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Vancouver 9/11 Truth Conference

Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

The Vancouver 9/11 Truth Society will be hosting a multi-speaker, international conference to expose the realities, myths, omissions and distortions of the official narrative of the events of September 11th, 2001, and the evidence which contradicts what we, the public, have been told about that fateful day; the defining moment of the 21st Century.

The theme of the conference is “9/11, Canada and the New World Order – Reclaiming Our Destiny” and will therefore focus not only on what did or did not occur, on that day, but will also look critically at what has been done, and is being done today, by our own government(s) with 9/11 as the justification, and why Canadians and people around the world must demand a new, full, fair and impartial investigation into 9/11.

Topics for discussion include:

Solid Evidence that directly contradicts the Official Narrative of 9/11
The History of False Flag Terrorism
The War On Terror and Canada’s participation in it, our role in the War in Afghanistan, and that country’s relationship to 9/11.
The use of Depleted Uranium Weapons which are permanently injuring and even killing Canadian Armed Forces personnel, and destroying Afghanistan and Iraq (and the world) with radioactive dust, as well Canada’s roll in producing such weapons.
The Weaponization of Space and Canada’s participation in the space program, the Military Industrial Complex, as well as hi-tech weapons and their potential uses
The S.P.P. (Security and Prosperity Partnership) between the USA, Canada and Mexico, which many contend is a blueprint for a North American Union (without citizen input nor public debate), as well as the fate of democracy, civil rights, Canadian culture and our national identity.
Big Brother and the Surveillance of Ordinary Citizens in Canada and worldwide.
Globalization and “New World Order” agenda for Canada and the world.
Gatekeeping: suppression of information by the mass media, political parties and respected authors and political commentators.
The importance, methods and means of 9/11 Truth Activism

Speakers include:Webster Griffin Tarpley, Prof. Steven E. Jones, Prof. Kevin Barrett, Will Thomas, Robin Hordon, Rowland Morgan, Barrie Zwicker, Hal Sisson, Ian Woods, Connie Fogal, Ken Fernandez, Dr. Bill Deagle, Dr. Joe Hawkins, Gillian Norman, Prof. Peter Dale Scott, Prof. Michael Keefer and more

Full Weekend Tickets $95 CDN (including lunch on Saturday and Sunday) OR Single Day Tickets: Friday $25, Saturday and Sunday $50 each day

6 pm to 10 pm on Friday, June 22nd, 2007 (doors open at 5 pm)
10 am to 6 pm on Saturday, June 23rd, 2007
10 am to 8 pm on Sunday, June 24th, 2007

Venue / Location:

The Maritime Labour Centre
1880 Triumph St..,
Vancouver, B.C.
V5L 1K3

FULL CONFERENCE DETAILS and TICKETS HERE
Information about Vancouver, Travel and Accommodations Here

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Al-Qaeda warns of attacks ‘worse than 9/11′

Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

AN AMERICAN member of al-Qaeda warned in an Internet video that United States President George W Bush should withdraw all his troops from Muslim land or face attacks worse than September 11.

Adam Gadahn, a convert to Islam who has been indicted for treason by a US jury, issued a list of demands which he said were not up for negotiation.

“Your failure to heed our demands means that you and your people… will experience things that will make you forget all about the horrors of September 11, Afghanistan and Iraq, and Virginia Tech,” he said in the video posted last Tuesday.

“You’re losing on all fronts and losing big time,” said Gadahn, who is the English-language spokesman for Osama bin Laden’s terror network.

The tape entitled “Legitimate Demands” was produced by As-Sahab, a media outfit that specialises in al-Qaeda online material.

Gadahn _ sporting a headress, glasses and long beard _ said Bush had “embroiled his nation in a series of unwinnable and bloody conflicts in the Islamic world”.

He also called on the United States to cease support for the “bastard state of Israel” and the “56-plus apostate regimes of the Muslim world” and to free all Muslims from its prisons.

“We don’t negotiate with war criminals and baby killers like you. No, these are legitimate demands which must be met,” he said.

Gadahn _ also known as Azzam al-Amriki and Azzam the American _ has appeared in several videotapes for al-Qaeda since 2004, praising the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington and threatening new terror onslaughts.

In October 2006, he became the first person to be charged in the United States with treason since the World War II era.

The charge carries a minimum of five years in prison and a maximum penalty of death.

Gadahn, who is believed to be in Pakistan, has a US$ 1 million reward for his capture.AFP

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Microsoft Unveils New Surface Computer

Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

By JESSICA MINTZ

AP Business Writer

SEATTLE (AP) - Microsoft Corp. has taken the wraps off “Surface,” a coffee-table shaped computer that responds to touch and to special bar codes attached to everyday objects.

The machines, which Microsoft planned to debut Wednesday at a technology conference in Carlsbad, Calif., are set to arrive in November in T-Mobile USA stores and properties owned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. and Harrah’s Entertainment Inc.

Surface is essentially a Windows Vista PC tucked inside a shiny black table base, topped with a 30-inch touchscreen in a clear acrylic frame. Five cameras that can sense nearby objects are mounted beneath the screen. Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by setting real-world items tagged with special bar-code labels on top of it.

Unlike most touchscreens, Surface can respond to more than one touch at a time. During a demonstration with a reporter last week, Mark Bolger, the Surface Computing group’s marketing director, “dipped” his finger in an on-screen paint palette, then dragged it across the screen to draw a smiley face. Then he used all 10 fingers at once to give the face a full head of hair.

With a price tag between $5,000 and $10,000 per unit, Microsoft isn’t immediately aiming for the finger painting set. (The company said it expects prices to drop enough to make consumer versions feasible in three to five years.)

Some of the first Surface models are planned to help customers pick out new cell phones at T-Mobile stores. When customers plop a phone down on the screen, Surface will read its bar code and display information about the handset. Customers can also select calling plans and ringtones by dragging icons toward the phone.

Guests sitting in some Starwood Hotel lobbies will be able to cluster around the Surface to play music, then buy songs using a credit card or rewards card tagged with a bar code. In some hotel restaurants, customers will be able to order food and drinks, then split the bill by setting down a card or a room key and dragging their menu items “onto” the card.

At Harrah’s locations, visitors will be able to learn about nearby Harrah’s venues on an interactive map, then book show tickets or make dinner reservations.

Microsoft is working on a limited number of programs to ship with Surface, including one for sharing digital photographs.

Bolger placed a card with a bar code onto Surface’s surface; digital photographs appeared to spill out of the card into piles on the screen. Several people gathered around the table pulled photos across the screen using their fingertips, rotated them in circles and even dragged out the corners to enlarge the images - behavior made possible by the advanced graphics support deep inside Windows Vista.

“It’s not a touch screen, it’s a grab screen,” Bolger said.

Historically, Microsoft has focused on creating new software, giving computer programmers tools to build applications on its platforms, and left hardware manufacturing to others. (Some recent exceptions include the Xbox 360 and the Zune music player, made by the same Microsoft division that developed Surface.)

For now, Microsoft is making the Surface hardware itself, and has only given six outside software development firms the tools they need to make Surface applications.

Matt Rosoff, an analyst at the independent research group Directions on Microsoft, said in an interview that keeping the technology’s inner workings under wraps will limit what early customers - the businesses Microsoft is targeting first with the machine - will be able to do with it.

But overall, analysts who cover the PC industry were wowed by Surface.

Surface is “important for Microsoft as a promising new business, as well as demonstrating very concretely to the market that Microsoft still knows how to innovate, and innovate in a big way,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Jupiter Research.

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Anti-war group airs views, but Bush doesn’t see them

Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

CAROLE HAWKINS

TERRY DICKSON/The Times-Union

President Bush came to Brunswick to talk about immigration, but anti-war protesters were determined to change the subject.

The president spoke on the need for immigration reform during his visit to Brunswick’s Federal Law Enforcement Training Center on Tuesday. At the same time, across the street about 20 anti-war activists talked about getting the U.S. out of Iraq instead.

“He’s killing troops and Iraqi civilians for oil and money, and this has to stop,” said Cathy Browning, a member of GlynnPeace: Citizens to End War in Iraq. “I don’t think we should be occupying a country and calling it a war.”

Bush entered and left the center by another gate and did not see the protesters.

Protestor Thomas Clavin served as a Marine during World War II. But he called the deaths of 19-, 20- and 21-year-olds today in Iraq shameful.

“It’s always been the young who are sent, but they should die for a cause,” he said. “World War II was to stop the Japanese from coming here and taking over. This war is over politics and oil.”

Vietnam veteran Dave Stone agreed.

“If this is such a great war, why don’t the president’s and vice president’s children serve? This war is being fought on a credit card. America’s not really committed,” he said.

The group evoked mixed reactions. Several passing cars honked horns in support, while threats of towed vehicles loomed over protesters’ heads.

Although their numbers were small, Robert Randall, president of GlynnPeace, says the activists make a difference.

“We’re in the majority,” he said. “Most people want to see the war end. But people have to see folks like us out here in order to justify in their minds what they’re already thinking.”

When asked about the president’s address, protesters called the current immigration debate a non-issue, having more to do with poverty than terrorism.

“Bush could have closed those borders a long time,” Browning said. “But corporations in the U.S. want those immigrants for cheap labor.”

Protester Elaine Brown, former chairwoman of the Black Panther Party and a former candidate for mayor of Brunswick, criticized the immigration initiative for targeting Mexicans, not terrorists.

“[This bill] is just pitting poor blacks and poor Mexicans against one another,” she said. “The only reason [illegal] Mexicans are coming here is because they are willing to work for less than union wages. If you paid someone $20 an hour, you wouldn’t have an illegal immigration problem because people here would be willing to take those jobs.”

One lone protester standing apart from the others offered a different challenge to the president.

Sam Wright, who served three tours in the infantry in Vietnam, supports the Iraq war but came to protest amnesty for illegal immigrants.

“In 1954, President Eisenhower deported a half-million illegal aliens from this country. Don’t tell me that it can’t be done again,” he said.

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Talking CCTV Cameras Come To Manchester

Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

There are around 4.2 million security cameras in Britain

CCTV cameras that tell people off for committing anti-social behaviour have gone live in Greater Manchester. The “talking” cameras in Salford come complete with speakers to bark orders at litter louts or vandals.

The speakers have been rigged to 11 CCTV cameras along Liverpool Road, and officers in the control room can flick a switch and speak to offenders.

Critics of the scheme complain of “big brother”, but the authorities say it will make a real difference.

Salford has been granted £25,000 for the scheme which will also be rolled out to other hotspots in Brookhouse, Ordsall and Winton later this year.

The talking CCTV scheme is part of a wider national campaign - through the government’s Respect Agenda - to promote good behaviour and challenge bad behaviour.

It is hoped the camera will shame troublemakers into better behaviour.

‘Wake-up call’

Ch Supt Kevin Mulligan, divisional commander for Salford, said: “The technology will enhance our ability to tackle all kinds of anti-social behaviour, by reminding people that we are actively monitoring their actions.”

Councillor David Lancaster, lead member for community safety at Salford City Council, said: “We are confident this Talking CCTV will act as a wake-up call for those who blight our communities.”

Salford is the first area in Greater Manchester to get the talking cameras.

Blackpool in Lancashire already has the talking cameras and Wirral in Merseyside is also awaiting their arrival.

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White House turns to veteran diplomat to head World Bank

Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

- Robert Zoellick nominated as Wolfowitz successor
- Choice of respected figure an attempt to mend fences

Richard Adams and Conor Clarke in Washington
Wednesday May 30, 2007
The Guardian

File photo of Robert Zoellick during his time at the US state department in Washington. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

The White House moved last night to mend fences with the international community when it indicated it would nominate a respected veteran diplomat, Robert Zoellick, to replace Paul Wolfowitz as head of the World Bank.

The Bush administration, bruised by the fallout after the former Pentagon deputy was forced to step down after granting pay rises to his girlfriend, turned to Mr Zoellick, an experienced Washington insider who served as Condoleezza Rice’s number two at the state department and played a key role in the reunification of Germany in 1990.

Sources in the World Bank said the announcement followed careful negotiations by the US treasury secretary, Hank Paulson, with leading governments, including Britain and Germany, in which Mr Zoellick’s name was mentioned as the top choice. “It certainly could be worse. He’s a solid appointment - he’s not a former architect of the Iraq war,” said Ken Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and a professor at Harvard University.
White House officials said Mr Bush intended to formally announce Mr Zoellick’s nomination today and they were confident he would be endorsed by the bank’s board of directors. If approved, he would take over on June 30, when Mr Wolfowitz steps down.

Mr Zoellick’s nomination maintains the US prerogative of choosing an American for the post which has been criticised following the disastrous tenure of Mr Wolfowitz. Aid agencies and some governments argue that the appointment process should be open to other nationalities and conducted transparently.

The US has selected the head of the World Bank since the institution was founded 60 years ago, while European governments have chosen the head of its sister organisation, the International Monetary Fund.

Gene Sperling, an economist during the Clinton administration and a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, said Mr Zoellick was a “very smart and very serious” operator. “He’s been seen as the one person in the Bush administration who is a true internationalist and that probably put him in favour with many of the key G8 partners that the administration wanted to get on board,” he said.

The new president faces enormous challenges in healing the wounds within the bank after Mr Wolfowitz’s controversial reign, which provoked a staff revolt, as well as overhauling the bank’s role. Experts say it needs to focus on giving grants to very poor countries, and scale down the amount of lending to middle-income countries.

Nancy Birdsall, president of the Centre for Global Development, while praising Mr Zoellick’s analytical skills and experience, said: “The question is whether other countries will be satisfied that he is indeed the best candidate, for example, whether he has the right management skills.”

Described by former colleagues as a policy wonk with sharp elbows, Mr Zoellick’s background means he is familiar with the rigours of international diplomacy. Before his official jobs under Mr Bush, he served as a protege of James Baker, a long-time confident of the Bush family. Mr Zoellick helped run two presidential election campaigns and served in the administration of Mr Bush’s father.

· Profile: Robert Zoellick

Robert Zoellick may hail from the conservative wing of US Republican party but, unlike his predecessor, Paul Wolfowitz, he has a formidable record in financial and economic governance. After a spell at the treasury and a stint as economics undersecretary of state in the 1980s, he returned to a more senior role in 2001 as George Bush’s first trade representative, the chief US trade negotiator. During his four years in the job, he helped launched the Doha round of world trade talks and negotiations to bring China and Taiwan into the WTO. He moved to the state department before leaving government for Goldman Sachs and a job as managing director.

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The case for ID cards is becoming desperate

Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

Gordon Brown will stick with the identity cards scheme when he takes over at No10, it was claimed today.

He appears to be warming to the £5billion project but will focus on its advantages to business and individuals rather than its value in combating terrorism.

There are now signs that the Chancellor and the Treasury - both of whom were initially highly sceptical - have come to support a version of the cards.

He is understood to be concerned about the rising cost of identity fraud and believes biometric cards should go ahead if they can within budget.

Mr Brown has commissioned former HBOS chief Sir James Crosby to look at potential benefits to business and customers, and has delayed publication of the report until he becomes prime minister.

The review team has consulted London School of Economics experts, who were highly critical of the original proposal on cost and workability grounds.

Academic Simon Burns, who has talked to the Crosby review, said: “I think Gordon Brown wants to create clear blue water between himself as premier and Tony Blair on the ID programme, without scrapping it like the Tories want. The Crosby report will help him justify such a move.”

Meanwhile Labour party sources say Mr Brown is considering a new “British Day to celebrate traditional national values. But he is understood to oppose a bank holiday because of the cost to the economy.

2007 Associated Newspapers Limited

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Human rights in Iraq: a case to answer

Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

Revealed: How Lord Goldsmith advised Army chiefs to deny detainees ‘full’ legal protection

By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor

Published: 29 May 2007

The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, is facing accusations that he told the Army its soldiers were not bound by the Human Rights Act when arresting, detaining and interrogating Iraqi prisoners.

Previously confidential emails, seen by The Independent, between London and British military head-quarters in Iraq soon after the start of the war suggest Lord Goldsmith’s advice was to adopt a “pragmatic” approach when handling prisoners and it was not necessary to follow the ” higher standards” of the protection of the Human Rights Act.

That, according to human rights lawyers, was tantamount to the Attorney General advising the military to ignore the Human Rights Act and to simply observe the Geneva Conventions. It was also contrary to advice given by the Army’s senior lawyer in Iraq, who urged higher standards to be met.

Today, rights groups and experts in international law will call on the Government to disclose Lord Goldsmith’s legal opinion, which they say could have helped create a culture of abuse of Iraqis by British soldiers.

Last month, the first British soldier convicted of a war crime was jailed for a year and dismissed from the Army after being convicted of mistreating Iraqi civilians, including the hotel worker Baha Mousa, who died of his injuries at the hands of British soldiers. In 2005, three British soldiers were jailed by a court martial in Germany after “trophy” photographs emerged, showing Iraqi detainees being abused at an aid centre called Camp Bread Basket. There are about 60 more allegations of abuse being prepared for legal claims by rights groups.

Last week, Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights wrote to the Government to ask for an “explanation” about the evidence of torture in the Baha Mousa court martial.

Andrew Dismore MP, chair of the committee, said: “We have asked the Ministry of Defence to explain what appear to be stark inconsistencies in the evidence presented to our committee about the use of inhuman and degrading interrogation techniques prohibited as long ago as 1972.”

But emails sent just after the invasion indicate Lord Goldsmith’s belief that British soldiers in Iraq were not bound by the Human Rights Act. The documents also show a wide differing of opinion between him and Lieutenant-Colonel Nicholas Mercer, the Army’s most senior legal adviser on the ground, who wrote to say he felt “the ECHR would apply” to troops in Iraq.

On one occasion, Rachel Quick, the legal adviser to Permanent Joint Headquarters who had regularly sought and been given guidance from Lord Goldsmith on the treatment of Iraqi prisoners, wrote to Colonel Mercer giving her interpretation of the Attorney General’s advice. His view, she said, “was that the HRA was only intended to protect rights conferred by the Convention and must look to international law to determine the scope of those rights”.

Ms Quick went on say that the advice of the Attorney General, supported by Professor Christopher Greenwood [the barrister who advised Lord Goldsmith on the legality of the war], was that, in the circumstances, the HRA did not apply. “For your purposes,” she wrote, “I would suggest this means no requirement for you to provide guidance on the application of the HRA. I hope this is clear.”

Ms Quick, who in November 2003, was appointed OBE, added: “With regard to the detention of civilians - I will look at your documents in more detail and discuss with FCO, MoD legal advisers. Although my initial thoughts are you are trying to introduce UK procedures to a Geneva Convention IV context. Whilst this may be the perfect solution it may not be the pragmatic solution. Again we raised this issue with the AG and got a helpful steer on the procedures. I’ll aim to try to produce guidance, taking into account their advice on the detention of civilians.”

Such were the concerns of legal advisers on the ground over the Attorney General’s views that the MoD arranged for the senior legal adviser at the Foreign Office, Gavin Hood, to visit Permanent Joint Headquarters to settle any worries. Crucially, the emails make clear Lord Goldsmith’s legal opinion was not shared by Colonel Mercer, who contacted his superiors in London to ask for guidance after he had witnessed the hooding of 40 Iraqis at a British PoW camp in March. The men were all forced to kneel in the sun and had their hands cuffed behind their backs. Worried this could leave the soldiers vulnerable to prosecutions, he told the MoD that in his view soldiers should behave in accordance with the “higher standard” of the Human Rights Act.

But the response from the military’s Permanent Joint Headquarters in Qatar was that Lord Goldsmith had told the MoD the human rights law did not apply and soldiers should simply observe the Geneva Conventions.

When Colonel Mercer said he disagreed with the Government’s most senior law officer he was told that “perhaps you should put yourself up as the next Attorney General”. Colonel Mercer also asked for a British judge to be flown out to oversee the procedures for the detention of Iraqi prisoners, but this also was blocked at a high level.

Colonel Mercer’s interpretation of the law has since proved correct. Thirty months after he first raised his concerns during the Iraq conflict, the Court of Appeal ruled that British soldiers were bound by the Human Rights Act, which bans torture or degrading of prisoners.

The emails, part of court documents being prepared to support a judicial review in the High Court this year, reveal considerable disquiet among the military about the Attorney General’s advice.

The documents show that as early as March 2003, the International Committee of the Red Cross had begun investigating complaints of possible war crimes by British soldiers at the same PoW camp in south-east Iraq that had prompted Colonel Mercer’s original intervention. The Government was so worried about this that it flew out a political adviser from London to address the Red Cross’s concerns about hooding and other practices.

International law

* Torture is defined by international law as any threat or use of severe pain, physical or mental, against an individual with the intention of obtaining a confession or other information. Under the UN Convention Against Torture, 40 states - including Britain - have agreed not to engage in such practices.

During military conflict the third and fourth Geneva Conventions protect prisoners of war and civilians who are held by soldiers. Torture is also defined as a war crime by the International Criminal Court, which describes it as the unlawful infliction of severe pain.

Many of the incidents of abuse committed by British soldiers on Iraqi civilians may fall outside the strict definition of torture under international law.

But under the European Convention of Human Rights, incorporated in the Human Rights Act 1998, there is no requirement that the threat or use of pain should be severe for an act to fall foul of the law.

Lord Goldsmith argued that because UK forces did not have full control of Iraq, the country was not part of its jurisdiction and therefore the Human Rights Act did not apply. He lost this argument when the Court of Appeal ruled that Iraqi civilians held in custody and the soldiers detaining them were subject to the Human Rights Act. The case is to be settled later this year by the House of Lords. If the Government loses then it is expected that full and independent inquiries will be held into the deaths, disappearances and torture of Iraqis by British soldiers.

Have Your Say: Human rights in Iraq: a case to answer
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The Real Big Brother Britain

Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

A cross RINF/Defy-ID event looking at the harsh reality of how Great Britain has become an Orwellian nightmare, we also look at future plans for the nation and what you can do about it.

26 JUNE, FRIENDS MEETING HOUSE, LANCASTER DOORs @ 7:30PM, FREE ADMISSION

Includes film screenings and talks:

The Big Brother State
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

Suspect Nation
Since Tony Blair’s New Labour government came to power in 1997, the UK civil liberties landscape has changed dramatically. ASBOs were introduced by Section 1 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and first used in 1999. The right to remain silent is no longer universal. Our right to privacy, free from interception of communications has been severely curtailed. The ability to travel without surveillance (or those details of our journeys being retained) has disappeared. Indeed, as Henry Porter (the Observer journalist famous for his recent email clash with Tony Blair over the paring down of civil liberties) reveals in this unsettling film, our movements are being watched, and recorded, more than ever before. The multi-billion pound introduction of national identity cards and biometric passports will make it ever harder for us to go anywhere, or buy anything, without leaving an electronic trail of information.

The True Face of the EU
‘The EU has been sold to Britain as our best hope for the future . . . But behind the scenes, has another, more unsettling agenda been unfolding? The European Economic Community (EEC) began for Britain as a free-trade agreement in 1972. Today’s European Union is well on its way to becoming a federal superstate, complete with one currency, one legal system, one military, one police force – even its own national anthem. In this shocking new documentary featuring EU insiders and commentators, independent author Phillip Day covers the history and goals of the European Union, as well as the disturbing, irrevocable implications this new government has for every British citizen. Whether the viewer is for or against Britain’s participation, this film asks the troubling questions the mainstream media has refused to confront.’

Have Your Say: The Real Big Brother Britain
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Medical Experiments Can Be Done Without Patient’s Consent

Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

ROB STEIN, WASHINGTON POST - The federal government is undertaking the most ambitious set of studies ever mounted under a controversial arrangement that allows researchers to conduct some kinds of medical experiments without first getting the patients’ permission. The $50 million, five-year project, which will involve more than 20,000 patients in 11 sites in the United States and Canada, is designed to improve treatment after car accidents, shootings, cardiac arrest and other emergencies.

The three studies, organizers say, offer an unprecedented opportunity to find better ways to resuscitate people whose hearts suddenly stop, to stabilize patients who go into shock and to minimize damage from head injuries. Because such patients are usually unconscious at a time when every minute counts, it is often impossible to get consent from them or their families, the organizers say. . .

Some bioethicists say the new research is more ethical than some of the earlier studies in several ways, including that patients are not being denied highly effective therapies. Most patients who receive the current treatments do not survive. . . But others say that the studies could be done by finding patients or family members who are in a position to provide consent, even though that might make such studies more difficult.

“This just seems like lazy investigators not wanting to try to get informed consent in situations where it is difficult to get it, so they say it is impossible,” said George Annas, a Boston University bioethicist. . . Annas was particularly disturbed that children as young as 15 might be included in the research. “Suppose a 15-year-old child is in the back of a car that is in a terrible accident,” Annas said. “The EMTs arrive and say: ‘We are doing an experiment with two techniques. We think they are about equal. Is it okay if we flip a coin to see how we treat your son? Or would you rather we just give him the treatment we think is best?’ Unless you think all parents would have the EMTs flip a coin, consent here is necessary.”

Others are concerned patients may be getting experimental therapies that could turn out to be inferior to standard treatments.

ECHOES FROM THE PAST

GINA KOLATA, NY TIMES, 1996 - For the first time in a half century, new Federal regulations allow investigators to enroll patients in some medical research studies without their consent. The Food and Drug Administration regulations, . . . apply only in carefully circumscribed situations. The patients must have a life-threatening condition, like a severe head injury, and must be unable to say whether they want to be part of a study. They would be selected only if it was not feasible to obtain consent from a relative. Furthermore, the community in which the research is done must be notified about the study, and the research design must have been reviewed and approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Even the most ardent supporters of the new regulations say they understand the seriousness of what they have done. They have repealed a principle that dates back to the Nuremberg trials of Nazi doctors after World War II, when American judges were agonizing over rules that might prevent doctors from ever again using human subjects in horrendous experiments. The judges wrote a code of ethics, the Nuremberg Code, whose first principle was that no one should ever be forced to take part in a medical experiment. “The voluntary consent of the human subject is essential,” they wrote. . .

“It’s a fateful step,” Jay Katz, an ethicist and lawyer at Yale University, said in a telephone interview from Germany, where he was at a conference marking the 50th anniversary of the Nuremberg doctors’ trials. “The first sentence of the first principle of the Nuremberg Code,” he said, stated that nothing should be done to human beings without their consent. And now, he said, “here we are making exceptions.”

US HOLOCAUST MUSEUM - During World War II, a number of German physicians conducted painful and often deadly experiments on thousands of concentration camp prisoners without their consent. Unethical medical experimentation carried out during the Third Reich may be divided into three categories. The first category consists of experiments aimed at facilitating the survival of Axis military personnel. In Dachau, physicians from the German air force and from the German Experimental Institution for Aviation conducted high-altitude experiments, using a low-pressure chamber, to determine the maximum altitude from which crews of damaged aircraft could parachute to safety. Scientists there carried out so-called freezing experiments using prisoners to find an effective treatment for hypothermia. They also used prisoners to test various methods of making seawater potable.

The second category of experimentation aimed at developing and testing pharmaceuticals and treatment methods for injuries and illnesses which German military and occupation personnel encountered in the field. . . The third category of medical experimentation sought to advance the racial and ideological tenets of the Nazi worldview. The most infamous were the experiments of Josef Mengele at Auschwitz. Mengele conducted medical experiments on twins. He also directed serological experiments on Roma (Gypsies), as did Werner Fischer at Sachsenhausen, in order to determine how different “races” withstood various contagious diseases. The research of August Hirt at Strasbourg University also intended to establish “Jewish racial inferiority.”

LANCET, 2005 - Patients the world over need adequate protection from overreaching physicians who use patients to test experimental drugs and procedures without their informed consent. Jacques Michel, a retired director of Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem who also heads the hospital ethics committee, triggered an investigation of 39 hospitals by Israel’s State comptroller, the government watchdog.

The findings of non-consensual experiments conducted primarily on children, the elderly and psychiatric patients, shocked Israelis. . . The violations were found to be worst in geriatric, rehabilitation, and psychiatric hospitals, where some children had their eardrums deliberately pierced so that a drug could be applied. In another painful procedure, a needle was used to draw urine from the bladder for testing without health ministry approval.”. . . “Anyone who performs a medical experiment on someone who doesn’t or is unable to give his informed consent should be tried for physical assault.”

WIKIPEDIA - The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male. . . became notorious because it was conducted without due care to its subjects, and led to major changes in how patients are protected in clinical studies. Individuals enrolled in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study did not give informed consent and were not informed of their diagnosis; instead they were told they had “bad blood” and could receive free medical treatment, rides to the clinic, meals and burial insurance in case of death in return for participating.

In 1932, when the study started, standard treatments for syphilis were toxic, dangerous, and of questionable effectiveness. Part of the original goal of the study was to determine if patients were better off not being treated with these toxic remedies.

By 1947, penicillin had become the standard treatment for syphilis. Prior to this discovery, syphilis frequently led to a chronic, painful and fatal multisystem disease. Rather than treat all syphilitic subjects with penicillin and close the study, or split off a control group for testing penicillin; the Tuskegee scientists withheld penicillin and information about penicillin, purely to continue to study how the disease spreads and kills. Participants were also prevented from accessing syphilis treatment programs that were available to other people in the area. The study continued until 1972, when a leak to the press resulted in its termination.

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Israel knew Six Day War was illegal, Secret Memo Reveals

Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

Donald Macintyre

A senior legal official who secretly warned the government of Israel after the Six Day War of 1967 that it would be illegal to build Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories has said, for the first time, that he still believes that he was right.

The declaration by Theodor Meron, the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s legal adviser at the time and today one of the world’s leading international jurists, is a serious blow to Israel’s persistent argument that the settlements do not violate international law, particularly as Israel prepares to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the war in June 1967.

The legal opinion, a copy of which has been obtained by The Independent, was marked “Top Secret” and “Extremely Urgent” and reached the unequivocal conclusion, in the words of its author’s summary, “that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

Judge Meron, president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia until 2005, said that, after 40 years of Jewish settlement growth in the West Bank - one of the main problems to be solved in any peace deal: ” I believe that I would have given the same opinion today.”

Judge Meron, a holocaust survivor, also sheds new light on the aftermath of the 1967 war by disclosing that the Foreign Minister, Abba Eban, was ” sympathetic” to his view that civilian settlement would directly conflict with the Hague and Geneva conventions governing the conduct of occupying powers.

Despite the legal opinion, which was forwarded to Levi Eshkol, the Prime Minister, but not made public at the time, the Labour cabinet progressively sanctioned settlements. This paved the way to growth which has resulted in at least 240,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank today.

Judge Meron, 76, is now an appeal judge at the Tribunal. Speaking about his 1967 opinion for the first time, he also tells tomorrow’s Independent Magazine: “It’s obvious to me that the fact that settlements were established and the pace of the establishment of the settlements made peacemaking much more difficult.”

Blaming restrictions on Palestinian movement for the devasatation of the Palestinian economy, the World Bank earlier this month acknowledged Israeli security concerns but added that many of the restrictions were aimed at ” enhancing the free movement of settlers and the physical and economic expansion of the settlements at the expense of the Palestinian population.” The settlements and their “jurisdictions” effectively control about 40 per cent of the area of the West Bank.

The argument that the settlements are illegal, stated in successive UN resolutions, and by the International Court of Justice advisory opinion condemning the separation barrier in 2004, is reinforced by such an authoritative source. It strengthens the political case in any “final status” negotiations on borders with the Palestinians for genuinely equitable land swaps of Israeli territory to a future Palestinian state if Israel is to retain settlement blocks.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon secured a promise in 2004 from President George Bush that large Israeli “population centres” in the West Bank could remain in Israel in any such negotiations. In a subsequent letter to the Palestinians, the President promised that final borders had to be subject to agreement by negotiation.

Judge Meron’s memorandum was obtained from the Israel State Archives. His subsequent defence of it amounts to a direct challenge to Israel’s continuing contention that the Geneva Convention’s provisions on settling people in occupied territory did not apply to the West Bank because its annexation by Jordan between 1949 and 1967 had been unilateral.

The memorandum was written in September 1967 as the Eshkol government was already considering Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Golan Heights, seized from Syria during the Six Day War. It says that the international community had already rejected the “argument that the West Bank is not ‘normal occupied territory’.”

It pointed out that the British ambassador to the United Nations, Lord Caradon, had already asserted that Israel’s position was that of an occupier. It added that a decree from the army command saying that military courts would “fulfil Geneva provisions” indicated that Israel thought so too.

Judge Meron also says in his interview that such an argument would not in any case have applied to the Golan Heights which had been undisputed as sovereign Syrian territory prior to the Six Day War.

While the Olmert government has so far rejected calls for peace negotiations by Syria’s President Bashir Assad, it has been weighing a welter of internal advice proposing that it explores talks seeking an end to Syrian support for Hizbollah and Hamas in return for restoring the Golan Heights to Syria.

The memorandum, details of which were published by the Israeli writer Gershom Gorenberg last year, also says settlements built on private land would explicitly contravene the 1907 Hague Convention.

The only implicit acknowledgement of the Meron memorandum - which Mr Gorenberg established also went to Moshe Dayan, the triumphant Defence Minister during the Six Day War - was that one of the first West Bank settlements, Kfar Etzion, was initially called a “military outpost” although it was already, in effect, a civilian settlement. The memorandum said there was no legal prohibition against military posts in occupied territory.

Ehud Olmert fought the Israeli election last year on a programme of unilateral withdrawal from parts of the West Bank - usually thought to mean dismantling settlements east of the separation barrier, which cuts deep into the West Bank in places. But this strategy was abandoned after the Lebanon war.

Mark Regev, the foreign ministry spokesman, said yesterday: “We do not accept that the West Bank is occupied in the classic sense.” He added that it was not sovereign Jordanian territory before 1967 and it had not enjoyed legal status since the British mandate, which had the remit, underpinned by the League of Nations, of establishing a Jewish national home.

He added: “That said we accept the principle of two states living side by side and obviously in the creation of this state settlements will be coming down. I would point anyone who says that is impossible to what happened in Gaza less than two years ago.”

Mr Regev also said that in some settlements - like Hebron where Jews left after a massacre by Arabs in 1929 - Jews had a long history of residence preceding the War of Independence in 1948.

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Iran Charges 3 Americans With Spying

Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

U.S. academic Haleh Esfandiari and two other Iranian-Americans have been “formally charged” with endangering national security and espionage, Iran’s judiciary spokesman said Tuesday.

“Esfandiari has been formally charged with endangering national security through propaganda against the system and espionage for foreigners,” Judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi told reporters. “She has been informed of the charges against her. The complainant is the Intelligence Ministry.”

Jamshidi did not say when the specific allegations had been read to Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars. She has been held at Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison since early May.

Jamshidi said the same charges had also been lodged against Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planning consultant who has also worked for the World Bank, and journalist Parnaz Azima. No trial date has been announced and Jamshidi said the investigation against all three is continuing.

It was the first time the government has confirmed the arrest of Tajbakhsh, who was believed to have been taken into custody around May 11, according to George Soros’ Open Society Institute. Azima, who works for the U.S.-funded Radio Farda, was detained but released and barred from leaving the country.

The Intelligence Ministry has accused Esfandiari and her organization of trying to set up networks of Iranians with the ultimate goal of creating a “soft revolution” in Iran, along the lines of the revolutions that ended Communist rule in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The Ministry has alleged that the Open Society Institute, which seeks to promote democracy, was part of the conspiracy.

Esfandiari’s family, the Wilson Center and the Open Society Institute deny the allegations.

Under Iranian law, the distinction between someone being accused and charged is less clear than in the United States and many Western countries, especially in matters of national security. Security courts have wide latitude, with the option of dropping the proceedings at any time or even holding trials in secret.

However, the statement issued by Jamshidi (seen at left) that specific allegations had been read to Esfandiari and the others indicates the cases have been raised to a new level under the Iranian legal system.

The Associated Press telephoned a spokeswoman for the Soros Foundation in New York for comment but she could not be reached.

The 67-year-old Esfandiari has for years brought prominent Iranians to Washington to talk about the political situation in Iran, some of whom have been subsequently detained and questioned back home. Her defenders say some of those she brought to the U.S. were supporters of the Iranian government who sought to explain Tehran’s stance to Americans.

Esfandiari had been trapped in Iran since December, when three masked men with knives stole her luggage and passport as she headed to the airport to leave the country, the Wilson Center said. In the weeks before her arrest, she was called in for questioning daily on her activities, it said.

Iran has stepped up accusations that the United States trying to use internal critics to destabilize the government. Tensions have mounted between the two countries over Iran’s nuclear program and U.S. allegations that the Iranians have been supporting armed groups in Iraq.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hardline government has also increased restrictions on local non-governmental organizations, particularly women’s rights groups and other critics.

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CIA keeps an eye on stock markets: ‘War against terror’

Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

Masood Haider

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is regularly briefing the US Securities and Exchange Commission (which oversees American stock and other capital markets) about activities of terrorists and other criminals in the global stock markets, powerful financial publication Barron’s discloses in its latest edition.

In the wake of financial scandals in the world capital markets and the insider trading cases have spurred the US authorities to look into the manipulation of volatile stock markets by the savvy terrorists networks to make money.

Barron’s says that SEC Chairman Christopher Cox and the four other commissioners were informed that activities of terrorists and other criminals were increasing in the global capital markets.

In an interview with Barron’s last week, Mr Cox said that intelligence reports offer the SEC a “somewhat sharper focus” to an “underworld of murky, illegal dealings that threaten the world capital markets”.

“The US government’s focus on money laundering and terrorist financing and other criminal activities in the capital markets has laid bare a good deal of activity of that sort,” Mr Cox added. He declined to elaborate.

The Barron’s said in a “James Bond scenario” in which terrorists bought millions of dollars of put options and blew up buildings or aeroplanes to increase the puts’ value was deemed unlikely by intelligence authorities. Yet less developed securities markets have reported stock trading by terrorists to raise money. In February, India’s national security adviser M.K. Narayanan said at a security-policy conference in Munich that India had evidence of “isolated incidents of terrorist outfits manipulating the stock markets to raise funds for their operations.” Mr Cox would not say if terrorists were active, or present, in US markets. But he was clear about the reason for this increased illegal activity in global markets.

“This phenomenon is born of the arrival on the scene of so many different, and substantial, liquidity pools,” Mr Cox said. “It used to be that significant capital had to be raised in the United States,” but that is no longer true.

And therein lies SEC’s great regulatory challenge. While insider trading in Dow Jones, TXU and Reebok securities linked to Hong Kong, Pakistani and Croatian residents may capture public attention, more significant market threats are harder to detect.

Criminals now purposefully disperse operations into different countries to avoid detection and prosecution. For example, residents of Hong Kong, Malaysia, Estonia and Latvia have hacked into US online brokerage accounts and used the money to bid up the price of their own stocks. In one “account intrusion” case, criminals made more than $732,000 trading 15 Nasdaq-listed stocks.

The SEC’s jurisdiction ends, of course, at the US border, and extends into foreign countries through agreements with foreign regulators. This is how the commission freezes bank and brokerage accounts in foreign countries.

“We’re not into real time international enforcement,” Mr Cox said. “We now have templates for sharing information in many cases on a prudential basis in advance of problems cropping up.”

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