Pent Up Housing Supply
A record 17.9 million U.S. homes stood empty in the third quarter.
A mere 2.07 million empty homes were for sale.
Let's do the math.
There are 15.83 million vacant homes just sitting there. How long can that last?
10 tribal sheiks kidnapped in Baghdad
Gunmen in Baghdad snatched 10 Sunni and Shiite tribal sheiks from their cars Sunday as they were heading home to Diyala province after talks with the government on fighting al-Qaida, and at least one was later found shot to death.
The bold daylight kidnapping came as the top U.S. commander in Iraq said the threat from the terror network has been "significantly reduced" in the capital.
Israel's legal advisor halts Gaza power cuts
Israel's state prosecutor said Monday that planned punitive cuts in the electricity supply to the Gaza Strip cannot go ahead without taking full account of the possible humanitarian consequences.
Menahem Mazouz said in a statement that "security chiefs must carry out supplementary examinations to take account of the humanitarian obligations before ordering electricity cuts."
Immunity Deal Hampers Blackwater Inquiry
The State Department promised Blackwater USA bodyguards immunity from prosecution in its investigation of last month's deadly shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians, The Associated Press has learned.
The State Department promised Blackwater USA bodyguards immunity from prosecution in its investigation of last month's deadly shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians, The Associated Press has learned.
Israel’s power cuts to Gaza: Collective punishment with tacit US approval
By Chris Marsden
Israel’s decision to begin cutting power to the Gaza Strip is a collective act of punishment that violates international law. It brings to a new stage the efforts made to starve the Palestinian population into submission since Israel imposed an economic embargo on Gaza after Hamas seized control in June from Fatah, now headed by the pro-Western President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas.
"Children are being treated as adults in Iraqi prisons and our investigations have shown that they are being abused and tortured," said Khalid Rabia'a, a spokesman for the Prisoners' Association for Justice (PAJ).
Greenspan Supports Gold Standard On Fox Business
Who's Behind the PKK?
In a word: Washington
By Justin Raimondo
The recent threat by the Turks to invade Iraq in hot pursuit of PKK terrorists has the administration scrambling to appease Ankara and stave off a major blow to the claim that the U.S. occupation has provided "stability" to the region. Kurdistan, after all, has been touted up until now as a model of peace, prosperity, and unalloyed happiness a foretaste of the country's golden future, provided "defeatists" in the U.S. don't pull the rug out from under our imminent victory. To see this veritable utopia smashed by Turkish force of arms would be a disaster for Washington but even worse would be the revelation of how we got ourselves into this wholly untenable position to begin with. Worse, that is, for whoever would be indicted and prosecuted for pulling off what may turn out to be one of the most ambitious, and dangerous, "rogue" operations since Iran-Contra.
Missing Nukes: Treason of the Highest Order
By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
U.S. Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Plans, and Requirements, Major-General Richard Y. Newton III commented on the incident, saying there was an “unprecedented” series of procedural errors, which revealed “an erosion of adherence to weapons-handling standards”
These statements are misleading. The lax security was not the result of procedural negligence within the U.S. Air Force, but rather the consequence of a deliberate tampering of these procedures.
State-owned Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, halted about 600,000 barrels a day of output as a storm passed through the Gulf of Mexico, spokesman Carlos Ramirez said in Mexico City. Early today, the dollar dropped to $1.4377 per euro, the weakest since the introduction of the 13-nation common currency in 1999.
Hersh: US, Israel support PKK
"In the past months, Israel and the United States have been working together in support of PKK and its Iranian offshoot PEJAK, I was told by a government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon," said Pulitzer Prize-winning, Seymour Hersh.
US annexes Canadian landmark in new video promoted by the State Department
In showing the natural wonder, Disney's filmmakers, however, chose the Horseshoe Falls, the only one of Niagara's three waterfalls to lie on the Canadian side of the border separating western New York state from southern Ontario province.
British minister detained at US airport
Britain's first Muslim Minister has decribed his disappointment after he was detained at a US airport, where his hand luggage was analysed for traces of explosive materials.
He was searched and detained by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) - the same department whose representatives he had been meeting on his visit to the country.
Travelers Beware: Homeland Security is Googling You
We've all undoubtedly heard the warnings about being careful about the information we put online, as well as the stories of potential employers and college admissions and coaches checking up on people online through Google and social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. But here's a new one for you: the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is also using this information to check up on individuals entering the country. "They" are watching you, and "they" know what you've been up to.
From CIA Jails, Inmates Fade Into Obscurity
On Sept. 6, 2006, President Bush announced that the CIA's overseas secret prisons had been temporarily emptied and 14 al-Qaeda leaders taken to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But since then, there has been no official accounting of what happened to about 30 other "ghost prisoners" who spent extended time in the custody of the CIA.
Thousands march against the war in S.F., across the country
March organizers put their number at 30,000 - old, young, workers, students, religious leaders. Police declined to give a formal estimate, but onlookers said the demonstrators definitely numbered more than 10,000. They filled up Market Street for several blocks, shouting that U.S. troops should be brought home and carrying banners decrying the war.
While there, he awoke one morning with a sore throat. Eighteen months later, Army Sgt. James Lauderdale was dead, of a bizarrely aggressive cancer rarely seen by the doctors who tried to treat it.
As a result, his stunned and heartbroken family has joined growing ranks of sickened and dying Iraq war vets and their families who believe exposures to toxic poisons in the war zone are behind their illnesses mostly cancers, striking the young, taking them down with alarming speed.
Mother Teresa, John Paul II, and the Fast-Track Saints
What usually went unreported were the vast sums she received from wealthy contributors, including a million dollars from convicted savings & loan swindler Charles Keating, on whose behalf she sent a personal plea for clemency to the presiding judge. She was asked by the prosecutor in that case to return Keating’s gift because it was money he had stolen. She never did. She also accepted substantial sums given by the brutal Duvalier dictatorship that regularly stole from the Haitian public treasury.
MRAPs going to Iraq on Russian cargo planes
The Air Force has been forced to use Russian commercial cargo jets to rush mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles from the U.S. to Iraq because it does not have enough C-5 and C-17 planes to do the job, the service’s top civilian official said recently.
No evidence Iran is making nukes: ElBaradei
Chief UN atomic watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei said overnight he had no evidence Iran was building nuclear weapons and accused US leaders of adding "fuel to the fire" with recent bellicose rhetoric.
Medical Marijuana User Commits Suicide After Long Being Denied Its Use
Robin Prosser, a Missoula woman who struggled for a quarter century to live with the pain of an immunosuppressive disorder, tried years ago to kill herself. Last week, she tried again. This time, she succeeded.
After her earlier attempt failed, Prosser wound up in even more trouble after investigating police found marijuana in her home. She used the marijuana to help cope with pain.
Yemen frees USS Cole plotter
Yemen has set free one of the al-Qaida masterminds of the USS Cole bombing in 2000 that killed 17 American sailors
World War II mass graves open a wound in Slovenia
"The killings that took place here have no comparison in Europe. In two months after the war, more people were killed here than in the four years of war," said Joze Dezman, a historian who heads the committee for registering hidden graves.
Reprieve for Saddam's men
That deadline has passed, but the men are still alive and in US custody. The reason is questions raised by prominent Iraqi officials and a spirited behind-the-scenes deliberation between senior Iraqi and US officials over the death sentence of one of the men, Sultan Hashem Ahmed al-Jabouri al-Tai, the former defence minister.
Intel Estimates to Be More Restricted
National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has reversed the recent practice of declassifying and releasing summaries of national intelligence estimates, a top intelligence official said Friday.
Crisis feared as U.S. water supplies dry up
An epic drought in Georgia threatens the water supply for millions. Florida doesn’t have nearly enough water for its expected population boom. The Great Lakes are shrinking. Upstate New York’s reservoirs have dropped to record lows. And in the West, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is melting faster each year.
Iraq Hampers U.S. Bid to Widen Sunni Police Role
The American military’s push to organize Sunni Arabs into local neighborhood watch groups has been one of the United States’ most important initiatives in Iraq so much so that President Bush flew to Anbar Province in September to highlight growing alliances with Sunni tribal leaders.
But now that the Americans are trying to institutionalize the arrangement by training the Sunnis to become policemen, the effort has been hampered by halfhearted support and occasionally outright resistance from a Shiite-dominated national government that is still inclined to see the Sunnis as a once and future threat.
Rumsfeld flees France fearing arrest
Former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fled France today fearing arrest over charges of "ordering and authorizing" torture of detainees at both the American-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the US military's detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, unconfirmed reports coming from Paris suggest.
US to Order Diplomats to Serve in Iraq
In the largest call-up of U.S. diplomats since the Vietnam War, the State Department is planning to order some of its personnel to serve at the American Embassy in Iraq because of a lack of volunteers.
We must bomb Iran, says US Republican guru
A senior foreign policy adviser to the Republican frontrunner Rudy Giuliani has urged that Iran be bombed using cruise missiles and "bunker busters" to set back Teheran’s nuclear programme by at least five years.
How Benjamin Franklin Made New England Prosperous
The following historical story is taken from a radio address given by Congressman Charles G. Binderup of Nebraska, some 50 years ago and was reprinted in Unrobing the Ghosts of Wall Street:
Governments in France, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, and several other countries have ordered such weapons, or are about to, even though human rights groups are warning that the supposed "non-lethality" of the guns is a myth, and that they actually can kill people.
Judgment Day for the CIA?
In a real-life version of 'Rendition,' a determined Italian prosecutor is hunting down those charged as the Bush administration's contract kidnappers.
The Politics of Paranoia
Jane Harman's War on the First Amendment
By Col. Dan Smith
Congresswoman Jane Harman has introduced legislation H.R. 1955: "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism" that is expected to be referred to the House Rules Committee for assignment of floor time for debate by the House. This is a bill that is unneeded, unwise, and unfortunately will pass and be signed into law as it purports to be part of the response to 9/11 and the global war on terror.
At base, Harman's proposal seems to be a direct attack on First Amendment rights. No where is this more clear than in the third introductory paragraph (the "where as" section) that provides the context for the action desired. Specifically, this legislation aims at the unregulated nature of the Internet
