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$2 billion settles 9/11 insurance case

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

AMY WESTFELDT

The builders of the World Trade Center site and seven insurers have reached a $2 billion settlement that ends all outstanding legal battles over its multibillion-dollar policy, state officials said Wednesday.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer and state Insurance Superintendent Eric Dinallo announced the settlement after leading two months of talks with the insurers, trade center developer Larry Silverstein and the site’s owner, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The $2 billion, added to $2.55 billion already paid out since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that destroyed the trade center, is about $130 million less than the amount awarded to rebuild the site after a trial in 2004.

Spitzer called the insurance dispute, which had cost both sides hundreds of millions of dollars, “the last major barrier to rebuilding.”

The deal “ensures that the Port Authority and Silverstein Properties will have the financial resources to meet their obligations and rebuild at the World Trade Center site in a way that will make all New Yorkers proud and fuel the revitalization of lower Manhattan,” the governor said.

The insurers involved include Swiss Reinsurance Co., Allianz Global Risks U.S. Insurance Co., the former Royal Indemnity Co., Zurich American Insurance Co., Travelers Companies Inc. and Employers Insurance of Wausau.

Silverstein, who leased the twin towers weeks before they collapsed, took out a $3.5 billion policy with dozens of insurers. He went to court after the attacks, arguing that he should receive two payouts because the two hijacked planes that crashed into the towers represented two attacks instead of one.

Silverstein was awarded $4.6 billion in 2004. The insurers have been in court recently to determine exactly how much they would pay.

The money represents more than half of the funding needed to rebuild the site. Silverstein was originally responsible for rebuilding five office towers, but a year ago agreed to split the rebuilding - and the insurance money - with the Port Authority, which will build the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower and another planned tower.

Wednesday’s agreement ends all court cases; the insurers will not disclose exactly how much each company will pay.

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Dustbin spy chips attacked

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

GOVERNMENT proposals which could lead to homeowners having “spy chips” fitted to their dustbins were today being outlined by ministers.

But the leader of Ipswich council warned that any proposals to change the way households were charged should be put in the hands of central, rather than local government.

Liz Harsant said she was not in favour of chips being installed in bins. She said: “That does sound like big brother watching over us. I think we should get more recycling by encouraging people rather than forcing them into it.”

Environment Secretary David Miliband was today announcing new recycling programmes, including a proposal to collect household food waste separately every week, to be used to generate renewable energy.

Already 40 per cent of councils - including most in Suffolk - run fortnightly or alternate-week rubbish collections, in which non-recyclable waste is collected one week and recyclables the next.

Figures show these councils have a 30pc higher rate of recycling than those which haven’t introduced the measures.

But they have sparked opposition from those who believe the move encourages vermin, unpleasant smells and fly-tipping.

The long-awaited English Waste Strategy, published today, is the first major environmental strategy by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) since Mr Miliband became Secretary of State.

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Why are Honest 9/11 Researchers Targetted

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

bollyn

Christopher Bollyn and Professor Steven Jones discussing the evidence of Thermite from the World Trade Center. Shortly after this photo was taken in May 2006, both Jones and Bollyn were targeted victims of organized smear campaigns.

I am an independent journalist who has investigated the events of 9/11 since that terrible day in which our lives and national political reality were so drastically changed.

My original research and articles have resulted in several discoveries that are central to understanding what really happened at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the reclaimed mine in Lambertsville, Pennsylvania.

Unfortunately, because my discoveries do not support the official government conspiracy version, I was branded an “anti-government conspiracy theorist” by those who refuse to investigate any evidence that challenges the official version.

Last August 15, a gang of three undercover cops came to my house and assaulted me during an unjustified arrest. I was TASERed while restrained and my right elbow was broken in front of my wife and 8-year-old daughter. My writings made me a target of those who are dedicated to promoting the lies about 9/11.

Naturally, this brutal assault took a heavy toll on me. I was thrown into a cell with no water and told to “drink from the toilet.” When I asked why undercover cops with body armor had been prowling around my house, I was told – “We are watching you.”

I was subsequently charged with two trumped-up misdemeanor charges and immediately became the subject of a well-orchestrated international campaign to discredit me – and by extension my writings and research.

I now face a jury trial on May 31st in the Cook County Circuit Court and would appreciate if you would contact the mayor and police chief of Hoffman Estates and express your concern for what happened to me. In today’s America, what happened to me could happen to anyone. For that reason it needs to be addressed by concerned citizens.

The contact information is available here: http://www.bollyn.com/index/?id=10451

WHY ARE 9/11 RESEARCHERS TARGETED?

Three weeks after I was assaulted and arrested, 9/11 researcher Professor Steven E. Jones of Brigham Young University, was slandered on the local NPR affiliate as a “anti-Semite” and removed from his teaching position at that prestigious Mormon school.

Jones and I had collaborated in the spring of 2006 on his research into the molten metal seen at the World Trade Center. I had learned and reported about the molten iron found in the basements of the three collapsed towers in the summer of 2002. These reports had piqued the interest of Jones several years later. His scientific interest resulted in a thesis that Thermite-type cutter charges had been used to facilitate the destruction of the twin towers and the 47-story WTC 7.

I took Jones’ research to the University of California at Davis where I met with Professor Thomas Cahill. Cahill had collected data and analyzed the smoke (with a Davis DRUM) that rose from the WTC debris pile from early October until Christmas 2001. The extraordinary abundance of nano-size particles in the smoke indicated that the molten metal beneath the towers was hotter than the boiling point of iron and the other metals found in the bluish smoke. This is the kind of evidence that those who support the official version hate.

SMEAR-AND-FEAR CAMPAIGN

Were the attacks on me and Professor Jones related? Were we attacked, slandered, and discredited because we were asking too many questions about 9/11? In her recent article, “War and the Police State: Complicity of the American People,” published by Global Research Donna J. Thorne wrote,

“Fearing exposure, the Czars of Propaganda know that ‘Truthers’ must be branded and discredited if government corruption and corporate fraud is to flourish unabated.”

“Fear attempts to silence dissenters,” Thorne wrote. “As the Truth Movement gains momentum and amasses credibility, the fear profiteers have begun heralding yet another ‘threat’ to National Security - inquiring minds. This is both good news and bad news. We are no longer ignorable. Fearing exposure, the Czars of Propaganda know that ‘Truthers’ must be branded and discredited if government corruption and corporate fraud is to flourish unabated. This said, prepare for an intensified Smear-and-Fear Campaign. Any group or individual who vocally questions the official story of 9/11 or who exercises the right to demand Government accountability will be labeled ‘Anti-American and Anti-Patriotic.’”

Will we allow that? Will we stand up for the Truth - or will we quietly submit to the lies?

Photo: Christopher Bollyn and Professor Steven Jones discussing the evidence of Thermite from the World Trade Center. Shortly after this photo was taken in May 2006, both Jones and Bollyn were targeted victims of organized smear campaigns.

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Claims of 9/11 conspiracy have suspect running scared

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

Sue Lindsay, Rocky Mountain News

Former Denverite says 9/11 work has made him a target

A former Federal Emergency Management Agency videographer accused of killing his wife in Denver is seeking political asylum in Argentina, claiming the U.S. government wants him silenced for what he saw in the smoldering ruins of the Twin Towers after 9/11.

Kurt Sonnenfeld’s efforts to avoid extradition have gained interest from human rights organizations in South America and broad attention from conspiracy theorists on the Internet.

Sonnenfeld, 44, is charged with first-degree murder in the New Year’s Day 2002 shooting death of his 36-year-old wife, Nancy, at the couple’s home in Congress Park.

The case caused a sensation at the time, with friends describing Nancy as among the city’s “beautiful people” and the two as “madly in love.”

The charges against Sonnenfeld were dismissed just before trial in June 2002 after a note written by Nancy Sonnenfeld was found that supported Kurt Sonnenfeld’s contention that she took her own life.

New charges were filed in 2004, however, after two Denver jail inmates came forward to say Sonnenfeld had confessed to them during his time in custody. By then, Sonnenfeld had remarried and was living in Argentina.

He has been fighting extradition ever since, describing the warrants against him as “a false pretext for other darker motives.”

That drew a sharp rebuke Tuesday from Chief Denver District Attorney Michelle Amico.

“I have heard that nonsense from him . . . but then he has nothing to back it up,” she said.

An Argentine judge refused to extradite Sonnenfeld in 2005 because of concerns that he could face the death penalty.

The U.S. Department of Justice appealed that decision, assuring the court that no death sentence would be sought, Amico said. The Justice Department has since been notified that the extradition is on hold while an asylum request is pending, a process that could take months or even years.

In a series of recent e-mails to the Rocky Mountain News, Sonnenfeld said Argentina’s highest court had rejected the appeal and had sent his case back to the presiding judge for ratification.

Sonnenfeld did not bring up 9/11 when the initial murder case was pending against him or during a lengthy interview with the Rocky on the day he was released from jail.

He also declined to specifically discuss the World Trade Center in a 12-page, single-spaced document he sent to the newspaper in late-night e-mail sessions Sunday and Monday.

“You are asking me to antagonize the very people who, for whatever reason, desperately want me destroyed,” Sonnenfeld wrote. “Frankly, I am afraid for the safety of my family. Please don’t ask me about what information I have. This is not really the time or the forum.”

As always, he maintained his innocence in his wife’s death.

“I love Nancy. Nancy’s death was tragic, heartbreaking and affected many people. But it is clear to everyone who knows the truth that she committed suicide. It was not a homicide,” he wrote.

Sonnenfeld blasted accounts of his alleged jailhouse confession as “absurd.” Nancy Sonnenfeld’s family, meanwhile, is firmly convinced of his guilt.

A new life

Sonnenfeld now lives in Buenos Aires with his wife, Paula, and twin 18-month-old daughters. He continues to work as a videographer for Argentine media.

He said he and his family were followed, threatened and photographed before and after his arrest in Argentina in 2004 on the new Denver charges.

“This led us to conclude I was being extradited under false pretexts,” he wrote.

Although he wouldn’t discuss specifics with the Rocky, Sonnenfeld is quoted by the Argentine newspaper el Pais as saying, “I realized that they were after something else: the tapes of Ground Zero in my possession.”

Sonnenfeld said he was arrested by Interpol agents on the new Denver charges a week after delivering a demo video of 9/11 footage to a TV producer in Argentina.

“I find that extremely coincidental,” he said.

After his arrest, Sonnenfeld spent seven months in Buenos Aires’ Devoto prison, which Time magazine once described as the “darkest penal hellhole in all Argentina.”

While imprisoned, Sonnenfeld said an unidentified man phoned his wife and said “leave things the way they are and you can still have a life.”

Sonnenfeld said he hid copies of his 9/11 videotapes in boxes and furniture he shipped to Argentina when he moved there. But he said the footage he offered to the media was in the public domain.

‘Terrible conclusion’

In other interviews with Argentine media, Sonnenfeld is quoted as saying, “What I saw (at 9/11) leads me to the terrible conclusion that there was foreknowledge of what was going to happen - the precautions that were taken to save certain things that the authorities there considered irreplaceable or invaluable.

“For example, certain things were missing that could only have been removed with a truck. Yet after the first plane hit one of the towers, everything in Manhattan collapsed and no one could have gotten near the towers to do that.”

Sonnenfeld is quoted as saying documentation was removed from U.S. intelligence agencies in the World Trade Center, including the CIA, prior to the attacks. He did not specify how he could have known that.

Sonnenfeld’s allegations have made him a poster child for conspiracy theorists on the Internet, and a number of Web sites use him to bolster their contentions of government involvement in or knowledge about the attacks.

But Jim Chesnutt, fellow -FEMA videographer and a former FEMA spokesman, said he saw no such conspiracy evidence.

“I did not see any damning evidence that would support what he says he saw,” said Chesnutt, who was at the World Trade Center with Sonnenfeld after 9/11.

“At the same time, I do respect Kurt’s position on that,” Chesnutt said. “I didn’t see anything that led me to those conclusions, but I don’t know what he saw.

“We each had free rein to travel throughout the site with the rescuers. We each had different experiences because of the massiveness of the site. We worked independently, and we rarely traveled together.”

‘I am innocent’

In the e-mail interview, Sonnenfeld denied that he is seeking political asylum to avoid being brought back for trial.

“I waited for a trial in 2002,” he said. “I had the truth on my side, and I knew it would finally come out in the courtroom when the people fabricating the case against me were forced to tell the truth under threat of perjury.”

Responded Amico: “I would be more than happy to give him the opportunity to make his case in a district court here in Denver.”

“I am innocent,” Sonnenfeld wrote to the Rocky. “The police know it; the prosecution knows it. This intense campaign to return me to American soil is a false pretext for other darker motives.”

His appeals to Argentine authorities have drawn the interest of human rights groups, including Amnesty International Argentina and the country’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel.

Chesnutt, Sonnenfeld’s former FEMA colleague, said he doesn’t know what to make of the last few years of Sonnenfeld’s life.

“He was a friend of mine. I had great respect for him as a colleague,” Chesnutt said. “What happened in the last few years with him, the year leading up to Nancy’s death, is a huge question mark in my mind.

“I don’t know what happened. And I made no decision about it. I guess now it’s largely between Kurt and God about what has gone on.”

What conspiracy blogs are saying about Sonnenfeld

conspiracyplanet.com

• The saga of Kurt Sonnenfeld appears to be but one more detail in the sordid tale that has been the US government’s continuing attempts to distort and cover up the massive and growing evidence that the 9/11 attacks were undeniably the work of elements of the US government itself.

sott.org

• It is also reasonable to suggest that he is (or was on 9/11) an employee of one of the intelligence agencies involved in the perpetration of the attacks.

portlandindymedia.org

• Some very strange activity, I think. It’s like they’re chasing him around the globe, using his wife’s suicide (?) as their excuse. What do you suppose they’re after?

• Kurt and his partner Jim had a very strange ‘MO,’ which involved surveilance [sic] … I am fully convinced that Kurt Sonnenfeld was/is an FBI agent! Mary’s [sic] murder is definately [sic] connected to 9/11. I will continue to research this.

• They had NO PROOF because they know he didn’t do it, but they were just trying to use what they could to lock him up and keep him quiet.

IN HIS OWN WORDS: KURT SONNENFELD

• As soon as I returned home (to Denver) after the charge was dismissed and I was released from jail, I began to be harassed constantly. Cars often followed me wherever I drove. Men parked in front of my house for hours. I discovered doors to my house unlocked. Even my outdoor security lights were unscrewed.

• (After he married his second wife, Paula) we intended to return to the U.S. But after months of bureaucratic pitfalls foiling our attempts at obtaining a permanent visa for Paula, we decided to stay awhile. Paula did not particularly want to go to the U.S., and I had lost everything there anyway.

• In late July of 2004, Paula and I delivered a short sample video (from ground zero) to the producers of a very popular television show.

Within days, an “unrestricted” arrest order, accompanied by the extradition request, was delivered to Argentine authorities by the United States embassy.

I had no idea that the dismissed case against me had been refiled and the nightmare had been inexplicably revived.

• In March of 2005, after spending seven more months in prison in Argentina, the extradition request was refused and I was again released from prison.

The campaign to intimidate and harass me and my family has increased significantly since then. I have been tortured, falsely accused and imprisoned, not once but two times, bankrupted, my reputation destroyed by their lies.

My wife, my precious babies and I live as virtual prisoners inside our house because we are afraid for our lives.

And it continues even now.

lindsays@RockyMountainNews.com

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Bush: be prepared for more bloodshed in Iraq

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

Rupert Cornwell

As Congress prepared for a crucial war-funding vote, President George Bush warned that Americans should prepare for a bloody summer of heavy fighting and more loss of life in Iraq in the run-up to September, the month that is now set to be a watershed for US policy in the country.

“August could be tough,” the President conceded at a White House press conference in the face of some of the toughest questioning yet of his war policy - especially of whether the date for the now critical report promised by his top commander in Iraq had in fact handed insurgents precisely the sort of deadline that Mr Bush has all along strenuously resisted.

Attempting to explain the continuing level of violence in Iraq, Mr Bush pointed out that the “surge” of 25,000 new combat troops would not be completed until next month, and that General David Petraeus was to make a first judgement on the success of the operation only in September. But if nothing has visibly changed on the ground, then the clamour for a US troop withdrawal could become deafening.

As it is, the latest $100bn (£50bn) funding bill for Iraq and Afghanistan (which also will run out at the end of September) has been stripped of the timeline for withdrawal which caused Mr Bush to veto a previous measure earlier this month. The new one instead contains “benchmarks” for political action by the Iraqis. These, Mr Bush said, reflected “a consensus that the Iraqi government needs to show real progress in return for America’s continued support and sacrifice”.

On Capitol Hill however, a deal is causing not so much consensus as heartache in both parties. With varying degrees of unease, Republicans have again rallied behind Mr Bush. This removes any possibility of a veto over-ride by Congress, but exposes them to the wrath of an electorate which has turned against the war.

Democratic rifts are even deeper. Many liberal congressmen and senators said they would vote against the bill which, they insist, runs counter to the express will of the voters who handed the party back control of both chambers in November’s mid-term elections. The leading anti-war group, Moveon.org, with 3.2 million members, has warned it might back primary election rivals to Democrats who vote in favour. But the party leadership has calculated that despite the risk that half of the House Democrats will oppose the measure, an even greater danger would be exposure to Republican charges that the party did not care about the troops who risked risking their lives daily on the ground in Iraq. Even so, Democratic leaders face the embarrassment of relying on Republican votes to get the bill through.

The tensions have spilt over into the Presidential campaign. John Edwards, the Democrats’ vice-presidential candidate in 2004 who this time is waging a populist campaign for the White House, called the latest bill a “capitulation” to Mr Bush. The two 2008 front-runners, senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, were last night maintaining an uncomfortable silence about their voting intentions.

At his press conference, Mr Bush himself yielded not one inch of ground to his critics - even when a reporter directly challenged his credibility as commander-in-chief in a four-year war that has taken the lives of more than 3,400 US servicemen, and tens - perhaps hundreds - of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Instead he reiterated his familiar arguments: that Iraq was better off without Saddam; that America must stay on the offensive; and that it was better to take on al-Qa’ida in Iraq than on US soil.

“These people attacked us before we went into Iraq,” said Mr Bush. A US withdrawal would merely embolden al-Qa’ida in its efforts to restore the caliphate, “if they could say they drove great, soft America out of the region”. As for the efforts of his Democratic opponents to have a say in the execution of war policy, “I’d trust David Petraeus to make judgements a lot better than people in Congress,” Mr Bush declared.

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Greens: ID cards ‘controversial, intrusive and unnecessary’

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

The Green party has lambasted the government for its plans to phase-in ID cards, reiterating criticism from the joint committee on human rights (JCHR) that the scheme risks promoting racial profiling.

Jean Lambert, a Green MEP, claims introducing mandatory biometric immigration documents (BIDs) for foreigners but not citizens indicates “a fundamental shift in our immigration philosophy and perspective”.

“The UK has always had border controls but never before internal controls. This, however, looks set to change,” she said.

In a strong defence of immigrant groups, which the Green party believes are unfairly stigmatised by both the media and the government, Ms Lambert said: “Experimenting with the ID card scheme on the most vulnerable people, those who have the most to lose if it does not work, is simply unacceptable.

“Not only could this lead to allegations of racism but opens up more questions than it answers.”

The party, which is radically opposed to ID cards, views the proposals as an opening salvo in Home Office attempts to establish them in the UK, and warned the UK border bill proposals gave some indication of where government policy was heading.

“ID cards have always been controversial, intrusive and unnecessary,” she argued.

“Requiring non-EU nationals married to British citizens, to hold ID cards is shocking. It is the thin end of the wedge indicating that we should all be cautious of future Government initiatives.”

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U.S. Democrats to fund Iraq war with no pullout date

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

Richard Cowan and Susan Cornwell

President George W. Bush won a battle over nearly $100 billion to fund the Iraq war as Democratic leaders in Congress on Tuesday abandoned efforts to withdraw troops for now but pledged to try again in July.

Instead of setting schedules for pulling U.S. troops, it appeared the Democratic-run Congress and the Republican White House agreed for the first time to include conditions prodding Baghdad to make better progress toward quelling violence or risk losing around $1.3 billion in U.S. reconstruction aid.

Bush could waive the provision, however.

Congress wants to deliver by week’s end the $100 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through September.

With the Iraq funding deal, Democrats said the first minimum wage increase in a decade, a high priority for them, would be included. Congress already has approved tax breaks for small businesses to go along with the wage hike.

Democrats also will try to attach about $20 billion in domestic initiatives — from farm aid and better health care for veterans, to health insurance for poor children and money to continue rebuilding states hit by hurricanes in 2005.

Negotiations between the White House and Congress were continuing on details, however.

House liberals were disappointed by the emerging deal, and House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat who signed off on the plan, said she opposed the Iraq portion of it.

VOTE LATER THIS WEEK

Pelosi said she was “not likely to vote for something that does not have a timetable” for withdrawing troops from the war that has killed at least 3,420 U.S. soldiers and wounded more than 34,000.

But enough Republicans are expected to join some Democrats in backing the Iraq measure to ensure passage if it is put to a vote later this week, as planned by Pelosi.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey of Wisconsin said Democrats will move the troop withdrawal fight to another bill. “The practical result of this would be we would transfer the debate on the Iraqi war” from the current emergency funding bill to fiscal 2008 war spending bills moving through Congress starting in July, he said.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the negotiated measure would provide “the funding and flexibility the forces need. That’s what we’ve wanted all along.”

Bush vetoed Congress’ first version of this year’s emergency war funds bill because it set an Oct. 1 deadline for starting to pull most of the 147,000 soldiers out of Iraq, a goal of anti-war Democrats.

In postponing their demand for timetables to withdraw combat troops, Democrats acknowledged the political realities.

“The president has made it very clear he’s not going to sign timelines (for withdrawing troops). We can’t pass timelines over his veto,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland told reporters.

Virginia Democratic Rep. James Moran, who pushed for withdrawing troops, said Democrats would get blamed for any further hang-ups in passing the war funds. “The president has the bully pulpit,” Moran said.

While disappointing to some Democrats who say they won control of Congress last November largely because voters wanted an end to the 4-year-old Iraq war, it was welcome news for Republicans who have argued Congress should not be “micro-managing” the war.

“Democrats have finally conceded defeat in their effort to include mandatory surrender dates in a funding bill for the troops,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio.

But some Democrats argued that even with a weaker bill, they have ended four years of “rubber stamp” war funding bills of the previous Republican-run Congress.

Bush and most Republicans have argued that setting dates for withdrawing U.S. troops would rob military commanders of the flexibility they need to conduct the war.

Despite those charges, even some congressional Republicans, Boehner among them, have spoken of autumn as the timeframe for reassessing progress in Iraq and possibly producing “Plan B.”

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UK ‘politics of fear eroding human rights’

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

Nigel Morris

Tony Blair’s government has been condemned for exploiting the “politics of fear” by bringing in tougher anti-terror legislation, cracking down on asylum-seekers and allowing the prison population to soar.

Amnesty International condemned Britain’s human rights record on an array of issues, from curtailing the free speech of anti-war protesters to failing to stand up to the US over the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

It coupled a scathing assessment of this country’s disregard for civil liberties with a challenge to Gordon Brown to show leadership by changing direction on human rights when he becomes Prime Minister.

In its annual report Amnesty said: “The Government continued to erode fundamental human rights, the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary. Measures taken with the stated aim of countering terrorism led to serious human rights violations and concern was widespread about the impact of these measures on Muslims and other communities.”

The human rights group denounced the policy of deporting people to countries “with a history of torture or other ill-treatment” or placing them on control orders, which severely restrict their movements. It added: “Consequent judicial proceedings were profoundly unfair, denying individuals the right to a fair hearing.”

Intelligence material was withheld from the suspects in the secret hearings that determined their fate and depended on a “particularly low standard of proof”.

Amnesty also registered its alarm over the behaviour of police in anti-terror raids, including the shooting of an innocent man in Forest Gate, east London, last June.

It painted a bleak picture of the treatment of failed asylum-seekers who “through no fault of their own were condemned to live in abject poverty”, and made clear its worries over last year’s Immigration, Nationality and Asylum Act, which weakens refugees’ UN protections.

Amnesty also attacked the prison service. It said Britain had one of the world’s highest per capita imprisonment rates, adding: “Overcrowding continued to be linked to self-harm and self-inflicted deaths, greater risks to the safety of staff and inmates, and detention conditions amounting to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”

Kate Allen, Amnesty’s UK director, said: “Gordon Brown should reject the politics of fear and show principled leadership which respects human rights and upholds the rule of law.

“The UK should use its influence on the world to encourage others to put policy based on fear aside. If the UK is to be credible in this, it must have its own house in order by having a humane asylum policy and counter-terrorism measures that do not undermine basic human rights protections.”

She suggested that Mr Brown should call for the closure of Guantanamo Bay and order a full investigation into allegations that British officials have colluded in the CIA kidnapping terror suspects and transporting them around the world for interrogation.

Irene Khan, Amnesty’s secretary general, called on Mr Brown to take an international lead to find a solution to the Darfur conflict, which she described as a “bleeding wound on the world’s conscience”.

She said the US had lost much of its authority in the world as a result of its security policies. “There is great suspicion about the US’s intentions now. It is a powerful country and it is sad to see that has been squandered, making it impotent as a force for human rights.”

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Government knew of HIV risk from imported blood

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

Expert panel decided against import ban - since then 1,757 have died

Sarah Hall
Friday May 25, 2007
The Guardian

The government’s advisers on medicine knew that patients were at risk of contracting Aids from imported blood products as early as 1983, but ruled against a ban because of fears it would cause a shortage of supply.

Minutes obtained by the Guardian of a meeting held on July 13 1983 reveal that the Committee on Safety of Medicines (CSM) knew that “patients who repeatedly receive blood clotting-factor concentrates appear to be at risk” of Aids.

They also knew that the risks were highest if the blood products came “from the blood of homosexual and IV drug users in areas of high incidence - eg New York and California” and for those who repeatedly received high doses of the blood plasma products. Despite this, the committee ruled that the risk of contracting Aids had to be balanced against the “life-saving” benefits of their use to haemophiliacs. They also argued that withdrawing the blood products was “not feasible on the grounds of supply”.

British patients with the rare inherited condition in which blood does not clot normally were not told of the risks. Critics say they would have preferred to carry on receiving their previous treatment, called cryoprecipitate, manufactured in the UK from single donors, even though it meant going to hospital.

Nearly 5,000 people were infected with hepatitis C; of these 1,200 contracted HIV after receiving the imported plasma product in the late 70s and early to mid-80s.

A total of 1,757 patients have died and many are terminally ill following a scandal that the Labour peer Lord Winston has dubbed “the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS”.

The revelations are contained in documents obtained by campaigners as part of the public inquiry into the haemophilia affair, which took emotional evidence from victims yesterday.

The minutes conclude: “The possibility was considered of withdrawing US preparations from the UK. It was concluded that this is not at present feasible on grounds of supply. Moreover, the perceived level of risk does not at present justify serious consideration of such a solution.”

However, it argued that the UK should become self-sufficient in blood concentrates - something the former Labour health minister David (now Lord) Owen, had pledged would happen by 1977.

The plasma, called Factor VIII, was made from blood from 10,000 paid donors, many of whom were prisoners or vagrants, who, by 1975, were known to carry a greater risk of having hepatitis C.

The decision to continue using the US plasma product came despite the committee being warned of the growing link between it, Aids and haemophiliacs by the scientist charged with assessing the spread of such diseases.

In a letter to the Department of Health and Social Security dated May 9 1983, Dr Spence Galbraith, the head of the communicable disease surveillance centre at the Public Health Laboratory Service, warned that, since there had been 14 cases of haemophiliacs contracting Aids after receiving Factor VIII concentrate - including one in Cardiff - US blood products made in the affected period should be withdrawn.

Dr Galbraith added: “I have reviewed the literature and come to the conclusion that all blood products made from blood donated in the US after 1978 should be withdrawn from use until the risk of Aids transmission by these products has been clarified.”

Dr Galbraith gave expert evidence at the July 13 meeting, of a subcommittee of the CSM, where his advice to withdraw imported blood products was considered but ruled out. The subcommittee, chaired by Dr (later Sir) Joseph Smith also received a scientific paper on Aids that warned: “It is hoped there is no ‘ticking time bomb’ for haemophiliacs.”

Last night Sir Joseph said: “The subcommittee faced the difficult decision of weighing the relatively uncertain risk of contamination from imported blood products against the serious risk of harm to patients with haemophilia should there be a shortage of the products. The conclusions reached were considered and agreed by the CSM.

“At that time the need for blood products for the treatment of haemophilia patients far outstripped the supply of the material produced in the UK. The subcommittee wanted the UK to produce enough material as soon as possible so that import would no longer be required. The need for research into Aids was also strongly supported, including the development of heat treatment to counter the risk of infection.

“It remains a great tragedy that many people contracted blood-borne diseases from contaminated materials … The subcommittee’s conclusions were based on the best available evidence at the time, balancing what was known of the risks and benefits of current treatment options to patients living with a life-threatening condition.”

The government has always insisted treatment was given in “good faith” and that it did not understand the danger.

Carol Grayson, whose husband Peter Longstaff died in April 2005 after contracting Aids and hepatitis C, and who now heads the campaign group Haemophilia Action UK, said: “The minutes … clearly demonstrate that the safety warnings regarding Aids laid out by Dr Galbraith … were ignored by both the government and members of the medical profession.

“In 1983, the government and medical profession brushed aside the fact that haemophiliacs were dying from Aids. The alarm bells should have been ringing.

“Dr Galbraith had already identified that the US treatment came from large plasma pools and that there was a high risk that the products were contaminated with Aids because of the type of donor used. But those responsible for patient safety at the CSM meeting decided that ‘the benefits of this treatment outweighed the risk’ and in doing so condemned many patients to a death sentence.”

Roddy Morrison, chair of the Haemophilia Society, said: “The evidence of the risks was clearly known and I feel absolute anger and a degree of incredulity that this decision could have been made. This decision meant a preventable infection was not prevented - and impacted on people in the ultimate way.”

Jenny Willott, the Liberal Democrat MP who has campaigned on the issue, said: “The more documents that come out, the more clear it becomes that people did know there was a quite severe risk - and they needed to tell people who were affected. I have constituents who contracted HIV and hepatitis and who had very mild haemophilia. Under no circumstances would they have taken anything to put them at risk.”

At the public inquiry in central London yesterday, one victim accused successive governments of “a disgraceful cover-up”. Another, haemophiliac Andrew Evans, 30, told the hearing he had been living with HIV for 25 years. His parents were told of his HIV status when he was 10; the information was kept from him until he was 13, when he began to display symptoms of immune deficiency.

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‘Loose Change 9/11′ heading for UK cinemas

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

Revolver have acquired the rights to the hugely successful online film about the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Chris Tilly

Online film phenomenon ‘Loose Change 9/11′ has been picked up for theatrical release in the UK.

The controversial documentary, which centres on the September 11 terrorist attacks and the failure of both the US government and the media to answer the questions surrounding the tragedy, is one of the most downloaded films in internet history.

It was also the subject of BBC documentary ‘9/11: The Conspiracy Files’ and was screened in London as part of Time Out’s ‘My Favourite Film’ season last year.

Revolver has picked up the rights to ‘Loose Change (Final Cut)’ and will release the film on the anniversary of 9/11.

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Google is watching you

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

Robert Verkaik

‘Big Brother’ row over plans for personal database

Google, the world’s biggest search engine, is setting out to create the most comprehensive database of personal information ever assembled, one with the ability to tell people how to run their lives.

In a mission statement that raises the spectre of an internet Big Brother to rival Orwellian visions of the state, Google has revealed details of how it intends to organise and control the world’s information.

The company’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, said during a visit to Britain this week: “The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’.”

Speaking at a conference organised by Google, he said : “We are very early in the total information we have within Google. The algorithms [software] will get better and we will get better at personalisation.”

Google’s declaration of intent was publicised at the same time it emerged that the company had also invested £2m in a human genetics firm called 23andMe. The combination of genetic and internet profiling could prove a powerful tool in the battle for the greater understanding of the behaviour of an online service user.

Earlier this year Google’s competitor Yahoo unveiled its own search technology, known as Project Panama, which monitors internet visitors to its site to build a profile of their interests.

Privacy protection campaigners are concerned that the trend towards sophisticated internet tracking and the collating of a giant database represents a real threat, by stealth, to civil liberties.

That concern has been reinforced by Google’s $3.1bn bid for DoubleClick, a company that helps build a detailed picture of someone’s behaviour by combining its records of web searches with the information from DoubleClick’s “cookies”, the software it places on users’ machines to track which sites they visit.

The Independent has now learnt that the body representing Europe’s data protection watchdogs has written to Google requesting more information about its information retention policy.

The multibillion-pound search engine has already said it plans to impose a limit on the period it keeps personal information.

A spokesman for the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK agency responsible for monitoring data legislation confirmed it had been part of the group of organisations, known as the Article 29 Working Group, which had written to Google.

It is understood the letter asked for more detail about Google’s policy on the retention of data. Google says it will respond to the Article 29 request next month when it publishes a full response on its website.

The Information Commissioner’s spokeswoman added: “I can’t say what was in it only that it was written in response to Google’s announcement that will hold information for no more than two years.”

Ross Anderson, professor of Security Engineering at Cambridge University and chairman of the Foundation for Information Policy Research, said there was a real issue with “lock in” where Google customers find it hard to extricate themselves from the search engine because of the interdependent linkage with other Google services, such as iGoogle, Gmail and YouTube. He also said internet users could no longer effectively protect their anonymity as the data left a key signature.

“A lot of people are upset by some of this. Why should an angst-ridden teenager who subscribes to MySpace have their information dragged up 30 years later when they go for a job as say editor of the Financial Times? But there are serious privacy issues as well. Under data protection laws, you can’t take information, that may have been given incidentally, and use it for another purpose. The precise type and size of this problem is yet to be determined and will change as Google’s business changes.”

A spokeswoman for the Information Commissioner said that because of the voluntary nature of the information being targeted, the Information Commission had no plans to take any action against the databases.

Peter Fleischer, Google’s global privacy Ccunsel, said the company intended only doing w hat its customers wanted it to do. He said Mr Schmidt was talking about products such as iGoogle, where users volunteer to let Google use their web histories. “This is about personalised searches, where our goal is to use information to provide the best possible search for the user. If the user doesn’t want information held by us, then that’s fine. We are not trying to build a giant library of personalised information. All we are doing is trying to make the best computer guess of what it is you are searching for.”

Privacy protection experts have argued that law enforcement agents - in certain circumstances - can compel search engines and internet service providers to surrender information. One said: “The danger here is that it doesn’t matter what search engines say their policy is because it can be overridden by national laws.”

How Google grew to dominate the internet

It’s all about the algorithms. When Google first started up, in summer 1998, it quickly made its mark by being the internet’s best, most efficient search engine. Now Google wants to know everything - all the knowledge contained on the world wide web, and everything about you as a computer user, too.

The key, at every step of the way, has been the methodology the company has used to catalogue and present information. The first stroke of genius that the company’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, had while they were still in graduate school was to measure responses to an internet search not only by the frequency of the search word but by the number of times a given web page was accessed via other web pages. It was a revolutionary idea at the time, now copied by every one of their rivals.

A decade later, their technical brilliance is operating on an altogether more ambitious scale. Google is now a $150bn (£77bn) company and a seemingly unstoppable corporate, as well as technical juggernaut.

The big question, of course, is whether the idealism that first fired up Page and Brin can survive in a dirty corporate world where information is not just an intellectual ideal, but also a legal and political hot potato involving profound issues of privacy, intellectual property rights and freedom of speech. “You can make money without doing evil,” runs one of their most celebrated mantras. Does that extend to signing a deal with China whereby its search functions will be subject to state censorship? The furore over that particular decision, made at the beginning of last year, still rages.

Google’s activities thus touch on some of the key philosophical questions of our digital age. Because of its power and prominence, it will also be the benchmark by which we come to measure many of the answers.

Andrew Gumbel

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Spy drones added to UK’s ‘surveillance society’

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

It could be the 4 million closed-circuit television cameras, or maybe the spy drones hovering overhead, but one way or another Britons know they are being watched. All the time. Everywhere!

The latest gizmo to be employed in what civil liberty campaigners are calling Britain’s “surveillance society” is a small, remote-controlled helicopter that can hover above inner city streets and monitor suspected criminals.

Unveiled in the north of Britain this week, it could be introduced across the country if deemed a success, fuelling an already intense debate over whether the “Big Brother” world George Orwell predicted is now truly upon us, or whether such scrutiny is merely essential for security in the modern era.

“For us, this is a cost-effective way of helping to catch criminals,” said Simon Byrne, a senior police officer in the Merseyside district who launched the spy drone project.

Britain is now the most intensely monitored country in the world, according to surveillance experts, with 4.2 million CCTV cameras installed, equivalent to one for every 14 people.

So blanketing is the surveillance that the average resident of London runs the possibility of being photographed up to 300 times a day just moving around the capital, civil liberties campaigners Liberty say.

The pervasiveness of the cameras, combined with the government’s plans to introduce digital identity cards for all citizens in the coming years and expand its DNA database, has led to calls for a halt until the impact can be better studied.

In a report issued earlier this year, the Royal Academy of Engineering warned that increased monitoring of society actually risked provoking a breakdown in trust between individuals and the state, eventually causing more harm than good.

“The state should remain the ultimate protector of citizen rights to privacy and should not garner new powers to invade the privacy or increase surveillance without strong justification,” it said in a study filled with carefully measured language.

As well as civil liberty campaigners growing increasingly alarmed at the tightening web of surveillance, some police officers have also expressed concern, saying excess monitoring is disrupting otherwise tranquil communities.

The deputy chief constable of Hampshire, a leafy county west of London, said this week he feared Britain was becoming an Orwellian society, with quiet villages now wired with cameras.

“I really don’t think that’s the kind of country that I want to live in,” Ian Redhead told BBC television.

The conundrum for many is that while they don’t want to feel constantly under surveillance themselves, they don’t mind demanding the benefits of CCTV if it might do some good.

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Bush grants presidency extraordinary powers

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

Directive for emergencies apparently gives authority without congressional oversight

President Bush has signed a directive granting extraordinary powers to the office of the president in the event of a declared national emergency, apparently without congressional approval or oversight.

The “National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive” was signed May 9, notes Jerome R. Corsi in a WND column.

It was issued with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, as a Homeland Security Presidential Directive.

The directive establishes under the office of the president a new national continuity coordinator whose job is to make plans for “National Essential Functions” of all federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments, as well as private sector organizations to continue functioning under the president’s directives in the event of a national emergency.

“Catastrophic emergency” is loosely defined as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.”

Corsi says the president can assume the power to direct any and all government and business activities until the emergency is declared over.

The directive says the assistant to the president for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, currently Frances Fragos Townsend, would be designated as the national continuity coordinator.

Corsi says the directive makes no attempt to reconcile the powers created for the national continuity coordinator with the National Emergency Act, which requires that such proclamation “shall immediately be transmitted to the Congress and published in the Federal Register.”

A Congressional Research Service study notes the National Emergency Act sets up Congress as a balance empowered to “modify, rescind, or render dormant” such emergency authority if Congress believes the president has acted inappropriately.

But the new directive appears to supersede the National Emergency Act by creating the new position of national continuity coordinator without any specific act of Congress authorizing the position, Corsi says.

The directive also makes no reference to Congress and its language appears to negate any requirement that the president submit to Congress a determination that a national emergency exists.

It suggests instead that the powers of the directive can be implemented without any congressional approval or oversight.

Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke affirmed to Corsi the Homeland Security Department would implement the requirements of the order under Townsend’s direction.

The White House declined to comment on the directive.

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