Link: http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/16/europe/16kiev.php

A quarter century ago, a Ukrainian historian named Stanislav Kulchytsky was told by his Soviet overlords to concoct an insidious cover-up. His orders: to depict the famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in the early 1930s as unavoidable, like a natural disaster. Absolve the Communist Party of blame. Uphold the legacy of Stalin. Professor Kulchytsky, though, would not go along.

The other day, as he stood before a new memorial to the victims of the famine, he recalled his decision as one turning point in a movement lasting decades to unearth the truth about that period. And the memorial itself, shaped like a towering candle with a golden eternal flame, seemed to him in some sense a culmination of this effort. "It is a sign of our respect for the past," Professor Kulchytsky said. "Because everyone was silent about the famine for many years. And when it became possible to talk about it, nothing was said. Three generations on." The concrete memorial was dedicated last November, the 75th anniversary of the famine, in a park in Kiev, on a hillside overlooking the Dnieper River in the shadow of the onion domes of a revered Orthodox Christian monastery. More than 100 feet tall, the memorial will eventually house a small museum that will offer testimony from survivors, as well as information about the Ukrainian villages that suffered.

Link: http://fdralloveragain.blogspot.com/2009/03/soon-illegal-to-grow-your-own-food.html

Congress is about to make it illegal to grow your own food, or for any farm not to purchase and use government mandated chemicals, additives, and pesticides on all food consumed in the United States, violations are subject to a $1,000,000 dollar fine. HR 875 Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009
(sponsored by Rosa DeLauro whose husband Stanley Greenburg works for Monsanto) (growing an organic tomato in your backyard is now illegal) oprah.com

Link: http://www.wkyc.com/news/local/news_article.aspx?storyid=109037&catid=3

STARK COUNTY -- A story that already has people talking nationwide is certain to get more attention with a billboard that encourages former female inmates to report jail abuse. The billboard along Route 62 near Root Avenue in Stark County was put up as a result of the civil lawsuit brought by Hope Steffey against Stark County Sheriff Tim Swanson. Steffey's clothes were forcibly removed by both male and female deputies and she was left completely naked inside the Stark county jail for six hours. Sheriff Swanson says Steffey was considered suicidal so her clothes had to be removed for her own safety. Steffey has denied she was suicidal. The woman's lawyers discovered during the lawsuit that at least 128 women between 1999 and 2007 were strip-searched or forced to remove their clothing or placed on suicide watch, homicide watch or "naked detention." This Stark County Sheriff Tim Swanson is like a concentration camp commandant. When asked about the ethics of stripping prisoners - young women, naked in his jail Swanson justified his 'Abu Ghraib' style treatment of human beings by stating that he has hundreds of prisoners that are stripped naked in his jail. Swanson thinks the large scale of the crime somehow legitimizes it. Sheriff Swanson should know that many thousands of Jews were also stripped naked in concentration camps and it didn’t make the dehumanizing practice any less of an atrocity. In fact it made it much worse.

Link: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/patriot/38979prs20090311.html

The American Civil Liberties Union released a comprehensive report today examining widespread abuses that have occurred under the USA Patriot Act, a law that was rushed through Congress just 45 days after September 11. In the almost eight years since the passage of the controversial national security law, the Patriot Act has led to egregious government misconduct. “From the gagging of our nation’s librarians under the national security letter statute to the gutting of time-honored surveillance laws, the Patriot Act has been disastrous for Americans’ rights,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “In the panic following the events of 9/11, our nation’s lawmakers hastily expanded the government’s authority to a dangerous level and opened a Pandora’s box of surveillance.”

Link: http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/federal-loan-guarantees-0204.html

Bailout estimates for failed projects could range from hundreds of billions to more than a trillion. The nuclear power industry is pressuring Congress to dramatically expand federal loan guarantees for building new plants, which would put taxpayers and ratepayers at significant financial risk, according to a report released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). Congress already has authorized $60 billion for loan guarantees in which the federal government would shield utilities and private investment firms from the risk of default on loans for building new electricity generation plants. The Department of Energy (DOE) has allocated $18.5 billion of that money for new nuclear plants over the next few years. Given the average projected cost of building one reactor is currently $9 billion, the industry is clamoring for considerably more. To date, the DOE has received $122 billion in applications for loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants.

Link: http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:_XSDPC4u2KgJ:www.blackcommentator.com/309/309_col_lavena_johnson_raped_murdered_military_base_iraq_printer_friendly.pdf+LaVena+Johnson:+Raped+and+Murdered+on+a+Military+Base+in+Iraq+The+Black+Commentator&hl=en&ct=clnk&

Have you heard about the story of LaVena Johnson? Well, maybe you should read on. LaVena Johnson, a high school honor student, decided to enlist in the Army in order to pay for college. On July 19, 2005, after serving eight weeks in Iraq, she was killed, just eight days short of her twentieth birthday. Private Johnson, posthumously promoted to Private First Class - was found dead on a military base in Balad, Iraq, in a tent belonging to military contractor KBR, a spinoff and former subsidiary of Halliburton, Dick Cheney’s company. She was the first woman from Missouri to be killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. And the U.S. Army officially ruled her death a suicide, she shot herself in the head, case closed. But this is where the story begins. Johnson’s family knew something was wrong. They had talked to her on the phone a few days earlier, and she was in a great mood as usual, and was planning to come home for the holidays, earlier than expected. Questions were raised when LaVena’s family viewed her body. There were suspicious bruises, and while the military claimed that this right-handed soldier had shot herself in the head with an M-16 rifle, the gunshot wound was on the left side of her head. Others who committed suicide were murdered in Iraq: LaVena Johnson | Ted Westhusing | Alyssa Peterson | Sgt Melissa Valles | Jennifer A. Valdivia | Pat Tillman | US Army Cover-Up of Rape and Murder?

Link: http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=western_support_for_islamic_militancy_2848#western_support_for_islamic_militancy_2848

Two Israelis, Salvador Gersson Smike, 34, and Sar Ben Zui, 27, are arrested in the Mexican Congress Building in Mexico City. Smike is carrying a plastic 9 mm sophisticated Glock 9 mm pistol tucked into his underwear in his lower back. He also has with him a briefcase reported to contain 58 bullets, bomb-making materials, three detonators, and nine grenades. The two were apprehended after ex-sugarcane workers, who were waiting for a congressional hearing, saw the two Israelis behaving strangely at around 4:00 p.m.

Link: http://socialistworker.org/2009/01/12/theyre-wiping-out-entire-families

AS ISRAELI forces began what officials called "phase three" of their onslaught on Gaza--moving into the cities--stories of atrocities are emerging that confirm the inhuman barbarism of the attack so far. For example, in an eastern section of Gaza City, one extended family named the Samounis, whose members lived near one another in several homes, were herded by Israeli forces into a single building--which was then repeatedly shelled. The dead lay together with those left alive, but the Israelis prevented ambulances from coming to their aid for days on end.

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.

Link: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6044243.html

Witnesses described dozens of police storming a shocked and unresisting wedding party, shouting profanity and roughly shoving men and women. Michael McMillan, 36, of Houston, said he and Backe walked up to see what the commotion was about and saw O'Balle on the ground bleeding, being shocked with a Taser and handcuffed. Police began shouting at them to back up and they complied, he said. After they backed up as far as they could, McMillan said, officers continued shouting, "and Brandon Backe said, 'Sir, be cool, we're backed up as far as we can go.'" As soon as Backe spoke, several officers wrestled him to the ground, punching him as he went down, McMillan said. "A police officer kicks him right in the face," he said. Backe never used profanity, insults or resisted the officers, McMillan said. McMillan said he moved away and began walking down the hill with his wife when an officer ran at him and struck him with an elbow, knocking him to the ground. Several officers piled on and one put a foot in his back, he said. He was put in a police car with Backe, he said. When they complained about their handcuffs being painfully tight, officers increased the pain by cornering at high speeds and forcing them to slide along the seat, he said. He said officers laughed as they cried out in pain. Describing the experience, McMillan said, "You will feel the most helpless, humiliated, betrayed, that you will ever feel." Chris Cornwell, 26, of Galveston, said police threw him to the ground when he asked them to stop shoving his pregnant wife. An officer put his foot on Cornwell's head until he stopped talking, he said. Matt Goodson, 26, of Galveston, said he was taken down next to Cornwell. One of the officers picked up his head and pepper-sprayed him in the face for no reason, he said. Video showing the brutal and senseless taser torture of the wedding guests. The compliant father of the bride lays prone on the floor screaming in agony as the Texas police officers stand over him tasering him again and again. As He writhes in terrible pain from the electro torture one police officer puts a foot on his spine.

n we are hearing about this case is because Brandon Backe is a famous baseball player. Every year in America some 460 innocent men and women are shot, tasered, beaten, and abused to death, die accidentally, or die from unknown causes while in police custody. Every day in America innocent people are brutalized, stripped naked, tortured, and beaten by the police. America’s government and prison system do not recognize the Geneva Conventions. America’s version of freedom and democracy resembles tyranny and police state.

Link: http://www.cantonrep.com:80/communities/canton/x309570834/Deputies-sue-TV-station-over-reports-about-woman-stripped-naked

those deputies — Kristin Fenstemaker, Laura Rodgers, Tony Gayles, Richard T. Gurlea Jr., Andrea Mays and Brian Michaels — sued reporter Tom Meyer, WKYC and its parent company, alleging defamation and invasion of privacy.

Link: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090223/klein?rel=hp_currently

Watching the crowds in Iceland banging pots and pans until their government fell reminded me of a chant popular in anti-capitalist circles in 2002: "You are Enron. We are Argentina." Its message was simple enough. You--politicians and CEOs huddled at some trade summit--are like the reckless scamming execs at Enron (of course, we didn't know the half of it). We--the rabble outside--are like the people of Argentina, who, in the midst of an economic crisis eerily similar to our own, took to the street banging pots and pans. They shouted, "¡Que se vayan todos!" ("All of them must go!") and forced out a procession of four presidents in less than three weeks. What made Argentina's 2001-02 uprising unique was that it wasn't directed at a particular political party or even at corruption in the abstract. The target was the dominant economic model--this was the first national revolt against contemporary deregulated capitalism.

Link: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/detention/38535prs20090128.html

Former United States Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, former FBI Director William Sessions and numerous former generals, admirals and diplomats joined the American Civil Liberties Union in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reject the president's authority to indefinitely imprison a legal resident of the U.S. without charge or trial. These and other top military and civilian leaders are expected to file friend-of-the-court briefs today in the ACLU case of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who has been detained in solitary confinement at a Navy brig in South Carolina since June 2003.

Link: http://uruknet.info/?p=m50993&hd=&size=1&l=e

Cairo: Doctors operating the only brain-scanning machine at an Egyptian hospital near Gaza have been almost overwhelmed by the number of Palestinian children arriving with bullet wounds to the head. On just one day last week, staff at the Al Arish hospital in Sinai were called to perform CAT scans on a nine year old, two 10 year olds and a 14 year old, each of whom had a bullet lodged in their brain after coming under fire during the Israeli ground assault on Gaza. Israeli officials continued to deny on Saturday that their soldiers had deliberately targeted civilians, blaming Hamas fighters for sheltering in the houses of ordinary Gaza residents and using them as human shields. But there is no disputing the scale of the suffering in Gaza or its heavy impact on the young. Hundreds of victims of Israel's three-week campaign in Gaza have been transferred across the Egyptian border at Rafah for urgent treatment. They are seen first at Al Arish, nearly 40 miles from the border. Among them last week was nine-year-old Anas Haref, who arrived with a bullet in her brain. Dr Ahmad Yahia, head of the trauma team, broke the news to her grandmother that the girl was not expected to live.