Free Republic

Why have Soviet secret service 'KGB', General Yevgeni Primakov, as well as Markus Wolfe, the ex-boss of the ''STASI'', the equally feared former East German 'State Security Police' been hired by - and for - the US Gov't.? PEOPLE NOT UNDERSTANDING NOR SEEING THIS ''MENE TEKEL'' ARE BRAINWASHED BLIND... US: KGB and STASI reinforce Homeland Security. For whom? "These appointments have already been made" Dec. 16th - 2004 - If somebody would inform you, that the former Ex-head of the inhuman and despicable Soviet secret service 'KGB', General Yevgeni Primakov, as well as Markus Wolfe, the ex-boss of the ''STASI'',...

A sweeping mental health initiative will be unveiled by President George W Bush in July. The plan promises to integrate mentally ill patients fully into the community by providing "services in the community, rather than institutions," according to a March 2004 progress report entitled New Freedom Initiative (www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/newfreedom/toc-2004.html). While some praise the plan's goals, others say it protects the profits of drug companies at the expense of the public. Bush established the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health in April 2002 to conduct a "comprehensive study of the United States mental health service delivery system." The commission issued its recommendations...

Microsoft has recently been making sounds that indicate it will use its patent portfolio to start to extract fees from other companies. A recent example was its use of patents around technology mapping short filenames to long file names, and how Microsoft is licensing this technology to embedded devices company which use FAT on devices such as digital cameras. So what else do Microsoft have in wait for us? How about New Zealand patent 525484 - "Word processing document stored in a single XML file that may be manipulated by applications that understand XML". Filed on the 24th of April...

It took long enough, but Congress finally eliminated all funding for Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) (formerly the more sinister sounding "Total Information Awareness"), the data-mining program of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and shut down the DARPA Information Awareness Office (formerly headed conservative icon, criminal and all-around enemy of the people: John Poindexter). Read more at this link. Still, while many (link, link) have long been up in arms over TIA, its sinister cousins live on. Recently, Thomas Greene called attention to the ominously titled the MATRIX (Multi-state Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange). Read more here and here. Most, however,...

Senior democrats have accused the CIA of sabotaging weapons inspections in Iraq by refusing to co-operate fully with the UN and withholding crucial information about Saddam Hussein's arsenal. Led by Senator Carl Levin, the Democrats accused the CIA of making an assessment that the inspections were unlikely to be a success and then ensuring they would not be. They have accused the CIA director of lying about what information on the suspected location of weapons of mass destruction had been passed on.

CIA Veterans' Warning on Iraq War Newsmax Wires Monday, Feb. 10, 2002 WASHINGTON -- CIA veterans have warned the Bush administration not to go to war against Iraq, saying that doing so would further widen the divide between the Western and Islamic worlds and increase the incidence of terrorism. In a statement sent to media organizations earlier this week, the retired CIA officials also referred to an agency assessment report last fall, which, they said, opposed a military offensive against Iraq. They urged the Bush administration to "re-read" the CIA report that pointed out: "The forces fueling hatred of the...

If we look beneath the surface of our public affairs, we can discern one fundamental fact, namely: a great redistribution of power between society and the State. This is the fact that interests the student of civilization. He has only a secondary or derived interest in matters like price-fixing, wage-fixing, inflation, political banking, "agricultural adjustment," and similar items of State policy that fill the pages of newspapers and the mouths of publicists and politicians. All these can be run up under one head. They have an immediate and temporary importance, and for this reason they monopolize public attention, but they...