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Democracy

  • U.S. Patriot Act faces legal challenge in Connecticut
    3 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    BRIDGEPORT, Connecticut (Reuters) - A controversial clause in the U.S. Patriot Act that allows authorities to search citizens’ personal records faced its first public challenge in federal court on Wednesday as a library sought to lift a gag order on a FBI probe into its records.
    The case stems from an FBI request for records of a library patron without identifying the threat posed by the person, said an attorney from the American Civil Liberties Union, representing the unidentified (…)

  • Iraq’s fig leaf constitution
    3 September 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    by Robert Scheer
    Who lost Iraq? Someday, as a fragmented Iraq spirals further into religious madness, terrorism and civil war, there will be a bipartisan inquiry into this blundering intrusion into another people’s history.
    The crucial question will be why a "preemptive" American invasion - which has led to the deaths of nearly 2,000 Americans, roughly 10 times as many Iraqis, the expenditure of about $200 billion and incalculable damage to the United States’ global reputation - has had (…)

  • New Iraqi Constitution - text of Preamble
    25 August 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    (Translated from the Arabic by The Associated Press)
    PREAMBLE
    We the sons of Mesopotamia, land of the prophets, resting place of the holy imams, the leaders of civilization and the creators of the alphabet, the cradle of arithmetic: on our land, the first law put in place by mankind was written; in our nation, the most noble era of justice in the politics of nations was laid down; on our soil, the followers of the prophet and the saints prayed, the philosophers and the scientists (…)

  • Chile Completes Its Transition To Democracy
    19 August 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    by Brian McAfee
    In two key decisions Chile has restored her democracy lost on September 11, 1973 when Gen. Augusto Pinochet overthrew democratically elected president Salvador Allende in a bloody Coupe supported by the United States.
    On July 6, a Chilean court ruled 11 to 10 to remove Picnochet’s immunity he had granted himself when he became dictator in 1973. This opens the door to the families of those murdered and tortured by his regime to pursue legal action against him. There (…)

  • Soul Search
    19 August 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    By John Dinges
    For the last seven years, the press in Venezuela has had a story that would be the envy of any red-blooded, news-addicted reporter. It is a story of political upheaval and social change that began when Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998, and promptly rewrote the constitution. He has fended off efforts to dislodge him ever since. Chavez is floating vast income-redistribution programs, including housing and land reform that have peasants squatting on private property, on bonanza (…)

  • Of the Evil Empire: Imperialist Devastation of People and the Evils Done in our Names
    18 August 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    3 comments

    original found at www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com
    (MUST READ!!)
    Let us for a few moments put aside our lavish lifestyles of fortuitous endowment and providence that have made us blind to the realities of billions of our fellow humans. Let us ignore our plasma televisions, our DVDs, our two-story cookie cutter homes and gas-guzzling SUVs. Let us promise to not open our overstocked pantries and refrigerators, or to go out and eat at one of many corporate controlled franchise (…)

  • Psychoanalyst Stephen Soldz on Torture at Abu Ghraib
    14 August 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    Listen
    Welcome to Talk Nation Radio produced in New England at WHUS Storrs.
    Talk Nation.org for news and discussion on politics, human rights, and the environment.
    I’m Dori Smith
    Our guest today is
    Stephen Soldz of Roslindale Neighbors for Peace and Justice.
    He describes himself as a psychoanalyst, clinical psychologist, and social activist, and while teaching at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis he also finds time to write and perform research duties on a web page he (…)

  • LOOKING BACK AT LBJ
    11 August 2005 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    By William Fisher
    In our country, we seem to revere only a few presidential speeches ? Waashington’s Farewell Address, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s First Inaugural, John F. Kennedy’s “Ask Not”, and a few others.
    But I have to confess that, while I have written thousands of words about the Voting Rights Act of 1965, it has been many years since I actually listened to the words President Lyndon B. Johnson used to introduce this legislation.
    I did that (…)

  • Parts of Patriot Act are offensive-lawyers group
    10 August 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    By Andrew Stern
    CHICAGO - The president-elect of the nation’s largest lawyers group on Monday said some of the federal government’s investigative powers included in the anti-terrorism Patriot Act are a threat to constitutional rights.
    Michael Greco criticized aspects of the act, passed to bolster security after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, at the American Bar Association convention, where U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urged the U.S. Congress to renew it.
    "We support the (Bush) (…)

  • The Crisis of the Media and the Fifth Estate
    10 August 2005 par (Open-Publishing)

    "In many countries, the media long regarded as a characteristic element of democracy have become the main problem for democracy. Media’s association with information has become a problem.. The quality of democracy depends on the quality of democratic debate.."
    THE CRISIS OF THE MEDIA AND THE FIFTH ESTATE
    By Ignacio Ramonet
    [This article published in: WOZ, 6/2/2005 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.woz.ch/artikel/inhalt/2005/nr22/International/11892.html. (…)