Author: Admin

Monday, January 23, 2006

In the town of Weare, New Hampshire, a movement is under way to force Supreme Court Justice David Souter to sell his home for “public benefit,” an expansion of the eminent domain provision in the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution that the Supreme Court legalized in the controversial 5–4 decision in Kelo v. New London where Souter was on the majority side. In the June 2005 decision this majority ruled that “public use” included “public benefit,” stating that a local council could use the Fifth Amendment to compulsorily acquire private property for the express purpose of selling it to other private parties whose use was expected to yield increased tax revenues. The decision left many worried that homes would be seized for commercial enterprises or that the decision could be used as a means to remove minority property owners deemed inconvenient.

The campaign to have Souter’s house removed is headed by Logan Clements, who is petitioning to replace it with the Lost Liberty Hotel, a tongue-in-cheek name for what he says will be a memorial to lost freedom. Clements already has 188 signatures to put the issue on a ballot, and only 25 are needed. Once it is on the ballot, the measure can be approved as soon as March. Weare has 8,500 residents.

So far, neither Justice Souter nor Kathy Arberg, Supreme Court spokeswoman, have commented on the matter.

Thursday, September 6, 2007

82-year-old Jewish Bowmanville, Ontario woman Ms. Marion Schwarz’s house has been found vandalized with graffiti showing neo-Nazism expressions, as well as swastikas. Broken windows and walls were found ripped open.

The terms “Kike”, “Fuck Jews,” and “White Power” were written in white around the house, as well as a large green swastika.

The woman’s husband Mr. Allan Schwarz, was returning home to their house on King Street East, the town’s center, to bring home a present for their 40th wedding anniversary when he found the house not the way he left it.

Bought to start an antique store, the Schwarz’s started a cattle business instead and later rented it out. Ten years ago their tenant started to rent the house, just five months ago he stopped paying rent saying he was on welfare. Ms. Schwarz offered to lower his rent. He vandalized and fled, with his son and daughter, from the house on Tuesday morning, the day he was to be evicted. She was accompanied by her son Alan, two police officers, and a locksmith.

“I don’t know what happened to him … Up until the last while, I never had a day’s trouble with him. He was friendly,” Ms. Schwarz said.

Durham Regional Police are now investigating what they refer to as an “incident”, and what lobby group B’nai Brith Canada has argued constitutes a “hate crime”.

“A swastika on its own, as per the Criminal Code of Canada, is not a hate crime,” said Sgt. Paul McCurbin. “It doesn’t have the proper components to be considered a hate crime. For example, if I said that I was going to kill a race of people or we should kill a race of people, that would be considered a hate crime.”

A local neighbor, who asked not to be named, swept glass from the broken windows off the sidewalk, worried that dogs could cut their feet. She said the tenants were private people.

A Prisoner of War (POW) camp was located in Bowmanville during World War II (WWII). [1] [2] Named Camp 30 it held captive German army officers from the Afrika Korps, fliers from the Luftwaffe and naval officers from the Kriegsmarine. Many of them were transferred from England. Among them was famous top U-boat ace of World War II Otto Kretschmer. He was involved in the Battle of Bowmanville.

The Bowmanville boys’ school was the building holding the prisoners. The facility had been designed to house 300 boys. Surrounding the existing school buildings was a barbed wire fence. It was not the typical POW camp, having good food and prisoners being well treated. It had gardens and even a swimming pool was built. Movies were shown each week, music concerts were held, and stage plays were produced.

Mr. Schwarz fled from Germany to Canada in 1938. Marion, a Toronto native, and her husband moved to Bowmanville to start a new life.

“In 1938, we found safe haven in Bowmanville,” said her son Alan. “It was wonderful place to settle and my parents have been here basically for 70 years. They never anticipated ever facing the same kind of symbolism they had to leave Germany for.”

The investigation still continues. The tenant’s name has not been released.

“We couldn’t foresee anything like this because human beings don’t do things like this.”

Sunday, April 9, 2006

Prime Minister Tony Blair launched a new crime-fighting agency to deal with “brutal and sophisticated” crimes by organised gangs. The agency’s mandate and powers have been compared to that of the United States’ FBI.

The Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), has approximately 4,200 “law enforcement officers”, some of whom are ex-spies, and will use their £400m annual budget to fight counterfeiting, fraud, drug and people-trafficking.

The agency was created out of the National Crime Squad, the National Criminal Intelligence Service and investigative staff from the Immigration Service. SOCA is chaired by ex-MI5 chief Sir Stephen Lander.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

The United Nations is reportedly beginning an investigation into claims that Pfc. Bradley Manning is being “tortured.” Manning was arrested in May, after allegedly leaking over 250,000 classified diplomatic cables to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

Last week, it was announced that supporters for Manning lodged a complaint with the Office of The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland, saying that the conditions of his cell and the treatment he is receiving, amount to “torture.” According to Salon, Manning is not allowed to exercise, is denied bed sheets and pillows, and has been held in solitary confinement for 23 hours of every day since his arrest. According to Manning’s attorney, David Coombs, a former United States Army major, and veteran of the Iraq War, Manning is only allowed to walk in a small room for exercise.

“[Manning is] taken to an empty room and only allowed to walk, normally just walks figure eights in the room. If he indicates that he no long feels like walking, he is immediately returned to his cell,” stated Coombs to Salon.

The Pentagon denies that Manning is being tortured, saying he is being treated “fairly. We’ve been reviewed … No concerns have been voiced from a (Department of Defense) perspective.”

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Ian Narev, the CEO of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, this morning “unreservedly” apologised to clients who lost money in a scandal involving the bank’s financial planning services arm.

Last week, a Senate enquiry found financial advisers from the Commonwealth Bank had made high-risk investments of clients’ money without the clients’ permission, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars lost. The Senate enquiry called for a Royal Commission into the bank, and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

Mr Narev stated the bank’s performance in providing financial advice was “unacceptable”, and the bank was launching a scheme to compensate clients who lost money due to the planners’ actions.

In a statement Mr Narev said, “Poor advice provided by some of our advisers between 2003 and 2012 caused financial loss and distress and I am truly sorry for that. […] There have been changes in management, structure and culture. We have also invested in new systems, implemented new processes, enhanced adviser supervision and improved training.”

An investigation by Fairfax Media instigated the Senate inquiry into the Commonwealth Bank’s financial planning division and ASIC.

Whistleblower Jeff Morris, who reported the misconduct of the bank to ASIC six years ago, said in an article for The Sydney Morning Herald that neither the bank nor ASIC should be in control of the compensation program.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

On Monday, the Olympic torch for the 2008 Summer Olympics was lit in Olympia, Greece as per tradition. The Games of the XXIX Olympiad are scheduled to be held in and around Beijing, China from August 8, 2008, to August 24, 2008.

Members of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), and others, were able to break through the police cordon. “We cannot let the Chinese government seize the Olympic flame, a symbol of peace, without denouncing the dramatic human rights situation in the country,” RSF said in a statement.

While Liu Qi, president of the Beijing Organizing Committee and a former mayor of Beijing, delivered a speech, at least one protester was able to run up behind him and display a flag that resembled the Olympic flag, except it was black and the rings were handcuffs.

The protester was quickly apprehended and Liu Qi continued his speech relatively uninterrupted. “The Olympic flame will radiate light and happiness, peace and friendship, and hope and dreams to the people of China and the whole world,” he told the crowd.

“Shame on China. Don’t send China’s blood-tainted torch to Tibet. Free Tibet. Tibet is an independent country,” shouted Tenzin Dorjee, a leader for Students for a Free Tibet, while he was taken by police.

“All we wanted to do was break into the torch relay and shout that this is a torch of shame as the Chinese government continues to kill hundreds of our people,” Dorjee said later. “They were stalking me from the moment I touched down to Greece,” he added.

The torch is still scheduled to be carried around the world in a relay that will go through twenty countries before arriving in Beijing for the start of the Games.

Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has defended having the Games in China, saying, “The major political leaders don’t want a boycott.”

In his speech Monday, he said, “The torch is the link between all athletes and citizens of this world; between all of us who believe in Olympism and the virtue of sport. It has the force to unite humanity and to stand for harmony.”

Germany’s Olympic Committee rejected a boycott of the games aimed at events in Tibet. Noting that the 1980 Summer Olympics boycott did not avert the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the president of the committee said they concluded that the role of sports is to start dialog and promote understanding — and not to exert political pressure.

Friday, March 23, 2007

French space agency CNES released its UFO files to the public through its website on Thursday. The 100,000 pages of witness testimony, photographs, film footage and audiotapes are an accumulation of more than 1,600 sightings since 1954 and will include all future UFO reports obtained by the agency.

Jacques Patenet, an aeronautical engineer who is leading the study of the “non-identified aerospatial phenomena,” noted that the release of the UFO files to the public was “a world first,” and that “the data that we are releasing doesn’t demonstrate the presence of extraterrestrial beings. But it doesn’t demonstrate the impossibility of such presence either. The questions remain open.”

Almost 25 percent of the cases have been categorized as “type D”, meaning that “despite good or very good data and credible witnesses, we are confronted with something we can’t explain,” Jacques explained.

CNES receives approximaely 50 to a 100 UFO reports each year. 10 percent of these reports are objects of on-site investigations.

Security was on hand at CNES headquarters during the announcement “to screen out uninvited UFOlogists.”

The CNES website containing the UFO files crashed all its host servers three hours after it was brought online due to heavy traffic.

Other countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom do have UFO files available, but only release them through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) on a case-by-case basis.