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US spy networks discovered operating in Iran

Sunday, May 27th, 2007

TEHRAN: Iran said it has uncovered spy rings organised by the United States and its Western allies, claiming on state-run television that the espionage networks were made up of “infiltrating elements from the Iraqi occupiers.”

The Intelligence Ministry has “succeeded in identifying and striking blows at several spy networks comprised of infiltrating elements from the Iraqi occupiers in western, southwestern and central Iran,” said the statement yesterday, using shorthand for United States and its allies.

The broadcast did not elaborate on how the alleged networks were uncovered, but said further details would be published within days.

Meanwhile, state IRNA news agency said the networks “enjoyed guidance from intelligence services of the occupying powers in Iraq” and also that “Iraqi groups” were “involved in the case.”

Since the US-led invasion of Iraq, Iran has often accused the United States and Britain of trying to undermine the security of the Islamic Republic.

Yesterday’s allegations come just two days before ambassadors of the US and Iran are to sit down in Baghdad to discuss ways to ease the Iraq crisis. It remains unclear how the announcement will impact those talks, although it reflects a toughening of Iran’s stand.

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US and Iran to hold key meeting

Sunday, May 27th, 2007

Iran and the United States are due to hold their first bilateral public talks for decades in Baghdad on Monday to discuss the future security of Iraq.

Both sides will be represented by their ambassadors in Iraq, Ryan Crocker and Hassan Kazemi Qomi.

The US is expected to present claims that Iran is providing technology and other support to Iraqi militia groups.

For its part, Tehran says it has uncovered several spy networks run by the US and its allies inside Iran.

On Sunday, the Iranian authorities summoned the Swiss ambassador to demand an explanation of the networks, which Iranian TV said were seeking to commit “infiltration and sabotage in western, central and south-western areas of the country”.

Switzerland represents US interests in Iran.

The White House said it did not confirm or deny allegations about intelligence matters.

“We urge Iran to play a positive role in Iraq… and stop blaming everyone else for problems they are only bringing on themselves,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

No pre-conditions

Monday’s Iranian-US meeting will be the first formal bilateral meeting since the two countries broke off relations in 1979, falling the fall of the Shah.

The US has backed away from the conditions it first set for such a meeting, says the BBC’s Paul Reynolds - which included support from Tehran for the government in Baghdad.

Mr Crocker will now press claims that Iran is supporting Shia and Sunni militias attacking US and British forces in Iran.

For its part, Iran will call for a timetable for an American withdrawal from Iraq.

But the BBC’s Frances Harrison in Tehran says that although the talks are symbolically important, there is little chance of any dramatic breakthrough.

Iran’s position on the talks has been dictated by the country’s ultimate authority - the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

He said the aim of the meeting was to remind the American occupiers of Iraq that they had a legal responsibility to bring security to the country.

Ayatollah Khamenei says the US government is colonial, bullying, arrogant and expansionist.

But, our Tehran correspondent says, Iran is more isolated than it’s been for years - now under UN as well as US sanctions because of its nuclear ambitions.

However, the nuclear issue will not be under discussion at these talks.

“Nothing but Iraq is on the agenda,” Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said 10 days ago, when announcing that this meeting would take place.

Source

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Hamas agrees to Cairo talks on violence

Sunday, May 27th, 2007

Hamas has accepted an invitation by the Egyptians to participate in talks with other Palestinian factions in Cairo on ways of ending the current cycle of violence with Israel and avoiding civil war in the Palestinian Authority-controlled territories.

Meanwhile, sources close to Hamas revealed that the movement has received $50 milion in donations from “the people of Yemen.”

The sum was collected by dozens of Hamas representatives based in Yemen over the past few months, the sources said.

The Egyptians believe that a cease-fire with Israel would be possible only after Fatah and Hamas patch up their differences. The Egyptians are also worried that a massive Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip would result in thousands of Palestinians attempting to cross the border into Egypt.

Ayman Taha, a spokesman for Hamas in the Gaza Strip, announced that his movement would send representatives from Syria and the Gaza Strip to the talks, which are being held under the banner of “Palestinian national dialogue.”

On the eve of the talks, representatives of the various Palestinian factions reiterated their demand that any new truce with Israel include the West Bank and not only the Gaza Strip.

Hamas will participate in the dialogue to salvage the [national unity government] Mecca Agreement between Fatah and Hamas, Taha said. “We support any effort to consolidate the Palestinian internal front. We must be united in confronting the only enemy we have: Israel.”

The talks are being held under the auspices of Egyptian Intelligence Chief Gen. Omar Suleiman, who has long been playing the role of mediator between Fatah and Hamas.

Members of a Fatah delegation who arrived in Cairo over the weekend met on Sunday with senior Egyptian government officials.

Hamas legislator Salah Bardaweel said he was unaware of a new Egyptian initiative to reach a new truce with Israel. The Egyptians, he noted, are very worried at the continued tensions among the Palestinians. “They want to see stability, especially in the Gaza Strip,” he said.

Asked about the prospects of declaring a truce with Israel, Bardaweel said: “There is a consensus among the Palestinians that there can be no unilateral cease-fire. If Israel wants a truce, it should be a mutual and simultaneous one. Otherwise, the Palestinians are entitled to continue the resistance.”

Fawzi Barhoum, another Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip, said his movement does not believe that Israel is sincere about reaching a new truce. “The problem is not with the Palestinians or the truce,” he said. “The Palestinians have already offered Israel a long-term truce, but Israel is not interested in stability and security in this region.”

PA negotiator Saeb Erekat expressed hope that the Cairo talks would lead to an agreement over a new truce with Israel. “The truce has become a top Palestinian national interest,” he said. “We are holding talks with the EU and UN in an attempt to restore calm. The Palestinians want a truce.”

Source

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Soft Drinks Could Warp DNA

Sunday, May 27th, 2007

Expert links additive to cell damage

Martin Hickman

A new health scare erupted over soft drinks last night amid evidence they may cause serious cell damage. Research from a British university suggests a common preservative found in drinks such as Fanta and Pepsi Max has the ability to switch off vital parts of DNA.

The problem - more usually associated with ageing and alcohol abuse - can eventually lead to cirrhosis of the liver and degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s.

The findings could have serious consequences for the hundreds of millions of people worldwide who consume fizzy drinks. They will also intensify the controversy about food additives, which have been linked to hyperactivity in children.

Concerns centre on the safety of E211, known as sodium benzoate, a preservative used for decades by the £74bn global carbonated drinks industry. Sodium benzoate derives from benzoic acid. It occurs naturally in berries, but is used in large quantities to prevent mould in soft drinks such as Sprite, Oasis and Dr Pepper. It is also added to pickles and sauces.

Sodium benzoate has already been the subject of concern about cancer because when mixed with the additive vitamin C in soft drinks, it causes benzene, a carcinogenic substance. A Food Standards Agency survey of benzene in drinks last year found high levels in four brands which were removed from sale.

Now, an expert in ageing at Sheffield University, who has been working on sodium benzoate since publishing a research paper in 1999, has decided to speak out about another danger. Professor Peter Piper, a professor of molecular biology and biotechnology, tested the impact of sodium benzoate on living yeast cells in his laboratory. What he found alarmed him: the benzoate was damaging an important area of DNA in the “power station” of cells known as the mitochondria.

He told The Independent on Sunday: “These chemicals have the ability to cause severe damage to DNA in the mitochondria to the point that they totally inactivate it: they knock it out altogether.

“The mitochondria consumes the oxygen to give you energy and if you damage it - as happens in a number if diseased states - then the cell starts to malfunction very seriously. And there is a whole array of diseases that are now being tied to damage to this DNA - Parkinson’s and quite a lot of neuro-degenerative diseases, but above all the whole process of ageing.”

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) backs the use of sodium benzoate in the UK and it has been approved by the European Union but last night, MPs called for it to investigate urgently.

Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat chair of Parliament’s all-party environment group said: “Many additives are relatively new and their long-term impact cannot be certain. This preservative clearly needs to be investigated further by the FSA.”

A review of sodium benzoate by the World Health Organisation in 2000 concluded that it was safe, but it noted that the available science supporting its safety was “limited”.

Professor Piper, whose work has been funded by a government research council, said tests conducted by the US Food and Drug Administration were out of date.

“The food industry will say these compounds have been tested and they are complete safe,” he said. “By the criteria of modern safety testing, the safety tests were inadequate. Like all things, safety testing moves forward and you can conduct a much more rigorous safety test than you could 50 years ago.”

He advised parents to think carefully about buying drinks with preservatives until the quantities in products were proved safe by new tests. “My concern is for children who are drinking large amounts,” he said.

Coca-Cola and Britvic’s Pepsi Max and Diet Pepsi all contain sodium benzoate. Their makers and the British Soft Drinks Association said they entrusted the safety of additives to the Government.

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Revealed: Blair’s secret stalker squad

Sunday, May 27th, 2007

The Government has established a shadowy new national anti-terrorist unit to protect VIPs, with the power to detain suspects indefinitely using mental health laws.

The revelation is set to reignite the row over the Government’s use of draconian measures to deal with terror suspects amid accusations they are abusing human rights.

The Fixated Threat Assessment Centre (FTAC) was quietly set up last year to identify individuals who pose a direct threat to VIPs including the Prime Minister, the Cabinet and the Royal Family.

It was given sweeping powers to check more than 10,000 suspects’ files to identify mentally unstable potential killers and stalkers with a fixation against public figures.

The team’s psychiatrists and psychologists then have the power to order treatment - including forcibly detaining suspects in secure psychiatric units.

Using these powers, the unit can legally detain people for an indefinite period without trial, criminal charges or even evidence of a crime being committed and with very limited rights of appeal.

Until now it has been the exclusive decision of doctors and mental health professionals to determine if someone should be forcibly detained.

But the new unit uses the police to identify suspects - increasing fears the line is being blurred between criminal investigation and doctors’ clinical decisions.

It also raises questions about why thousands of mentally ill individuals have been allowed back into the community - including some who have attacked and killed members of the public - while VIPs are being given special protection.

Scotland Yard, which runs the shadowy unit, refuses to discuss how many suspects have been forcibly hospitalised by the team because of “patient confidentiality”.

But at least one terror suspect - allegedly linked to the 7/7 bomb plot and a suicide bombing in Israel - has already been held under the Mental Health Act.

The suspect, who was subject of a control order and cannot be named for legal reasons, later absconded from the hospital and his whereabouts are unknown.

The existence of FTAC, part of the Metropolitan Police’s specialist operations department which oversees anti-terrorist investigations and royal and diplomatic protection, slipped out in the fine print of a Home Office report.

The report makes it clear FTAC is a counter-terrorism unit and says: “We aim to make the UK a harder target for terrorists by maintaining effective and efficient protective security for public figures.”

NHS documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday reveal the unit’s role “concerns the identification and diversion into psychiatric care of mentally ill people fixated on the prominent”.

The purpose of the centre is “to evaluate and manage the risk posed to prominent people by…those who engage in inappropriate or threatening communications or behaviours in the context of abnormally intense preoccupations, many of which arise from psychotic illness.”

The Mental Health Act requires two doctors or psychiatrists to approve someone’s forcible detention for treatment.

So-called ’sectioning’ allows a patient to be held for up to six months before a further psychological assessment. Patients are then reviewed every year to determine if they can be released.

FTAC’s senior forensic psychiatrist Dr David James, who has made a study of attacks on British and European politicians by people suffering pathological fixations, is qualified to order such a detention, as are other members of his team.

Also on the staff is Robert Halsey, a consultant forensic clinical psychologist who is a specialist in risk assessment.

The centre, which is based at a secret Central London location, has a staff of four police officers, two civilian researchers, a forensic psychiatrist, a forensic psychologist and a forensic community mental health nurse. Job descriptions make it clear they implement “interventions”.

Human rights activists fear the team, whose existence has never been publicised, may be being used as a way to detain suspected terrorists without having to put evidence before the courts.

It also comes amid a continuing row over proposed mental health legislation which will make it easier to ’section’ someone deemed a threat to the public.

Last night human rights group Liberty said the secret unit represented a new threat to civil liberties.

Policy director Gareth Crossman said: “There is a grave danger of this being used to deal with people where there is insufficient evidence for a criminal prosecution.

“This blurs the line between medical decisions and police actions. If you are going to allow doctors to take people’s liberty away, they have to be independent. That credibility is undermined when the doctors are part of the same team as the police.

“This raises serious concerns. First that you have a unit that allows police investigation to lead directly to people being sectioned without any kind of criminal proceedings.

“Secondly, it is being done under the umbrella of anti-terrorism at a time when the Government is looking at ways to detain terrorists without putting them on trial.”

FTAC was set up following an NHS research programme based at Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield, Middlesex, which looked at the threat to prominent figures from “fixated” people.

The team examined thousands of cases and liaised with the FBI, the US Secret Service, the Capitol Hill Police, which protects Congressmen and Senators, and the Swedish and Norwegian secret services.

The Swedish authorities gave the team access to files on the murder of foreign minister Anna Lindh who died from multiple stab wounds after being attacked by a stalker in a Stockholm store in 2003.

The research led to FTAC being set up with a £500,000-a-year budget from the Home Office and Department of Health. NHS documents say: “It is a prototype for future joint services.”

No one from FTAC was willing to talk to The Mail on Sunday last week and few Whitehall officials seemed aware of the Centre’s existence.

Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: “The Government is trying to bring in a wider definition of mental disorder and is resisting exclusions which ensure that people cannot be treated as mentally disordered on the grounds of their cultural, political or religious beliefs.

“When you hear they are also setting up something like this police unit, it raises questions about quite what their intentions are.

“The use of mental health powers of detention should be confined to the purposes of treatment. But the Government wants to be able to detain someone who is mentally disordered even when the treatment would have no benefit.

“Combined with the idea that someone could be classed as mentally ill on the grounds of their religious beliefs, it is a very worrying scenario.”

Last night a Home Office spokeswoman said there was “nothing sinister” about the unit or its role in counter-terrorism.

She said: “It comes under the remit of royal and diplomatic protection and is administered by that part of the Home Office.

“Psychiatric investigations are undertaken by psychiatric professionals only. Police officers do not assess people with mental health issues. The police provide the intelligence to ensure that psychiatrists have all the information available to make an assessment.

“This is done not only to protect public figures but also to protect the person fixated with the public figure.”

Details of FTAC are revealed as the Government faces a new row over its terrorist control orders after three suspects, supposedly under house arrest, absconded last week.

The suspects, who it is feared may have fled the country, include the brothers of Anthony Garcia, who was jailed last month for his role in a plot to bomb London nightclubs and shopping centres.

Source

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Irish Schools Set To Fingerprint Children

Sunday, May 27th, 2007

Niall Byrne

50 Irish schools have expressed an interest in biometric attendance management technology in the past month, a provider of biometric fingerprinting systems has told siliconrepublic.com. Dublin-based Byamsys said this surge of interest was on top of a large number of schools that are already working with the company on rolling out fingerprinting systems.

“We’re working with it on a large number of schools,” said John Beckett, managing director of Byamsys. “We’ve partnered with a company called Shaw Scientific in Ireland who have a 40-year relationship with a vast number of schools. 50 schools have expressed an interest in the past month alone in Ireland, and that’s on top of our existing clients.”

The systems Byamsys implements use fingerprint scanners placed around the entrances to the schools to record students’ attendance, thus freeing up time that would otherwise be spent on lengthy roll calls.

One school that has completed a pilot of the technology and hopes to implement it fully in September is St Andrew’s in Booterstown, Co Dublin. Headmaster Arthur Godsil said the primary reason for rolling it out is to ensure no students get through the net.

“The primary reason was to know who was in the school and what time they came in at. It’s a foolproof way of making sure I know who’s on site,” he said.

St Andrew’s has six panels located around the school and intends to add more. Students scan their fingerprints when they arrive in the morning. If a student doesn’t scan in, an automatic text message or email is sent to their parents informing them of this, but only after a period of time during which the school can ascertain whether there is another reason the student didn’t scan in.

Godsil explained the system would ensure the school of 1,279 pupils is completely compliant with the Education Welfare Act, which requires schools to know the whereabouts of its pupils during school hours.

In March the Data Protection Commissioner issued guidelines about the use of biometric fingerprinting in schools. The main stipulation was that parents and children over 18 had to give their consent to use the system.

“If a parent doesn’t consent the child is outside the loop,” said Godsil.

According to Godsil, the reaction of parents and children has been overwhelmingly positive.

“I’ve had one parent ring me and one call in to see me about it. Parents are quite happy with it and the kids quite like it because they click in themselves. They don’t have to be clicked in by a teacher. It gives more time for teachers to do other things instead of taking rolls. I’ve a woman here who works three hours a morning checking all the absences. That’s a lot of time.”

Beckett, a past pupil of St Andrew’s, explained that data protection and privacy were the key priorities when developing the technology. “There’s no way to reproduce the data we store as a fingerprint. We don’t store the data as a fingerprint.

“When students check in their fingerprint is scanned and converted into a string of letters and numbers which is encrypted and then compared to the encrypted file that we have already for that person. There’s never a decryption process.

“If, for example, there was a break-in at the school and the gardai were able to get fingerprints from the window there’s no possible way to cross-reference the fingerprint information from the window with the database of students.”

However, lobby group Digital Rights Ireland has criticised the rollout of fingerprint technology in schools. Chairman TJ McIntyre said schools could provide no guarantee that the gardai won’t request information held on the database. He also expressed scepticism about the data being useless to other parties.

“There is a standard that’s used across the industry for biometrics to ensure different systems are compatible. The biometrics people will tell you they generate a hash of the fingerprint so the fingerprint itself isn’t stored, just the information that enables you to compare it with the particular fingerprint that’s placed on the scanner. That’s correct as far as it goes, but what they don’t explain is that the information used there is capable of being reconstructed to give you soft fingerprint information and it’s still possible to be used in police work.”

While this “soft” information may not stand up in court it could potentially be used in a police investigation, McIntyre claimed. “The question in these things is not what it is initially intended to be used for but what else it could be used for.”

Byamsys has stated its system cannot be used in this way. It said at no time is an image of the fingerprint stored by the system and it is not possible to recreate a fingerprint from the data stored.

Digital Rights Ireland has criticised the implementation of such systems on other grounds, such as their viability if a large number of students opt out. Beckett told siliconrepublic.com that students who opt out will be able to use proximity cards with encoded data to scan in.

Bernie Goldbach of Digital Rights Ireland said he would prefer to see technology like this being used all the time in place of fingerprinting. “It’s less intrusive. What you get is an identity device as well as a door-opening device and something students can use for their lunch money.

“With a card you’re not exactly sure it’s the same person but most kids don’t give up cards that have money on them and they don’t lose them. They learn a bit of responsibility without losing a part of their identity.

“We give up a lot of stuff today. We’re rolling out a lot of technology without safeguards.”

“Kids are being desensitised and they don’t realise the implications at such a young age,” added McIntyre. “There is a risk they’ll be desensitised to it being used on them at a later stage in life.”

“There are no civil liberties issues in relation to any other usage that the school would have for those particular pieces of information,” commented Godsil. “I think its possible to roll it out across the board. It’s a perfectly safe system and it’s a sensible system to use.”

“We used the Data Protection Commissioner’s guidelines for the use of biometrics in the workplace from day one,” said Beckett. “We were actually compliant with 99pc of the guidelines for schools prior to them being released. We were only too happy to have a more formal structure around the use of biometrics in schools.”

He cited the benefits of biometrics as certainty for parents that their children are in school, more accurate attendance records for parent-teacher meetings and the overnight elimination of unauthorised truancy.

He also said that it empowered students to be responsible for their own attendance.

According to Byamsys, the cost of implementing biometric fingerprinting varies depending on the size of the school and the customisation requirements, but it could be anything between €10,000-20,000.

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The Big Brother State

Sunday, May 27th, 2007

The Big Brother State is an educational film about what politicians claim to be protection of our freedom but what we refer to as repressive legislation.

Since terrorism has become a global threat, especially after 9/11, governments all over the world have started enforcing laws which, so
the governments say, should increase national security.

These laws obviously aim at another goal: the states gaining more and more control of their citizens at the cost of our privacy and freedom.

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International Antifascist demo in Schwerin

Sunday, May 27th, 2007

*International Antifascist demonstration against the German Nationalist Party (NPD) march on June 2nd 2007 in Schwerin*

With the slogan, “Against Fascism and Capitalism – For a World without Borders!”, antifascists from Germany and beyond will protest against the planned right-wing extremist march on June 2nd 2007 in Schwerin. On this day, the regional leader of the German Nationalist Party (NPD), Stefan Koester, previously convicted for grievous bodily harm, has registered a march with over 1000 Neonazis from the whole of Germany.

The reason for this right-wing extremist demonstration is the the G8 Summit from 6th – 8th June in Heiligendamm. For some time now, Neonazis have been trying to jump on the bandwagon of the alterglobalisation movement. During the regional elections last year, the NPD, supported by right-wing thugs, took up the theme in their flyers and pamphlets. “With simplistic explanations and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, the right-wing extremist party sought to diffuse the fears of the population about globalization in their own interest.

Continue reading at the dissent! Network Of Resistance web site

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Al Gore 9/11 Truther

Sunday, May 27th, 2007

John Doraemi

See these comments:

“Most Americans have tended to give the Bush-Cheney administration the benefit of the doubt when it comes to its failure to take action in advance of 9/11 to guard against an attack. Hindsight casts a harsh light on mistakes that should have been visible at the time they were made. But now, years later, with the benefit of investigations that have been made public, it is no longer clear that the administration deserves this act of political grace from the American people.”[1]

What is he saying?

This is couched in diplomatic language, but the intention is clear. He is not buying the Bushies’ excuses for September 11th 2001. He’s attributing this lack of trust to the “American people,” which polls on 9/11 support. But he is also going out on a political limb and making a value judgment as to whether the Bush regime “deserve” any trust on September 11th issues.

Very few politicians have dared challenge the regime on September 11th. Gore is the exception here, which is notable. These are carefully chosen words that appear in his book The Assault on Reason as well as on the Guardian website and “progressive” US websites.

A lot of very committed peope have been shouting about the regime’s “failure to take action in advance of 9/11 to guard against an attack” (as well as during the actual attacks) for a very long time, and yet are routinely attacked for doing so — sometimes on the very same websites that re-published Gore’s article. Well how’s that for a bit of hypocrisy?

Back in 2004, Gore touched upon some 9/11 issues in a speech:

“Bush described this rigorous and formal analysis as just guessing. If that’s all the respect he has for reports given to him by the CIA, then perhaps it explains why he completely ignored the warning he received on August 6 th, 2001, that bin Laden was determined to attack our country. From all appearances, he never gave a second thought on that report until he finished reading My Pet Goat on September 11 th.” [2]

This is — if you can believe it — also diplomatic language, because the other explanation of Bush’s actions is too politically unthinkable for him to say out loud. Gore belongs to a political caste that doesn’t accuse others of the caste of criminality, or of high treason. It’s just not done.

For clarity sake, let’s have no mistakes here. The August 6 PDB is NOT the only warning this regime received by a long shot. Bush himself was moved out of his high rise hotel, by his own Secret Service, in Genoa Italy in July 2001 because of a warning of an “Al Qaeda plot” to hijack commercial airliners and “crash them into the summit of industrialized nations.” [3]The ignorance excuse ends right there.

Many dozens of warnings [4]were reported by mainstream news organizations. Even CIA head George Tenet and CIA Counterterrorism head Cofer Black warned the administration,[5] every member of the cabinet – including Bush in Crawford TX [6] — of impending and imminent attacks.

Nothing was done about these warnings.

Gore elaborates on similar warnings received during his tenure as Vice President:

“The only warnings of this nature that remotely resembled the one given to George Bush was about the so-called Millenium threats predicted for the end of the year 1999 and less-specific warnings about the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996. In both cases these warnings in the President’s Daily Briefing were followed, immediately, the same day - by the beginning of urgent daily meetings in the White House of all of the agencies and offices involved in preparing our nation to prevent the threatened attack.” [7]

I think it’s safe to say that Gore smells a rat. Perhaps he can’t come right out and say it, but he’s leaving clues for others to take up and pursue. He appears on the surface to have accepted some of the excuses put out by the regime, but in other contexts he flatly rebukes them and seeks more investigation.

That is the primary purpose of the 9/11 Truth Movement, to uncover the ugly buried truth that the Bushies have made “classified.” Gore is at least to some extent working toward the same ends.

Notes.

[1] The Guardian/UK, A Drive For Global Domination Has Put Us In Greater Danger, by Al Gore, excerpt from The Assault on Reason, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2086737,00.html

[2] Al Gore Speaks on Iraq, t r u t h o u t | Speech, Monday 18 October 2004, Gaston Hall, Georgetown University, http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/102004X.shtml
[3] LA Times, Italy Tells of Threat at Genoa Summit, September 27, 2001, http://www.prisonplanet.com/Italy_Tells_of_Threat_at_Genoa_Summit.htm
[4] Complete 911 Timeline: Foreign Intelligence Agency Attack Warnings, click here

[5] Tenet told 9/11 panel that he warned Rice of Al Qaeda Former CIA head said she took threat seriously, By Dan Eggen and Robin Wright, Washington Post | October 3, 2006, click here

[6] They Knew, Tenet’s Book Reveals 9/11 Perjury, http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/2007/05/they-knew-tenets-book-reveals-9-11.html
[7] Al Gore Speaks on Iraq, t r u t h o u t | Speech, Monday 18 October 2004, Gaston Hall, Georgetown University, http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/102004X.shtml

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Congress: New direction for Iraq in the air

Sunday, May 27th, 2007

Expectations are mounting in Congress, including among the White House’s Republican backers, that President George W. Bush will later this year have little option but to change course in Iraq.

Despite Bush’s victory over anti-war Democrats in securing a new 100 billion dollar budget to fund the war through September, attention on Capitol Hill is already shifting to the bitter political fights to come.

Lawmakers left Washington for a week-long recess as a report said huge cuts in the current 147,000-strong US garrison in Iraq could be in the offing.

“I feel a direction change in the air,” Democratic congressman John Murtha, a gruff former Marine and Vietnam veteran said last week, as he intensified his emotional quest to end the war.

Significantly, the top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, who has largely kept his party in step with the president, despite deep skepticism among some Senators, is also predicting a sea-change in Iraq policy.

“I think the handwriting is on the wall that we are going in a different direction in the fall, and I expect the president himself to lead it,” McConnell said on Friday.

After a prolonged test of wills with Congress, Bush last week got his war funding, after forcing Democrats to abandon their drive for troop withdrawal timetables.

But Democrats, though conscious they lack the veto-proof majorities to force Bush to change tack, are certain their campaign is beginning to yield results.

“We will oppose the President’s failed war policy at every turn,” Senate Majority leader Harry Reid said.

“This fight will continue every day.”

Democrats are already eyeing the several defense department budget bills pending in Congress over the next few months, as vehicles to handcuff Bush on war strategy.

“This summer will be very important here in Washington,” said congressman Rahm Emanuel, a former top aide to ex-president Bill Clinton and now part of House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi’s brain trust.

“Republicans will be consistently asked to take a new vote on bringing an end to the current course in Iraq and bringing a new direction.”

The strategy is designed to ratchet up pressure on Republicans, who the theory goes, will be increasingly anxious about supporting Bush in his waning days as president, as an unpopular war rages and US elections loom in 2008.

Leaders on both sides of the partisan divide are increasingly looking towards September, when the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, is due to report on the course of the war.

Anything less than an unequivocal declaration of success for Bush’s strategy to surge nearly 30,000 extra troops into Iraq, will likely lead to increasing and perhaps irresistible demands to start disengaging from the country.

As the political battle played out in Congress, emotions became increasingly taut, as lawmakers took to the floor of both chambers to mourn constituents who fell in battle.

In a grim month for US troops in Iraq — more than 90 had died by Saturday — the top House Republican John Boehner broke down in tears while warning about terrorism, and Reid eulogised those killed in an “American tragedy” in Iraq.

As expectations mounted that a critical point was approaching in Iraq, the New York Times reported Saturday the White House was working on several “concepts” for reducing the number of US combat troops in Iraq by as much as 50 percent next year.

Citing unnamed senior administration officials, the newspaper said the move could cut troop levels in Iraq to roughly 100,000 by the time the 2008 US presidential election moves into high gear.

They would also greatly scale back the mission that Bush set for the US military when he ordered it in January to win back control of Baghdad and Anbar Province, the report said.

The mission would instead focus on the training of Iraqi troops and fighting Al-Qaeda, while removing Americans from many of the counter-insurgency efforts inside Baghdad.

Those details closely mirror Democratic Party plans for reconfiguring the US posture in Iraq, themselves modelled on the last year’s report by the Iraq Study Group, which was initially rejected by the White House.

The White House responded to the newspaper report by saying it was premature to talk about reducing the troop levels.

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UK warned of microchip bins

Sunday, May 27th, 2007

Ian Morgan

Unsuspecting homeowners could have their rubbish “spied” on by microchips fitted to household bins, the Tories claimed today.

The accusation came ahead of expected Government proposals to introduce financial incentives encouraging recycling and a consultation on “save-as-you-throw” schemes.

Environment Secretary David Miliband is also set to put forward plans to collect household food waste separately every week, to be used to generate renewable energy.

But the Conservatives fear microchips could lead to an unfair stealth tax after a Freedom of Information request showed one in seven household bins in town halls were fitted with the device.

Eric Pickles MP, Shadow Minister for Local Government, said: “We face the prospect of bin chips quietly being fitted in bins across the country to spy on families without their knowledge.

“I fear now that Labour Ministers are forcing town halls into levying new bin taxes, without public consent.”

The Local Government Association (LGA) said if the Government plans were introduced, councils must ensure there was public support, no overall increase in council tax and the adoption of tough measures to tackle any increase in fly-tipping.

Already, as many as four in 10 councils 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 30% 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.

He will outline how England will deal with waste up until at least 2020 and guide local authorities on how to manage it.

The strategy is being driven by the need to ensure that England reaches targets set by the EU for reducing the amount of biodegradable waste sent to landfill, as part of the battle against climate change.

The amount of waste generated by households in the UK is rising, but the amount being recycled must rise to 40% - from its current level of 27% - to meet the EU targets.

Media reports this week have predicted that “slop buckets” will be introduced as part of Mr Miliband’s new plans and councils could be given power to introduce schemes that reward households for behaving in a “green” fashion.

Friends of the Earth also said the Government is expected to “strongly encourage local authorities to collect food waste separately every week, so that it can be treated to produce a bio-gas”.

This gas would be converted from food waste in “anaerobic digesters” and then used to produce 100% renewable heat and electricity.

But the campaign group said it expected further consultation on the idea of a financial incentive scheme for recycling after the strategy is published.

According to an LGA survey, two out of three people would back a “save-as-you-throw” scheme.

But Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, chairman of the LGA, said: “If the Government introduces proposals for waste charging it must not insist on a national scheme, but each individual council working with its residents should be able to decide whether to introduce a scheme or not.

“Councils, working on the ground with local people, have the knowledge and expertise to decide how best to encourage residents to understand the consequence of throwing away more each year and to take more responsibility for their rubbish.”

He added: “Britain is the dustbin of Europe with more rubbish being thrown into landfill than any other country on the continent.

“For decades people have been used to being able to throw their rubbish away without worrying about environmental consequences or rising costs. Those days are now over.”

Friends of the Earth’s waste campaigner, Dr Michael Warhurst, said: “The England Waste Strategy will be a real test of David Miliband’s environmental credentials.

“Sending waste to incineration or landfill is a waste of valuable resources and contributes to climate change.

“If Mr Miliband is serious about tackling climate change he must introduce a strategy that promotes reuse, recycling and composting of waste and discourages landfill and incineration.”

Dr Warhurst dismissed alarm about a microchip system for monitoring waste, saying: “It’s just the same as having a number on your bin, only faster”.

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RFID & Wi-Fi Could Track Students

Sunday, May 27th, 2007

Wireless tracking systems could be used to “protect” patients in hospitals and students on campuses, backers of the technology said.

The combination of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags and wi-fi allows real-time tracking of objects or people inside a wireless network.

Angelo Lamme, from Motorola, said tracking students on a campus could help during a fire or an emergency.

“You would know where your people are at any given moment,” he said.

Marcus Birkl, head of wireless at Siemens, said location tracking of assets or people was one of the biggest incentives for companies, hospitals and education institutions to roll out wi-fi networks.

Both firms were at The Wireless Event, in London, this week selling new products in the area of so-called real-time location services.

Siemens is pushing a complete system, developed with Finnish firm Ekahau, which can track objects or people.

Battery powered

Battery-powered RFID tags are placed on an asset and they communicate with at least three wireless access points inside the network to triangulate a location.

Mr Birkl said: “The tags have a piece of software on them and they detect the signal strength of different access points.

“This information is sent back to the server and it then models the movement of the tag depending on the shift in signal strength detected.”

For the system to work, the building or area that has been deployed with a wireless network needs to have been mapped and calibrated.

To effectively locate objects a wireless access point is needed every 30 metres and Siemens said it was able to pinpoint assets to within a metre of their actual position.

Mr Birkl said: “It’s very useful for the health care industry - where there are highly expensive pieces of mobile equipment that move around a hospital.

“At every point in the day health staff need to know where it is.”

The system can also be used to track wi-fi equipped devices, such as laptops, tablet PCs and wi-fi enabled phones.

“You can record movements over a period of time. You can see if the security guard in the night makes the right rounds, for example,” said Mr Birkl.

He added: “You can set certain boundaries and parameters. If a certain device enters or leaves an area it could trigger an alarm.”

‘More popular’

As wi-fi becomes more popular in schools, the technology could also be used to track students.

“It has to be aligned with the understanding of the people who are tracked,” said Mr Birkl.

There have been privacy concerns expressed in some quarters about RFID tags, especially around the possible use of tags on shopping goods to monitor consumer spending habits.

RFID supporters have pointed out that the tags cannot be read at a great distance, but combining the technology with wi-fi raises the possibility of remote tracking.

Tags on products are typically passive - they have no power source and are only activated when read by a scanner in close proximity. These tags contain only an identifying number and can be small enough to embed in a sheet of paper.

But the tags used in conjunction with a wi-fi network have to be active - they need a power source and have software installed on them that communicates with the wireless access points.

The tags, therefore, are larger in size, and currently are impractical for use on anything other than high value consumer goods or, potentially, on people.

“There needs to be standards put in place so the data is not abused for other purposes,” said Mr Birkl.

He added: “But there are clear benefits to keeping people safe.”

More than half of respondents to a recent pan-Europe consultation on RFID said regulations were needed to police the use of tags.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/6691139.stm

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Operation Northwoods Makes It To Mainstream Media - 40 Years Late

Sunday, May 27th, 2007

In the early 1960s, America’s top leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba’s then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

America’s top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: “We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,” and, “casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.”

Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America’s largest spy agency, the National Security Agency. However, the plans were not connected to the agency, he notes.

The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy’s defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.

“These were Joint Chiefs of Staff documents. The reason these were held secret for so long is the Joint Chiefs never wanted to give these up because they were so embarrassing,” Bamford told ABCNEWS.com.

“The whole point of a democracy is to have leaders responding to the public will, and here this is the complete reverse, the military trying to trick the American people into a war that they want but that nobody else wants.”

Gunning for War

The documents show “the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government,” writes Bamford.

The Joint Chiefs even proposed using the potential death of astronaut John Glenn during the first attempt to put an American into orbit as a false pretext for war with Cuba, the documents show.

Should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, they wrote, “the objective is to provide irrevocable proof & that the fault lies with the Communists et all Cuba [sic].”

The plans were motivated by an intense desire among senior military leaders to depose Castro, who seized power in 1959 to become the first communist leader in the Western Hemisphere, only 90 miles from U.S. shores.

The earlier CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles had been a disastrous failure, in which the military was not allowed to provide firepower.The military leaders now wanted a shot at it.

“The whole thing was so bizarre,” says Bamford, noting public and international support would be needed for an invasion, but apparently neither the American public, nor the Cuban public, wanted to see U.S. troops deployed to drive out Castro.

Reflecting this, the U.S. plan called for establishing prolonged military not democratic control over the island nation after the invasion.

“That’s what we’re supposed to be freeing them from,” Bamford says. “The only way we would have succeeded is by doing exactly what the Russians were doing all over the world, by imposing a government by tyranny, basically what we were accusing Castro himself of doing.”

‘Over the Edge’

The Joint Chiefs at the time were headed by Eisenhower appointee Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, who, with the signed plans in hand made a pitch to McNamara on March 13, 1962, recommending Operation Northwoods be run by the military.

Whether the Joint Chiefs’ plans were rejected by McNamara in the meeting is not clear. But three days later, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer directly there was virtually no possibility of ever using overt force to take Cuba, Bamford reports. Within months, Lemnitzer would be denied another term as chairman and transferred to another job.

The secret plans came at a time when there was distrust in the military leadership about their civilian leadership, with leaders in the Kennedy administration viewed as too liberal, insufficiently experienced and soft on communism. At the same time, however, there real were concerns in American society about their military overstepping its bounds.

There were reports U.S. military leaders had encouraged their subordinates to vote conservative during the election.

And at least two popular books were published focusing on a right-wing military leadership pushing the limits against government policy of the day.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee published its own report on right-wing extremism in the military, warning a “considerable danger” in the “education and propaganda activities of military personnel” had been uncovered. The committee even called for an examination of any ties between Lemnitzer and right-wing groups. But Congress didn’t get wind of Northwoods, says Bamford.

“Although no one in Congress could have known at the time,” he writes, “Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs had quietly slipped over the edge.”

Even after Lemnitzer was gone, he writes, the Joint Chiefs continued to plan “pretext” operations at least through 1963.

One idea was to create a war between Cuba and another Latin American country so that the United States could intervene. Another was to pay someone in the Castro government to attack U.S. forces at the Guantanamo naval base an act, which Bamford notes, would have amounted to treason. And another was to fly low level U-2 flights over Cuba, with the intention of having one shot down as a pretext for a war.

“There really was a worry at the time about the military going off crazy and they did, but they never succeeded, but it wasn’t for lack of trying,” he says.

After 40 Years

Ironically, the documents came to light, says Bamford, in part because of the 1992 Oliver Stone film JFK, which examined the possibility of a conspiracy behind the assassination of President Kennedy.

As public interest in the assassination swelled after JFK’s release, Congress passed a law designed to increase the public’s access to government records related to the assassination.

The author says a friend on the board tipped him off to the documents.

Afraid of a congressional investigation, Lemnitzer had ordered all Joint Chiefs documents related to the Bay of Pigs destroyed, says Bamford. But somehow, these remained.

“The scary thing is none of this stuff comes out until 40 years after,” says Bamford.

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Guantanamo detainee claims MI5 misinformation led to arrest and torture

Sunday, May 27th, 2007

ANDREW O SELSKY

JAMIL el-Banna has been locked up by the United States for nearly five years without being charged - arrested in Africa, allegedly tortured at a CIA “black site” in Afghanistan, then held at Guantanamo Bay - all because of faulty British intelligence, his lawyers claimed yesterday.

Now, the UK government has said that el-Banna had been cleared by the US for transfer to his native Jordan, where he says he was tortured before becoming a political refugee in Britain in 1997. His lawyers have decried the move, saying that sending him back amounted to the US outsourcing torture.

“We are going to block his rendition to Jordan,” lawyer Clive Stafford Smith said. “To be sure, he would be out of [Guantanamo], but it would be from the frying pan into the fire.”

Navy Cmdr Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, refused to discuss el-Banna, who is under indictment in Spain for allegedly joining a terrorist group and who admits associating with Islamic extremists but denies having anything to do with al-Qaeda or any other terror activity.

Tony Blair recently told Parliament that he opposes el-Banna’s return to Britain, where the detainee’s wife and five British-citizen children live and where - according to his supporters - official mishandling of intelligence information led to his arrest in the first place.

According to intelligence documents, el-Banna’s troubles started after a British MI5 intelligence officer visited his home near London in October 2002 and tried to get him to become a paid informant.

He had associations with radical Muslims, including Abu Qatada, a Muslim cleric described by a Spanish judge as Osama bin Laden’s “spiritual ambassador in Europe”.

Also, in Jordan, el-Banna belonged to a radical Palestinian support group linked to Iran and Syria - which is what got him in trouble with Jordanian authorities.

The MI5 officer wrote that el-Banna “did not give any hint of willingness to cooperate with us”.

Unbeknown to el-Banna, his friend Bisher al-Rawi, an Iraqi living in Britain, was helping MI5 keep tabs on London’s Muslim community.

At the time, Abu Qatada was in hiding to avoid arrest under Britain’s anti-terrorism laws, and al-Rawi relayed messages between MI5 and the cleric.

Al-Rawi also recruited el-Banna on the trip that ended with their arrest in Africa.

They were detained at Gatwick Airport. According to an MI5 memo written on November 1 2002, “some form of homemade electronic device” found in al-Rawi’s bag could have been used in a car bomb.

British authorities released the men three days later and let them go to Africa after deciding the device was simply “a commercially available battery charger that had been modified by al-Rawi in order to make it more powerful”.

They were eventually handed over to CIA custody, where according to a lawsuit filed on April 26, they were tortured.

The men were taken to Afghanistan and several months later the two were moved to Guantanamo.

The Home Office, which oversees MI5, refused to comment.

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Civil rights fears over DNA file for everyone

Sunday, May 27th, 2007

Campaigners say Whitehall wants even litter-droppers on crime database

Jamie Doward, home affairs editor
Sunday May 27, 2007
The Observer

Civil liberties groups are warning that the details of every Briton could soon be on the national DNA database, raising fresh concerns of a ’surveillance society’. Controversial plans being studied by the government would see the DNA of people convicted of even the most minor, non-imprisonable offences, such as dropping litter, entered on the national database.

The proposals are part of a wide-ranging government review of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (Pace), which campaign groups warn may have profound ramifications for society. ‘The danger is that if we start adding the details of people convicted of these sort of minor offences to the database we’ll come to a tipping point,’ said Gareth Crossman, director of Liberty. ‘The government will say: “Actually it’s a bit unfair some people aren’t on the database; maybe everyone should be on it.”‘

The DNA database is already proving controversial with some politicians and police officers raising concerns about its use. Liberty claims that, per head of population, the UK has five times as many people on the DNA database as any other country. The government estimates that even if the database is not expanded to include the details of minor offenders, some 4.5 million people will still be on it by 2010.

The expansion of the database is prompting fears that people from ethnic minorities are being stigmatised. According to research by the Liberal Democrats, under the existing system within three years the details of more than half of all black men will be on the DNA database. ‘The arbitrary method of collecting DNA will alienate minority groups who already feel unjustly targeted,’ said Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrats’ leader.

A three-month public consultation exercise on the government’s plans to overhaul Pace concludes this month. The government intends to publish responses to the exercise in July and proposals will be put to ministers in January.

Currently, the police do not have the power to place details such as DNA and fingerprints of anyone who has committed a minor, or ‘non-recordable’, offence such as dropping litter or speeding on to the relevant database.

However, the government believes there may be a case for recording the details of people who have committed minor crimes. In a briefing document promoting the consultation exercise, the Home Office claims its inability to take personal details such as fingerprints or DNA from all offenders ‘may be considered to undermine the value and purpose’ of having a searchable database.

A Home Office spokesman said all options were being considered. ‘The Pace consultation is about maximising police efficiency and ensuring that appropriate and effective safeguards are in place,’ he said. ‘We have made no decisions but we must consider anything which might free up police time or improve the efficiency and effectiveness of police investigations.’

Arguments that the DNA database should be expanded are growing. Writing in the latest edition of the House magazine, Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate, a former president of the Police Superintendents’ Association, said the case for including more people on the database was overwhelming. ‘If I had my way, the DNA we now take from newborn babies to check for genetic disorders would be added to the national database in the national interest,’ Mackenzie writes.

The DNA database has led to the successful prosecutions of rapists and murderers in recent years, sometimes decades after the crimes were committed. However, Simon Davies, director of the pressure group Privacy International, which campaigns against state surveillance, said such examples were a red herring. ‘The problem is for every such instance if you expand the DNA database there are going to be multiple miscarriages of justice. This is the last domain. There’s nothing left after this,’ he claimed.

Privately, the Home Office anticipates a public backlash against the proposals. ‘This is a completely open exercise,’ one Home Office source said. ‘If there is overwhelming opposition against this we will not go there.’

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