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POPSClip Title Deleted It's for "National Security." :) Screw our own rights and liberties and security and privacy, as long as the tyrannical, paranoid, fear-driven Empire is happy. Right? America's behaviour is alarming, annoying, paranoid and ridiculous, to say the least, and very unbecoming of a so-called "free and brave" nation. "It's one thing to say it's reasonable for government agents to open your luggage. It's another thing to say it's reasonable for them to read your mind and everything you have thought over the last year. What a laptop records is as personal as a diary, but much more extensive. It records every Web site you have searched. Every e-mail you have sent. It's as if you're crossing the border with your home in your suitcase." ----- One law firm has instructed its lawyers to travel to the United States with "blank laptops" whose hard drives contain no data ----- Lawyers cannot fully advise people how they may exercise their rights during a border search.
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POPSChristian Double Standard True to form, Christians seem to be all in favor of religious non-discrimination as long as it's non-discrimination towards Christians only.
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POPSWhere Is Atheism When Bad Things Happen? Hmm....I had noticed this but never really gave it much thought. Good points. Funny that the protests against religious expression never occur until a couple weeks or so after a tragedy like this. More than that you never see an atheist offering a shoulder to those who are suffering. These folk scatter faster at the outset of tragedy, when man's natural inclination is to turn to God, than do roaches at a the turning of a light switch. Suppose they are seeking similar dark corners?
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POPS The social web - power to the people!!! Oh yes, a truly revolutionary web we are weaving. My hat is off to people in places such as Egypt who brave the potentially dire consequences in order to spread the truth. Their words will hopefully lead to more democratic, free societies in places that have for so long kept their people bottled up.
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POPSBurma, Chevron, slave labor, Rice and more The pipeline was built with slave labor, forced into servitude by the Burmese military. The original pipeline partner, Unocal, was sued by EarthRights International for the use of slave labor. As soon as the suit was settled out of court, Chevron bought Unocal. Chevron’s role in propping up the brutal regime in Burma is clear. Rice served on the Chevron board of directors for a decade. She even had a Chevron oil tanker named after her. While she served on the board, Chevron was sued for involvement in the killing of nonviolent protesters in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Like the Burmese, Nigerians suffer political repression and pollution where oil and gas are extracted and they live in dire poverty. The protests in Burma were actually triggered by a government-imposed increase in fuel prices.
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POPSW's Protest Manual: Conservative Treason. The manual demonstrates "that the White House has a policy of excluding and/or attempting to squelch dissenting viewpoints from presidential events," said ACLU lawyer Jonathan Miller. "Individuals should have the right to express their opinion to the president, even if it's not a favorable one." "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt
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POPSPre-RNC raids: so who hates freedom now? Doesn't look like any evidence has been uncovered thus far of intent to commit anything beyond non-violent protests. Kind of an unnerving story if you ask me, but, hey, it's a post-9/11 world, and the cops are just trying to keep us all safe, right? (It's funny, when I was a kid growing up in the eighties, there used to be after-school specials about how this kind of thing happened in apartheid South Africa.)
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POPSThe Dalai Lama's Dilemma "The Dalai Lama's comments came as a dampener for organizers of the Tibetan People's Uprising Movement, who had been hoping that if the Dalai Lama could not lend his support to the march, he would at least refrain from opposing it. Four of the five organizations involved in the movement oppose the Dalai Lama's "middle path" approach of seeking dialogue with the Chinese leadership in search of a "genuine" autonomy for Tibet. They want direct action to seek independence from China, and they want to it now, while the world is watching China as it prepares to host the Olympic Games this summer".
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POPSAn American in Albania ...The Albanians of Montenegro were lucky, I thought as we approached the customs agents, to live under Josip Broz Tito's relatively lenient communist system in Yugoslavia instead of suffering Enver Hoxha's full-bore Stalinist regime just a few miles away in Albania proper. Hoxha, who ranks among the most thoroughly oppressive tyrants in history, made Tito's dictatorship look libertarian....