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Protests at UK embassy in Tehran

Sunday, April 1st, 2007

Petrol bombs and rocks have been thrown at the British embassy in Tehran during a rally supporting the detention of 15 British sailors and marines.

About 200 people also threw firecrackers at the embassy on Sunday and called for the expulsion of Geoffrey Adams, Britain’s ambassador.

The protesters chanted “death to Britain” and “death to America” as they hurled stones into the embassy’s courtyard.

Britain’s foreign office said nobody was hurt and there was no damage.

‘Balanced stance’

Witnesses said demonstrators approached a barrier near the embassy and crossed into lines of police before being pushed back.

Manouchehr Mottaki, the Iranian foreign minister, said on state television his government was waiting for Britain to show a balanced stance over Iran’s legal demands.

The Iranians have demanded an apology which acknowledges the British troops illegally entered Iran’s territorial waters.

Britain denies the accusation and says the sailors were seized in Iraqi waters.

Iran also sent a letter to the British embassy in Tehran on Saturday complaining about shots fired by British troops near its consulate in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.

Iran previously accused British forces of surrounding the consulate on Thursday and firing into the air in a provocative act, which the British military has denied.

Basra shootings

Iran’s ISNA news agency on Sunday quoted a foreign ministry official as saying: “Iran asked Britain to prevent any such actions from happening again and asked for the British soldiers in Iraq to respect international regulations applied to diplomatic places.”

The British military said the shots heard came from a British convoy that was ambushed in the same street as the consulate in central Basra.

In his first commetns on the capture of the Royal Navy sailors George Bush, the US president, on Saturday demanded Iran release the sailors.

Bush said at a news conference: “I support the Blair government’s attempts to resolve this peacefully. And I support the prime minister when he made it clear there were no quid pro quos. The Iranians must give back the hostages.

“The British hostages issue is a serious issue because the Iranians took these people out of Iraqi water, and it’s inexcusable behaviour.”

Britain ‘arrogant’

Ali Reza, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Tehran, said Bush’s use of the term “hostages” will likely further infuriate Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Iran’s president, who has labelled Britain as “arrogant” for failing to apologise.

Reza said: “Demands from the European Union that they are freed immediately and unconditionally are only antagonising the situation”.

Mohammad Ali Hosseini, a spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, said: “The recent stance of the European Union officials regarding this issue will not help in solving the problem, but instead it will complicate the issue and might even make it last even longer.”

Iran’s ambassador to Russia has said the 15 could be tried for violating international law.

Britain said on Saturday that it had sent a letter of response to accusations of “trespassing” in Iranian waters.

Mediation offer

Terry Waite, who was held captive for almost five years in Lebanon the country’s civil war, has offered his services to help settle the issue.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on Saturday, Waite said: “I would hope that the Iranians would behave in the same courteous way to me as they’ve behaved before, would perhaps give me access to the people they’ve detained just to be assured of their welfare, so that that could be conveyed to their families, and begin to see if we can find a sensible way through this problem.”

Reza said Tehran maintains that what the sailors did was wrong, that they have confessed to their actions and foreign interference will achieve little to secure their release.

Al Jazeera and agencies

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Briton tells of Guantanamo ordeal

Sunday, April 1st, 2007

A British resident released from Guantanamo Bay after being held for more than four years has said that the US failed to observe fair legal processes at the detention camp.

Al-Rawi said he had no chance to prove US allegations wrong whilst in detention in Guantanamo [AP]

Bisher al-Rawi, an Iraqi national and British resident, had been held at the US military base in Cuba since 2002, but was reunited with his family this weekend in England.

“Allegations are made against you that are laughably untrue, but you have no chance to prove them wrong. There is no trial, no fair legal process,” al-Rawi said in a statement on Sunday.

British officials investigated al-Rawi’s case after it emerged he had provided assistance to MI5, Britain’s domestic spy agency.

George Brent Mickum IV, a US lawyer representing al-Rawi, said his client had agreed to work for the British spy service in exchange for his release.

‘Suspicious’ equipment

Al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna, another British resident, were alleged to have been associated with al-Qaeda through their connection with Abu Qatada, a London-based cleric.

The two were arrested in 2002 in Gambia while trying to return to Britain with electronic equipment that authorities described as “suspicious”.

Zachary Kaznetzelson, a senior counsel from the US law firm representing al-Rawi, told Al Jazeera: “He was actually arrested in [London's] Gatwick airport. The device turned out to be a perfectly innocent battery charger.

“The police in London apologised and let him go but … the British had sent information to the Americans that he was travelling with a suspicious device.

“The British never then corrected the initial information, to say the device was innocent. That was the basis for [al-Rawi's] original seizure.”

‘Rendition’ flight

Lawyers claim that after their arrests in Gambia, the men ended up in American custody.

Mickum said that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) took them from Gambia on a “rendition flight” to Cairo, Egypt, where the plane re-fuelled.

They were then taken to a CIA facility in Afghanistan where they were interrogated as suspected terrorists.

Al-Rawi said in his statement that he and el-Banna were held in a CIA underground prison close to Kabul before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay.

‘Extreme treatment’

Kaznetzelson said al-Rawi had been subjected to extreme treatment while in detention.

“[Al-Rawi] has been held in Guantanamo Bay in total isolation – lights on, 24 hours a day, in a six-foot by eight-foot cell,” he said.

Al-Rawi said in his statement issued through Reprieve that he wanted to advocate for the remaining British citizens held in Guantanamo Bay.

“I hope everyone who believes in justice and the rule of law will join with me to work for the release of Jamil and the other British residents,” he said.

Britain has secured the release of all nine of its citizens who were held at Guantanamo but says the release of nine others who were resident in Britain but not nationals is not it’s responsibility.

Al Jazeera and agencies

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Rosie O’Donnell 9/11 Conspiracy, Sheen To Narrate ‘Loose Change’

Sunday, April 1st, 2007

Rosie O’Donnell believes it and Charlie Sheen has agreed to narrate it. We are talking, of course, about the documentary about the 9/11 tragedy and Sheen feels it’s a “story that needs to be told.”

The actor will provide commentary to the film, Loose Change: Final Cut, which investigates conspiracy theories suggesting the US government played a role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Sheen says, “It’s a story about the truth, and the truth needs to be exposed.

“It’s not just me, not just the Hollywood community, but the social community that is standing up saying, ‘What you have given us doesn’t make sense.’ We just want better answers.”

The ‘Two and a Half Men’ said in a radio interview last year that on 9/11/2001 he “was up early and we were gonna do a pre-shoot on Spin City, the show I used to do, I was watching the news and the north tower was burning. I saw the south tower hit live, that famous wide shot where it disappears behind the building and then we see the tremendous fireball.”

http://www.postchronicle.com/news/original/article_21272349.shtml

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Ex-CIA- 911 Almost Certainly A Monstrous Series Of Lies

Sunday, April 1st, 2007

Paul Chen

David Ray Griffin is widely recognized as one of the leading spokespersons of the 9/11 truth movement. This is by virtue of his previous four books on the subject. Professor Griffin and a growing list of scholars, other researchers as well as diverse experts and activists, reject the official Islamist mastermind conspiracy theory about 9/11 advanced by Establishment interests.

Although the 9/11 truth movement was long ignored by the U.S. government and the mainstream media, recent polls have shown that (as Time magazine has acknowledged) the rejection of the official theory has become “a mainstream political phenomenon.”

It is not surprising, therefore, that the U.S. government and the Big Business controlled media have shifted tactics. No longer ignoring the 9/11 truth movement, they have released a flurry of stories and reports aimed at debunking it.

In David Ray Griffin’s new book entitled Debunking 9/11, shows that these attempts can themselves be easily debunked.

“Debunking 9/11 is a superb compendium of the strong body of evidence showing the official U.S. Government story of what happened on September 11, 2001 to be almost certainly a monstrous series of lies. Tragically, the entire course of U.S. foreign and domestic policies since that date has grown out of these almost certain falsehoods,” says Bill Christison, former senior official of the CIA.

Mr. Christison further indicates that, “This single book could (and should) provide the basis for the United Nations International Court of Justice, or some specially constituted global body (independent of the U.S.) to investigate with highest priority, and publicly report its findings about, the charge that unknown elements within the U.S. Government, and possibly some individuals elsewhere closely allied to the U.S., caused or contributed to causing the events of September 11 to happen.”

Besides demonstrating the pitiful failure of “Debunking 9/11 Myths” (published by Popular Mechanics and endorsed by Senator John McCain), Professor Griffin critically challenges recent reports and stories put out by the US Department of State, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and Time magazine.

Professor Griffin also responds to criticisms of these efforts by left-leaning and Christian publications — which one might have expected to be supportive.

Throughout these critiques, Griffin shows that the charge that is regularly levelled against critics of the official theory — that they employ irrational and unscientific methods to defend conclusions based on faith — actually applies more fully to those who defend the official theory.

“Considering how the 9/11 tragedy has been used by the Bush administration to propel us into immoral wars again and again, I believe that David Ray Griffin’s provocative questions about 9/11 deserve to be investigated and addressed,” says Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States.

“Professor Griffin is the nemesis of the 9/11 cover-up. This new book destroys the credibility of the NIST and Popular Mechanics reports and annihilates his critics,” says Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury during the Reagan administration.

“David Ray Griffin hits another one out of the park by taking on the left gatekeepers and the mass media for the lies and cover-up called ‘the official story of 9/11/01,’ which is the greatest conspiracy theory ever perpetrated on the American public. I highly recommend this book for all thinking Americans,” further indicates Meria Heller, Producer Host of the Meria Heller Show http://www.meria.net/

This book, by debunking the most prevalent attempts to refute the evidence cited by the 9/11 truth movement, shows that this movement’s central claim — that 9/11 was an inside job — remains the only explanation that fits the facts.

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April 1, 2007 Make comments about this article in The Canadian Blog. David Ray Griffin is professor of philosophy of religion and theology, emeritus, at Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California, where he remains a co-director of the Center for Process Studies. His 30 books include The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 (2004), The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions (2005), 9/11 and American Empire (2006, ed. with Peter Dale Scott), and Christian Faith and the Truth behind 9/11 (2006)

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George Orwell, Big Brother is watching your house

Sunday, April 1st, 2007

The Big Brother nightmare of George Orwell’s 1984 has become a reality - in the shadow of the author’s former London home.

It may have taken a little longer than he predicted, but Orwell’s vision of a society where cameras and computers spy on every person’s movements is now here.

Foresight: The cameras crowd George Orwell's former London home

Foresight: The cameras crowd George Orwell’s former London home

According to the latest studies, Britain has a staggering 4.2million CCTV cameras - one for every 14 people in the country - and 20 per cent of cameras globally. It has been calculated that each person is caught on camera an average of 300 times daily.

Use of spy cameras in modern-day Britain is now a chilling mirror image of Orwell’s fictional world, created in the post-war Forties in a fourth-floor flat overlooking Canonbury Square in Islington, North London.

On the wall outside his former residence - flat number 27B - where Orwell lived until his death in 1950, an historical plaque commemorates the anti-authoritarian author. And within 200 yards of the flat, there are 32 CCTV cameras, scanning every move.

Orwell’s view of the tree-filled gardens outside the flat is under 24-hour surveillance from two cameras perched on traffic lights.

The flat’s rear windows are constantly viewed from two more security cameras outside a conference centre in Canonbury Place.

In a lane, just off the square, close to Orwell’s favourite pub, the Compton Arms, a camera at the rear of a car dealership records every person entering or leaving the pub.

Within a 200-yard radius of the flat, there are another 28 CCTV cameras, together with hundreds of private, remote-controlled security cameras used to scrutinise visitors to homes, shops and offices.

The message is reminiscent of a 1949 poster to mark the launch of Orwell’s 1984: ‘Big Brother is Watching You’.

In the Shriji grocery store in Canonbury Place, three cameras focus on every person in the shop. Owner Minesh Amin explained: ‘They are for our security and safety. Without them, people would steal from the shop. Although this is a nice area, there are always bad people who cause trouble by stealing.’

Three doors away, in the dry-cleaning shop run by Malik Zafar, are another two CCTV cameras.

‘I need to know who is coming into my shop,’ explained Mr Zafar, who spent £400 on his security system.

This week, the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) produced a report highlighting the astonishing numbers of CCTV cameras in the country and warned how such ‘Big Brother tactics’ could eventually put lives at risk.

The RAE report warned any security system was ‘vulnerable to abuse, including bribery of staff and computer hackers gaining access to it’. One of the report’s authors, Professor Nigel Gilbert, claimed the numbers of CCTV cameras now being used is so vast that further installations should be stopped until the need for them is proven.

One fear is a nationwide standard for CCTV cameras which would make it possible for all information gathered by individual cameras to be shared - and accessed by anyone with the means to do so.

The RAE report follows a warning by the Government’s Information Commissioner Richard Thomas that excessive use of CCTV and other information-gathering was ‘creating a climate of suspicion’.

Source

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This entry was posted on Sunday, April 1st, 2007 at 11:39 pm and is filed under War & Terrorism News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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