By Stephen Lendman | On November 23, Venezuela held regional and local elections for governors, mayors and other municipal offices. Over 5000 candidates contested in 603 races for 22 state governors, 328 mayors, 233 state legislative council members, 13 Caracas Metropolitan area council members, and seven others for the Alto Apure District Council. As mandated under Article 56 of the Bolivarian Constitution: "All persons have the right to be ...

By C Stephen Frost | Mary Bedworth, Christopher Burns-Cox, Lou Coatney and David Halpin co-signed this article, which appeared as a commentary in The Guardian following the publication of an article by Richard Norton Taylor (see below).     Background on the scandal of the twice-changed legal advice of the British Attorney General, which purported to allow the United Kingdom, and thereby the United States (together with Australia, Denmark and Poland), to wage an aggressive and ...

Moody's and Fitch's high ratings of subprime mortgage bonds disproportionately harmed black and Latino home buyers, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition alleges. By Kenneth R. Harney | In what is apparently the first legal action of its kind, an association of community-based organizations has filed a federal civil rights complaint against two of ...

Even after emancipation, the lives of former slaves in BDA were heavily policed The Bermuda Archives has extended its "groundbreaking" exhibit, 'A Very Manifest Alteration' to December 31. Pilot James 'Jemmy' Darrell is the basis from which 17 display items examine the limitations on the rights of 'freed people of colour' during Bermuda's transitional period from 1793 to 1816. The pilot-slave was 'manumitted' (freed) in 1796 ...

Human rights activists are calling on Egypt to open its border with Gaza to prevent the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the strip. Parliamentarians, community leaders, NGOs and human rights activists, from different countries, have written a letter to be delivered on Saturday by the Egyptian Embassy to President Hosni Mubarak to ask him ...

FT | So much for parliamentary privilege: Damian Green, the frontbench Conservative MP for Ashford, was arrested this week and held for nine hours for his part in leaking official documents to the press. The police's absurd over-reaction shows a lack of understanding of political sensitivities in relation to freedom of information. The government is right to investigate leaks. Given the sensitivity of materials in the Home Office, police ...

Truthdig | Still-President Bush has discussed his legacy with his sister Dorothy Bush Koch as part of a national oral-history project, suggesting the future should remember him for his “liberation” of 50 million people and reluctance to “sell his soul ... to accommodate the political process”—likely referring to that which is outlined in the U.S. Constitution.     ABC News: In a personal ...

By Steve Gunn MUSKEGON, Mich. -- A top-ranking Republican said he will call for a new federal inquiry into an alleged CIA cover-up in the 2001 military attack on a small plane in Peru that killed an American missionary and her infant child. Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., the ranking Republican on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, said the attack that killed Veronica and Charity Bowers can be traced to a reckless ...

Via anonymous email Portsmouth introduces CCTV cameras that can 'identify' suspicious behaviour and alert their operators As an MP is reportedly arrested for trying to leak information in the public interest, and royal assent is given to a bill that carries up to ten years in prison for gathering information on a police officer, new CCTV cameras in Portsmouth will be able to identify 'unusual' incidents and alert their ...

Three laws aimed at fighting climate change come into force in Britain today. by JOEL TAYLOR The legislation provides the world's first legally binding targets for a country to reduce carbon emissions. Its aim is to cut 1990 greenhouse gas levels by 80 per cent in 2050. Environmentalists welcomed the 'historic' laws but called on the government to go further by developing a low-carbon economy. They were also concerned ...

By Ruth Conniff | Black Friday is only a day away, and it doesn't look good for retailers. A front-page story in The New York Times, "To Buy Children's Gifts, Mothers Do Without," describes a trend away from shopping responsible for an 18.2 percent drop in women's clothing sales from a year ago. People are curbing the Christmas binge, buying less, forgoing gifts, and generally avoiding the ...

Baghdad, 27 Nov. (AKI) - Thousands of Iraqis detained by US forces will be at risk of torture or even execution if they are handed over to the Iraqi authorities, top rights Amnesty International warned on Friday. The warning came as the Iraqi Parliament overwhelmingly ratified a controversial security pact with the US under which around 16,000 prisoners held by the US will be transferred to Iraqi custody from the ...

Statement from the Steering Committee for the Prosecution for War Crimes of President Bush and His Subordinates Never before has a president pardoned himself or his subordinates for crimes he authorized. The closest thing to this in U.S. history thus far has been Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence. Bush is widely expected to follow that commutation with a pardon. Not only did Libby work for the White House, but he ...

By Robert Stevens | Lord Bingham used the occasion of his first major speech since his retirement as a senior law lord to describe the 2003 invasion of Iraq as “serious violation of international law”. Bingham, a former Lord Chief Justice, gave the annual Grotius Lecture at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law on November 17. His speech was a devastating judicial refutation of the lies concocted by ...

Via http://lancasteruaf.blogspot.com | Members of the British National Party (BNP) working in universities should not be allowed direct contact with students, the higher education equality watchdog has said. Several higher education staff were among BNP members whose details were recently leaked on the internet. Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of the Equality Challenge Unit (ECU), said this week that while "primacy of freedom of speech is fundamental", universities had ...