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Google aims to predict user behaviour

Monday, May 28th, 2007

Alec Simpson

Internet search giant Google is planning to build the world’s most powerful human database computer that will one day not only be able to log but also it will predict our every move.

The worlds most powerful search database has announced plans to build the database with full backing from the

US government. It is the biggest Orwellian style threat to civil liberty and a threat to human privacy ever conceived and many are saying that this sort of system should not be allowed.

Google argue that it is purely a marketing and general life assistant type of application that will be able to predict what it is we might need without us actually realising it. It says that by organising the world’s information and collating every piece of data that it can hold about it’s users it can guess what people will look for.
Ultimately, it plans to make Google so personal that it will be able to target specific people who it knows are interested in certain genres an subjects. It says it will collate this data from all of it’s search engine information and that it already knows a great deal about what we look for, when we look for it and why.
Google say that it will be so advanced that it will be able to predict market trends, fashions and fluctuating moods and human behaviour. It is almost digitizing the human psyche. Others say that it will use the information to direct and influence our trends and instead of forecasting what we will need, it will be suggesting what we need according to their own influences.
The internet search giant argue that in theory there should be no problem. In fact, the new database could make life easier - perhaps even better. For example if you want to buy a particular book from a certain site, Google could locate other sites selling the same book at a cheaper price or it could recommend other books by the same author.

The same could also work if you want to buy a television or a holiday and the search engine could bring up the best buy on the net.

In setting up this database Google says it is giving customers what they want and that any information collated will be volunteered. Users will only be identified by name if they sign up to one of the log-on services such as G-mail or Froogle.

However, critics fear the database is the next step towards an Orwellian Big Brother state and that once Google has been allowed or even endorsed to ‘harvest’ all our most intimate daily habits, then we are dangerously close to the next step of total computer dependency.
While we already are living in a closely monitored society, we are almost becoming too used to seeing powerful cameras on every street corner and using store cards that log our every move and we are even willing to use websites such as Bebo, Myspace or friends reunited where even more personal data is stored, farmed and in some cases sold.

Protestors see the declaration for such a system as an infringement of civil liberties by stealth by a company that wants to turn the personal database into a lucrative marketing tool.

Like all businesses Google is driven to make money which it does through multi-million pound advertising sponsorship.This means consumers have no idea whether or not the information being given is impartial or whether something is being recommended of a big money deal.

In truth, people would not tolerate being followed around the shops day by day by some stranger taking notes of everything they buy, writing about the reasons behind their purchase and trying to steer them towards certain shops. So why should we put up with it in the virtual world?

Privacy protection campaigners fear that in certain circumstances law enforcement agents could force internet search engines to surrender personal information and already in it’s short existence,  Google hold the largest compilation of personal information ever stored.

Google has bought the targeted advertising company Doubleclick which further monitors users on a wide range of websites, and deploys “cookies” - small software programs that embed themselves into people’s computers to keep track of what they are looking at.

And it has also invested £2m in genetics company 23andMe - a move which sceptics of the database are calling ‘very worrying’.

Surely the best advice is, as in real life, if you are concerned about privacy, don’t give out and personal information unless you know exactly who will be reading it. But in most cases, it proves impossible to use the internet without disclosing such information – as most sites insist that they have such data before you can access the site.
Also under the Data Protection Act information must only be used for the purposes it was given and Google has said it plans to impose a limit on the period it keeps personal information.

Google has been around for many years now and is a very much respected resource. It has proved itself to be the best of its kind. Although it has in the past resisted

US government court applications to hand over personal information it holds on some users – it could also resist future demands to part with other information. But in this age of the super information technology, knowledge is super-power.

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The True Story of the CIA Torture Program

Monday, May 28th, 2007

The names Khaled El Masri, Moazzam Begg, Binyam Mohammad, and Maher Arar may not sound familiar to most people. But they are among the hundreds of people, many of whom have no proven ties to terrorist organizations, who since 1997 have been removed from airports on suspicions based at times on the flimsiest of evidence. They have been escorted away at boarding gates, grabbed while they changed planes, and approached on street corners. Those accused disappeared into a secret world of endless interrogations and torture; all transported care of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

In his new book Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program, award-winning investigative journalist Stephen Grey tells the true story of what became of the CIA’s torture program known by the euphemism “extraordinary rendition” and the airplanes that make the program run. Citizen reporter Chris Brown spoke with him by telephone while he was in New York on a book tour. 

Your first encounter with the rendition program began back in December 2001 while you were interviewing a certain congressperson, who later became one of President Bush’s key men in the war on terror. Could you briefly talk about this?

I was working for The Sunday Times of London and I was in Washington just after Sept. 11. I sat down on a sofa in an office on Capital Hill in the office of Porter Goss, who was then the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and later became head of the CIA. It was he for the first time who actually told me the term “rendition.” I was asking about what the CIA had been doing to capture Osama Bin Laden, and I said, “Could he have been kidnapped?” And he said, “It’s called rendition. Have you heard of that?” And I said, “No I haven’t.” And he said it’s a way of bringing people to a kind of justice.

So I was very intrigued to hear about this kind of concept. And that really was the start of what had become many years of inquiries to try to get to the bottom of it.

Many in the U.S. might think that this so-called rendition policy is a new weapon to pursue terrorists. But, in fact, it’s been around for a number of years. Can you speak about this?

Rendition itself — which basically means sending people across to another country without any trial, legal process, or treaty — that’s been going on since the 1880s. It started off with the case of someone being picked up in Peru by the Pinkerton Detective Agency, quite an early example of a contractor operating under presidential authority. But the point was that this kind of rendition involved bringing people back to trial in the United States, in other words before an open trial, before a judge and jury. And as such, although laws are broken abroad, it was ruled to be legal in the U.S. And that’s been going on for a very long time.

I don’t suppose many people would have much to protest about that. But what I’m writing about in the book is the program of extraordinary rendition. That began as a systematic program used against suspected Islamic terrorists in the 1990s under Bill Clinton, specifically in 1995. And its been going on ever since. Although, I have to say that while this program started under Clinton, it expanded dramatically after Sept. 11.

In the book you write about Canadian citizen Maher Arar. The U.S. sent him to Syria. Before he was sent there he was interrogated for quite some time by the U.S. When Arar found out that he would be sent to Syria, where he is originally from, he pleaded with the U.S. agents not to send him there because he was certain that he would be tortured. The Bush administration has repeated that it doesn’t torture. But, in fact, it is at the very least outsourcing torture when it sends people off to places like Syria, Egypt, or Uzbekistan. More to the point, the U.S. have been involved directly with interrogations that have involved torture, most notably Abu Ghraib. I was wondering if you might comment more on this?

Sure, the basic problem for the U.S. is that the laws prohibit torture and no one can be directly involved in it. So the mechanism of sending people to another country does certainly allow interrogations to take place, which wouldn’t be allowed if carried out by U.S. agents themselves. And, you know, initially when President Bush first commented about rendition he said, “We don’t send people to countries that torture.” And they had to revise that because I think the lawyers pointed out that, in fact, America does.

And there are lots of countries that send their people to other countries to be tortured. Funnily enough the best evidence, if you want to read about torture in Syria, is to look at publications by the U.S. government that show, in very great detail, the kind of torture reserved for people who upset the state in Syria, and in particular people who are accused of being Islamic militants face the worst kind of torture.

It’s not just a matter of getting people off the street, keeping them out of harm’s way. I mean, Maher Arar could have been flown back to Canada; in fact he was on his way home to Canada. There was a deliberate choice to send him to a country where, it was believed, he would be properly interrogated. And when he arrived he wasn’t wanted by Syria; Syria had no interest in him. He was sent with a list of questions attached. He was asked about the threat that he posed to the U.S. and to Canada. He wasn’t asked about Syria. So this is a very clear example of outsourcing, of getting other people to do your dirty work for you.

I read something in the book that I found disturbing. The pilots who flew the planes were issued fake IDs and licenses by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Can you speak more on this?

It’s quite striking that these people are able to fly around the world with control and knowledge of many government agencies that they’re using false documents and false names. And it’s involved the FAA, it’s involved state offices who issue fake driver’s licenses, it involves private contractors down in San Jose. You have a major subsidiary of Boeing called Jefferson Data Plan, which is a private company that is involved in organizing private flights all around the world. And they work directly with the CIA in organizing these trips, which involve rendition. There was a quite interesting interview in the New Yorker where someone who actually worked for that company said that they were quite aware that these planes were being used for the outsourcing of torture. So there were a lot of people who had knowledge of this and I suppose everybody thinks it’s someone else’s job to work out whether this is right or wrong.

Maher Arar was not known to have any significant links to terrorists. The CIA admit that on occasion they target the wrong person. Can you talk about this more?

Well I do believe that when they pick these people up they don’t deliberately target someone who’s innocent. They really do suspect that they are capturing someone and try to get him out of the way.

But there seems to be a kind of recklessness about finding out the truth here, and Khaled El-Masri, who is a German citizen for example, he was picked up by people in the CIA who thought he was somebody else. But as Khaled himself said, to verify a passport just takes a few weeks. He was held for five months in solitary confinement. And he wasn’t even questioned for months at a time. Essentially he was forgotten in this jail and he wasn’t really that important to try to sort out the truth.

Likewise, Maher Arar was questioned on the flimsiest of evidence. He knew somebody, went for a walk with somebody who himself was under investigation. It’s amazing through these intelligence reports how you can link someone to terrorism on these small pieces of evidence. But he was completely cleared. Maher Arar was judged by an official Canadian inquiry to be a man with no connections whatsoever with terrorists. And it just highlights secret detentions, secret intelligence and no opportunity to test this intelligence in a courtroom, have a lawyer try to challenge what you’re accused of, is a system that is bound to end up locking up and mistreating people who are innocent. Because there is no safety valve to really check whether we’re doing to this to other people who really have got something that they’re guilty of.

And Maher Arar was compensated for his treatment by the Canadian government and issued a public apology, correct?

That’s right he’s been compensated, the head of the Royal Mounted Police has resigned, the government has apologized. Although there was poor evidence linking him to Al Qaeda, which turned out to be wrong, they have apologized for that. What should be said is that Canada played no role in the decision to send him to Syria. So whatever wrong intelligence they had and supplied to U.S., ultimately it was the U.S. that decided to send him to be tortured.

And what’s really striking is that, although the administration continues to state publicly that it’s against torture and that there are all kinds of laws that prohibit torture and ensure that people that take part in torture are prosecuted, there appears to be no way from him to complain in the U.S. He tried to file a lawsuit, and it’s been judged that it can’t go ahead because if it did it might reveal state secrets. So, there’s been no avenue given to these people to actually get their day in court and find justice at last.

Christopher Brown is an independent journalist living in San Francisco, Ca. He produces and hosts a podcast entitled, Crossing The Line: Life in Occupied Palestine (http://ctl.libsyn.com).

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Twin Towers controlled demolition, claims California architect

Monday, May 28th, 2007

ROSS ROMANIUK

Conspiracy buffs are in for a big treat.

California architect Richard Gage will be in Winnipeg this week to offer his explanation of why the World Trade Centre towers collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001.

Gage has become a leading figure of the so-called 9/11 truth movement, an informal campaign from people all over the world who challenge official accounts of what happened that day.

He argues that a deliberate, controlled demolition using explosive devices is what really destroyed the twin towers that day, along with another skyscraper known as WTC 7 or Building 7. Speaking to Sun Media from his Bay Area home this weekend, Gage said few people are even aware of the third building.

‘SMOKING GUN’

“It’s the smoking gun of 9/11,” he said. “It was a 47-storey building, not hit by an airplane, that came down into its own footprint in 6.5 seconds, at nearly freefall speed — symmetrically, smooth, straight down.”

Gage says Building 7 fell after sustaining relatively minor damage due to the collapse of one of the twin towers hours earlier, with small fires on its fifth and 12th floors.

Explosions were heard around its base as it collapsed and a large amount of molten metal was found in the basement area, said Gage. He claims the only good explanation for the presence of the metal is that it came from certain kinds of incendiary charges.

“Two small fires — even large, hot-burning, long-lasting fires — have never brought down a steel frame highrise building, ever,” said Gage.

By all official accounts, the 9/11 attacks were the work of the al-Qaida terrorist network but Gage is trying to spur the U.S. Congress to launch a new investigation into who was responsible. “We don’t know who did it and we don’t know why,” he said. “That’s why we need an investigation.”

Gage is scheduled to address a public audience tomorrow at 1 p.m. with a free lecture in University Centre at the University of Manitoba. At 7 p.m. he’ll conduct a seminar at the Fort Garry Hotel.

On Wednesday at 7 p.m., Gage will give a presentation at the Gas Station Theatre on what he calls the mainstream media’s “code of silence” about the 9/11 “inside job.”

Joe Hawkins, a Winnipeg chiropractor helping arrange the seminars, says no one wants to talk about who’s really behind the 9/11 attacks.

“Clearly it points to elements within the government,” he said. “If it’s an inside job, it has to be inside the military-industrial government complex.”

Hawkins says he’s on hiatus from his practice, in part because he’s been busy the past few years trying to get information out about 9/11.

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Bush ignored warning on Iraq War chaos

Monday, May 28th, 2007

‘Sadly, the administration’s refusal to heed these dire warnings - and worse, to plan for them - has led to tragic consequences for which our nation is paying a terrible price…’

By Amina Anderson

Numerous investigations have found that U.S. intelligence agencies were dead wrong about Iraq’s supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction and Saddam Hussein’s alleged links to al-Qaeda.

A recent Senate report dealt a major blow to the Bush administration as it showed that top U.S. intelligence experts predicted before the 2003 invasion that al-Qaeda could exploit any U.S. military action in Iraq as an opportunity to extend its sway in the region and that Iran would try to shape a post-war Iraq.

The declassified document, which was distributed to scores of White House, national security, diplomatic and congressional officials, is the latest chapter in the Intelligence Committee’s ongoing investigation into the pre-war Iraq intelligence which reviews assessments from a number of agencies, with special focus on two January 2003 papers from the National Intelligence Council: “Regional Consequences of Regime Change in Iraq” and “Principal Challenges in Post-Saddam Iraq.”

According to the report, the Bush administration was warned in January 2003 that al-Qaeda “probably would try to exploit any post-war transition in Iraq by replicating the tactics it has used in Afghanistan during the past year to mount hit-and-run operations against U.S. personnel.” It also said the risk of terror attacks in Iraq would increase after the invasion and slow over the next three to five years. However, the State Department recently found that violence rose sharply in the war-torn country last year.

The analysts also warned that Iraq’s neighbours would struggle for influence and that “some elements in the Iranian government could decide to try to counter aggressively the U.S. presence in Iraq.” The less Tehran felt threatened by U.S. actions, they said, “the better the chance that they could cooperate in the post-war period.”

Among other conclusions, the analysts warned that:

• There is a “significant chance that domestic groups (in Iraq) would engage in violent conflict with each other.”
• Establishing a stable democracy in Iraq would be a “long, difficult and probably turbulent process.”
• Post-war Iraq would face significant economic challenges, having few resources beyond oil. 
• Military action to destroy Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction wouldn’t prevent other countries from giving up such programs.

The Senate committee released its conclusions about pre-war intelligence on Friday, one day after a divided U.S. Congress approved $100 billion to fund the war in Iraq, with many Democrats vowing to keep pushing for a U.S. troop withdrawal, a move President Bush strongly rejects.

Democrats, who now control the U.S. Congress, said the Senate report made clear that President Bush, a Republican, and his aides ignored warnings about the chaos that would follow a U.S. invasion of Iraq. “Sadly, the administration’s refusal to heed these dire warnings - and worse, to plan for them - has led to tragic consequences for which our nation is paying a terrible price,” said Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat and the committee’s chairman.

House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat and longtime war critic, said the report was no surprise, because President Bush had ignored “chapter and verse” of intelligence warnings.

“President Bush wanted to go to war in Iraq in the worst possible way, and he did,” Pelosi told reporters.

Despite the publication of the recent findings, President Bush, asked by reporters before the release of the report, defended his decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein’s regime. “Going into Iraq, we were warned about a lot of things, some of which happened, some of which didn’t happen,” he said. “Obviously, as I made a decision … I weighed the risks and rewards of any decision.”

Many other Republicans disputed the findings of the Senate report, saying that they merely represented speculation from experts in and out of the U.S. government, despite the fact that most of the report’s conclusions turned out to be true.   

At least one Republican admitted that U.S. intelligence had been prescient about the effects of war in Iraq. “Our intelligence community accurately predicted many aspects of the chaotic landscape that we see in Iraq today,” said Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican who voted for the war in 2002 but soon afterward became a vocal critic of the invasion. 

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Big Brother is watching; he’s the landlord

Monday, May 28th, 2007

Private eyes aid eviction effort at rent-control units

Asbury Park Press

Residents of one of the last middle-class bastions in ever-more-expensive Manhattan say their new landlord is using Orwellian tactics in an attempt to drive them out and raise rents.

The complaints concern one of the country’s largest apartment complexes, the twin developments of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, comprising 110 buildings in a campus-like East Side setting. It also is one of the city’s largest stocks of rent-stabilized housing.

Tenants lucky enough to hold a lease on one of its 8,000 regulated units pay a fraction of the market rate. The savings allow a lifestyle unavailable to many middle-class New Yorkers, replete with vacation bungalows and kids in parochial school.

Landlords have but one way to legally hike the rent more than a token amount annually: Persuade a tenant to leave, or prove the tenant lives elsewhere. Tenants say the global real estate firm Tishman Speyer, which bought the complex last year for $5.4 billion, is engaged in a campaign to do both.

Over the past few months, hundreds of tenants say they received nonrenewal notices on their leases over suspicions that they reside elsewhere for at least 183 days a year.

The charges are based on evidence apparently culled by private investigators, from public records, property deeds, and credit applications databases. Leaseholders were stunned by the scope of the information.

“It’s like they’re spying on us!” said Jeanette Besosa, who works at the United Nations.

Besosa was accused of keeping residences in Florida, Pennsylvania and Manhattan’s Washington Heights; she’s now assembling a thick binder of records demonstrating the Pennsylvania home is a weekend retreat, the Washington Heights townhouse an investment property, and the Florida address her son’s rented college apartment.

Suzanne Ryan said the company ordered her family out of Peter Cooper Village by the end of May after discovering that she and her husband owned a Long Island beachfront house.

“Its a little Cape. We had fixed it up ourselves,” Ryan said. But the family used it sporadically as a summer beach house, she said, and their residence was in the city where her two children attend Catholic school.

City Councilman Daniel Garodnick, who lives in the complex, said residents have packed a series of legal clinics.

“These are scary letters to get,” he said. “I think there are a number of legal, legitimate tenants who are getting caught up in this pursuit.”

Tishman Speyer declined to comment on specific cases, but said in a written statement that it was routine for city landlords to contact tenants suspecting of illegally holding leases.

“If residents feel a notice has been sent in error, there is a process in place to address each case individually,” the statement said. ” . . . We only send notices when we believe there is true cause.”

Some tenants say they were given a chance to produce tax returns, voting records and credit card bills to demonstrate residency. Others face a trip to housing court, possibly with the expense of an attorney.

Real estate experts say people shouldn’t instantly condemn Tishman.

Abuse of rent stabilization rules is common in New York. Some leaseholders move out of town and illegally sublet their apartments for a hefty profit. Others hold on to units they don’t need for years, using them as weekend getaways or passing them on to friends.

A few private eyes have built entire businesses out of following renters around and scouring public records to prove they don’t actually live in the apartments they lease.

Some landlords go as far as to install hidden cameras in hallways to prove that a leaseholder has moved out, said Mitch Kossoff, a lawyer representing property owners. The incentive to catch a tenant cheating, he added, can be powerful: A vacancy means the landlord can immediately hike rents at least 20 percent.

And any apartment where the legal rent rises above $2,000 can be removed from the stabilization rolls forever — a change worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to its owner.

Many tenants believe that was Tishman’s ultimate goal with its purchase, converting units to expensive luxury condominiums.

“They must have bought this place for too much money, and now they’re trying to throw everybody out and raise the rents,” said Besosa’s husband, Rafael Rodriguez. “But why should we give up? We have to make a stink.”

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Venezuela’s RCTV: Sine Die and Good Riddance

Monday, May 28th, 2007

Stephen Lendman

Venezuelan TV station Radio Caracas Television’s (known as RCTV) VHF Channel 2’s operating license expired May 27, and it went off the air because the Chavez government, with ample justification, chose not to renew it. RCTV was the nation’s oldest private broadcaster, operating since 1953. It’s also had a tainted record of airing Venezuela’s most hard right yellow journalism, consistently showing a lack of ethics, integrity or professional standards in how it operated as required by the law it arrogantly flaunted.

Starting May 28, a new public TV station (TVES) replaces it bringing Venezuelans a diverse range of new programming TV channel Vive president, Blanca Eckhout, says will “promot(e) the participation and involvement of all Venezuelans in the task of communication (as an alternative to) the media concentration of the radio-electric spectrum that remains in the hands of a (dominant corporate) minority sector” representing elitist business interests, not the people.

Along with the other four major corporate-owned dominant television channels (controlling 90% of the nation’s TV market), RCTV played a leading role instigating and supporting the aborted April, 2002 two-day coup against President Chavez mass public opposition on the streets helped overturn restoring Chavez to office and likely saving his life. Later in the year, these stations conspired again as active participants in the economically devastating 2002-03 main trade union confederation (CTV) - chamber of commerce (Fedecameras) lockout and industry-wide oil strike including willful sabotage against state oil company PDVSA costing it an estimated $14 billion in lost revenue and damage.

This writer explained the dominant corporate media’s active role in these events in an extended January, 2007 article titled “Venezuela’s RCTV Acts of Sedition.” It presented conclusive evidence RCTV and the other four corporate-run TV stations violated Venezuela’s Law of Social Responsibility for Radio and Television (LSR). That law guarantees freedom of expression without censorship but prohibits, as it should, transmission of messages illegally promoting, apologizing for, or inciting disobedience to the law that includes enlisting public support for the overthrow of a democratically elected president and his government.

In spite of their lawlessness, the Chavez government treated all five broadcasters gently opting not to prosecute them, but merely refusing to renew one of RCTV’s operating licenses (its VHF one) when it expired May 27 (its cable and satellite operations are unaffected) - a mere slap on the wrist for a media enterprise’s active role in trying to overthrow the democratically elected Venezuelan president and his government. The article explained if an individual or organization of any kind incited public hostility, violence and anti-government rebellion under Section 2384 of the US code, Title 18, they would be subject to fine and/or imprisonment for up to 20 years for the crime of sedition.

They might also be subject to prosecution for treason under Article 3, Section 3 of the US Constitution stating: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort” such as instigating an insurrection or rebellion and/or sabotage to a national defense utility that could include state oil company PDVSA’s facilities vital to the operation and economic viability of the country and welfare of its people. It would be for US courts to decide if conspiring to overthrow a democratically government conformed to this definition, but it’s hard imagining it would not at least convict offenders of sedition.

Opposition Response to the Chavez Government Action

So far, the dominant Venezuelan media’s response to RCTV’s shutdown has been relatively muted, but it remains to be seen for how long. However, for media outside the country, it’s a different story with BBC one example of misreporting in its usual style of deference to power interests at home and abroad. May 28 on the World Service, it reported RCTV’s license wasn’t renewed because “it supported opposition candidates” in a gross perversion of the facts, but that’s how BBC operates.

BBC online was more nuanced and measured, but nonetheless off the mark in key comments like reporting “Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in Caracas Sunday, some to celebrate, others to protest” RCTV’s shuttering. Unexplained was that Chavez supporters way outnumbered opponents who nearly always are part of rightist/corporate-led staged for the media events in contrast to spontaneous pro-government crowds assembling in huge numbers at times, especially whenever Chavez addresses them publicly.

BBC also exaggerated “skirmishes” on the streets with “Police us(ing) tear gas and water cannons to disperse (crowds) and driving through the streets on motorbikes, officers fired plastic bullets in the air.” It also underplayed pro-government supportive responses while blaring opposition ones like “Chavez thinks he owns the country. Well, he doesn’t.” Another was “No to the closure. Freedom.” And still another was “Everyone has the right to watch what they want. He can’t take away this channel.” BBC played it up commenting “As the afternoon drew on, the protests got louder.” The atmosphere became nasty. Shots were fired in the air and people ran for cover. It was not clear who was firing” when it’s nearly always clear as it’s been in the past - anti-Chavistas sent to the streets to stir up trouble and blame it on Chavez.

BBC’s commentary ended saying “The arguments highlight, once again, how deeply divided Venezuela is.” Unmentioned was that division is about 70 - 80% pro-Chavez, around 20% opposed (the more privileged “sifrino” class), and a small percentage pro and con between them.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on TheMicroEffect.com Saturdays at noon US central time.

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United Nations: U.S. violated international law

Monday, May 28th, 2007

Evelyn Leopold

The United States apparently violated international law in its military tribunals by using coercion to extract confessions and writing counter-terrorism laws that restrict immigration on questionable grounds, a U.N. investigator said on Friday.

But Martin Scheinin of Finland, a U.N. rapporteur on rights in countering terrorism, said his findings for the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council did not mean the “the United States has become an enemy of human rights.”

“It is a country which still has a great deal to be proud of,” especially in exercising freedom of the press, Scheinin said in a 12-page preliminary report on a 10-day visit to the United States. His full report will be presented to the Council later in the year.

But U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad rejected the allegations, saying, “We have a different point of view.”

“We are doing this under U.S. laws and procedures and legitimate decision-making authorities that exist in the United States,” he said. “We are a rule of law country and our decisions are based on the rule of law.”

Scheinin spoke to officials from departments of Homeland Security, Defense and Justice, members of Congress, academics and nongovernmental groups. But he did not go to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because he was not allowed to interview prisoners in privacy.

Still, he said reports that information was obtained from terror suspects using “enhanced interrogation techniques” amounted to a form of torture or inhumane treatment that is illegal under international law, particularly the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights treaty the United States signed.

His report said the prisoners detained by the military at Guantanamo had been categorized by the United States as alien “unlawful enemy combatants,” which Scheinin called a “description of convenience” since there is no such category under international law.

They are either combatants to be released at the end of a conflict as prisoners of war, or people who have to be charged with war crimes and prosecuted accordingly, usually in civilian courts, he said.

In Guantanamo, he said, even an acquittal by a military commission “does not result in a right of release.”

“This further undermines the principles of fair trial and would, if immediate release was not provided in an individual case, involve an arbitrary detention in contravention” of the treaty, he said.

Scheinin also criticized several U.S. laws, including the 2001 Patriot Act, enacted by Congress after the September 11 attacks on the United States, for expanding the definition of terrorist acts “beyond the bounds of conduct which is truly terrorist,” and tightening immigration restrictions based on the expanded definitions.

Scheinin said his visit supported suspicions that the CIA has flown terrorism suspects from Afghanistan or Iraq to countries where they could face abuse and torture under “extraordinary rendition.”

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Tasers Used to Control Mentally Ill

Monday, May 28th, 2007

Reports of Tasers being used to control volatile situations involving mentality ill people are on the rise.

This rise in Taser use on the mentally ill by police is cause for some concern. In Houston, Texas alone, the local paper the ‘Houston Chronicle’ says that since the end of 2004 there have been 120 known incidents of police using Tasers to control a mentally ill suspect of the 1000 incidents the paper investigated.

Also uncovered about the Houston Taser incidents was that the police had some prior knowledge about the situations. Meaning they were made aware that they were entering a volatile situation involving a mentally ill person. This prior warning should have triggered the police to bring in specialists that have training in how to deal with this type of situation, however this happened very seldomly.

When taking a closure look at the people who were tasered by the police the ‘Houston Chronicle’ found that nearly all of the people were weapon less. It was also found that the majority of the tasered people were not guilty of committing a crime. There were of course a couple of exceptions and a criminal was apprehended.

The circumstances leading to the Taser use appears to be the lack of clarity in the mind of person the police were attempting to apprehend. These people were mentally ill and in most cases just confused and unable to understand what the police officers wanted, due to their illness.

When the ‘Houston Chronicle’ spoke to the police chief, Harold Hurtt, he defended what looks to be heavy-handed use of Tasers. He said, “When you look at instances where people were armed, there could have been more deadly encounters if Tasers were not in place.”

Of the many people tasered by the Houston police there was a man who was mentally ill, aged 63 and could not get around without the use of his walker. In another incident a bi-polar sufferer, Carol Ann Vickery suffered an episode at a store leading to her becoming agitated and picking up a can of soda and apparently threatening to throw it. Police were call in and Vickery was tasered. The husband of Vickory said, “She may have gotten excited, but two male officer should be able to defuse a situation with on woman without pulling out a Taser. In this case, it’s clear they did not try.”

Houston isn’t the only US city with reports of police using Tasers unnecessarily; reports are also coming from Minneapolis.

In Minneapolis a woman who was apparently homeless, in her early thirties, African-American and to a witness mentally ill was the target of police Tasers in May. When writing her story about what she saw the witness, Lydia Howell described the homeless woman’s obvious mental illness. The woman was repeating one sentence, “I’m not white and I’m not a star.”

© 2007  Associated Content, Inc.

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Police ’stop and question’ powers under more fire

Monday, May 28th, 2007

JAMES SLACK

Plans to give police draconian ‘wartime’ powers to stop and question anybody they choose about their identity and movements were in disarray last night.

The Prime Minister and his supporters want to introduce the power, backed by a fine of up to £5,000 for anyone refusing to co-operate, as part of a crackdown on terrorism.

But its future is already in doubt after Cabinet splits on the issue, a cool reaction from aides to Gordon Brown and backtracking by the Home Office.

Initial leaks of the policy said police would not need to suspect that a crime had taken place, and could use the power to gain information about any ‘matters relevant’ to terror investigations.

But Home Office officials said they did not believe this would be the case. In an apparent watering down of the policy, they said police would need a ‘reasonable suspicion’ in order to stop and question somebody.

Critics said it appeared the proposals were little more than Tony Blair, and his outgoing Home Secretary John Reid, casting around for a ‘political legacy’.

Candidates for the Labour deputy leadership also became embroiled in a row about the idea. Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain, rated an outsider in the race, expressed grave doubts, saying it could alienate British Muslims.

He said: “We’ve got to be very careful that we don’t create the domestic equivalent of Guantanamo Bay, which was an international abuse of human rights, acted as a recruiting sergeant for dissidents and alienated Muslims and many other people across the world.”

But one of his rivals, Hazel Blears, said it was Mr Hain’s own department which

had first suggested the move.

Police in Northern Ireland already have the sweeping ’stop and question’ power, as a result of emergency legislation passed during the Troubles, but want to keep it.

Mr Hain’s officials have, therefore, suggested extending it across the UK. The Home Office, under Mr Reid, has subsequently picked up the baton, she said.

Opponents said the confusion was symptomatic of a Government lacking direction as it waits for Mr Blair to hand power to Mr Brown. In the meantime, anti-terror powers and civil liberties are being used as a ‘political football’ for internal party politics, they said.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said: “The driving imperative of these draconian announcements appears to be more of a wish to project the reputation of John Reid and Tony Blair in their last weeks in office, than a need to protect the British public.”

Police have long- standing powers to stop and search anyone suspected of involvement in a crime under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.

Officers can also stop people or vehicles in an area seen as being at risk from terrorism, even if they are not suspected of any breach of the law, under the Terrorism Act 2000.

But this can take place only in designated areas, and does not apply across the majority of the country.

The leaked Government papers suggested a new right for officers to stop anybody they wished across all parts of the UK - regardless of whether they were suspected of a crime.

A person refusing to give their name or business would be fined up to £5,000.

Tony McNulty, the Home Office Minister in charge of counter-terrorism, wrote in the leaked papers that the powers would be ‘very useful UK-wide’.

But yesterday it became apparent there would need to be grounds for reasonable suspicion.

What would remain new, however, is the right to ask a person’s name and movements. Under current laws, a person can simply refuse with no threat of punishment.

Muslim and civil liberties groups reacted with horror.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: “This looks like political machismo, a legacy moment. Stopping and questioning anyone you like will backfire because people will be being criminalised.”

Ahmed Versi, editor of Muslim News, said extending police powers would be ‘counterproductive’ to improving relations with Muslims and could drive some towards extremism.

Supporters of Gordon Brown were also cautious, which indicates it could be killed off when he enters Downing Street.

Ed Miliband, a member of the Chancellor’s inner circle, said: “We need to know from the police and people concerned with anti-terrorism whether it’s a necessary power.”

Even Mr McNulty conceded it was not a ‘fait accompli’. The idea will be put out for months of consultation, he said.

Reports had suggested Mr Reid and Mr Blair wanted to force it through before they go next month.

The confusion follows growing concern at the Government’s continued extension of the many powers of the state.

Civil liberties groups warned that plans being studied by Ministers would see the DNA of those convicted of even the most minor, non-imprisonable offences - such as dropping litter - entered on the national DNA database.

It also emerged that the Government has established a national anti-terrorist unit to protect VIPs, with the power to detain suspects indefinitely using mental health laws.

The Fixated Threat Assessment Centre was quietly set up last year to identify those posing a direct threat to VIPs including the Prime Minister, the Cabinet and the royals.

________________________________________________________________________ Police powers to stop and search the public, which date from the 1824 Vagrancy Act, have caused controversy and even riots.

The Sus law (from ’suspected’) made it “illegal for a suspected person or reputed thief to frequent or loiter in a public place with intent to commit an arrestable offence”.

In effect, officers could stop and search, even arrest, anyone purely on the basis of a suspicion that they might commit a crime.

In later years ethnic minorities were to claim they were being unfairly targeted. Riots took place in Bristol in 1980 and a year later in Liverpool and Brixton.

As a result the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act said officers needed ‘reasonable suspicion’ that an offence had been committed. But race groups said the law remained open to abuse.

The 1999 Macpherson report said there were disparities in its use, such as unrecorded stops of cars driven by black or Asian people.

The effect of Macpherson was a sharp decline in the use of stop and search. But after September 11 its use began to increase.

The Terrorism Act 2000 allows officers to question people in designated areas even when there are no grounds to suspect they are plotting an atrocity.

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Tories want Diana documentary shelved

Monday, May 28th, 2007

 BBC

A Channel 4 documentary featuring graphic images of the car crash that killed Princess Diana should be cancelled, the Conservatives have said.

Shadow culture secretary Hugo Swire urged the channel’s bosses to shelve the show Diana: The Witnesses In The Tunnel, due to be screened on 6 June.

It includes pictures taken by French photographers following the collision in Paris in 1997.

Channel 4 told the Observer it did not believe the images were intrusive.

The Observer reported that the film features a picture of the Princess of Wales being treated with oxygen by a French doctor along with images of the inside of the car.

Interviews with photographers who were at the scene and other witnesses are also included, the paper said.

Mr Swire said Channel 4 needed to remember that the princess was a mother as well as a public figure.

“This kind of coverage must be deeply distressing to Princes William and Harry,” he said.

“We would expect more from a public service broadcaster than showing sensationalist material in this way.”

He added: “The best thing Channel 4 can do for the British public and Diana’s family is simply not to broadcast this programme.”

‘Not intrusive’

A spokesman for Channel 4 told the Observer there was a “genuine public interest” in the events surrounding the collision.

He added: “We don’t think the pictures are intrusive and we have thought very carefully about the sensitivities of the families involved.

“Appropriate action has been taken to avoid unwanted intrusion into the privacy of the families.”

Earlier this month Channel 4 came under fire from media regulator Ofcom which ruled that the channel’s Celebrity Big Brother breached its code of conduct over the race row which dogged the series in January.

Crash inquiry

Diana, 36, and 42-year-old Dodi Al Fayed were killed when their Mercedes crashed in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris as they were being driven away from pursuing paparazzi after leaving the Ritz Hotel.

A three-year inquiry conducted by former Metropolitan Police chief Lord Stevens concluded that Princess Diana had died in a tragic accident.

The inquiry report said chauffeur Henri Paul, who also died, was speeding and over the legal drink-drive limit.

In 2004 Princess Diana’s brother, Lord Spencer, said he was “shocked and sickened” by the broadcast of photographs of his dying sister by US network CBS in a programme on the accident.

Inquests into the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed are due to begin in October.

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Why haven’t Bush and Cheney been held accountable?

Monday, May 28th, 2007

Bill Hare

Accountability is an old-fashioned word that the truth jugglers of the Cheney-Bush Administration and important elements of the mainstream media have sought to effectively remove from the English language.

The reason why that word accountability is looked upon with such morbid fear along with savage distaste is that if followed by definition the neocons marching under the Cheney-Bush brigade would have been removed from office long ago.  The sun light of accountability would deliver a piercing arrow of permanent destruction to elements of darkness that have endured through perpetuating patterns of lies.

In the New York Times on Friday, May 25, it was reported that members of the Senate Intelligence Committee had accused the Bush Administration “of ignoring preinvasion warnings from the nation’s spy agencies that a war in Iraq could be followed by violence and division and that it could strengthen the hands of Al Qaeda and of Iran.”

According to the Democratic chairman of the Committee, Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, “Sadly, the administration’s refusal to heed these dire warnings, and worse, to plan for them, has led to tragic consequences for which our nation is paying a terrible price.”

The overall report was approved in a 10-5 vote.  All eight Democrats on the Committee voted affirmatively.  Two Republican senators, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, joined them.  Senator Christopher Bond of Missouri supplied a note of unintended humor in a strong dissent by complaining that the inquiry “has become too embroiled in politics and partisanship to produce an accurate and meaningful report.”

Bond’s lament is highly laughable.  He is one of the brigade of martinets marching to the tune of pied piper Bush, who has proclaimed that in the war on terror you are either “with or against me” and that one had better not be against him because, after all, Bush receives his advice from direct communication with God.

The Cheney-Bush neocon brigade is known for slavish repetition rather than originality, so it came as anything but a surprise that Bond called the study of prewar assessments “a bad idea” and called for the committee to stop rehashing the past controversies and to focus instead on “the myriad of threats we face today.”

How we recall the same sentiment being expressed in almost those identical words by Dick Cheney when, in the wave of fourth of July speeches and sainthood declarations from the media for Rudolph Guiliani, that an independent investigation be conducted into the causes of the 9/11 tragedies.

Cheney promptly turned thumbs down on such an idea.  We should, after all, concern ourselves with preventing such attacks in the future instead of looking to the past.  

So a building is burnt to the ground and the insurance company holding the vital policy asks for an investigation to determine how it all happened.  The rejoinder is, “No fair!  That already happened!  We’re interested in preventing future fires!”  

Yes, more bright logic from a group of stumbling neocons frightened that the public may ultimately learn the truth about them and demand immediate answers.  This is a consequence they morbidly fear as they dodge responsibility in their never-ending snake dance of deceit.  

Congratulations, Senator Bond.  Rudy Guiliani could not have said it better.  Keep sticking those fingers in the dike to prevent the whole town from being flooded.  In this case the floodtide would come in the form of truth, sanity and reason, alien concepts to this group.  

Investigation?  You know that familiar refrain, “You’re giving aid and comfort to the enemy!”  There’s also the familiar corollary:  ”Remember, the root cause of all this lies with the terrorists!”

The second point is true enough in a certain context, but one that the neocons do not wish for us to explore.  Enough independent investigation might establish that there are different terrorists out there serving as provocateurs that the neocons do not wish for us to know about since the results hit too close to home.

It is therefore understandable why Senator Bond needs to keep playing the partisan card with such unflagging repetition.  He is terrified of us exploring further.  

“Senator Rockefeller and I have very different views,” Bond said at the end of the New York Times article.  ”But we’re trying to get these battles behind us.”

Please note the loaded propaganda message.  It makes one wonder if Bond worked on his comments in concert with resident neocon propagandist Karl Rove.  Bond and the neocons certainly are “trying to get these battles behind us.”

This is the neocon ploy.  Paint any investigative effort to get at the truth behind the Iraq War and 9/11 as invidious propaganda designed to shift concentration away from the war on terror.  

If enough Americans can grasp the destructive charlatanism in play here then the truth can eventually be known and Cheney and Bush, along with their accomplices, will ultimately have to begin paying the ultimate price for destructive global and domestic policies grounded in deceit.        

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Iranian protester sentenced to 6 years in prison

Monday, May 28th, 2007

A female activist has been sentenced to six years in prison by an Iranian court for attending two banned rallies and for “propaganda activity against the system”.

Nasrin Sotoudeh, the lawyer acting on behalf of Roya Tolui, said on Wednesday her client took part in two peaceful rallies in 2005.

The ISNA news agency reported the two rallies were in front of the governor’s office in the north-western town of Sanandaj in Iran’s Kurdistan province and Sotoudeh said Toloui was found guilty by a court in the town even though Iranian law allowed peaceful protests.

ISNA did not give details on what the protests were about.

Numerous convictions

“Roya Toloui was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment on the charge of attending the mentioned gatherings and one year’s imprisonment on the charge of propaganda activity against the system,” Sotoudeh told ISNA.

It was not clear whether Toloui was in the court when the sentence was announced or whether she was tried in absentia.

Last month, a court in Tehran handed down partly suspended prison sentences of up to four years against two female activists who attended a banned rally in the capital to demand greater women’s rights, according to Iranian media.

About 100 women protested in Tehran in June against unequal inheritance laws, the difficulties women in Iran face getting a divorce, and the fact their court testimony is worth half that of men.

According to Human Rights Watch, six women have been convicted after taking part in that protest.

The group urged Iran’s judiciary last month to overturn the convictions and end its persecution of human rights defenders.

Iran says it does not discriminate against women and says its rules are based on the Sharia.

Agencies

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Legislation to Microchip Criminals ‘Needs More Work’

Monday, May 28th, 2007

Tim Talley Associated Press Writer

Legislation that would authorize microchip implants in people convicted of violent crimes was sent back to a committee for more work Wednesday after state House members questioned whether the proposal would violate constitutional civil liberties.

The measure, approved by the Senate, authorizes microchip implants for persons convicted of one or more of 19 violent offenses who have to serve at least 85 percent of their sentence, including murder, rape and some forms of robbery and burglary, while prohibiting government from requiring microchips implants in anyone else.

The tiny electronic implants are commonly used to keep track of pets and livestock, but several House members questioned whether their forced use in people would be unconstitutionally invasive.

“We are going down that slippery slope,” said Rep. Ed Cannaday, D-Porum.

Lawmakers never voted on the measure. During debate, its author, Rep. Sue Tibbs, R-Tulsa, asked that it be sent back to a joint House-Senate conference committee where the exception for violent offenders was inserted.

Cannaday and others said the measure may violate the Fourth, Fifth And Fourteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, the Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment and the Fourteenth Amendment contains the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses.

“I see it as invasive,” Cannaday said. He said many sex offenders and prisoners convicted of other crimes are already required to wear wrist or ankle bracelets when they are released from prison so their movements can be monitored by satellite tracking devices.

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MSNBC: Iraq ‘War of Lies’

Monday, May 28th, 2007

A Special Comment about the Democrats’ deal with President Bush to continue financing this unspeakable war in Iraq - and to do so on his terms.

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