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Learn a lot from my writing style?
...that's a strange sort of request.
Is there any particular topic you were looking for? My harddrive was recently fried so all i've got is what i've uploaded to my email.
And usually those are rough drafts or crap I write in a day
Anything as closely related to history as possible.
Well I have a rough draft of a hideous essay I did on a Supreme Court Justice...
but its really really bad - what's your email?
No its not, its better the one innocent man lives.
Dave i'm not critisising the US for its death penalty (this time that it)
But if I were to, it could be said that the Shariah is supposed to only execute someone according to God's law.
Gentleness and kindness were never a part of anything except that it made it beautiful, and harshness was never a part of anything except that it made it ugly.
Through cheating, stealing, and lying, one may get required results but finally one becomes
lol i didn't mean to imply you were - the thought just sparked a memmory of something Afro once said.
I have nowt against the death penalty.
Norany problem with the US using it.
Four witnesses are needed in a case of adultery.
Otherwise (for e.g. murder) it has to be a unanimous verdict by the jury (if there is one), or the Qadi, the nearest relative to the victim has to demand it, and there must be no doubt whatsoever.
Any doubt, and its not death.
"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.
After reading this watch the film: [b]Enemy of the State[/b], Will Smith and Gene Hackman. It will make more sense.
-------
Did Bush spy on his own citizens ?
BBC- Friday, 16 December 2005
[b]Bush spying claim causes US storm [/b]
Allegations that President George Bush authorised security agents to eavesdrop on people inside the US have caused a storm of protest.
The New York Times says the National Security Agency was allowed to spy on hundreds of people without warrants.
The NSA is normally barred from eavesdropping within the US.
Republican Senator John McCain called for an explanation, while Senator Arlen Specter, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, called it "inappropriate".
Previously, surveillance on American soil was generally limited to foreign embassies.
'Attacks foiled'
The New York Times said Mr Bush signed a secret presidential order following the attacks on 11 September 2001, allowing the agency to track the international telephone calls and e-mails of hundreds of people without referral to the courts.
Critics have questioned whether such surveillance has crossed constitutional limits on legal searches.
American law usually requires a secret court, known as a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, to give permission before intelligence officers can conduct surveillance on US soil.
Administration officials refused to confirm or deny details of the New York Times report, but issued a robust defence of anti-terrorist operations, saying they had prevented several attacks - including one on targets in Britain.
When asked about the programme on US TV, the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, said: "The president acted lawfully in every step that he has taken".
"He takes absolutely seriously his constitutional responsibility both to defend Americans and to do it within the law," she said.
Intense concern
To opponents of the Bush administration, the alleged bugging programme is reminiscent of the widespread abuse of power by the security services during the Vietnam War when anti-war activists were monitored illegally, says BBC Washington correspondent Justin Webb.
In a separate development on Friday, the Senate refused to reauthorise provisions of the Patriot Act, extending government surveillance rights.
It is a sign of intense concern about infringements of civil liberties in the name of security, our correspondent says.
The White House is having a tough time convincing even its Republican supporters that the things it does in the name of the war on terrorism are always justified, he adds.
[b]Q&A: US domestic spying row [/b]
After allegations that President Bush authorised a US intelligence agency to eavesdrop on American citizens without court approval, the BBC News website considers some key questions.
What are the allegations?
The New York Times has reported that the Bush administration allowed US intelligence agencies to monitor phone calls and e-mail sent by US citizens without getting permission from the courts.
The paper says the monitoring began in 2002 and has been credited with disrupting some terrorist plots, including a plan to attack British targets.
It quotes unnamed officials with the National Security Agency saying that the NSA conducts warantless surveillance on up to 500 people at any one time in the US.
The Bush administration has so far neither confirmed nor denied the report.
Is this legal?
The legal arguments used to justify the alleged surveillance have not been made public so it is difficult to say.
But civil liberties groups are concerned about a possible breach of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution.
This protects the "right of people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures".
Electronic surveillance did not exist in 1789 when this was written, but over the years the limits of the government's powers in relation to new technologies have become more clearly defined.
One key case relevant to the current controversy is the so-called Keith case of 1972, in which the Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment required prior judicial approval for any "domestic security" electronic surveillance.
But legal experts also say there is provision in a 1968 law for federal agents to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance for up to 48 hours before going to court, where there are conspiratorial activities threatening "national security".
Defending the administration, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said only that Mr Bush had "acted lawfully in every step that he has taken".
Why is this such a big issue in the US?
Technological developments have rendered almost every aspect of American lives susceptible to electronic surveillance, yet controls on the use of increasingly sophisticated techniques have not always been effective.
Certain protections were enshrined in law after huge controversy over the "Watch listing" of the 1960s and early 1970s.
Thousands of US citizens and domestic groups, many of whom were active in the anti-Vietnam War and civil rights movements, were placed on "watch lists" by the FBI, CIA, Secret Service and others without judicial warrant.
The latest eavesdropping programme grew out of concerns after the 9/11 attacks that the nation's intelligence agencies were not poised to deal effectively with the threat of al-Qaeda, and were handcuffed by legal restraints more suited to peacetime than war.
The programme - and controversial provisions of the US Patriot Act that expand domestic surveillance - have given rise a new outcry from those who say civil liberties are again being eroded.
What political reaction has there been to the claims?
Senior senators from both main parties are promising investigations of what would appear to be a considerable infringement of the privacy rights of US citizens.
Veteran Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy said: "This is Big Brother run amok."
Another Democrat, Senator Russell Feingold, said "This shocking revelation ought to send a chill down the spine of every senator and every American."
Criticism also came from Bush's Republican Party. Senator Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said "there is no doubt that this is inappropriate," and added that he would make oversight hearings by his panel next year "a very, very high priority".
THE N.S.A.
[b]America's Most Powerful Spy Agency[/b]
By Tom Carver
A few miles out of Washington, on Route 1 to Baltimore, lies an inconspicuous military installation called Fort Meade.
You would not notice it unless you knew what to look for. In fact, on most road maps, Fort Meade does not exist.
And yet it contains the largest mass of secrets in the world.
It is home to the National Security Agency (NSA), the least visible but most powerful spy agency in America's armoury.
In the enormous post-mortem exercise over what went wrong in the run-up to 11 September, all the criticism has been directed at the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is how the US Government wants it.
The less attention the NSA gets the better - the joke is that its initials stand for No Such Agency - and yet somewhere hidden in its massive computers there are almost certainly enough vital clues to have prevented the 11 September attacks, had anyone known where to look.
Listening in
The NSA's job is to eavesdrop on the world's phone calls and emails, but do not try to phone them.
The NSA website does not list a phone number. You do not contact them. They listen to you.
You are not allowed to take any pictures of the base. Your only option is to order a video which they shot themselves.
Having finally found a phone number, I rang to ask for it and offered to send a courier to pick it up.
The lady on the end of the phone who called herself a press officer - what a curious job that must be since no NSA official has ever given an interview - said that it would not be possible to pick it up because the courier would not be allowed near the camp.
Instead they send it to you.
I even tracked down the Phoenix Society, the association for former NSA employees. I phoned the number listed but an answer-phone simply clicked on without a message.
It is as if an entire city has got a highly contagious disease and is sealed off from the outside world.
Secret world
Though invisible on the map, 38,000 people work at the agency every day, more than the CIA and FBI put together - every one of them sworn to a lifetime of secrecy.
They have their own police force, shopping malls and sports complexes - and their own television network, complete with newsreaders.
On one channel you can watch live video from unmanned planes flying over Afghanistan or surf through real-time satellite photos of Pakistan troop movements on the Kashmir border.
On their secure internet, which they share with the CIA and FBI, you can read transcripts of intercepted conversations between soldiers on exercise in China, or European diplomats.
When Osama bin Laden first moved to Afghanistan, the NSA listened in to every phone call he made on his satellite phone.
Over the course of two years it is believed they logged more than 2,000 minutes of conversation.
Who knows what gems of information the NSA learnt from that which have not been made public.
It all ended when President Clinton ordered the cruise missile strike on his training camp in 1998. Bin Laden narrowly escaped with his life.
He realised that the NSA was listening in and ditched his satellite phone, and ordered his aides never to talk on the phone again about operations.
Terrorist neighbours
This shows the limitations of the NSA's incredible technology.
In my experience, journalists cannot resist endowing spy agencies with supernatural capabilities and power. In fact their failings are all too human.
September 11 is a perfect example of this.
Nineteen men armed only with box-cutters and their fanaticism successfully hatched a plot totally unnoticed by America's $40bn a year intelligence-gathering machine.
They succeeded because they lived and worked, not in the shadows where spies operate, but in full view.
In fact, one of the most bizarre ironies of all this is that five of the hijackers lived in a motel right outside the gates of the NSA.
Early on the morning of 11 September, when Hani Hanjour and his four accomplices left the Valencia Motel on US route 1 on their way to Washington's Dulles airport, they joined the stream of NSA employees heading to work.
Three hours later, they had turned flight 77 around and slammed it into the Pentagon.
The NSA was created after World War II to stop another surprise attack like Pearl Harbor by providing early warning.
But in the hour when the need was greatest, it failed the country. And it failed not because it did not have enough information, but because it had too much.
According to author James Bamford, who has studied the NSA for years, each one of their dozen largest listening posts around the world picks up more than two million communications an hour - cell phones, diplomatic traffic, emails, faxes.
That works out at 500 million hours every day.
When you think that this has to be translated from a myriad of languages and then analysed, you realise that the NSA looks less like an omniscient being than a man wading through a warehouse of words in search of a few tiny diamonds.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4536310.stm
Also, see the brilliant ACLU - American Civil Liberties Union
http://www.aclu.org/
"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.
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