized due to its historically inaccurate version of the events described in the movie. Persians in the film are also depicted as ugly and violent creatures rather than realistic human beings.

Link: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/detention/38782prs20090223.html

Government Should Not Maintain "Other Gitmos," Says ACLU NEW YORK – The Obama administration told a federal court late Friday that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their detention. The move, which is a continuation of the Bush administration's detention policy, comes in a lawsuit filed on behalf of several prisoners who have been indefinitely detained at the Bagram Air Force base for years without trial. The American Civil Liberties Union calls on the new administration to reconsider this troubling position. "The Obama administration did the right thing by ordering Guantánamo closed. But a restoration of the rule of law and American ideals cannot be achieved if we allow 'other Gitmos' to be maintained around the globe," said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. "Detainees at Bagram, like at Guantánamo, are under U.S. control and custody. It is therefore the responsibility of the U.S. to ensure that basic fundamental rights apply there. As its review of detention facilities continues, we strongly urge the Obama administration to reconsider this position."
►Is Aafia Siddiqui Bagram’s Prisoner 650?
►Dr Afia Siddiqui "The Grey Ghost Lady of Bagram"
►Vanishing into the American Gulag

Link: http://gigapan.org:80/viewGigapanFullscreen.php?auth=033ef14483ee899496648c2b4b06233c

If you attended the presidential inauguration and were among the millions of people in the crowd in front of the Capitol, it would seem that you would just blend into such a crowd, but not so. If you were there, ‘they’ knew you were there, and they knew exactly where you were sitting and probably who you are. This is just a little sample of the technology that is used to monitor us.

Link: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/38695prs20090209.html

The Justice Department today repeated Bush administration claims of "state secrets" in a lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen DataPlan for its role in the extraordinary rendition program. Mohamed et al. v. Jeppesen was brought on behalf of five men who were kidnapped and secretly transferred to U.S.-run prisons or foreign intelligence agencies overseas where they were interrogated under torture. The Bush administration intervened in the case, inappropriately asserting the "state secrets" privilege and claiming the case would undermine national security. Oral arguments were presented today in the American Civil Liberties Union's appeal of the dismissal, and the Obama administration opted not to change the government position in the case, instead reasserting that the entire subject matter of the case is a state secret. Change?

Link: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090302/greider?rel=hp_currently

Governing elites in Washington and Wall Street have devised a fiendishly clever "grand bargain" they want President Obama to embrace in the name of "fiscal responsibility." The government, they argue, having spent billions on bailing out the banks, can recover its costs by looting the Social Security system. They are also targeting Medicare and Medicaid. The pitch sounds preposterous to millions of ordinary working people anxious about their economic security and worried about their retirement years. But an impressive armada is lined up to push the idea--Washington's leading think tanks, the prestige media, tax-exempt foundations, skillful propagandists posing as economic experts and a self-righteous billionaire spending his fortune to save the nation from the elderly.

Link: http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/11379/farmers-up-in-arms-at-herb-listing

Farmers and traditional medicine experts have reacted angrily to the listing of 13 widely used herbal plants as hazardous substances, suggesting there is a hidden agenda that favours chemical companies. The Industry Ministry listed the 13 plants as hazardous substances to control production and commercialisation. The plants are widely used among farmers as alternatives for expensive and toxic farm chemicals, pesticides and herbicides. Multinational chemical companies are expected to benefit once production and commercialisation of the alternative substances is curbed, he said. Large numbers of farmers have switched recently from imported chemicals to botanical substances as they are much cheaper and safer, he said.

Link: http://www.usgs.gov:80/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911

U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey Office of Communication: North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation. A U.S. Geological Survey assessment, released April 10, shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency's 1995 estimate of 151 million barrels of oil. Technically recoverable oil resources are those producible using currently available technology and industry practices. USGS is the only provider of publicly available estimates of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and gas resources. The Bakken Formation estimate is larger than all other current USGS oil assessments of the lower 48 states and is the largest "continuous" oil accumulation ever assessed by the USGS.