Save your knife, mail it back to yourself

April 27, 2004 D. H. McKee
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Politics

Travelers who realize they're carrying a treasured pocketknife or grandma's scissors after arriving at the airport may now have a more convenient way to save the items.
Newsstands in several airports are now carrying special envelopes -- including postage -- designed to allow people to mail their scissors, pocket knife, multi-tool or other item to themselves.
Called MailBack, the envelopes are sold at several Hudson News stands and the manufacturer is planning to expand sales through several news chains in airports.

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Pro-Life “Terrorists”

April 27, 2004 D. H. McKee
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Politics

We have dedicated ourselves to ending the campaign of murder and terror against abortion providers throughout the United States, and to end the war on our right to choose.
This war has taken the lives of doctors, nurses, administrators, and volunteers who go to work each day for one simple and heroic reason: to give each and every woman in the United States the right to choose whether or not to have an abortion.

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pro-choice = TERRORIST

April 27, 2004 D. H. McKee
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Politics

Karen Hughes, Bush's advisor has just likened pro-choice supporters with terrorists... When asked about this week's pro-choice rally, Hughes revealed that the administration would prefer that voters not distinguish supporting terrorists from supporting a woman's right to exercise control over her own body
"I think that after September 11, the American people are valuing life more and we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life," she said. "President Bush has worked to say, let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions. And I think those are the kinds of policies the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy and, really, the fundamental issue between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life."

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The Illegal Internet Page

April 20, 2004 D. H. McKee
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Politics

Earlier, a federal court in Philadelphia had already ruled that the CDA was unconstitutional: quoth that court, “Just as the...

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Nuclear material, whole buildings missing from Iraq

April 19, 2004 D. H. McKee
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Politics

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - Contaminated metal, equipment and even entire buildings in Iraq that had been monitored by UN nuclear inspectors have disappeared since the war, the UN's nuclear watchdog said.
Diplomats said the discovery, much of it from commercially available satellite pictures, raises concerns about whether the US occupation in Iraq has been able to effectively monitor sensitive Iraq sites.

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Britian in Danger

April 7, 2004 D. H. McKee
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Politics

Britain's top policeman has underlined his warnings about the terrorist threat to Britain.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens said: "We are now in a state of real danger."
He firmly rejected the accusation that he had been scaremongering or that the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, had rebuked him for saying that an attack on Britain was "inevitable".

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Letting George Do It

April 7, 2004 D. H. McKee
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Politics

Pondering The World's Mother-In-Law
I'm trying to understand American foreign policy. It's like oil-painting on a trampoline, but makes less sense. I'm not sure anybody could do it--not even if you took St. Augustine and Jimmy the Greek and Carl Friedrichs Gauss and wired them together in parallel.

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U.S. fingerprinting everybody now

April 2, 2004 D. H. McKee
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Politics

Washington has reversed course and will require millions of travellers from 27 countries to be fingerprinted and photographed before entering the United States.
The change affects citizens from 27 previously-exempt countries, including close U.S. allies like Great Britain, Japan and Australia. Up to now, visitors from those and other countries had been allowed to travel within the U.S. for 90 days without a visa.

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U.S. Violated Mexicans’ Rights

March 31, 2004 D. H. McKee
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Politics

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - The International Court of Justice on Wednesday ruled that the United States violated the rights of 51 Mexicans on death row and ordered their cases be reviewed.
The United Nations' highest judiciary, also known as the world court, was considering a suit filed by Mexico claiming 52 convicted murderers weren't given their right to assistance from their government.
"The U.S. should provide by means of its own choosing meaningful review of the conviction and sentence" of the Mexicans, presiding judge Shi Jiuyong said.
Shi said the review, in all but three cases, could be carried out under the normal appeals process in the United States.
But for three men whose have already exhausted all other appeals, the court said the United States should make an exception and review their cases one last time.
The court found that in the remaining case, the convict had received his rights and his case didn't need to be reviewed.
At the heart of the Mexico-U.S. case is the 1963 Vienna Convention, which guarantees people accused of a serious crime while in a foreign country the right to contact their own government for help and that they be informed of that right by arresting authorities.
The world court is charged with resolving disputes between nations and has jurisdiction over the treaty. It found that U.S. authorities hadn't properly informed the 51 men of their rights when they realized they were foreigners.

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The psychology of terrorism: Fanatical Identities

March 31, 2004 D. H. McKee
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Politics

This paper deals with some of the same questions that Parvez asked his son. How and why do people become fanatics and terrorists, and what characterizes those who do? Are they influenced by particular events? Do they have common personality-traits or sociological attributes? Are they mentally unbalanced? Are there typical trajectories leading to membership of a terror organization?

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