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Iran Police Crack Down As Thousands Protest

Saturday, June 20th, 2009

His backers were demonstrating over the re-election of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who won by a landslide despite opposition claims the result was rigged.

The protesters defied a call from the country’s supreme leader for the demonstrations to end.

Eyewitnesses said around 3,000 people chanted “Death to the dictator!” and “Death to dictatorship!” near Revolution Square in the city centre.

Police beat protesters and fired tear gas and water cannon at them. At least one person is thought to have been injured by gunfire.

Witnesses said Mr Mousavi’s supporters lit a fire at the headquarters of the president’s backers in the capital.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had issued a strong warning on Friday to the leaders of the street protests that they would be responsible for any bloodshed.

Mr Khamenei claimed the June 12 vote was won fairly by Mr Ahmadinejad.

But in a letter to the country’s top legislative body, Mr Mousavi claimed poll rigging had been planned months ago and insisted the election must be annulled.

The runner-up in the election said if he was arrested, he urged people to go on strike.

Meanwhile, a suicide bomber has blown himself up in Tehran at the shrine of Iran’s revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, injuring one person, reports say.

Foreign media are banned from reporting on non-official events but reports are still reaching the outside world of violence being used by the authorities.

The election result sparked fury among supporters of the losing candidates, who accused the government of rigging the poll and took to the streets in their hundreds of thousands in the biggest public protests since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Iran’s electoral watchdog, the Guardian Council, says it is ready to “randomly” recount up to 10% of the ballot boxes from the election, state TV said.

In his speech, Mr Khamenei also denounced Britain as the “most treacherous” of Iran’s enemies.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has said violence on the streets of Tehran must not be turned into a battle between Iran and the UK.

Writing in The Sun, he hit back at the Ayatollah’s claims. “Dignity has been shown by the protesters on the streets of Tehran,” Mr Miliband said.

“Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tried to blame the unrest on the West.

“But we will not allow anyone to turn scenes on the streets of Tehran into a battle between Britain and Iran. My message to the Iranian people is simple: the future of your country is for you to decide.

“But we need to know whether Iran is prepared to work with us to restore confidence in its nuclear intentions.”

The Ayatollah offered no concession to opposition supporters who are demanding the elections be cancelled and held again, sternly warning against further protests.

He blamed Great Britain and Iran’s external enemies for the unrest, vigorously defending the ruling system.

“The enemies (of Iran) are targeting the Islamic establishment’s legitimacy by questioning the election and its authenticity before and after (the vote),” the Ayatollah continued.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, talking to Sky’s political editor Adam Boulton, said: “What we want is to have a good relationship with Iran in the future.

“But that depends on Iran being able to show to the world that its elections have been conducted fairly and that there is no unfair suppression of rights and individuals in that country.”

Supporters of runner-up Mr Mousavi have so far ignored the Ayatollah, holding huge unauthorised rallies.

Tens of thousands of Iranians had gathered in and around Tehran University to hear Khamenei’s Friday prayer sermon.

Some in the crowd were draped in Iranian flags. Others held placards with anti-Western slogans.

As passions soared, the crowd reportedly chanted: “Death to the UK, Israel and the US.”

American President Barack Obama said he was very concerned by the “tenor and tone” of Khamenei’s comments.

In a US TV interview, Mr Obama said that Iran’s government should “recognise that the world is watching.”

He said “how they approach and deal with people who are, through peaceful means, trying to be heard” will signal “what Iran is and is not”.

Mr Khamenei’s speech followed six days of protests by Mousavi supporters.

On Thursday, tens of thousands of black-clad marchers bore candles to mourn those killed in earlier rallies.

Iranian state media has reported seven or eight people killed in protests since the election results were published on June 13.

Scores of reformists have been arrested and authorities have cracked down on both foreign and domestic media.

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Iranians Use Internet, Phones to Share Protest News

Saturday, June 20th, 2009

With independent media coverage of Iranian protests restricted by authorities, witnesses are reaching out online and by telephone to report what they see on the streets of Tehran.

Opposition Web sites said protesters had planned to gather Saturday in Revolution (Enghelab) and Freedom (Azadi) Squares, two of Tehran’s main areas.

But witnesses told VOA Persian News Network and other news agencies they saw large numbers of police gathered in the streets, blocking the demonstrators.

Near Freedom Square, the witnesses say police clashed with thousands of protesters, arresting some and using tear gas, batons and water cannons on others.

Some witnesses also said they heard gunshots, but it is unclear who fired the shots. At least three helicopters were hovering over the area.

At other places in the capital, witnesses say protesters attacked authorities, setting some of their motorcycles on fire.

News agencies are relying heavily on information published by Iranian citizens through social media services, such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

On Friday, Facebook announced it is making its Web site available in Farsi, so Iranians can use the service in their native language.

Google also introduced a new Farsi translating tool.

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Why Obama’s CIO Wants to Put All Gov’t Info Online

Friday, June 19th, 2009

The Obama administration’s most radical idea may also be its geekiest: Make nearly every hidden government spreadsheet and buried statistic available online, all in one place. For anyone to see. Are you searching for a Food and Drug Administration report that used to be obtainable only through the Freedom of Information Act? Just a mouseclick away. Need National Institutes of Health studies and school testing scores? Click. Census data, nonclassified Defense Department specs, obscure Securities and Exchange Commission files, prison statistics? Click click. Click. Click.

The man in charge is the US government’s first-ever chief information officer, Vivek Kundra. Previously CTO of the District of Columbia, Kundra, 34, knows that the move from airtight opacity to radical transparency won’t be a cakewalk. Until now, the US government’s default position has been: If you can’t keep data secret, at least hide it on one of 24,000 federal Web sites, preferably in an incompatible or obsolete format.

The goal of Kundra’s new Web site, Data.gov, is to create a place where all the information is easy to find, sort, download, and manipulate. He wants to put as much data out there as possible, then sit back and let the private sector come up with great ways to use it. He envisions a future in which well-designed spreadsheets, charts, and graphs are embedded in applications for phones, Facebook, and blogs. In DC, someone combined several of the data sets released by local government—maps, liquor license info, crime statistics—into an app called Stumble Safely, which shows users the safest way to walk home when drunk. He doesn’t know what people will build with all the federal data, but he’s confident it will be cool.

Since Barack Obama took office, Wired has been running its own public wiki, on which scores of people have posted suggestions for how Kundra should proceed—which data sets to open first, what mashups might yield interesting results, and what existing Web sites to use as models. The response suggests a real appetite for what Kundra is proposing, so we paid a visit to the White House just prior to Data.gov’s launch to see how his plans are developing.

Wired: Where do you start?

Vivek Kundra: One, we’re going to look at which feeds are most popular and which the public are demanding. Two, we want to advance the president’s agenda around health care, around energy, around education.

Wired: But won’t people say you’re releasing one feed because it makes Obama look good but not another that includes something embarrassing to the administration?

Kundra: Well, look at health care. As the president said, it’s one of the most urgent problems affecting our economic future. So it makes sense to get the most innovation in that space.

Wired: Give me an example.

Kundra: There’s a lot of data out there—from the National Institutes of Health, the CDC, the FDA—concerning outbreaks and pandemics. And there’s lots of Census Bureau data right now. For the first time, the bureau is going to be noting GPS coordinates for addresses across the country. There are privacy issues, obviously. But if you release that data at a national level, all of a sudden you’ve got a new layer of information that has never existed before. Imagine if you could build an iPhone app that combined the GPS info with addresses and then combined that with data about outbreaks.

Wired: You’d know precisely where outbreaks were occurring? Sort of like Google flu trends except better, because instead of search data you’re using real medical data?

Kundra: Exactly. And the government doesn’t even have to create the applications.

Wired: What do you mean? You’ll release the data and just hope people do interesting things with it?

Kundra: Yes. Think about the Department of Defense. When satellite data was made available, you had this explosion in the private GPS market. Now GPS is available on your iPhone, so if you’re lost you can navigate. The car rental industry uses it. Google and Facebook use it to help you get real-time information on where friends are and where the closest restaurant is. The key is recognizing that we don’t have a monopoly on good ideas and that the federal government doesn’t have infinite resources. We’re even thinking about running competitions for people making applications. What wired was able to do with that Data.gov wiki, frankly, would have cost the government a fortune and taken much longer.

Wired: Given how complicated this effort will be, are there some simple rules you’re going to follow?

Kundra: The core principles are using open standards, presenting raw data, and distributing it in as many formats as possible. Public policy decisions are made using the data anyway, but the raw data is important because if it is massaged too much, you can lose the big issues.

Wired: Sometimes more data confuses rather than clarifies, especially if it’s raw or presented in some clumsy spreadsheet, which is typically how government data has been released in the past, if at all.

Kundra: But we now have the ability to use data in ways we couldn’t before, and to do it in a machine-readable way where we can not only spot trends and make intelligent decisions but make applications that create value and economic opportunities. The perfect example at a local level is in DC, where you can download an application that lets you know—based on where you’re standing—what the closest Metro station is, when the next train is coming, and, if you like Mexican food, where the closest Mexican restaurant is. That’s built on one subset of data feeds, and there are hundreds of others.

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All in a day’s work for the Israeli army: beating and torturing children

Friday, June 19th, 2009

Jonathan Cook reports on how Israeli soldiers routinely, and as a matter of policy, practise torture against Palestinian children, hundreds of whom are “convicted in Israel’s military courts each year, with children older than 12 denied access to lawyers in interrogation”.

“He broke his hand here at the wrist. Broke his hand at the wrist, broke his leg here. And started to stomp on his stomach, three times, and left… The next day I go out with him on another patrol, and the soldiers are already starting to do the same thing.” – Israeli soldier describing assault by his commander on four-year-old Palestinian boy, 2007

The rights of Palestinian children are routinely violated by Israel’s security forces, according to a new report that says beatings and torture are common. In addition, hundreds of Palestinian minors are prosecuted by Israel each year without a proper trial and are denied family visits.
 
The findings by Defence for Children International (DCI) come in the wake of revelations from Israeli soldiers and senior commanders that it is “normal procedure” in the West Bank to terrorize Palestinian civilians, including children.
 
Col Itai Virob, commander of the Kfir Brigade, disclosed last month that to accomplish a mission, “aggressiveness towards every one of the residents in the village is common”. Questioning included slaps, beatings and kickings, he said.
 
As a result, Gabi Ashkenazi, the head of the armed services, was forced to appear before the Israeli parliament to disavow the behaviour of his soldiers. Beatings were “absolutely prohibited”, he told legislators.
 
Col Virob made his remarks during court testimony in defence of two soldiers, including his deputy commander, who are accused of beating Palestinians in the village of Qaddum, close to Nablus. One told the court that “soldiers are educated towards aggression in the IDF [army]”.
 
Col Virob appeared to confirm his observation, saying it was policy to “disturb the balance” of village life during missions and that the vast majority of assaults were “against uninvolved people”.
 
Last week, further disclosures of ill-treatment of Palestinians, some as young as 14, were aired on Israeli TV, using material collected by dissident soldiers as part of the “Breaking the silence” project, which highlights army brutality.
 
Two soldiers serving in the Harub battalion said they had witnessed beatings at a school in the West Bank village of Hares, southwest of Nablus, in an operation in March to stop stone-throwing. Many of those held were not involved, the soldiers said.
 
During a 12-hour operation that began at 3 a.m., 150 detainees were blindfolded and handcuffed from behind, with the nylon restraints so tight their hands turned blue. The worst beatings, the soldiers said, occurred in the school toilets.
 
According to one soldier’s testimony, a boy of about 15 was given “a slap that brought him to the ground”. He added that many of his comrades “just knee [Palestinians] because it’s boring, because you stand there 10 hours, you’re not doing anything, so they beat people up”.
 
The picture from serving soldiers confirms the findings of DCI, which noted that many children were picked up in general sweeps after disturbances or during late-night raids of their homes.
 
Its report includes a selection of testimonies from children it represented in 2008 in which they describe Israeli soldiers beating them or being tortured by interrogators.
 
One 10-year-old boy, identified as Ezzat H, described an army search of his family home for a gun. He said a soldier slapped and punched him repeatedly during two hours of questioning, before another soldier pointed a rifle at him: “The rifle barrel was a few centimetres away from my face. I was so terrified that I started to shiver. He made fun of me.”
 
Another boy, Shadi H, aged 15, said he and his friend were forced to undress by soldiers in an orange grove near Tulkarm while the soldiers threw stones at them. They were then beaten with rifle butts.
 
Jameel K, aged 14, described being taken to a military camp where he was assaulted and then had a rope tightened around his neck in a mock execution.
 
Yehuda Shaul, of “Breaking the silence”, said soldiers treated any Palestinian older than 12 or 13 as an adult.
 
“For the first time a high-ranking soldier [Col Virob] has joined us in raising the issue — even if not intentionally — that the use of physical violence against Palestinians is not exceptional but policy. A few years ago no senior officer would have had the guts to say this,” he said.
 
The DCI report also highlights the systematic use of torture by interrogators from the army and the secret police, the Shin Bet, in an attempt to extract confessions from children, often in cases involving stone-throwing.
 
Islam M, aged 12, said he was threatened with having boiling water poured on his face if he did not admit throwing stones and was then pushed into a thorn bush. Another boy, Abed S, aged 16, said his hands and feet were tied to the wall of an interrogation room in the shape of a cross for a day and then put in solitary confinement for 15 days.
 
Last month, the United Nations Committee Against Torture, a panel of independent experts, expressed “deep concern” at Israel’s treatment of Palestinian minors.
 
According to the DCI report, some 700 children are convicted in Israel’s military courts each year, with children older than 12 denied access to lawyers in interrogation.
 
It adds that interrogators routinely blindfold and handcuff child detainees during questioning and use techniques including slaps and kicks, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, threats to the child and his family, and tying the child up for long periods.
 
Such practices were banned by Israel’s Supreme Court in 1999 but are still widely documented by Israeli human rights groups.
 
DCI says it has been disturbed by reports from several children of a special tiny cell, referred to as No.36, at a detention centre near Haifa. The cell has no windows or ventilation, its walls are dark and a dim light is kept on 24 hours a day.
 
In 95 per cent of cases, children are convicted on the basis of signed confessions written in Hebrew, a language few of them understand.
 
Once sentenced, the children are held in violation of international law in prisons in Israel where most are denied visits from family and receive little or no education.
 
DCI also criticizes “a culture of impunity” among the Shin Bet, noting that not one of 600 complaints of torture filed against its interrogators during the second intifada has led to a criminal investigation.
 
Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, reported in November that soldiers too rarely face disciplinary action over illegal behaviour.
 
Army data from 2000 to the end of 2007 revealed that the military police had indicted soldiers in only 78 of 1,268 investigations. Most soldiers received minor sentences.
 
Academic studies suggest that Israeli soldiers have been routinely using violence against Palestinian civilians, including children, for many years.
 
In late 2007 Israelis were shocked by the testimonies collected by clinical psychologist Nufar Yishai-Karin from 21 soldiers with whom she shared her military service during the early 1990s.
 
The soldiers told her of incidents in which bystanders were shot or assaulted. In one of the most disturbing testimonies, a soldier said he had witnessed his commander attacking a four-year-old boy playing in the sand in Gaza.
 
“He broke his hand here at the wrist. Broke his hand at the wrist, broke his leg here. And started to stomp on his stomach, three times, and left… The next day I go out with him on another patrol, and the soldiers are already starting to do the same thing.”
 
Such revelations have grown in number since the “Breaking the silence” began drawing attention to the army’s mistreatment of Palestinians in 2004.

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Al Qaeda leader arrested over Sunni MP’s killing

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

Iraqi police arrested a top Al-Qaeda operative on Wednesday over the killing of a senior Sunni Muslim MP and human rights advocate who was shot dead in a Baghdad mosque last week.

 

The arrest came after intelligence efforts led police to a house in the western Baghdad neighbourhood of Ghazaliyah, not far from Al-Yarmuk where Harith al-Obaidi was assassinated on Friday.

“We received information from one of our sources in Ghazaliyah that the group involved in the assassination were in one house,” Brigadier General Noaman Dakhil Jawad, the commander of the police’s rapid intervention forces in Baghdad, told AFP.

“We prepared our forces, we raided the house, and we arrested the criminal Ahmed Abed Oweiyed.”

Jawad said Oweiyed was the deputy commander of Al-Qaeda’s military wing in Iraq.

“Through intelligence efforts, we tracked down the criminal who masterminded the killing,” he said.

A teenage gunman shot dead Obaidi and his bodyguard in Al-Shawaf mosque in the predominantly Sunni neighbourhood of Al-Yarmuk after Obaidi led worship on the weekly Muslim day of prayer.

The gunman then killed three others and wounded 12 by throwing a grenade into a crowd, before killing himself.

Obaidi, born in 1966, was deputy chairman of parliament’s human rights committee and head of the biggest Sunni bloc in parliament, the National Concord Front.

The day before he was killed, he called for an independent inquiry into torture and abuse of detainees in Iraq’s prisons.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki led mourners at Obaidi’s funeral on Saturday, while Vice President Adel Abdel Mahdi, a Shiite Muslim like Maliki, described the murder as a “brutal crime.”

Iraq has seen several political assassinations since the US-led invasion of March 2003.

In February, Islamic Party official Samir Safwat was killed outside his Baghdad home by gunmen in a car. A month earlier, two candidates standing in provincial elections held on January 31 were killed in Baghdad and Mosul.

Wednesday’s arrest comes less than two weeks ahead of a deadline by which US troops must withdraw from Iraq’s urban centres, as part of a landmark security accord between Washington and Baghdad under which all US troops will leave Iraq by the end of 2011.

Maliki has warned that insurgents and militias would likely step up their attacks in the coming weeks in a bid to undermine confidence in Iraq’s own security forces.

Violence has dropped markedly in Iraq in recent months, with May seeing the lowest Iraqi death toll since the 2003 invasion. But attacks remain common, particularly in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq was also blamed for a car bombing last week in a market in Batha, in the largely peaceful Dhi Qar province, that killed 19 people and wounded 56, the bloodiest attack in Iraq since May 20.

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Craig Murry on Iran

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

For me, any sensible discussion of Iran must accept a number of facts. I will set these out as Set A and Set B. Both sets are true. But ideologues of the right routinely discount Set A, while ideologues of the left routinely discount Set B. That is why most debate on Iran is inane.

Set A

Iranian Islamic fundamentalism allied to fierce anti-Americanism was born from CIA intervention to topple democracy and keep in power a ruthless murdering despot for decades, in the interests of US oil and gas companies

Iranian anti-Americanism was fuelled further by US support for US friend and ally Saddam Hussein who was armed to wage a murderous war against Iran, again in the hope of US access to Iran’s oil and gas

The US committed a terrible atrocity against civilians by shooting down an Iranian passenger jet

Iran is surrounded by US military forces and has been repeatedly threatened to the extent that the desire to develop a nuclear weapon is a reflex

There is monumental hypocrisy in condemning Iran’s nuclear programme while overlooking Israel’s nuclear weapons

Set B

Iran is governed by an appalling set of vicious theocratic nutters

Iran is not any kind of democracy. It fails the first hurdle of candidates being allowed to put forward meaningful alternatives

Hanging of gays, stoning of adulterers, floggings, censorship and pervasive control are not fine because of cultural relativism. Iran’s whole legislative basis is inimical to universal ideals of human rights.

Iran really is trying to develop a nuclear weapons programme, though with some years still to go.

There are two very good articles on the current situation in Iran. One from the ever excellent Juan Cole. I would accept his judgement on the elections being rigged.
http://www.juancole.com/2009/06/class-v-culture-wars-in-iranian.html#comments

The other from Yasamine Mather, which puts it in another perspective.
http://www.hopoi.org/articles/elections%20June%202009.html

I am not optimistic about the outcome of the popular protest.

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EU “disturbed” by Iraq executions, calls for freeze

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

The European Union protested against reported executions in Iraq on Monday and called on Baghdad to resume a moratorium on the death penalty.

“The European Union is deeply disturbed at reports that in recent days further death sentences were carried out in Iraq, probably totalling number 20,” the Czech EU presidency said.

“Moreover, the European Union is severely alarmed about indications that further mass executions might be imminent,” the EU said in a statement.

The presidency did not specify which executions it referred to. A Czech official told Reuters that EU diplomatic sources in Baghdad had information of recent executions but gave no details.

Baghdad reintroduced the death penalty in 2004 after it was suspended following the U.S.-led invasion a year earlier and has been conducting executions regardless of numerous calls from the international community to suspend them.

Rights groups have warned trials ending in death sentences are often poorly conducted.

“The EU … urges the government of Iraq to resume the de facto suspension of the execution of death penalty, which had been observed in Iraq since August 2007, pending legal abolition,” the Czech presidency statement said.

“This suspension should include all cases still on death row in Iraq.”

The United Nations urged Baghdad in May to reconsider its resumption of the death penalty, saying Iraq’s justice system was not conducting fair trials.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on May 31 that former members of Saddam Hussein’s government on trial for ordering poison gas attacks on Kurdish villages will be executed if found guilty. (Reporting by Jana Mlcochova; Editing by Louise Ireland)

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Iran Restricts Foreign Media

Monday, June 15th, 2009

Cell Phone Network Shut Down, Websites Blocked in Effort to Control Information Coming Out of Tehran

As Friday’s election gave way to a weekend of riots in the capital city of Tehran and accusations that the Interior Ministry rigged the outcome in favor of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, multiple foreign media outlets are reporting efforts by the Iranian government to control the media reports coming out of the nation.

Al-Arabiya television has reportedly been forbidden from working in the capital for a week, while Nederland 2 has had its journalist and cameraman ordered to leave the country. The BBC is also claiming that the government is responsible for jamming which has caused intermittant service disruptions of its Farsi-language service.

The primary cell phone network in Tehran has also been cut off since Saturday evening, while the government is apparently blocking several popular websites, including Facebook and YouTube, likely also part of an effort to prevent unapproved reports from coming out of the nation.

Former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi is seeking to have the election results overturned, amid reports that he has been placed under house arrest for calling his supporters to publicly contest the outcome. Ahmadinejad has rejected allegations of election fraud, and likened the furore to the aftermath of a soccer match.

Jason Ditz

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MEP Nick Griffin - An audience with a racist

Sunday, June 14th, 2009

Nick Griffin: MEP elect, BNP mouthpiece, convicted Holocaust-denier and would-be deporter of black people invites me into the back seat of his car. He jokes that there is no egg on his jacket as I move it and climb in: last Tuesday he was pelted with eggs as he tried to give a victory press conference after Sunday’s election results.

On Thursday morning, a sunny day in Shrewsbury, Griffin makes small talk as we drive in his Mondeo estate to a garden centre: “Normally we’d do this in a pub but it’s too early for that.” From the moment we meet, there is an unspoken compact: he has never met me before but does not flinch or blanch when he does. I refuse to be shocked or angered, regardless of how sweeping or wild his claims about race.

At Dobbie’s Garden Centre, less than five minutes’ drive out of Shrewsbury, the BNP leader and I share a table. I sip black coffee, he swigs from a bottle of James White’s apple juice. We talk about the BNP’s election to two seats – North-West England for him and Yorkshire and Humberside for Andrew Brons – in the European Parliament; about being pelted with eggs; racism; whether his party deserves to be ignored because its views are abhorrent, or whether non-supporters should be told what he stands for and make up their own minds.

Is he a racist? The denial is out of his mouth before I finish the question. Does he have a problem personally with me because I am black? “None at all.” So why does he want to give me £50,000 to leave Britain? “This country is the most overcrowded in Europe.”

He argues that by paying non-whites to go away he is actually working to preserve racial diversity. So, why are people throwing eggs at him? He laughs, nervously. “Obviously it’s the immigration, race perception thereof, at one level, and also quite simply the people throwing eggs, the Union of Anti-Fascists, is based on the Communist Party, a little group of hardline Stalinists who’ve never really changed their views. So there’s an ideological opposition, and racism is merely an excuse, or alleged racism is merely an excuse.”

This is a recurrent theme. He is beset by enemies on all sides, including the hard left, smug liberal elitists and and nutty neo-Nazis. The last, he claims, have not forgiven him for distancing himself from his public statements of a decade ago, the Holocaust denial that saw him convicted in 1998. “The BNP has changed enormously, and in the course of changing enormously I’ve made myself literally the most unpopular person with Britain’s neo-Nazis in the entire world.”

Griffin grew up in Barnet, north London, where his mother walked him to school together with a West Indian neighbour and her children. At the age of eight he moved to Southwold, Suffolk. His father, Edgar, was a Conservative councillor who provided right-wing books for his son to read and took his family to National Front meetings. In 1975, the younger Griffin joined and became close to the party’s national organiser, Martin Webster. He went to Cambridge, where he gained a boxing blue. He lost an eye in 1990 when a shotgun cartridge exploded in a fire in France.

In 1995 he joined the BNP. He took over as leader in 1999, ousting its founder, John Tyndall, in a coup. A year earlier he was convicted of incitement to racial hatred after publishing material that denied the Holocaust. In 2005, he was tried, then retried and acquitted a year later, for alleged incitement to racial hatred. Recently, he has started an autobiography – “names have been changed to protect the guilty” he laughs.

He has spent the past 10 years changing the party’s image from a pack of violent thugs to something electable, softening its stance on repatriation and inter-racial marriage in an effort to make the BNP less nasty – not anti-black, but pro-English.

So, how would he feel if I moved in next door? He laughs, nervously again, and points out there is no house next door to his detached stone farmhouse home 10 miles from Welshpool. “In simple terms, if you moved in next door it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest. One family doesn’t make any difference at all but, erm, where does it stop?”

So if I moved next door and my brother the other side, then that would trouble you? “Well, then that would concern me because, historically, in the 1970s I spent a lot of time in the old East End with the old community, and it was a wonderful place: poor, rough and ready, but extraordinarily hospitable and really good people with an identity of their own.

“Some of them are still there, and there’s an enormous amount of really bitter hostility towards mass immigration in the old, white East End. They don’t even vote for us; they’re so alienated by the process they simply don’t bother. If that was done to any other ethnic group, at the very least the liberal elite would be saying this is a terrible shame. In fact they’d want to stop it.”

Sitting in his suit and tie, with neatly combed hair and trotting out psephological jargon, he comes across as a sort of racist version of Tony Blair: coolly spouting dodgy dossiers of misinformation to justify a “war” against weapons of mass immigration and miscegenation. Most people don’t believe him; we’re not sure whether he sincerely believes himself, but he’s going to keep pushing his line for as long as he can.

At the moment he is trying to soft-sell repatriation. “We’re not talking about turfing everybody out. We’re talking about encouraging some to go. It would benefit them if we did a proper, sensible deal with countries that have suffered hugely from brain-drain, with people coming here – it’s the final form of colonialism. Instead of stealing, erm, gold and old statues, we steal the people and best brains, and the countries suffer as a result.

“We would help to stabilise all sorts of countries if some of their nationals or people who originate from there returned to their homelands with some of the skills that they’ve learnt here and applied them to make those a better place instead of coming here because it’s convenient for Britain and easier than training our own people.” Xenophobia as humanitarianism is just one of his verbal gymnastics.

Why does he want me out of Britain so badly? “Large-scale multi-cultural, multi-racial societies are clearly seen to be fundamentally unstable. They only work when there’s some repressive force to keep them in place. When the force is removed you get something like the former Yugoslavia or Rwanda. All the real horrors of human society are based on two tribes going to war.

“I would say in 30 years it’s inevitable that Europe will face a decision which is absolutely unavoidable between whether Europe will continue on the lines it is, which is founded on Christianity … a choice between that and becoming an Islamic caliphate. There’s no question about it, the government figures show it.”

What would he do, then, if one of his three daughters brought home someone like me? “I would be as disappointed, as I know many Sikhs, Hindus and black people would be, and I’d talk to them both about it, try and put them off. But in the end that’s their business.

“Children grow up and do their own thing. I wouldn’t go as far as, say, someone from the orthodox Jewish community could well do, which is to hold a funeral, a symbolic funeral for them. But I would ask you again – unless you’re going to condemn the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, for writing a book called Will We Have Jewish Grandchildren? – don’t call me a racist, or some kind of wicked bigot, for saying I would be very disappointed.”

Here lies a clue to his single-handed conversion of the BNP into electability over the past 10 years: while what he says is frequently outrageous, deeply racist and often factually dubious, the way he says it – pointing to other ethnic groups allegedly acting in the same way – is designed to appear as devoid of malice, and simply an appeal for an equal hearing.

Colour, he claims, is being replaced by culture. Muslims, he says, are a community with whom everyone has a problem. I point out I don’t have a particular problem with Muslims. But he does, and he expounds at length about it. He believes there is a fault line in British society. “The fault line isn’t colour: Enoch Powell got that wrong. The fault line is between Islam and the rest. Islam will conquer Europe. It won’t do it through guns: it will just do it through having lots of children.” He blithely claims Muslims routinely groom young, non-Muslim girls for sex, that the Koran is a manual for the overthrow of the West.

I cannot let this pass: surely he doesn’t believe any of that. It’s nonsense isn’t it? “Nope. There’s an utter gulf of comprehension between us, isn’t there?”

I point out that the vast majority of people in this country are either highly antipathetic towards him or just apathetic. A minority may support him, but they are out of touch with reality. Most sensible people ignore the BNP or think they’re a bunch of crazy folk.

“Your perception of a vast number thinking we’re a bunch of dangerous crazies is coloured by the fact that your work colleagues, the social circles you mix in and so on [are liberal] – a self-reinforcing groupthink thing.”

I suggest that he can’t stop multiculturalism, and he spirals off into fantasy. “If we’d been sat in café anywhere from East Berlin to the Urals in 1988, anyone who was of the mindset of Pravda, Izvestia and so on would have said you can’t stop Communism. Inevitability is the chief weapon of totalitarianism, and we do live in a totalitarian society.”

Can he see why some people might think he was like King Canute trying to hold back the tide of multi-culturalism? “You may well be right. I could have a more comfortable life if I went along with the flow and said ‘yes, it’s inevitable’. Do you think I should just pass by on the other side of the road and let it happen? Why should I do that?

“So yeah, we may not win. I don’t believe we have a God-given right to win or come to power. It’s not even likely. But the more successful we become, the more opponents will have to co-opt our policies.”

Why such outbursts? Did black children steal his lunch at school or beat him? “I don’t hate or have any problem with black people other than I hope very much that they remain black people. Other than I hope their children will look as black as they are, and as different and as interesting. And where it doesn’t happen: it’s not my business. No, I haven’t got a problem, so where does it come from? I don’t really know.”

Your Views, Please: The liberal’s dilemma

Should we ignore the BNP, denying it the oxygen of publicity, or engage, thereby giving it a platform?

Have Your Say: MEP Nick Griffin - An audience with a racist
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Racist rants of elected BNP man, Andrew Brons, revealed

Sunday, June 14th, 2009

One of the British National party’s first MEPs’ attempts to play down his past links to the extreme right as “silly” teenage posturing are today exposed as a sham after it emerged that for many years he played a crucial role in shaping the National Front’s most overtly racist policies.

In 1983, when he was in his late twenties, Andrew Brons edited the National Front’s general election manifesto that called for a global apartheid to prevent the “extinction” of whites everywhere.

The Let Britain Live! manifesto was prepared by the party’s policy department, chaired by Brons. It outlined a series of hugely controversial positions, crystallised in one of its opening statements: “The National Front rejects the whole concept of multiracialism. We recognise inherent racial differences in Man. The races of Man are profoundly unequal in their characteristics, potential and abilities.”

The manifesto claimed the UK had been “swamped” by “racially incompatible Afro-Asians” and that “Black muggings of White people, especially elderly ladies, occurs regularly”.

It continued: “The eruptions in Bristol in 1980 and Brixton in 1981 were just two examples of the ‘cultural enrichment’ promised to us by the multiracialists.” And it claimed: “We believe the gradual dismantlement of the Apartheid system over the last 17 years to be retrograde … The alternative to Apartheid, multiracialism, envisages an extinction of the White man.”

Brons was also an enthusiastic contributor in the 1970s and 1980s to Spearhead, a far-right magazine considered so extreme even the BNP tried to distance itself from it. In two lengthy polemics for the magazine, Brons outlined the supposed importance of nationalism and interpreted genetic studies to suggest Europeans had a “greater cognitive ability” than non-whites. He attacked the influence of “people of Jewish ethnic origin” and peddled the myth that a number of predominantly Zionist organisations were controlling the world.

The now retired college lecturer wrote: “One ethnic, national and religious group whose power and influence has undoubtedly increased has been the Jews. It can be no mere coincidence that the number of people of Jewish ethnic origin to be found in internationalist and multiracialist schools of thought and organisations of action is out of all proportion to their numbers in the population.”

Brons, who was elected as the BNP MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber this month, has tried to distance himself from his National Front days. “People do silly things when they are 17,” he said recently. “Peter Mandelson was once a member of the Young Communist League but we don’t continue to call him a communist.”

But his critics say his relationship with the National Front was more than a youthful dalliance and question the extent to which he has left his past behind. A 1980 edition of National Front News, the party newspaper, carried an article about Brons saying he was prepared to go to jail for his beliefs. It noted that Brons refused a “Negro reporter permission to attend two National Front ticket-only meetings” and explains that Brons, then 29, has “campaigned against Coloured Immigration since he was a teenager” - suggesting his extremist views have been a feature as much of his adult as his teenage life.

Brons seized the NF chairmanship in 1980 when John Tyndall quit to form the BNP. In 1984 Brons was convicted of using insulting behaviour towards an ethnic-minority police officer and left the party, citing family problems.

At the National Front, Brons was a close ally of Richard Verrall, the author of the Holocaust-denial tract Did Six Million Really Die?, who was vice-chairman. In 1981, while Brons was chairman, the NF endorsed We are National Front, a pamphlet carrying an introduction from Verrall. It had photographs of Brons and Verrall as well as a picture of a gorilla and a black man stating: “These two creatures look the same, don’t they?”

Anti-racism and Jewish support groups yesterday described Brons’s failure to condemn his past activities as disturbing. “From a young man until well into his middle age, Andrew Brons was very much involved in a series of viciously antisemitic and racist far-right movements,” said a spokesman for the Community Security Trust, which monitors attacks on the UK’s Jewish community. “It’s hard to believe he has undergone a serious conversion since then.”

Searchlight, the anti-fascist organisation, said Brons was influential in shaping the NF and it was important that those voting for him should be aware of his past views. “The fact that Brons is an intellectual fascist and bigot rather than an ignorant fascist and bigot cuts little ice,” a spokesman said. “We are unimpressed by his claims that his prejudice was a result of youthful exuberance.”

Attempts to contact Brons through the BNP were unsuccessful.

Jamie Doward

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Iran polls prompt vote rigging allegations

Saturday, June 13th, 2009

Have Your Say: Iran polls prompt vote rigging allegations
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Iran election may decide war or peace for Middle East

Saturday, June 13th, 2009

More than 42 million Iranians are eligible to vote Friday in the presidential election, and long lines were reported around the country’s polling places. Voting has already been extended at least two hours because of heavy turnout.

 

Incumbent hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has denied the Holocaust and vowed bloodcurdling threats against the United States and to wipe Israel off the map, is being challenged by former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who was an extremist prime minister through most of the 1980s but now appears a relative moderate compared with Ahmadinejad. There are two other candidates, but the race is seen as between Ahmadinejad, whose reputation precedes him, and Mousavi. If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote, a runoff is scheduled for June 19.

Most opinion polls heavily favor the incumbent Ahmadinejad, but some have given widely varying results — Ahmadinejad’s support swings from 22 percent to 62 percent. On the other hand, Ahmadinejad and his supporters control the state functions of government, which puts them at a huge advantage.

The campaign has been very spirited. The central issues — echoing last November’s presidential election in the United States — are the economy and international relations. The British Broadcasting Corporation reported that, after voting, Ahmadinejad thanked his fellow Iranians for “their goodness, for the greatness, for their selflessness, their sacrifice and for their forgiveness.” What was meant by that last comment is unclear.

Mousavi said, “God willing, with the nationwide participation of the public we will see better and more beautiful days.”

A quarter-century ago Mousavi was determined to export the Iranian Islamic Revolution throughout the Middle East, and he vigorously prosecuted Iran’s bloody, eight-year war with Iraq not just to drive the Iraqi invaders out of Iran, but also to carry the flag of the revolution across the entire region, fulfilling the implacable vision of the Islamic Republic’s founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

But Mousavi sounds very different today. Al-Jazeera television network quoted him as saying in the closing stages of his electronic campaign, “The conditions in this country have changed. The revolution has changed. There were specific conditions at the beginning of the revolution, particular motives and the motivation.”

According to al-Jazeera, Mousavi now wants to ensure that Iran functions as part of the international system as a major and respected power, and even as a partner to other nations.

The position of president is no figurehead in Iran. Ahmadinejad re-radicalized the country’s foreign and national security policies and pushed ahead more energetically than ever with its nuclear development programs after he succeeded President Mohammed Khatami in the 2005 presidential election. Khatami had offered two U.S. presidents, Democrat President Bill Clinton and Republican George W. Bush, to negotiate an end to Iran’s programs that could develop nuclear weapons, but neither followed up on it.

Iran’s current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, backs Ahmadinejad.

If Ahmadinejad wins, global oil prices, which climbed back to $70 a barrel this week, are likely to rise again, as fears will increase that Israel may order a pre-emptive air attack on Iran’s far-flung web of thousands of gas centrifuges that are working day and night to produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.

That could also happen if Mousavi wins, but the Israelis might then be more willing to sit back and let U.S. President Barack Obama try till the end of this year his policy of reining in the Iranian nuclear program by negotiations alone.

This year’s election therefore may be the most significant in the history of the Islamic Republic, and its outcome will be closely scrutinized not just in the Middle East but around the world for its pointers to war and peace in the coming years.

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Spying Teachers - MI5 Wants Recruits

Friday, June 12th, 2009

Now pay attention school teachers: your country needs you.

The British Security Service MI5 is seeking to recruit teachers to serve as intelligence officers in the fight against terrorism, espionage and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Where once the Service recruited Oxbridge graduates via a meticulously planned tap on the shoulder and ex-SAS men via shady meetings on shady park benches, MI5’s HR department has lately looked elsewhere for its operatives.

Lawyers and former City workers have been screened and assimilated into the Service. It now appears to believe that anyone who can survive double Geography on a Friday afternoon will prove useful in the fight to uphold national security.

It has placed an advert in the Times Educational Supplement in an attempt to lure the finest men and women from British common rooms to serve Queen and country.

“You may not realise it but life has given you the skills you need to be an MI5 Operational Officer,” says the advertisement.

It is vague about what other qualifications teachers possess for infiltrating terrorist networks and counter-espionage, though the work is thought to be similar in many respects to maintaining discipline in a year ten maths class.

Most teachers are used to identifying potential trouble-makers through a discreet system of profiling and breaking up potentially dangerous “cells” by getting them to sit on different sides of the classroom.

When the threat to destabilise the established order is serious, they are known to resort to detention of suspects without trial for a period of time after school.

Many are also thought to be deadly with a piece of chalk from twenty yards.

The MI5 advert does not mention these skills, perhaps for fear of alerting enemy combatants to the full capabilities of its new cadre of recruits. Instead it stresses the formidable people skills that British teachers develop at comprehensives and academies across the country.

“Your experience of dealing with people means you can build trust and relationships with all sorts of individuals, which makes you the ideal candidate for developing a career securing the information we need to protect national security,” the advert says.

Teachers are quite used to moving into new environments, quickly establishing the rules of engagement, the number of people who should be allowed to visit the lavatory and what constitutes the correct PE Kit.

Responding to the advertisement, the TES observed that: “Jet-setting, espionage and national security are not usually associated with a career in the classroom.”

It notes that: “Those at the chalkface might not be overly tempted by the money. The salary is £35,425 depending on skills and experience, about the same as a secondary teacher who has been in the job for some time.”

The Service appears to hope that teachers will be drawn to apply to the agency by the promise of serving Queen and country. Or the gadgets. Or the women, who are widely imagined to emerge from the sea in bikinis holding large shells.

Many teachers are thought to be sympathetic to the idea that it is only a few people who are spoiling it for the rest of us. They are expected to take the fight to the terrorists, making it clear to Al-Qaeda that they will be there all day and it is, after all, their own time they are wasting.

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The Ugly Side of Globalization: Slavery

Friday, June 5th, 2009

The offer came to families on the edge of desperation, living and working around the clock on garbage dumps whose sickening stench seeps into their clothes.

A motherly woman accompanied by a kindly gentleman arrived one day in early December, shortly before the New Year’s Tet celebration when the poorest of the poor hope for a little extra cash for modest festivities. The two said they were looking for attractive young women to work in a Ho Chi Minh City cafe, and they were ready to give each family a $60 advance — a small fortune for people barely scraping by on a couple of dollars a day — or less.

Though at least two fathers objected, they were overruled by their wives and daughters, who were willing to take any risk to help their struggling clans. After examining each girl like livestock, the man chose five of the prettiest teenagers, and picked two more from a neighboring area. The teens quickly packed a few belongings and left.

Seventeen-year-old Truong Thi Nhi Linh was one of those chosen. It was, she says, the best chance to help her family — a chance to make considerably more money than she earns working 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. in the dump, sloshing around on rainy nights in knee-high sludge among swarms of other workers looking for bits of junk.

She reassured her parents, who opposed her leaving. “I said, ‘It’s OK. I’m just going to work.” She added, “I want to help my family.”

later, one of the few parents with a cell phone received a panicked call from their daughter — they were not headed north to Ho Chi Minh City but to Cambodia, where the girls would be forced into the sex trade.

It is a misfortune that falls on many young women in Southeast Asia with the twin vulnerabilities of being pretty and poor. Like their parents, they often are illiterate and profoundly uninformed about the dangers of international sex trafficking and how strangers drug or lure unsuspecting teens into a life of satisfying the cravings of foreign men. Their innocence is prized: Some Asian men are willing to pay as much as $600 to have sex with a virgin because they believe it will restore their youth, give them good fortune or even cure them of AIDS.

Vietnam, with an abundance of beautiful young women living in desperate straits, is a magnet for human brokers — some of whom pay families to marry off their daughters to men in Korea, Taiwan and China; others are linked directly to human trafficking. Parents often ignore the dangers to their daughters in pursuit of a better life.

“The families are so poor,” said Quach Thi Phan, chairwoman of the Women’s Union of Rach Gia City in Kien Giang Province, which organizes anti-trafficking educational campaigns. “They just think about how to get money, how to find a job.”

In the case of the Rach Gia girls, the police conducted a last-minute raid near the Cambodian border to rescue them after receiving calls from a community member and, eventually, at least one worried parent. The almost routine incident received no local news coverage, underscoring the virtual daily threat to the world’s underclass.

“It’s globalization in its ugliest form,” said Diep Vuong, president of Pacific Links Foundation, a Milpitas-based non-profit started by Vietnamese-Americans. The organization works to prevent human trafficking by providing educational opportunities to at-risk Vietnamese girls and those who escape the sex trade.

“If you don’t know how to read the public announcements or have enough money for newspapers and you barely have enough to eat, how can you understand there are risks?” she said. “It’s so easy to look the other way. I meet many young women who say, ‘I know it’s risky, but I must try because we are so poor.’ I tell them, ‘Do you think you’ll be able to sleep with 15 guys a day?’ They are mostly terrified and surprised; ‘What are you talking about?’ they ask.”

A half-million young women are trafficked each year around the world, according to the U.S. State Department. In Vietnam, the government recently reported that last year there were 6,684 victims of trafficking, with 2,579 returned to their homes. It also said there were 21,038 people reported missing who could have been sold into prostitution.

Vietnamese authorities in recent years have moved aggressively to stop sex trafficking. Police in the home province of the seven teens, for instance, have officers dedicated to cracking down on traffickers. Overall, though, neither the national nor local governments has enough resources to adequately fight the problem, experts say.

In 2004, NBC’s “Dateline” news show broadcast a report about Cambodia’s sex trade. To the horror of the Vietnamese-American community, the young prostitutes spoke Vietnamese. As a result of the broadcast, a number of Vietnamese in the Bay Area and elsewhere began creating programs to prevent such sexual exploitation, said Benjamin Lee, chairman of San Jose-based Aid to Children Without Parents.

They set up organizations to provide opportunities and hope for those at the bottom of the economic ladder and assistance to those who escape forced prostitution.

But they face a culture that makes their task difficult; in some cases, parents willingly sell their daughters to traffickers for thousands of dollars. “In the Eastern way of thinking, the children have to obey their parents: ‘I have my body. I will do this for my family,’” said Nguyen Kim Thien, director of Ho Chi Minh City’s Little Rose Warm Shelter for sexually abused girls.

This modern-day slavery takes root in regions isolated by abject poverty and proximity to Cambodia’s thriving sex trade, such as parts of the Mekong Delta. One such place is on the outskirts of the bustling port city of Rach Gia in a majority ethnic Khmer community.

Though Vietnam boasts a literacy rate of more than 90 percent, many of the residents in this community have little or no education. They spend their days and nights picking through heaps of garbage for recyclable materials, such as plastic and metal. Children, barefoot and barely clothed, play amid the foul-smelling waste.

“This is a community in which we had to teach them how to use soap, how to use a bathroom — the basics of the basics,” said Caroline Nguyen Ticarro-Parker, co-founder and executive director of the U.S.-based Catalyst Foundation, which has set up a school in the area and is working with Habitat for Humanity to construct homes for people in the community.

“Their day-to-day life is, ‘How do I get food on the table today? Who is going to take care of my child today?’” she said. “Life has been so hard for them. They can’t think of the future.”

They live in huts with thatch roofs on or near a garbage dump swarming with flies and mosquitos. On a recent morning, 23-year-old Kim Thi Mau sorted dirty plastic bags. Last year, her 4-year-old son Lam drowned when he fell in a ditch filled with water while she and her husband worked nearby. She has two other sons, 20 months and 4 months.

“I hope there is a school that can take care of my children — some place not like this, dirty,” said Kim who, like her 28-year-old husband, is illiterate.

So it can be difficult to resist strangers who arrive in a village promising good-paying jobs. Many of these families survive on $1 or $2 a day. In the case of the seven teens, the traffickers said they could pay each one about $120 a month working in a city cafe.

On that December morning, a respected family in Rach Gia’s Vinh Quang ward sent out word about the employment offer. More than a dozen girls and their families gathered at a house.

“The man looked at our faces and said, ‘This girl is OK. This one is OK,’” said Danh Thi Anh, a shy and soft-spoken 20-year-old, who was one of those picked and 19 at the time.

The selection process began at 11 a.m. By 1 p.m. the teens were on the road. Soon after they left, a Catalyst employee who tried to dissuade the teens from going told one member of the community to call the police.

Most of the young women had never been far from home by themselves. Within a few hours, one figured out they were not heading to Ho Chi Minh City, Truong and two other teens recalled.

The girls, using a cell phone of them had, began calling home, and eventually one of their mothers called the police.

Some of the teens began to cry. They had arrived in An Bien City, south of Rach Gia, and were to travel to the coast and board a fishing boat to Cambodia.

“We were very afraid,” Truong said. “We did not know where we were.”

But police, who had tracked other human traffickers taking the same route, found them at 10 p.m. They arrested the woman who was escorting them. The man got away.

Around 4 a.m. the next day, the teens were back in Rach Gia.

It is unclear what the community learned from the narrow escape. Catalyst Foundation representatives held community meetings afterwards. “We said, ‘This is what will happen: Your child will be raped, and not by one person, but by many people,’” said the organization’s co-founder Nguyen. But she can’t be sure it won’t happen again.

For those living in brutal conditions, Nguyen said, “It is a lot of money.”

Seventeen-year-old Truong, who lives in a cramped thatched home elevated over water with nine family members, said she has not thought much about what would have happened to her had she ended up in Cambodia.

“I don’t think about that,” she said passively. “If it had happened, it would have been because it was my destiny. That’s the life.”

TO HELP

Bay Area groups working to prevent human trafficking among Vietnam”s poor:

Aid to Children Without Parents
Has provided assistance to refugee and other poor children since 1988. In recent years, the organization began focusing on preventing young people from being drawn into the sex trade. It has funded the renovation of schools and completed a community center. Created a culinary school in the Central Vietnam city of Hue to give at-risk young women skills. Has also built schools in Cambodia for poor Vietnamese communities in that country.
U.S. address: 134 Martinvale Lane, San Jose, 95119. Phone: 408-225-0405; 408-225-8302.
Vietnam address: 14 Nguyen Cong Tru, Hue.
Web site: www.acwp.org

The Asia Foundation
Sponsors discussions between Vietnam and its neighbors, Cambodia and China, on preventing human trafficking. Also works with partners to create a number of programs to provide economic opportunities for poor women, access to credit and vocational training. Works with National Legal Aid Agency to offer victims of trafficking legal services.
U.S. address: 465 California St., 9th Floor, San Francisco, 94104. Phone: 415-982-4640
Vietnam address: 10-03 Prime Centre, 53 Quang Trung St., Hanoi. Phone: 84 43 9433263.
Web site: asiafoundation.org/

Catalyst Foundation
Provides an array of educational programs, from vocational training to a primary school, to poor residents of the South Vietnam city of Rach Gia. It also works to raise awareness about the dangers of sex traffickers. The non-profit assists the poor in Dong Thap Province along the Cambodian border with scholarships and life-skills training.
U.S. address: 710 St. Olaf Ave., Ste. 100 Northfield, Minn., 55057
Phone: 507-664-9558
Vietnam address: 231/10 Bui Thi Xuan St, Ward 1, Tan Binh District, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Phone: 84 83 8476293
Web site: www.catalystfoundation.org

Pacific Links Foundation (An giang/Dong thap Alliance for the Prevention of Trafficking ADAPT)
It works in partnership with two other Bay Area-based non-profits, Oakland-based East Meets West Foundation and International Children Assistance Network in San Jose. The alliance provides an array of programs “” from scholarships to vocational training to job placement to grassroots advocacy “” along the Vietnamese-Cambodian border to prevent young women from becoming entangled in human trafficking. It operates a reintegration shelter for women who have been victims of human trafficking.
U.S. address: 534 Valley Way, Milpitas, 95035. Phone: 510-435-3035
Vietnam address: 163/A9 Huynh Thuc Khang, TP Long Xuyen, An Giang. Phone 84 76 3853888
Web site: pacificlinks.org

By John Boudreau

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US cybersecurity plan poses new war threats

Saturday, May 30th, 2009

By Tom Eley |

President Barack Obama announced on Friday the creation of a new “cyber czar” position. The Cybersecurity Coordinator, who is yet to be named, would oversee billions of dollars in funding for developing and coordinating defense of the computer networks that operate the global financial system and domestic transportation and commerce, according to the administration. The position, which Obama said would report directly to him, results from a 60-day “cyberspace policy review” Obama ordered.

Obama’s announcement was overshadowed by the US military’s imminent creation of a new military “Cyber Command,” detailed in a New York Times article published Friday. Obama has not even been presented with the military’s plan, nor did he mention it directly in his press conference. However, administration sources have said he will sign a classified order or set of directives later this month authorizing the creation of the Cyber Command.

Media accounts indicate that the formation of the parallel domestic and military cyber security agencies was the source of a bitter “turf battle” between and within competing national security and federal domestic agencies.

As a compromise, Obama’s domestic Cybersecurity Coordinator would report to both the National Economic Council (NEC), a White House economic advisory group, and the National Security Council, the top-level presidential advisory group that coordinates foreign and military policy, thus ensuring “a balance between homeland security and economic concerns,” the Washington Post reports. Obama’s top economic advisor, Lawrence H. Summers, fought for a dominant role for the NEC so that “efforts to protect private networks do not unduly threaten economic growth.”

In his Friday press conference, Obama sought to present the Cybersecurity Coordinator position in the most innocuous terms, referring to the “spyware and malware and spoofing and phishing and botnets.” and “cyber thieves” that anyone with access to the Internet confronts. Obama emphasized that the measure would not include “monitoring private sector networks or Internet traffic. We will preserve and protect the personal privacy and civil liberties that we cherish as Americans,” he said. “Indeed, I remain firmly committed to net neutrality so we can keep the Internet as it should be—open and free.”

But the creation of high-level police agency tasked with overseeing the Internet raises troubling questions. As the New York Times notes, it “appears to be part of a significant expansion of the role of the national security apparatus” in the White House.

Meanwhile, legislation working its way through Congress, the so-called Cybersecurity Act of 2009, would grant the US government unprecedented control over the Internet. The bill gives the president unrestricted power to halt Internet traffic, ordering the shutdown of both government and privately owned and operated networks deemed related to “critical infrastructure information systems,” merely by declaring a “cybersecurity emergency.”

In his remarks, Obama pointed to the threat of cyber terrorism, noting that US “defense and military networks are under constant attack. Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups have spoken of their desire to unleash a cyber attack on our country.” He invoked the recent terror attacks on Mumbai, India, where “terrorists…relied not only on guns and grenades but also on GPS and phones using voice-over-the-Internet.” Obama also alluded to the possibility of cyberwarfare with a major foe, mentioning Russia by name. “Last year we had a glimpse of the future face of war,” Obama said. “As Russian tanks rolled into Georgia, cyber attacks crippled Georgian government websites.”

However, these sorts of threats would most likely not fall under the purview of the Cybersecurity Coordinator, at least based on Obama’s explanation of the position. The implication is that these “threats” would be handled by the military-intelligence Cyber Command.

Reports indicate that there is an acrimonious struggle within the national security apparatus over who should oversee the new command. Currently, the National Security Agency (NSA) controls most of the functions that would be associated with cyberwarfare. Created by Democratic President Harry S. Truman in 1952 at the height of the Cold War, the NSA is a spy agency tasked with breaking the codes and signals of foreign entities and encrypting sensitive US government communications. It is overseen by a military figure—either a lieutenant general or vice admiral—and the NSA reports to the Department of Defense.

In March, Rod Beckstrom, the Department of Homeland Security’s cyber-security head (Director, National Cybersecurity Center) resigned in protest over the NSA appearing to win out in the struggle over who should “defend” domestic computer networks. In his resignation letter, which was leaked to the press, Beckstrom implied that the Office of Management and Budget had conspired with the NSA to starve his own agency of funding, and raised the threat posed by the NSA overseeing domestic computer-spying operations. “The threat to our democratic processes are significant if all top government network security and monitoring are handled by any one organization (either directly or indirectly),” Beckstrom wrote. “During my term as director we have been unwilling to subjugate the NSCS underneath the NSA.”

A Wall Street Journal report at the end of April indicated that the head of the Cyber Command would be current NSA chief, General Keith Alexander. Other accounts indicate that the Cyber Command would more likely report at first to the military’s Strategic Command, which oversees the nation’s nuclear arsenal, according to sources cited in the New York Times. And still other sources have said NSA personnel could be moved into a new military command structure under the control of the Pentagon.

In any case, the formation of the Cyber Command raises the threat of the military or the NSA launching operations within the US. Both are currently constitutionally-prohibited from carrying on either military or spy actions within American borders. One anonymous “senior intelligence official,” cited in the Times, called this “the domestic spying problem writ large.”

“These attacks start in other countries, but they know no borders,” he said. “So how do you fight them if you can’t act both inside and outside the United States?” The answer, implied by the very formation of the Cyber Command, is that the military and spy agencies should disregard the traditional separation of foreign war and espionage, on the one hand, and domestic policing and investigation, on the other.

According to the Defense Department, in 2008 360 million attempts were made to breach its computer networks. It also reported that the Pentagon spent $100 million in the past six months to repair damage done by hackers, most of whom work from Russia and China, it is claimed. In early April the Wall Street Journal reported that hackers had penetrated the national electricity grid and even the Pentagon’s $300 billion Joint Strike Fighters program.

Yet despite the rhetoric about national defense, comments from administration sources and military figures make clear that motivating the creations of the military cyber defense is its offensive capabilities. “We are not comfortable discussing the question of offensive cyberoperations, but we consider cyberspace a war-fighting domain,” said Bryan Whitman, an Obama Pentagon spokesman. “We need to be able to operate within that domain just like on any battlefield, which includes protecting our freedom of movement and preserving our capability to perform in that environment.”

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