When the U.S. Supreme Court meets Monday to decide Troy Anthony Davis’ fate, its nine justices face a fairly straightforward question: Is there sufficient doubt about Davis’ guilt to warrant further scrutiny of his case?
Davis needs four justices to vote “yes.” Otherwise, his execution, halted by the high court less than two hours before it was to be carried out Tuesday evening, will be rescheduled. The court is expected to announce its decision by Oct. 6.
The high court’s granting the stay at such a late hour, while not unprecedented, indicates the case has the justices’ interest, court watchers said.
“The court can grant a stay and then refuse to hear a case, but they don’t issue the stay lightly,” said Thomas Goldstein, a Washington lawyer who specializes in arguing cases before the high court. “They are thinking about it hard.”
The stay infuriated the family of slain Savannah Police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail. They had traveled Tuesday to the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson to witness the execution. But it sent Davis’ family and supporters, who arrived at the prison in a church bus to stage a protest, into a jubilant frenzy.
Davis sits on death row for the Aug. 19, 1989, murder of MacPhail, a 27-year-old officer shot dead after he responded to the wails of a homeless man being pistol whipped in a Burger King parking lot. The former Army Ranger and father of two, working off-duty as a security guard, did not have time to draw his gun before being shot three times.
Davis was convicted with scant physical evidence: no DNA, no fingerprints, no murder weapon.
Since the 1991 trial, seven of nine key witnesses who testified against Davis, 39, have recanted their testimony. These include trial witnesses who testified they saw what happened, as well as witnesses who testified Davis told them he killed MacPhail. More witnesses have come forw
Sunday, October 5, 2008
U.S. Supreme Court Decision on Hearing for Troy Davis Scheduled for Today
The Noose Tightens
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Saturday, September 13, 2008
Mainstream Media Wakes Up To Salvia (How Long Before It's Outlawed Now?)
With a friend videotaping, 27-year-old Christopher Lenzini of Dallas took a hit of Salvia divinorum, regarded as the world’s most potent hallucinogenic herb, and soon began to imagine, he said, that he was in a boat with little green men. Mr. Lenzini quickly collapsed to the floor and dissolved into convulsive laughter.
When he posted the video on YouTube this summer, friends could not get enough. “It’s just funny to see a friend act like a total idiot,” he said, “so everybody loved it.”
Until a decade ago, the use of salvia was largely limited to those seeking revelation under the tutelage of Mazatec shamans in its native Oaxaca, Mexico.
Today, this mind-altering member of the mint family is broadly available for lawful sale online and in head shops across the United States.
Though older Americans typically have never heard of salvia, the psychoactive sage has become something of a phenomenon among this country’s thrill-seeking youth.
More than 5,000 YouTube videos — equal parts “Jackass” and “Up in Smoke” — document their journeys into rubber-legged incoherence.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/us/09salvia.html
Marijuana Ingredient May Fight Bacteria
Researchers in Italy and Britain have found that the main active ingredient in marijuana — tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC — and related compounds show promise as antibacterial agents, particularly against microbial strains that are already resistant to several classes of drugs.
It has been known for decades that Cannabis sativa has antibacterial properties. Experiments in the 1950s tested various marijuana preparations against skin and other infections, but researchers at the time had little understanding of marijuana’s chemical makeup.
The current research, by Giovanni Appendino of the University of the Eastern Piedmont and colleagues and published in The Journal of Natural Products, looked at the antibacterial activity of the five most common cannabinoids. All were effective against several common multiresistant bacterial strains, although, perhaps understandably, the researchers suggested that the nonpsychotropic cannabinoids might prove more promising for eventual use.
The researchers say they do not know how the cannabinoids work or whether they would be effective, as systemic antibiotics would require much more research and trials. But the compounds may prove useful sooner as a topical agent against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, to prevent the microbes from colonizing on the skin.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/science/09obdrug.html?_r=2&ref=science&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Thursday, September 4, 2008
What does a police state look like?
What does a police state look like? That is a good question. Maybe it looks something like this. Here is a photo of a small group of people trying to hold a demonstration in Denver at the Democratic Party convention. Notice the police overkill.But at least there is still freedom of the press! Right? Apparently [...]
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US: Halliburton Ex-OfficialPleads Guilty in Bribe Case
In a wide-ranging foreign-corruption investigation, fired former Halliburton Co. executive Albert J. "Jack" Stanley pleaded guilty to orchestrating more than $180 million in bribes to senior Nigerian government officials. The bribes were used to win a contract to build a liquefied-natural-gas plant in Nigeria.
Under a plea agreement entered Wednesday in a Houston federal court, Mr. Stanley faces seven years in prison and a $10.8 million restitution payment. His lawyer, Lee Kaplan, said, "We're hopeful the government finds his cooperation merits" a reduction in his prison sentence.
Mr. Stanley's agreement to cooperate could breathe new life into the five-year federal investigation, and additional charges of executives are possible. Various current and former executives of KBR, once a unit of Halliburton but now an independent company, have been subpoenaed, as have other companies involved in the construction.
The guilty plea exposes the corruption that sometimes goes hand in hand with enormous energy investments in Africa and other parts of the world. As energy companies search the world for oil and gas and related projects, they sometimes encounter foreign government officials whose approval is needed for investments but who seek bribes. Bribing such officials subjects companies and executives to possible prosecution under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
According to the plea, government prosecutors said bribes began in 1995, while Mr. Stanley worked for M.W. Kellogg, then part of a company called Dresser Industries Inc. Halliburton acquired Dresser in 1998 and merged M.W. Kellogg into an engineering and construction unit of Halliburton called Kellogg Brown & Root, or KBR.
Several of the bribes Mr. Stanley has said were paid occurred after that acquisition, during the time when Vice President Dick Cheney led Halliburton, and they continued after Mr. Cheney left. Though there was no evidence Mr. Cheney knew of the bribes, the future vice president promoted Mr. Stanley to run KBR in 1998. Mr. Stanley's guilty plea said the bribes continued until 2004, the year Halliburton fired him. Mr. Cheney's tenure as Halliburton chief executive ended in 2000.
The guilty plea thus could renew attention to Mr. Cheney's past ties to Halliburton. The oil-service company was the focus of intense scrutiny in Washington starting in late 2003 when evidence emerged of extensive overcharging for work in provisioning the U.S. war effort in Iraq. Pentagon auditors later found dozens of examples of shoddy billing and inadequate services, including evidence that a KBR subcontractor was supplying fuel to the Iraqi market at highly inflated prices.
Mr. Cheney was traveling in the Caucasus region Wednesday and couldn't be reached. His office in Washington said it wouldn't comment on "pending litigation."
Halliburton did not comment on the guilty plea, but it has said in financial filings that it has produced documents to investigators and made employees available for interviews. A spokeswoman for KBR Inc., which Halliburton spun off last year, said it hadn't reviewed the plea and couldn't comment, but that the company "does not in any way condone or tolerate illegal or unethical behavior."
Halliburton, despite no longer owning KBR, still faces investigations, including a federal criminal investigation and a probe by the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, governments in Switzerland, the U.K. and elsewhere are looking into the matter.
According to Mr. Stanley's plea, a construction consortium that included Kellogg and later KBR paid a combined $182 million, through two agents, to bribe Nigerian officials in a scheme to win a series of contracts. The work involved building a $6 billion facility to cool natural gas until it turns into a liquid and can be transported on thermoslike tankers. The facility was built on Bonny Island in the Nigerian River delta.
Mr. Stanley, 65 years old, said he and others met with Nigerian officials to ask how the illegal payment should be handled.
Mr. Stanley also pleaded guilty to taking $10.8 million in kickbacks from an agent of the construction firms. In 2004, Halliburton dismissed Mr. Stanley for taking "improper" payments from a British lawyer, Jeffrey Tesler. Mr. Tesler, who has denied wrongdoing in the past, is suspected by investigators of helping funnel money from the consortium to Nigerian officials.
The liquefied-natural-gas trade was beginning to boom in 1995, when what was then M.W. Kellogg first submitted a bid, along with three other companies. Mr. Stanley was Kellogg's representative on the consortium's steering committee and helped hire agents who would later bribe Nigerian officials to win engineering and construction contracts.
According to the federal filing in the case, the bribery scheme moved money through a series of banks, in Amsterdam, New York City, Japan and Switzerland, before it was paid to senior Nigerian government officials and a Nigerian political party. Mr. Tesler operated out of an office in a rundown north London immigrant neighborhood.
Allegations that bribes had been paid first surfaced in an unrelated case in France. A French magistrate began looking into the matter in October 2003, uncovering shell corporations in Gibraltar and bank accounts in Switzerland. U.S. investigators joined the hunt in January 2004, according to Halliburton SEC filings.
Over the years, the investigation has grown in scope. According to Halliburton's financial filings, the SEC has issued subpoenas looking into multiple construction projects initiated over the past two decades, both inside and outside Nigeria. The plea agreement Wednesday was the first time any executive had pleaded guilty in this investigation.
In the earlier focus on Halliburton over its supply work in Iraq, Democratic lawmakers accused Mr. Cheney of having helped steer work to Halliburton, and held hearings on the subject. The matter became an issue in the 2004 presidential election, during which Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry accused the Bush administration of being soft on Halliburton. The Stanley case, especially if it balloons to include still-more-senior Halliburton officials, could supply fresh ammunition for Democrats to attack the Bush administration and the Republican Party as being overly cozy with Big Oil.
--Neil King Jr. contributed to this article.
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Zodiac Killer's Identity And Weapon Uncovered?
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) " The Zodiac Killer attacked at least eight people, terrorizing the Bay Area and taunting police in the 60's and 70's. Thursday, the FBI confirmed to CBS13 they are now running laboratory tests on some items that may link a suspect to the killer. The evidence was given to the FBI by a Pollock Pines man who also claims he recently found the disguise worn by the Zodiac Killer during one of his attacks."The identity of the Zodiac Killer is Jack Tarrance. He's my stepfather," says Dennis Kaufman. Eight years of Dennis Kaufman's life has been consumed with attempting to prove the only father he's known since he was five-years-old is none other than the Zodiac Killer. "This a handwriting comparison I did," says Kaufman, showing handwriting samples claiming to be his father's and the Zodiac Killer's, which bear a striking similarity. Similarities Dennis says are no coincidence.Photo of Jack Tarrance (left) and a composite of the Zodiac Killer.
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Comcast to Limit Customers' Broadband Usage
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) — Comcast Corp, the largest U.S. cable operator, said on Thursday it will cap customers' Internet usage starting October 1, in a bid to ensure the best service for the vast majority of its subscribers. Comcast said it was setting a monthly data usage threshold of 250 gigabytes per account for all residential high-speed Internet customers, or the equivalent of 50 million e-mails or 124 standard-definition movies."If a customer exceeds more than 250 GB and is one of the heaviest data users who consume the most data on our high-speed Internet service, he or she may receive a call from Comcast's Customer Security Assurance (CSA) group to notify them of excessive use," according to the company's updated Frequently Asked Questions on Excessive Use. Customers who top 250 GB in a month twice in a six-month timeframe could have service terminated for a year.Comcast said up to 99 percent of its 14 million Internet subscribers would not be affected by the new threshold, which it said would help ensure the quality of Internet delivery is not degraded by a minority of heavy users. U.S. Internet subscribers are typically not aware of any limit on their Internet usage once they sign up to pay a flat monthly fee to their service provider.
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Thursday, July 17, 2008
The Miraculous World of Benny Hinn
One of the mega-star television evangelists recently placed under investigation by the Senate is Benny Hinn. Hinn is one of the more controversial celebrity evangelists due to many of his claims — that he has divine healing powers, that God will destroy the coastal U.S., and that corpses can be revived by having their hands placed on television screens during Trinity Broadcasting Network broadcasts. However, nothing tops his shockingly bizarre faith-healing/revivalist summits, held at gigantic arenas and amphitheaters across the country; Hinn causes thousands of spectators to faint by pointing at them, while others cry from the pain of invisible fire.
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[Source: Vidz King - Posted by WAR ON YOU]
History of Oil in the Middle East from WWI to the Present: Iran Eliminates the U.S. Petrodollar
On Sunday 17 February 2008 the first phase of Iran's oil and petrochemical bourse on Kish Island was inaugurated, paving the way for “all major currencies of the world” to be used in future oil transactions. Two months later, on April 30, Iran announced that they had “totally removed U.S. dollars in the country's oil transactions.”
To understand the significance of these events let’s take a look back at our history, starting with World War I. The following short video (2:08) recaps the events that resulted in Britain landing troops in Iran in 1914, and consequently occupying Iraq. A more detailed and glorified recollection of this part of our history can be witnessed through one of the greatest epic movies of all time, ‘Lawrence of Arabia’.
We fast-forward to the first attempt of Middle Eastern countries to free themselves of Western control of their resources with Iran in 1951, when the democratically elected president, Dr. Mohammed Mosaddeq, nationalizated Iran's oil industry. Unfortunately however, Western powers would not stand idly by while Iranians took control of their own resources, which is why in 1953 the CIA, following instructions from Britain, organized a coup against Dr. Mosaddeq and overthrew the government. This was a well documented event and general knowledge among all those who lived in the Middle East and Asia for decades, but was not well known in the West until the year 2000 when the United States government released documents on the operation, and apologized to Iran and its people for the devastation that it unleashed. The following short video (4:39) is a good introduction to this topic.
Let’s now discuss the purchasing power of the US dollar.
Since the end of the Second World War, the US dollar has become the international reserve currency. The need for countries to maintain US dollar reserves was solidified in 1974 during the Nixon administration, when negotiations with Saudi Arabia assured that the oil would only be sold in US dollars, and surpluses from oil proceeds would be invested in U.S. Treasury Bills. In return the US would militarily and economically protect the Saudi regime. Since that time, US dollars have dominated world markets - until the year 2000 that is.
The following article, “The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War With Iraq”, which was written before the US invasion of Iraq, lays forth an argument that the war in Iraq was not just about oil but about the currency in which oil is traded. It is mandatory reading for anyone who wants to understand the basic concepts of American foreign policy, economics, and its military operations around the world. This article states that the principle reason why the United States invaded Iraq was because Saddam Hussein in the year 2000 went ahead with his plans to stop using the US dollar in its oil business and start using the Euro.
The trading of oil for the Euro instead of US dollars is an extremely important historical precedent set by Iraq that must be understood to fully grasp the implications of Iran's announcement in December of 2006 that they would “use Euro instead of US dollar in (their) next year's budget.” If the United states was willing to invade Iraq to prevent oil from being traded in any other currency than the dollar, then it would be logical to assume that they will also confront Iran regarding their plans to permanently and absolutely phase out the US dollar.
This now brings us full circle to the opening of Iran’s Oil Bourse and their announcement that they have “totally removed U.S. dollars in the country's oil transactions.” Since Saddam Hussein’s declaration that Iraq would begin to sell oil in other currencies, a few very significant events have taken place. Iran’s announcement that it would follow suit is just the tip of the iceberg. Many other countries have already started to sell the US dollar and to convert to other currencies. Some of these countries include: Sweden, Cuba, U.A.E., China, Russia, India, Indonesia, North Korea, Venezuela, and many more.
It is a fact that oil is the only reason the US dollar has maintained its value and acceptance as the world currency. Once countries can buy oil in non-US dollars then the complete collapse of the American Empire will occur.
All countries are aware that the US has been printing absurd amounts of their fiat currency, and they are no longer willing to hold reserves that continue to devalue. This devaluing has become accelerated since the discontinuance of the M3 report. “On March 23, 2006, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System” ceased publishing the M3 monetary aggregate. The M numbers (M1, M2, and M3) are “components of the United States money supply”, which “show the amount of dollars in circulation”.
[Source: Vidz King - Posted by WAR ON YOU]
Conservatives Deeply Depressed Over McCain Campaign
(Las Vegas, Nevada) Conservatives are so depressed over the state of the McCain campaign--particularly its failure to include and enthuse the Republican base--that they are preparing themselves for a monumental GOP defeat in November, Richard A. Viguerie, Chairman of ConservativeHQ.com, said in a speech to FreedomFest.
“You even have some conservatives who are considering voting for Barack Obama, because they fear McCain as president would destroy what’s left of the Republican brand and would finish off the conservative movement,” said Viguerie. “Their mood is that of the fatally ill patient who says ‘Let’s get this over with’.”
“John McCain has had the Republican nomination sewn up for five months and has done little to convince conservatives they should come off the sidelines and fight for him,” he said.
Viguerie said, “Personnel is policy and if Senator McCain won’t surround himself with conservatives during this campaign, when he desperately needs them, why should we think that he will have conservatives making critical decisions in his administration?”
“Senator McCain has never been a conservative, is not one now, and will not govern as one. From McCain-Feingold to cap-and-trade, he is a supporter of one Big Government scheme after another. History shows that, in the Oval Office, where almost all the political pressure comes from supporters of Big Government, he would only get worse.”
Viguerie has also called for the resignation of the Republican leadership in Congress.
“After this year’s expected blood bath in the November elections, the voters will bring about a massive housecleaning of GOP leaders in favor of principled conservatives,” he said.
Freedom Fest, at which Viguerie spoke, is a gathering of prominent advocates for free markets. Other speakers this year include Steve Forbes, George Gilder, Bob Barr, Dinesh D’Souza, Christopher Hitchens, and Congressman Ron Paul.
[Source: Vidz King - Posted by WAR ON YOU]
An American Pastime: Smoking Pot
The Netherlands, with its permissive marijuana laws, may be known as the cannabis capital of the world. But a survey published this month in PLoS Medicine, a journal of the Public Library of Science, suggests that the Dutch don't actually experiment with pot as much as one would expect. Despite tougher drug policies in the U.S., Americans were twice as likely to have tried marijuana than the Dutch, according to the survey. In fact, Americans were more likely to have tried marijuana or cocaine than people in any of the 16 other countries, including France, Spain, South Africa, Mexico and Colombia, that the survey covered.
Researchers found that 42% of people surveyed in the U.S. had tried marijuana at least once, and 16% had tried cocaine. About 20% of residents surveyed in the Netherlands, by contrast, reported having tried pot; in Asian countries, such as Japan and China, marijuana use was virtually "non-existent," the study found. New Zealand was the only other country to claim roughly the same percentage of pot smokers as the U.S., but no other nation came close to the proportion of Americans who reported trying cocaine.
Why the high numbers? Jim Anthony, chair of the department of epidemiology at Michigan State University and an author of the study, says U.S. drug habits have to do, in part, with the country's affluence — many Americans can afford to spend their income on recreational drugs. Another factor may be an increasing awareness that marijuana may be less toxic than other drugs, such as tobacco or alcohol. (However, the study also found that the U.S. is among the leading countries in the percentage of respondents who have tried tobacco and alcohol). As for the popularity of cocaine, the reason may simply be the close proximity of South America, the world's only coca plant producer. And finally, Anthony notes, it's a matter of culture: the U.S. is home to a huge baby boomer population that came of age when experimenting with drugs was a part of the social fabric. "It became a more mass-population phenomenon during a period when there were a large number of young people who were in the process of creating a culture of their own," Anthony says.
The survey also found that more Americans not only experimented with drugs, but also tended to try pot and cocaine for the first time at a younger age compared with people in other countries. Just over 20% of Americans reported trying pot by age 15 and nearly 3% had tried cocaine by the same age. Those percentages jumped to 54% and 16%, respectively, by age 21. That finding isn't surprising, says Dr. Richard Schottenfeld, a professor of psychiatry and a drug expert at the Yale University School of Medicine, since peer influence has a significant impact on the prevalence of drug use. In the Netherlands, for example, there is a large, vocal and homogeneous conservative population that is staunchly opposed to marijuana, says Schottenfeld. And anti-drug activists have made recent attempts to tighten the country's cannabis policies.
Yet experts say the findings of the new survey don't fairly reflect the success or failure of any particular drug policy. The survey asked only whether people had ever tried drugs in their lifetime — it did not ask about habitual use. "For drug policy, what you look at is regular use," says Tom Riley, a spokesman for the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy. "Somebody having tried pot in 1968 in college doesn't really have much to do with what the current drug use picture in the United States is."
Though current findings may not provide enough context to judge existing drug policy, Anthony says they do highlight some valid issues, especially since stringent laws don't appear to impact whether kids experiment with drugs. "One of the questions raised by research of this type is whether Americans will want to continue supporting the incarceration of young people who use small amounts of marijuana," Anthony says.
The ongoing study, which surveyed more than 85,000 people in 17 countries, is part of a larger project through the World Health Organization's World Mental Health Survey Initiative. Anthony says further research about the frequency of worldwide drug use, and new data from additional countries will be released in the future.
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[Source: Vidz King - Posted by WAR ON YOU]
Thursday, January 31, 2008
War on America
Show this to anyone that is not convinced of the true nature of our current rulers and the society they have created for us. Everyone besides Ron Paul that is left in the race is working for these cfr criminals.
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