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Children to ‘face criminal checks’

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007

All children could face compulsory checks to discover if they are at risk of turning into criminals, according to new plans announced by the Prime Minister.

The controversial proposal would mean checks at important stages in a child’s life, such as the move from primary to secondary school, Tony Blair said.

He also announced plans to further expand the DNA database to include ‘all suspected offenders who come into contact with the police’.

Currently it is only people actually arrested who must give a DNA sample, which remains on record even if they are not charged, or are acquitted.

The plans are part of a wide-ranging review of crime and security policy published by Number 10.

The document said the government wanted to: ‘Establish universal checks throughout a child’s development to help service providers to identify those most at risk of offending.

‘These checks should piggyback on existing contact points such as the transition to secondary schools.’

Other plans set out included publishing efficiency data on the courts for the first time, with the prospect of poor-performing courts facing measures to force improvements.

Another proposal was extending the police’s ability to seize non-cash assets from criminals, such as plasma screen televisions, jewellery and laptop computers.

Shadow home secretary David Davis said the proposals on child checks were an example of the ‘nanny state gone mad’.

He added: ‘We would have great and grave concerns about any extension of the DNA database. This is an admission that Labour have failed on crime and justice.

‘All they have come up with is a swansong to try and secure some sort of legacy for Tony Blair. They should realise that they cannot put right in two months what they have got wrong over 10 years.’

©2007 Associated Newspapers Limited

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Judge dismisses lawsuit against Rumsfeld

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007

Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cannot be tried on allegations of torture in overseas military prisons, a federal judge said Tuesday in a case he described as “lamentable.”

U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan threw out a lawsuit brought on behalf of nine former prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said Rumsfeld cannot be held personally responsible for actions taken in connection with his government job.

The lawsuit contends the prisoners were beaten, suspended upside down from the ceiling by chains, urinated on, shocked, sexually humiliated, burned, locked inside boxes and subjected to mock executions.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First had argued that Rumsfeld and top military officials disregarded warnings about the abuse and authorized the use of illegal interrogation tactics that violated the constitutional and human rights of prisoners.

“This is a lamentable case,” Hogan began his 58-page opinion.

No matter how appealing it might seem to use the courts to correct allegations of severe abuses of power, Hogan wrote, government officials are immune from such lawsuits. Additionally, foreigners held overseas are not normally afforded U.S. constitutional rights.

“Despite the horrifying torture allegations,” Hogan said, he could find no case law supporting the lawsuit, which he previously had described as unprecedented.

Allowing the case to go forward, Hogan said in December, might subject government officials to all sorts of political lawsuits. Even Osama bin Laden could sue, Hogan said, claiming two American presidents threatened to have him murdered.

“There is no getting around the fact that authorizing monetary damages remedies against military officials engaged in an active war would invite enemies to use our own federal courts to obstruct the Armed Forces’ ability to act decisively and without hesitation,” Hogan wrote Tuesday.

Had the Rumsfeld lawsuit been allowed to go forward, attorneys for the ACLU might have been able to force the Pentagon to disclose what officials knew about abuses at prisons such as Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and what was done to stop it.

Hogan also dismissed the charges against other officials named in the lawsuit: retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, former Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski and Col. Thomas M. Pappas.

Karpinski, whose Army Reserve unit was in charge of the Abu Ghraib prison, was demoted and is the highest-ranking officer punished in the scandal. Sanchez, who commanded U.S. forces in Iraq, retired from the Army and said his career was a casualty of the prison scandal.

The ACLU and Justice Department had no immediate response to the ruling.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070327/ap_on_go_ot/detainee_abuse_rumsfeld

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Public webcams, not CCTV, urged to avoid Big Brother society

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007

Ian Sample

Footage from surveillance cameras must be made freely available to the public if Britain is to avoid becoming a Big Brother state, researchers warned yesterday.Under the proposals, networks of CCTV cameras would be turned into public webcams, allowing those under surveillance to see where cameras are directed, what images are recorded and who is viewing the footage.

The recommendations, in a report called Dilemmas of Privacy and Surveillance, published by the Royal Academy of Engineering, come as the Home Office and police forces prepare to upgrade national CCTV networks amid concern that evidence from the cameras is often too poor in quality to use in criminal investigations.

The review was ordered after the bombings in London on July 7 2005, when police found that images recorded by many cameras were not good enough to help investigations.

The creation of “community webcams” would redress the imbalance of power between those in front and those behind the cameras by making organisations and individuals who use the information as accountable as those being filmed, the researchers claim.

“We are the most watched-over society in the world, and if we are being watched, then we need to be able to watch the watchers,” said Ian Forbes, a consultant and co-author of the report.

Britain has an estimated 5m surveillance cameras operated by councils and private companies - roughly one for every 12 people - but footage from them is unavailable to the public. The rise in surveillance systems has alarmed some MPs, and prompted the Commons home affairs select committee to launch an inquiry into so-called Big Brother Britain this week.

The report says: “The greatest value of this sort of “community webcam” would be its power to prevent a Big Brother state … Community members could object if they felt particular cameras were unnecessary or unnecessarily intrusive. This would limit the potential for voyeuristic or prejudicial misuse of surveillance.”

The report also raises fears over the security of personal details held by supermarkets, credit card companies and health authorities. Leaked health records, it says, could jeopardise people’s employment prospects, or even put them at risk of attack.

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UK in ‘discreet talks’ with Iran

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007

BBC

The government is attempting to “discreetly” talk to the Iranians to secure the release of 15 Royal Navy personnel, Downing Street has said.

Tony Blair’s spokesman said that if the talks were unsuccessful, the government may have to become “more explicit”.

He said they were “utterly confident” the 15 had been in Iraqi, not Iranian, waters, when they were captured.

Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett will shorten a visit to Turkey to fly home to help manage the crisis.

The 15 sailors and marines from HMS Cornwall were captured on Friday after searching a boat in the Gulf, off the coast of Iraq, which they suspected was smuggling cars.

‘No doubt’

Iran says the British personnel were trespassing in Iranian waters when they were seized - but the prime minister said the group were in Iraqi waters under a UN mandate.

The prime minister’s spokesman said the matter was being dealt with “privately” but the Iranians could be “in no doubt that we expect the immediate release of our personnel”.

Earlier, Mr Blair warned of a “different phase” if diplomacy failed to secure their release.

His spokesman said he was referring to a “different way” of handling talks, which could involve making public reasons why the UK was certain the group was in Iraqi waters.

It is understood this could include producing evidence such as boat co-ordinates and details of the searched vessel apparently still anchored in Iraqi waters.

The spokesman told reporters: “We are utterly confident that we were in Iraqi waters, and not just marginally in Iraqi waters but in Iraqi waters. It’s a case of tactics and if and when we have to prove that.”

However, one high-ranking Iraqi official has expressed surprise that British forces were operating in the area.

Brigadier-General Hakim Jassim, commander of Iraq’s territorial waters, said: “Usually there is no presence of British forces in that area, so we were surprised and we wondered whether the British forces were inside Iraqi waters or inside Iranian regional waters.”

The BBC has been told the group are being held at an Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps base in Tehran.

They have been held for five days, but are said to be being treated humanely.

Commons statement

On Tuesday, Defence Secretary Des Browne chaired a meeting of ministers and officials - under the auspices of the government’s “civil contingencies committee” known as Cobra - to discuss the situation.

Officials said it was intended to ensure coordination across Whitehall and keep civil servants updated on the latest developments.

Cobra leads responses to national crises and convened in recent years for the 7 July London bombings, the fuel protests and 11 September attack.

It is understood that while still in Turkey, Mrs Beckett spoke to Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki to push again for immediate consular access to them.

The Associated Press news agency reported that Iranian officials had repeated assurances that British diplomats would get access to the detainees once their inquiry into the incident was complete.

On Wednesday, Mrs Beckett is expected to make a statement to the Commons.

Faye Turney, one of the 15 captured, was interviewed by the BBC last week.

She said: “Sometimes you may be called upon, and when you do you’ve just got to deal with it and get on with it”.

Meanwhile, her family, from Shrewsbury, Shropshire, have said it is a “very distressing time” for them.

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Binning ID Cards

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007

Liverpool joins in national day of action against ID Cards

Liverpool Defy ID

A giant mock ID card in a bin proved to be an eye-catching symbol to draw the attention of lunchtime shoppers in Liverpool city centre this afternoon. The Liverpool Defy ID group handed out leaflets and talked to passers-by about the government’s ID card plans, as part of a national day of action, called to coincide with the opening of the first of the new passport interview (interrogation) centres that mark the next step towards ID card Britain.

69 new passport-processing centres will open over the next few weeks, and new applicants will all have to travel (at their own expense) to one of them to undergo an interview. Next year people will have to give fingerprints too - maybe you thought fingerprinting was for criminals, but no, in a surveillance society we are all turned into suspect individuals!

Buried within a story about how 10,000 fraudulent passport applications are granted every year (clearly timely propaganda to justify this new more troublesome passport procedure) are more details about how the passport interviews will work, and how bureacrats will snoop about in government & financial databases to pull together information about applicants’ lives:

“IPS announced that adult first-time passport applicants would have to attend face-to-face interviews from May.

The IPS executive director, Bernard Herdan, said applicants would be expected to know answers from a pool of around 200 questions about their ancestry, financial history and previous addresses.

“We will not ask questions to which we don’t know the answers,” he said. “Before the interview takes place, we will have cross-checked that individual against various databases in order to uncover information about them.”

The questions are intended to ensure that applicants are the people they claim to be and uncover any cases of identity fraud, he added.

Applicants will be asked who lives with them, whether they have a mortgage, where and when their parents were born and which bank accounts they hold, and will also face questions about the counter-signatory to their passport application.” 
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,2038442,00.html

“Take a look at the hoops through which new applicants will have to jump. Filling in the application form is just the start. Once the IPS has established that the applicant exists and is entitled to a passport, he will be invited to call a 24-hour advice line to arrange a face-to-face interview at one of 69 new centres (costing £180 million).

The “interrogation” (their word) will take between 10 and 20 minutes, though it will be conducted in a “non-threatening manner”; how very comforting. A list of up to 200 personal questions will be drawn on to authenticate people’s identities.

And that is the nub of this intrusive and costly (£66 for a passport, plus the travel costs) new process. The Government is in fact installing the machinery for its misguided and ludicrously expensive system of ID cards “ 
 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=XVCMEP5ZRXCHHQFIQMGSFF4AVCBQWIV0?xml=/opinion/2007/03/21/dl2101.xml

Links to more news & information about ID cards, state surveillance & threats to privacy & freedom: 
 http://del.icio.us/liverpool_defy_id/ 

 http://www.defy-id.org.uk |  http://www.no2id.net |  http://www.renewforfreedom.org

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BARCODE DEMO AT ID OFFICE

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007

PROTESTERS dressed as barcoded robots to demonstrate against ID cards yesterday.

Dozens of campaigners gathered at Edinburgh’s new passport interview centre to protest against plans to keep personal records on file.

DavidMuxworthy, Edinburgh secretary of campaign group No2ID, branded plans to fingerprint applicants “sinister”.

He said:”People from large areas of the Lothians and Fife needing a new passport will be forced to travel to Edinburgh to be interrogated and fingerprinted and to surrender 49 pieces of personal information for the database.”

The centre, in the city’s Haymarket Terrace, is to open later this year and is one of 69 offices across the UK.

AHome Office spokesman said: “By asking applicants to come and see us we will be able to make sure people are who they say they are.”

 

Meanwhile, experts warned last night that terrorists could rig up a bomb that would only explode when a target’s ID card passed close to it.

 

The Royal Academy of Engineering also warned the Government that unless information on ID cards and biometric passports was encoded, it could be read by criminals with the right antenna and other equipment.

 http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_headline=barcode-demo-at-id-office&method=full&objectid=18813667&siteid=66633-name_page.html

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FBI Used Inaccurate Info to Get Surveillance Warrants

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007

Luke O’Brien

The FBI, already taking flak for the abuse of national security letters used to spy on Americans, admitted to The Washington Post today that its agents “repeatedly provided inaccurate information to win secret court approval of surveillance warrants in terrorism and espionage cases.”

Warrants issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court allow for physical and electronic surveillance and are some of the most secretive and loosely vetted investigative tools available to federal law enforcement. But time and time again the FBI supplied the court with bad data to obtain warrants, according to the Post and an internal bureau audit last year. FBI agents even used information from deactivated informants. The errors were bad enough that FISC’s chief judge complained to the Justice Department.

The FBI has chalked its mishaps up mostly to sloppiness and lack of internal oversight. But the extent to which the FBI has violated civil liberties and run roughshod over the law — thousands of cases over several years — suggests the bureau’s problems go beyond mere incompetence.

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RINF Film Screening: A World Without Cancer

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007

13 APRIL, 7.30PM, GREGSON ARTS AND COMMUNITY CENTRE, LANCASTER

On Friday, 13 April, 2007, local events organiser RINF.COM will hold a screening of A WORLD WITHOUT CANCER: THE STORY OF VITAMIN B17. The film will be screened at 7.30pm at the Gregson Arts and Community Centre, Moor Lane, Lancaster.

Edward Griffin in his book ‘A World Without Cancer’ gives eight detailed case studies of patients who took laetrile and recovered from cancer in the 1960s and 1970s (p11 9ff). Doctor Binzel in his book ‘Alive and Well’ sites 21 cases from the 1970s up to 1992 (p11 4ff) and compares his own results in his general practice to those of conventional treatment statistics.

If patients started vitamin B17 and nutritional therapy when first diagnosed, and did not have chemotherapy or radiotherapy then Doctor Ernst T Krebs, Jr claimed a 98% success rate. The Del Rio Hospital of Tijuana claims a nearly 100% success rate with verging cases, i.e. with those who have not had chemotherapy or radiotherapy.

Food such as wild blackberries and apricot seeds can contain high amounts of the B17 vitamin (above 500 mgs. Nitriloside per 100 grams food). There are isolated tribes and peoples around the world who do not have cancer. These include the Abkhazians, the Hopi and Navajo Indians, the Hunzas, Eskimos and the Karakorum. What they have in common is that their diet is rich in vitamin B17.

With billions of pounds spent each year on research, with other billions taken in the sale of cancer related drugs, and with fundraising at an all time high, there are now more people making a living from cancer than dying from it.

About RINF Events - Real World Action & Empowerment

RINF events take place in the UK, usually free and always informative. RINF founder, Michael Meaney, often (but not always) works with a wide range of groups and people, to organise these events which include speakers and film screenings. Recent events include talks with Annie Machon and David Shayler (ex-MI5 whistleblowers), Ian R. Crane (chair of the British 9/11 Truth Campaign) and William Rodriguez (last man out of the Twin Towers). Funding, equipment, promotional material and room hire for events comes directly from the RINF.COM web site. If you’re interested in holding events in your area, please get in touch.

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US Soldiers Shoot Unarmed Civilians

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007

I ask readers to please forward this video to mainstream media outlets and to those in government demanding that action be taken to investigate this apparent murder of innocent Iraqi civilians. We can not witness murder and not take action without being complicit in the crime! Brought to you from www.ichblog.eu

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New documents expose White House lies

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007

New documents expose White House, Justice Department lies in firing of US attorneys

Barry Grey

A new batch of email messages and other documents released Friday by the Justice Department to congressional investigators provide conclusive evidence that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales lied about his involvement in the politically motivated firing of eight United States attorneys last year. The glaring contradictions between the documents and Gonzales’ statements earlier this month point to a systematic cover-up of the White House role in the purge of the federal prosecutors.

Gonzales has had the closest ties to President Bush going back more than a decade, when he served as Bush’s counsel and then state supreme court judge during the latter’s stint as governor of Texas, continuing as Bush’s White House counsel and then as attorney general in Bush’s second term.

Included in the 283 pages of records released Friday is a memorandum of an hour-long meeting between Gonzales and his senior aides on November 27, 2006 to review the plan to fire seven of the eight US attorneys. The eighth had already been fired earlier in the year.

The meeting in the attorney general’s conference room included Gonzales, Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty and four other senior Justice Department officials, including the aide who oversaw the firings, then-Chief of Staff D. Kyle Sampson. The firings went into effect on December 7, 2006, after they had been approved by Bush.

The meeting flatly contradicts Gonzales’ statements at a March 13, 2007 press conference at which he denied having played any direct or significant role in the firings or having had any detailed knowledge of them. “I was not involved in seeing any memos,” Gonzales said at the news conference, “was not involved in any discussions about what was going on.”

The attorney general claimed that the entire matter had been organized by Sampson and blamed his subordinate for misleading statements about the firings given by himself and other officials to Congress, claiming that Sampson had failed to properly keep the attorney general’s office informed. One day before the press conference, Sampson resigned his post as chief of staff.

Prior to the release of the latest series of documents on Friday, Sampson announced that he had agreed to testify under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee The hearing is set for Thursday, March 29. Sampson and his attorney have made it clear that they reject Gonzales’ version of events.

In a further sign of disarray, the Justice Department announced Friday that Monica Goodling, a senior counselor to Gonzales who worked with Sampson on the firings, had taken an indefinite personal leave from her job.

The crisis over the firings intensified last week with votes by the judiciary committees in both the House of Representatives and the Senate to authorize the issuing of subpoenas to compel Bush’s chief political aide Karl Rove, his former White House counsel Harriet Miers and other White House officials to testify under oath before the committees. Bush declared that he would refuse to allow them to testify under oath on the grounds of executive privilege.

The Democratic-controlled committees have made no decision whether to actually issue the subpoenas, and Arlen Specter, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is seeking to broker a compromise along lines acceptable to the White House.

At least four Republican lawmakers have joined a growing chorus of Democrats demanding Gonzales’ resignation. The purge of the US attorneys was the major topic on the Sunday television interview programs. But Bush continues to publicly back his long-time political crony. He used his weekly Saturday radio address to reassert his support for the firings and for his attorney general.

Gonzales’ stonewalling and deception are aimed not only at saving his own position, but at protecting the White House and Bush himself. Last week it emerged that the thousands of pages of email messages and other documents turned over by the Justice Department to investigators contain a large gap. There is almost nothing from November 16 of last year to December 7, the day seven of the firings occurred.

One of the last emails prior to this period was sent by Sampson to then-White House counsel Miers, and includes a request that the White House approve the plan. In other words, the gap covers precisely a period when top White House officials, possibly including Bush himself, would have likely been heavily involved.

Justice Department officials initially claimed that the White House had little role in the plan to fire the prosecutors, merely approving it after it had been drawn up by Justice Department officials. But email messages and other documents released to Congress earlier this month showed that the plan had been hatched by White House officials, primarily Rove and Miers, soon after the beginning of Bush’s second term in 2005.

Then administration officials claimed the dismissals were prompted by performance problems with the prosecutors and denied any political motivation. That ruse collapsed when it emerged that most of the attorneys had excellent performance ratings and that Republican legislators had pressed the Justice Department to fire the New Mexico US attorney, and a second prosecutor, in Arkansas, was dismissed to make room for a former aide to Rove.

In fact, the firings reveal a calculated drive to eliminate US attorneys who balked at using their positions to protect corrupt Republican politicians, and pursue trumped-up, politically motivated prosecutions of Democrats, including some intended to reverse the results of elections.

One of the fired prosecutors, Carol Lam of San Diego, California, had successfully prosecuted Republican Congressman Randy Cunningham, who was convicted and jailed for accepting $2.4 million in bribes from military contractors She was planning to extend her investigation to a second Republican congressman.

Another fired prosecutor, David Iglesias of Albuquerque, New Mexico, was targeted after he refused to succumb to pressure from New Mexico’s Republican Senator Peter Domenici and Congresswoman Heather Wilson to file corruption charges against local Democratic politicians in advance of the November, 2006 elections. Wilson was facing a hotly contest race for reelection at the time.

Appearing on NBC television’s “Meet the Press” program on Sunday, Iglesias was asked whether he believed he had been removed for political reasons. “Absolutely, yes,” he replied.

John McKay of Seattle, Washington, another fired prosecutor, had resisted political pressure and concluded there was no basis for convening a federal grand jury to investigate vote fraud charges following the 2004 gubernatorial election, which was narrowly won by the Democratic candidate.

Paul K. Charlton of Arizona had been on the “retain” list compiled by then-Justice Department Chief of Staff Sampson in February of 2005, but, according to a McClatchy newspaper report, “by September of 2006—after it became clear that Charlton had launched an investigation of Rep. Rick Renzi [an Arizona Republican]—Sampson included the Arizona prosecutor on another list of US attorneys ‘we now should consider pushing out.’”

It is widely believed that US Attorney Margaret M. Chiara of Grand Rapids, Michigan was dismissed because of her personal opposition to the death penalty. The Bush administration and Gonzales have made a point of pursuing capital punishment in states, such as Michigan, with a history of opposition to the death penalty.

This type of purge of US attorneys in the middle of a presidential term has no precedent in US politics. It constitutes a serious attack on democratic rights, because the aim is to directly and completely subordinate the judicial system to the right-wing political aims and agenda of the executive branch, eliminating any independence of the court system and turning it into an apparatus for the suppression of all opposition.

It is a continuation and extension of the subversion of democratic processes seen in the attempt to reverse a presidential election through Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s trumped-up investigation and the ensuing impeachment of Bill Clinton, and the outright theft of the 2000 election.

The purge of federal prosecutors is, moreover, only one aspect of a far broader process of subordinating the Justice Department to the right-wing, anti-democratic agenda of the Bush administration. Last week, several veterans of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division testified at a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on the administration’s perversion of that division for the purpose of suppressing voting rights and manipulating elections.

“The political decision-making process that led to the dismissal of eight United States attorneys was standard practice in the Civil Rights Division years before these revelations,” said Joseph D. Rich, recently retired head of the division’s voting rights section. He and other witnesses testified that their superiors, who were political appointees, repeatedly blocked cases that might harm the electoral prospects of Republicans while prodding the staff to pursue cases that stood to damage Democrats’ prospects.

They focused on major voting case decisions over the last six years that have benefited the Republican Party. In particular, they cited a 2005 Georgia law that required voters to provide photo identification. Staff attorneys warned that the law would disenfranchise large number of voters, mostly poor and black, who did not possess driver’s licenses or other prescribed forms of identification. The staff objections were ignored, they said, and the Justice Department approved the Georgia ID rule 24 hours after the staff report was filed.

Rich and other witnesses also spoke of redistricting cases that bolstered the Republicans. Delays by political appointees in the Justice Department allowed “the Republican Party in Mississippi to obtain implementation of a congressional redistricting plan that had been drawn up at the party’s behest,” Rich said in congressional testimony.

He also said that unanimous staff objections to the Texas redistricting plan engineered by the now-deposed and indicted House majority leader, Tom DeLay, were ignored and the plan was approved with the support of Republican officials in the department.

In another major case, Bush loyalists in Attorney General Gonzales’ office intervened at the last minute to weaken a landmark racketeering lawsuit against tobacco companies and drastically reduce the financial penalties demanded by federal prosecutors. That was the testimony given last week by Sharon Y. Eubanks, the leader of the Justice Department team that prosecuted the 2005 case.

She said that a supervisor demanded in the final stages of the trial that she drop recommendations that tobacco executives be removed from their corporate positions for lying to the public, and that she lower the proposed penalty from $130 billion to $10 billion. She added that the supervisor ordered her to tell key witnesses to change their testimony.

To this point, Democratic leaders in Congress have assiduously avoided broaching more fundamental issues, such as the pervasive and illegal domestic spying conducted by the Bush administration and agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a unit of the Justice Department. Earlier this month, the Justice Department’s inspector general issued a report revealing that the FBI, since the passage of the 2001 Patriot Act, has issued well over 150,000 “national security letters,” which enable the federal police agency to obtain personal data on hundreds of thousands of US citizens and residents without a court warrant.

The Democrats, who voted overwhelmingly to pass the Patriot Act and then supplied the needed votes to renew it, and who have rubber-stamped the domestic spying operations of the NSA, have no intention of conducting a serious struggle against the anti-democratic practices of the Justice Department, or pursuing those in the White House who have spearheaded its lawless actions.

To a large extent, the Democrats have seized on the scandal surrounding the US attorney firings to divert public attention from their collusion in the continuation and escalation of the US slaughter in Iraq, and to cover up their complicity in the overall assault on democratic rights and the moves toward police state forms of rule.

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American raid and arrests set scene for capture of marines

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007

Patrick Cockburn

At 3am on 11 January US military forces raided the Iranian liaison office in the Kurdish capital Arbil and detained five Iranian officials who are still prisoners.

The attack marked a significant escalation in the confrontation between the US and Iran.

Britain is inevitably involved in this as America’s only important foreign ally in Iraq. In fact the US raid could have had even more significant consequences if the Americans had captured the Iranian official they were targeting. Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of the Kurdish president Massoud Barzani, told The Independent that “they were after Mohammed Jafari, the deputy chairman of Iran’s National Security Council.”

It is a measure of the difficulty America has in getting its close allies in Iraq, notably the Kurds, to join it in confronting Iran that Mr Jafari was in Arbil as part of an Iranian delegation. He had just visited Mr Barzani in his mountain-top headquarters at Salahudin and earlier he met with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani in Dokan in eastern Kurdistan.

The political links between Iran and Iraq will be difficult to sever. Most Iraqi political leaders, Arab or Kurdish, were exiles in Iran or in Syria. They are also conscious that one day the US will withdraw from Iraq but Iran will always be there.

Some businessmen in Arbil scent profitable opportunities as the UN tightens its embargo on trade with Iran, announced at the weekend by the UN. As official trade is squeezed, they foresee remunerative possibilities for smuggling goods in and out of Iran.

Economically, northern Iraq needs Iran more than Iran needs it. Iranian petrol commands a premium price because it is considered pure and Kurdistan is eager to increase its supply of electricity, of which it is permanently short, from Iran.

In terms of US domestic and international politics, an American confrontation with Iran on the nuclear issue probably makes sense. Washington can rally support against Iran in a way that it cannot do when it looks for support for its occupation of Iraq. Seeing the US bogged down in Iraq, the Iranians may have overplaying their hand in developing nuclear power.

Inside Iraq, confrontation with Iran does not make much political sense. All America’s allies in Iraq have close ties with Iran. The only anti-Iranian community in Iraq is the five million Sunni who have been fighting the US for the past four years.

The US raid on Arbil in January would have had far more serious consequences if Mr Jafari had been abducted. As it was, the seizure of five Iranian officials seems to have set the scene for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards seizing 15 British sailors and marines.

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Ex-Reagan official Stockman charged with fraud

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007

David Stockman, a former top budget official in the Reagan White House, was charged Monday with overseeing a sweeping fraud at troubled a auto parts supplier he headed before it collapsed into bankruptcy.
Stockman was the former chairman and CEO of Collins & Aikman (CKCRQ), which makes auto parts.

Stockman, 60, was one of four former Collins & Aikman executives named in the indictment unsealed Monday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Four other former company employees including a former treasurer have already pleaded guilty in the case, prosecutors said.

The company, based in Southfield, Mich., cooperated in the investigation and was rewarded with a non-prosecution agreement calling for it to continue to help the government, prosecutors said.

The indictment charged Stockman and three others with conspiracy to commit securities fraud, making false statements in annual and quarterly reports, making false entries in books and records, and lying to auditors as well as committing bank fraud, wire fraud and obstruction of an agency proceeding.

The others charged in the indictment were J. Michael Stepp, 62, of Charlotte; David Cosgrove, 48, of Rochester, Mich.; and Paul Barnaba, 37, of Orion, Mich. All three pleaded not guilty and were released on $500,000 bail. They did not immediately comment.

Four others faced charges related to the scandal in separate court papers and had pleaded guilty, prosecutors said.

At a news conference, U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia said Stockman and his co-defendants “resorted to lies, tricks and fraud” to hide the truth about his failing company from investors and creditors.

For Stockman, his personal investments were at risk, Garcia said. “His reputation was on the line as well,” he added.

After he was freed on $1 million bail, Stockman walked out of the courthouse smiling.

“I have done absolutely nothing wrong, except to help save this company from a very dire circumstance,” he told reporters. “All of my actions were motivated by an effort to save the company.”

He said he had personally lost $13 million in the company’s collapse and a business he owned lost $360 million as he tried to rescue the company from a “brutal financial squeeze” by the three big domestic automakers.

“This wasn’t any kind of a joy ride,” he said of his efforts to save Collins & Aikman, which included moving into a motel next to headquarters, working long hours without pay and spending millions of dollars of his own money on company expenses. “This was a disaster.”

He added: “I didn’t line my pockets in any way.”

Stockman’s attorney, Elkan Abramowitz, said the evidence would show there was no looting or phony transactions, only disputes over accounting transactions. “We think this is not a crime,” Abramowitz said.

The indictment said the crimes occurred when Stockman served on the board of directors of Collins & Aikman from 2000 through May 2005. He was chairman of the board from August 2003 to May 2005. Stepp was vice chairman of the board of directors. Cosgrove and Barnaba also were employed by C&A.

According to court papers, Stockman responded to a financial crisis at the company in 2005 by directing it to delay paying its bills as long as possible.

Meanwhile, Stockman allowed the company’s employees to mislead creditors about the company’s revenue and the ability of Collins & Aikman to pay its bills, prosecutors said.

The government said Stockman personally decided which of the company’s suppliers and creditors would get paid and personally managed all of C&A’s liquidity during the crisis.

The indictment also accused Stockman of misleading investors, saying he wanted to hide his own and other senior management’s involvement in a fraudulent scheme to skew the company’s accounting to hide its troubles.

Separately, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission brought civil charges against Stockman and other individuals, as well as against the company.

If convicted, the defendants could face up to 30 years in prison on the most serious charge.

Stockman was Reagan’s budget director from 1981 to 1985. He created a storm early in his tenure when he told an interviewer that he thought Reaganomics were a “Trojan horse” for the rich, and predicted huge budget deficits. He said later he was summoned to the White House “woodshed” for his comments.

Stockman apologized and kept his job until 1985, when he resigned and wrote a book of scathing criticism of Reagan and his top aides.

Stockman became a private equity investor after leaving government. He joined Collins & Aikman in 2002, soon after Heartland Industrial Partners, a buyout fund that he co-founded in 1999, bought a controlling stake in the company. Stockman and Heartland lost hundreds of millions of dollars when Collins & Aikman sought bankruptcy protection.

Stockman left the company five days before it filed for bankruptcy in 2005. Collins is now reorganizing and has put most of its assets up for sale.

The company was one of the world’s largest auto parts suppliers. Its products included interiors, carpets, acoustics, fabrics and convertible tops.

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Guantanamo hearing begins for Hicks

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007

An Australian detainee at Guatanamo Bay in Cuba has become the first prisoner held at the US military base to face prosecution under revised US military tribunal rules.

David Hicks, who has been held for five years without trial, is charged with providing material support for terrorism by fighting for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

The 31-year-old former kangaroo skinner and a convert to Islam is the first detainee to come before a revised military tribunal created by the US congress after the supreme court last year found the Pentagon’s earlier version unconstitutional.

Hicks is accused of fighting for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan during the US-led invasion in late 2001.

He was originally charged with war crimes and conspiracy to commit murder, but now faces the less specific charge of providing material support for terrorism.

Human rights groups have criticised the tribunal saying the process lacks legal safeguards, while the crime with which Hicks is charged did not even exist when he was captured in 2001.

Plea deal

Appearing before the tribunal for the initial the arraignment part of his trial, Hicks deferred entering a plea.

Earlier his Australian lawyer, David McLeod, said Hicks was convinced he would not get a fair trial and has not ruled a deal to plead guilty if it would get him home sooner.

McLeod said there had been discussions about a potential plea agreement under which Hicks would plead guilty in return for a reduced sentence.

Australia has agreed a deal with the US that would allow Hicks to serve his sentence in Australia if he is convicted.

Hearing

During Monday’s hearing Hicks, wearing a khaki prison jumpsuit, told judge he was satisfied with his Pentagon-appointed attorney but wanted more defence lawyers and paralegals “to get equality with the prosecution.”

But instead the judge, Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, said two civilian lawyers, including a defence department attorney, were not authorised to represent him.

The two were ordered to leave the defence table when Hicks said he would not settle for them being designated as legal consultants.

One of the lawyers, Joshua Dratel, said he refused to sign an agreement to abide by tribunal rules because he was concerned the provisions do not allow him to meet with his client in private.

The US military flew Hicks’ father and sister to the base and allowed them to meet privately with him in the court building before the hearing started.

Hicks has previously appeared before an earlier military tribunal system created by a presidential order, which the US supreme court later ruled unconstitutional.

Last year the US congress, then under a Republican majority, passed a law authorising a reconstituted tribunal regime with some adjustments but still operating outside of regular US courts or military courts-martial.

The commission law permits hearsay, evidence obtained through “coercion”, to be admitted to the case, and bars detainees from appealing their detention in US courts.

Coercion

Hicks’ lawyers and human rights monitors observing the hearings say the trials are rigged to ensure convictions and allow the information obtained through coercion.

Hicks is not accused of involvement in the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington DC and Human Rights Watch has said he could easily be tried in a regular US court.

Speaking to reporters before Monday’s arraignment hearing, Air Force Colonel Morris Davis, the chief prosecutor for the tribunals, said prosecution planned to prove Hicks had provided “support for the al-Qaeda organisation”.

Davis admitted critics had effectively turned public opinion against the Guantanamo tribunals but said he expected that to change once the military begins presenting evidence.

“I recognize that around the world, ‘Guantanamo,’ when you say the word, has a negative connotation,” he said.

“One thing I hope is that in the way we conduct these proceedings, maybe we can change some of those attitudes.”

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/ECF0AF19-25A5-448E-8EE7-750C03F4B95E.htm

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