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This Week at I Want Change
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It's easy for soldiers to score heroin in Afghanistan Shaun McCanna, Salon
Just outside the main gate to Bagram airfield, a
U.S. military installation in Afghanistan, sits a
series of small makeshift shops known by locals as
the Bagram Bazaar. For Afghans, it is the place to
buy American goods, but the stalls that make up
the heart of the bazaar are also well known for
what they provide American soldiers stationed at
Bagram. Walking through the bazaar it takes less
than 10 minutes for a vendor in his early 20s to
step out and ask, "You want whiskey?" "No,
heroin," I tell him. He ushers me into his store
with a smile.
The shop is small, 9 feet wide by 14 feet deep,
and dark. The walls at the front are lined with
dusty cans of soda, padlocks and miscellaneous
beauty supplies. As we enter, a teenager is
visible at the back, seated in a chair next to a
collection of American military knives and
flashlights. The shopkeeper speaks to him in Dari.
The teen stands and heads for the door, where he
stops and asks my Afghan driver a question. My
driver translates, "He wants to know how much you
want? Twenty, 30, 50 dollars' worth?" From past
experience, for I have arranged this same
transaction a dozen times in a dozen different
Bagram Bazaar shops, I know that the $30 bag will
contain enough pure to bring hundreds of dollars
on the streets of any American city. Afghanistan,
after all, is the source of 90 percent of the
world's heroin. I say 30 and the teen jogs off...
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Democrats' responsibility for Bush radicalism
By Glenn Greenwald, Salon
It is staggering, and truly disgusting, that even
in August, 2007 -- almost six years removed from
the 9/11 attacks and with the Bush presidency
cemented as one of the weakest and most despised
in American history -- that George W. Bush can
"demand" that the Congress jump and re-write
legislation at his will, vesting in him still
greater surveillance power, by warning them, based
solely on his say-so, that if they fail to comply
with his demands, the next Terrorist attack will
be their fault. And they jump and scamper and
comply (Meteor Blades has the list of the 16
Senate Democrats voting in favor; the House will
soon follow).
I just finished a discussion panel with ACLU
Executive Director Anthony Romero which was
originally planned to examine his new (superb)
book about the work his organization has done for
years in battling the endless expansion of
executive power and presidential lawbreaking. But
the only issue anyone in the room really wanted to
discuss -- including us -- was the outrage
unfolding on Capitol Hill. And the anger was
almost universally directed where it belongs: at
Congressional Democrats, who increasingly bear
more and more responsibility for the assaults on
our constitutional liberties and unparalleled
abuses of government power -- many (probably most)
of which, it should always be emphasized, remain
concealed rather than disclosed.
Examine virtually every Bush scandal and it
increasingly bears the mark not merely of
Democratic capitulation, but Democratic
participation. In August of 2006, the Supreme
Court finally asserted the first real limit on
Bush's radical executive power theories in Hamdan,
only for Congress, months later, to completely
eviscerate those minimal limits -- and then go far
beyond -- by enacting the grotesque Military
Commissions Act...
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Feds Train Clergy to "Quell Dissent" By Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet
In May 2006, we exposed the existence of a
nationwide FEMA program which is training Pastors
and other religious representatives to become
secret police enforcers who teach their
congregations to “obey the government” in
preparation for the implementation of martial law,
property and firearm seizures, mass vaccination
programs and forced relocation.
A whistleblower who was secretly enrolled into the
program told us that the feds were clandestinely
recruiting religious leaders to help implement
Homeland Security directives in anticipation of a
a potential bio-terrorist attack, any natural
disaster or a nationally declared emergency.
The first directive was for Pastors to preach to
their congregations Romans 13, the often taken out
of context bible passage that was used by Hitler
to hoodwink Christians into supporting him, in
order to teach them to “obey the government” when
martial law is declared.
It was related to the Pastors that quarantines,
martial law and forced relocation were a problem
for state authorities when enforcing federal
mandates due to the “cowboy mentality” of citizens
standing up for their property and second
amendment rights as well as farmers defending
their crops and livestock from seizure.
It was stressed that the Pastors needed to preach
subservience to the authorities ahead of time in
preparation for the round-ups and to make it clear
to the congregation that “this is for their own good.”
Pastors were told that they would be backed up by
law enforcement in controlling uncooperative
individuals and that they would even lead SWAT
teams in attempting to quell resistance...
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Pollution risk for Olympic events
Dancers put on a show in Beijing to
mark one year to go before the 2008 Olympics China
is celebrating the one-year countdown to Beijing
2008 Olympic chief Jacques Rogge says air
pollution could lead to some events at the 2008
Beijing Games being postponed.
Speaking a year to the day before the start of the
2008 Games, the president of the International
Olympic Committee (IOC) said: "It is an option.
"Sports with short durations would not be a
problem, but endurance sports like cycling are
examples of competitions that might be postponed
or delayed."
Billions have been spent in an attempt to reduce
pollution without success.
A host of factories have been shut down, while
many others have been moved out of town, but
non-stop construction and booming car sales have
made air quality even worse.
SPORT EDITORS' BLOG "I get out of the airport into
the polluted atmosphere that has unfortunately
become all too familiar - visibility is barely a
few hundred metres"
Head of Major Events Dave Gordon in Beijing
Beijing's filthy air and clogged traffic are known
to have worried Beijing organizers and the IOC for
some time, but this is Rogge's strongest statement
on the subject...
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