Jamie and Gladys Scott have been wrongfully convicted for armed robbery and received double life sentences each. No one was murdered or taken to the hospital during this robbery, no one was even injured. The transcripts state that 9, 10 or 11 dollars was stolen. They have been in prison now for 14 years.

After a short rally in the stock markets, lasting somewhere on the order of 1 to 4 months after Obama is inaugurated as President, people will realize that Obama's stimulus plan isn't going to work.

Specifically, it will become obvious that we're in a Great Depression, and that nothing that Bushco or Obamaco did can get us out of it (it may take a while longer for people to realize that what both administrations did actually made the financial crisis much worse).
At that point, the stock market will crash like a waterfall. Mish thinks the crash will leave the S&P at 600. Robert McHugh thinks the crash will drive the S&P to 500 or lower (in McHugh's worst-case scenario, the S&P could end up at 50).

At around the time of the crash, the bubble in long-term treasuries will burst. Retirees and other people who have socked away their money in treasuries will get hit hard.

The government itself will start massively buying its own long-term treasuries.

The Maryland State Police surveillance of advocacy groups was far more extensive than previously acknowledged, with records showing that troopers monitored -- and labeled as terrorists -- activists devoted to such wide-ranging causes as promoting human rights and establishing bike lanes.

Intelligence officers created a voluminous file on Norfolk-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, calling the group a "security threat" because of concerns that members would disrupt the circus. Angry consumers fighting a 72 percent electricity rate increase in 2006 were targeted. The DC Anti-War Network, which opposes the Iraq war, was designated a white supremacist group, without explanation.

...

The operation has been called a "waste of resources" by the current police superintendent and "undemocratic" by the governor.

...

Police have been given the power to hack into personal computers without a court warrant. The Home Office is facing anger and the threat of a legal challenge after granting permission. Ministers are also drawing up plans to allow police across the EU to collect information from computers in Britain.

The moves will fuel claims that the Government is presiding over a steady extension of the "surveillance society" threatening personal privacy.

Dozier will undoubtedly face vigorous prosecution, accused of willfully attempting to murder police. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in light of the fact that he had nothing illegal in the house and no reason to initiate a shoot-out with the cops. Stay tuned.

The Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to hack into people’s personal computers without a warrant.

The move, which follows a decision by the European Union’s council of ministers in Brussels, has angered civil liberties groups and opposition MPs. They described it as a sinister extension of the surveillance state which drives “a coach and horses” through privacy laws.

A legal battle of President elect Barack Obama versus the claim of Bush Administration, to come up in the Supreme Court, has become a legal and technical issue whether the president has powers to order the military to seize legal residents of the United States and hold them indefinitely without charging them with a crime?

We no longer have a civilian-led government. It is hard for a lifelong Republican and son of a retired Air Force colonel to say this, but the most unnerving legacy of the Bush administration is the encroachment of the Department of Defense into a striking number of aspects of civilian government. Our Constitution is at risk.

Why is the military planning on how to crush civil protest in regards to the current economic crisis (see this, this, this, this, this and this)?

There sure is a lot of agreeing going on -- one might describe it as "absolute." The degree of mandated orthodoxy on the Israel question among America's political elites is so great that if one took the statements on Gaza from George Bush, Pelosi, Hoyer, Berman, Ros-Lehtinen, and randomly chosen Bill Kristol-acolytes and redacted their names, it would be impossible to know which statements came from whom. They're all identical: what Israel does is absolutely right. The U.S. must fully and unconditionally support Israel. Israel does not merit an iota of criticism for what it is doing. It bears none of the blame for this conflict. No questioning even of the wisdom of its decisions -- let alone the justifiability -- is uttered. No deviation from that script takes place.

When police were called, Kappel said, neighbors pointed out an apartment in a large white house. When police knocked on the door, one of the suspects opened the door brandishing a long rifle with a large bayonet attached.

Uniformed police officers warned the man several times to drop his weapon. He didn't, Kappel said, and he pointed it at one of the officers. Two officers shot him several times. He died at a hospital Thursday morning, Kappel said.

Sources say satellite infrared technology was used there and in Britain.

A study of red-light cameras in Houston showed that traffic accidents doubled at those intersections in the first year after they were put in.

Mayor Bill White defended the use of the cameras, which he has favored, saying they prevented even more wrecks. Critics, however, said that the city-financed study supports their contention that the cameras are more about generating revenue than making streets safer.

Across Israel, Arab leaders are reporting the same thing: the are called in by Israeli police, or by Shin Bet, and are threatened over the growing protests in their communities against the military operation against the Gaza Strip.

“The call in imams, distinguished sheikhs, and even school teachers - all under threats,” complained MP Abas Zkoor. “They are told that they will be held responsible for all the riots and if they continue security forces will make sure they can no longer serve in their offices.”

This video was linked to by What Really Happened.com as far back as 2004. It was re-made and placed on youtube in Jan 2006 in several languages. As of Dec 11, 2008 all but one form of the video (the Arabic language one) was removed from youtube/ADL. That is because the Arabic version of the video had been loaded twice. The first one much later than the French, German, japanese, or Spanish because I had a harder time finding a translator. So buried in my video I guess they didn't find it. Also the tags are in Arabic.

Did you notice how the ADL took out Youtube first and THEN Israel started a war? Copy it, upload it and make them censor you. It only means that they are afraid of us. Blogging and youtube growth has shaking the mass media. They aim to censor and control it.

A U.S. Army War College report warns an economic crisis in the United States could lead to massive civil unrest and the need to call on the military to restore order.

Having failed to quell resistance and restore order in Iraq and Afghanistan, what would be the prospect of the military succeeding in an occupation of the US itself?

For the last couple hundred years, the White House has been occupied by white males. Well, this may come as a shock to some of you, but despite the fact that I'm also white and also male, having tyrants in power who share those traits doesn't make me feel empowered. They may look a little like me, but they are NOT like me. I love freedom, they love to dominate people, and that's a pretty important difference.

On October 1, 2008, the U.S. Army announced its 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team will be under the day-to-day control of the Northern Command, ostensibly “on call” to respond to emergencies and disasters. The recent exercise staged out of the Naval Support facility located at Indian Head, Maryland, is likely only the first of many such exercises that will receive media coverage in order to acclimate the American people to the high profile presence of soldiers on the streets under the control of Northcom.

Officially, American capitalism is characterised by democracy, opportunity, self-improvement, open and free markets, and constructive regulation for the public good, in short, happiness. Under this construct America has never fought a war of aggression and harbours no designs to do so. Its leaders have the nation’s interests at heart, and its politicians listen to their constituencies. The truth is different. Why the United States is so widely misunderstood is due in part to a controlled educational system and media.

More than 2,000 opponents of the federal Labor government's plans to censor the Internet rallied in cities across Australia on December 13—the second national protest in the past two months. The demonstrations, which were convened by the Digital Liberty Coalition (DLC), are another indication of the growing concern of industry technicians, scientists and a broad range of ordinary people over the government's attempts to control and regulate Internet access in Australia.

Mamie Singleton, 101, and her granddaughter, Mary Reaves, 56, are being evicted from their home of 45 years.

They received a notice last week from Syracuse police Chief Gary Miguel, giving them five days to leave their two-family house at 114 Baker Ave. They were supposed to move out by Christmas Eve.

The property is being closed for six months under the city's nuisance abatement law because of drug arrests at the house, Miguel said.

The UK has recently introduced a national Internet censorship scheme, a national ID card and is about to spend 12 billion pounds pushing the British population's web-searches, emails, sms messages and telephone callings records through a central database run by its spy agency, GCHQ. This month saw a secret UK court hearing, with secret participants, produce a secret order to secretly gag the population, the terms of which are secret and the revelation of which is punishable by up to 15 years of imprisonment.

The research arm of the US Department of Justice is working on two portable non-lethal weapons that inflict pain from a distance using beams of laser light or microwaves, with the intention of putting them into the hands of police to subdue suspects.

In the end, the shame of Vice President Dick Cheney was total: unmitigated by any notion of a graceful departure, let alone the slightest obligation of honest accounting. Although firmly ensconced, even in the popular imagination, as an example of evil incarnate—nearly a quarter of those polled in this week’s CNN poll rated him the worst vice president in U.S. history, and 41 percent as “poor”—Cheney exudes the confidence of one fully convinced that he will get away with it all.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon hailed eight soldiers who were decapitated in Guerrero state as heroes who died at the hands of criminals growing increasingly desperate amid his government’s crackdown on drug cartels.

The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone's microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations.

The technique is called a "roving bug," and was approved by top U.S. Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him.

Just as the Right has sold American civil liberties down the river for an attempt at "safety from terrorists" - not minding the CENTRALIZATION of spying agencies set up with huge data banks to spy on lefties/commies/pinkos/Muslim/terrorists who threaten this country with their lack of obedience to authority/patriotism, the Left has sold American civil liberties down the river for an attempt at "food safety" - not minding that a CENTRALIZED "food safety" Department is being planned which will have huge data banks for spying on the right/rednecks/racists/farmers who threaten this country with th

In the latest twist in a scandal involving the presence of the German intelligence service or Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) in the Balkan nation of Kosovo, the head of the BND has ordered whistleblower website Wikileaks to remove all BND-related files under threat of "immediate prosecution."

The indigenous Algonquin community of Barriere Lake has been fighting with the provincial government of Quebec and the federal government of Canada for nearly twenty years over their land. Blockades they have set up in the late 1980s stopped illegal logging on their land and led them to sign a Trilateral Agreement with the two governments. Today, the community claims the agreement and all others that followed have not been honored, while logging companies plan to resume operations.

The government has been accused of trampling on individual liberties by proposing wide-ranging new powers for bailiffs to break into homes and to use “reasonable force” against householders who try to protect their valuables.

Under the regulations, bailiffs for private firms would for the first time be given permission to restrain or pin down householders. They would also be able to force their way into homes to seize property to pay off debts, such as unpaid credit card bills and loans.

A new report by the U.S. Army War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks.

“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” said the War College report.

Engineers are developing a computerized surveillance system that, when completed, will attempt to recognize whether a person on the street is acting suspiciously or appears to be lost. Intelligent video cameras, large video screens, and geo-referencing software are among the technologies that will soon be available to law enforcement and security agencies.

Three weeks after Milburn was hospitalized for her injuries, police went to her school and arrested her for assaulting an officer during the incident.

Bilderberg luminary Henry Kissinger has repeated his routine call for a new international political order, stating that global crises should be seen as an opportunity to move toward a borderless world where national interests are outweighed by global necessities.

Dick Cheney's lawyers are asserting that the vice president alone has the authority to determine which records, if any, from his tenure will be handed over to the National Archives when he leaves office in January.

Agents began rifling through all of the family's possessions, a task that lasted hours and resulted in a complete upheaval of every private area in the home. Many items were taken that were not listed on the search warrant. The family was not permitted a phone call, and they were not told what crime they were being charged with. They were not read their rights. Over ten thousand dollars worth of food was taken, including the family's personal stock of food for the coming year. All of their computers, and all of their cell phones were taken, as well as phone and contact records.

A shopkeeper has been told he faces prosecution unless he stops putting jokes on leaflets advertising his store over Christmas.

A new law working its way toward passage in Germany has journalists worried. Certain provisions, they say, could eliminate the ability for reporters to protect their sources.

A Clay County father said he wants answers after his daughter and two other kids at her elementary school were accused of selling drugs and facing possible punishment all over some Vitamin C drops.

In his research, Seligman discovered that animals who learn to be helpless have little resistance to adverse situations. They often die in as few as ten minutes when placed in a survival situation, whereas animals who have learned mastery continue fighting to survive hours later. This research suggests learned helplessness is literally life-threatening. Research suggests it even triggers a biological suicide mechanism. In some cases biological functions simply slow down or cease; other studies indicate that the body may develop a terminal disease.