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Torture, rape, murder…. Liberation: US style

Sunday, July 1st, 2007


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Pentagon’s Psychic Vision Revisited

Sunday, July 1st, 2007

By Sharon Weinberger

Some people believe he’s part of an elaborate government plot that abducts and harasses innocent civilians. Some view him as a military visionary. With his interest in parapsychology and near death experience, some think he watched one too many episodes of the X-Files. To me, he’s the sort of person I most enjoy speaking with: out on the edge (and sometimes, way out on the edge), but not afraid to speak to those who may question his views.

John Alexander, a former Green Beret, earned a reputation in the 1990s as a vocal advocate of nonlethal weapons research. He was also a champion of the government’s now defunct “Remote Viewing” program, which, until its termination in 1995, sought to use psychics in the service of national security. Today, he continues to advise the military and frequently writes on national security issues. We met for dinner earlier this month and it was about the time that Alexander started talking about witches that I asked him if I could record some of our dinner conversation. After all, it’s not too often that you get to talk about witchcraft in the context of national security.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Danger Room: So, tell me about the witches [who were brought into the Remote Viewing program].

John Alexander: It was a group of women. They were not doing remote viewing. They were doing palmistry, crystal ball kinds of stuff. This was very different from the guys who were the remote viewers, who were following very strict protocols.

DR: Then who were the witches?

JA: They were more like storefront psychics.

DR: Like you have all over in Washington, D.C.?

JA: Yeah.

DR: What year are we talking about?

JA: Must have been the 1990s. I’m not sure exactly what year, by 1995, [the remote viewing program] was dead.

DR: Were the witches successful?

JA: Not terribly. They lacked discipline and protocols.

DR: But I thought you could train anyone in remote viewing?

JA: Well, yes and no. My thesis on it is that this is a latent skill everybody has. You can run, but I doubt seriously you can run a four-minute miles. You can get better, within limits. I suspect this was much the same way. We’re still to this day figuring out how it works. How good could it possibility work. The problem initially was, how could this work? And if that answer were, yes, how could you do that? The explanation almost invariably is some kind of electromagnetic wave. That works, until you start perturbating time.

DR: Up until when?!

JA: When you start perturbating time. Obviously, that’s not an electromagnetic phenomenon.

DR: Hm, I guess not. But if you’re viewing submarines in other countries, where are you getting the signal?

JA: That’s the question. So, the theoretical construct is important, because through that you can build a training system. Obviously it seems to work.

DR: How hard is this to test?

JA: We’ve done that, and yes it works. The effect is real, yet small.

DR: If the Remote Viewing program had survived, where do you think it would be today?

JA: That’s an interesting question. The problem at the moment is everything is zero sum. The quote I heard today is, “TRADOC [Army Training and Doctrine Command] is a shadow of its former self.” Who is doing the long-range planning? The answer is, nobody. There’s nobody left. The question would have been, at this juncture: what resources would be available to do that? Active duty [personnel] would have been probably stripped away. You might have had some civilians, or reservists. Would it have advanced? It probably would have made some advances. It would not have had a huge impact.

DR: Would something like the Remote Viewing program be possible today [in the Pentagon]?

JA: My next monograph… is on creativity. SOCOM [Special Operations Command] says creativity is a core value, and I say, that’s interesting, but it’s a lot easier to say than do. What I’ve done is taken a series of things we did in the military, all of which were successful, The RV [Remote Viewing] program being one of them, and yet they all died. There are three things you need. You’ve got to have the champion, the guy who understand and has a vision; you have got to have angels, the protectors like you saw in the RV program; and you have got to have resources to make it work.

[For nonlethal weapons] I was a champion, but I had no angels. And the people who supported me were on the outside. I didn’t have any cover inside. [Those inside] didn’t want to pursue it.

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US warned of Glasgow attack 2 weeks ago - report

Sunday, July 1st, 2007

Ynet

Security official says Washington received warnings of possible terror attacks against airports in Scotland two weeks ago.

US security officials received warnings two weeks ago of a possible terror attack against “airport infrastructure or aircraft” in Glasgow, a senior official told ABCNews.com on Saturday.

The intelligence reports also warned that airports and aircraft in the Czech Republic would be the targets of attacks by al-Qaeda terrorists.

An SUV laden with explosive materials went ablaze at Glasgow airport on Saturday after its two occupants, apparently al-Qaeda operatives, crashed it into entrance doors in the main terminal.

The incident occurred a day after police in London defused two cars laden with gas canisters, gasoline and nails in two bustling areas in the capital.

US officials told ABC that the warnings about a possible terror attack in Scotland were kept secret for operational reasons.

US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the US would not raise the level of alert because there was no specific intelligence pointing to imminent terror attacks in the US.

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UK smoking ban is just the start. Could your home be next?

Sunday, July 1st, 2007

The man behind the ban on smoking in pubs and enclosed public spaces hasn’t finished yet. He wants to extend prohibition to private homes. Jonathan Owen reports on a smoking revolution

The Independent

From today, smokers will have to huddle outside in the rain like miserable outcasts because cigarettes have been banned from almost every enclosed public space. But the war is far from over: even in victory the enemies of nicotine intend to show no mercy, fining companies that let their employees drop butts and even hunting down addicts to their own homes.

The Government’s top smoking adviser is calling for a new government tobacco task force that can identify anyone who still dares to puff away in apparent privacy and persuade, cajole or bully them into quitting. “We can apply powerful social pressure on parents not to smoke in the house. It must be completely taboo for parents to smoke indoors when there are children present,” said Professor Robert West of University College London. “We’re talking about thousands of children whose health is adversely affected by passive smoking.”

Today the air will be clean in many English public places for the first time. The biggest smoking ban anywhere in the world will affect 3.7 million businesses, including 200,000 pubs, bars and restaurants. Those who have never lit up will be free at last from the risks of passive smoking, as England experiences a social revolution of the kind enjoyed by Scotland, Ireland and Wales before it. But in every revolution there are losers - and this time the miserable ones will be those who have failed or refuse to give up, despite the hugely expensive campaigns and legislation aimed at getting them to do so.

Segregated as never before, forced outside and reviled, pro-smoking advocates can barely contain their fury at what is happening. “The Government has manufactured a climate of fear about the effects of passive smoking and used it to justify draconian legislation out of all proportion to the actual risk,” said Simon Clark, director of the smokers’ rights group Forest. He warns that there is increasing anger over “institutionalised bullying” and that if smokers are penalised further, the Government is going to have a serious revolt on its hands. “The more smokers are told what to do, the more they will reach for their fags in defiance.”

But they will not even be able to retreat to the living room if Professor West gets his way. The man behind the NHS’s stop smoking campaign is urging ministers to take the hardest of lines. “Society has to wake up to this problem and deal with it,” he said.

Every year 17,000 under-fives are admitted to hospital suffering from the effects of passive smoking. And of the 12,000 deaths from the same cause each year, only 500 are from exposure to smoke in the workplace. Respiratory diseases such as asthma and pneumonia are far more common in children who have a parent who smokes. They are three times more likely to develop lung cancer in later life than children of non-smokers.

“The jury is still out on whether more will stop smoking at home,” said Professor West, who is not convinced by the Department of Health’s hope of a knock-on effect. “My own view is that the ban will make little difference one way or the other.”

Dr Douglas Bettcher, director of the World Health Organisation’s Tobacco Free Initiative, told The Independent on Sunday: “There is no doubt that breathing second-hand tobacco smoke is very dangerous to your health. It causes cancer and other diseases that might lead to death. We know that there is no safe level of human exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke.”

A confidential government briefing document obtained by the IoS states that provisions are already in place for extending the ban to outdoor areas: “The Health Act 2006 does include powers to make non-enclosed places smoke free if there is a significant risk that people there might be exposed to significant quantities of smoke.”

Ministers are believed to be considering a range of options to reduce the number of smokers. These include testing pregnant women for carbon monoxide levels and referring smokers for treatment, as well as introducing stop-smoking clinics in schools. Parents who buy cigarettes for young children and allow them to smoke in the home are expected to be given extra parenting help as part of the Government’s scheme to target help at families where children are at risk of a poor home life.

Some Primary Care Trusts around the country have already started “smoke-free home” schemes where parents are encouraged to quit smoking for the sake of their children’s health. But supporters warn that cuts to anti-smoking programmes have created a postcode lottery of provision.

A recent Populus poll found that 91 per cent of people supported a ban on smoking near children, and 62 per cent thought there should be a ban on smoking while driving.

Fears that the ban on smoking in public places will lead to crowds of office workers huddling in doorways dropping thousands of cigarette butts have prompted ministers to prepare to impose tough new littering penalties.

From today pubs, clubs and restaurants can be required to provide bins for cigarette butts and clean them up. The Government is also planning to change the law so that employers can be fined if they fail to stop workers dropping cigarette ends on the street.

And despite this being a day of rejoicing for them, anti-smoking campaigners are still calling for a massive increase in funding for tobacco control programmes, paid for by putting up the taxes on smoking yet further. They estimate that £250m a year is needed.

Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) wants a ban on tobacco products being displayed in shops or sold in vending machines. It also wants an end to brand names, logos and colours so that all cigarettes are sold in the same kind of packaging - an idea that the tobacco industry, predictably, opposes fiercely.

The Department of Health is, however, finalising proposals for the introduction of graphic picture warnings on tobacco packs, which are expected to come into force next year. Ministers are also considering placing information on where to get support to quit smoking on packs. Officials are looking into a ban on the display of tobacco products behind shop counters. The age at which cigarettes can be bought legally will rise from 16 to 18 this autumn. The move will be accompanied by a nationwide advertising campaign that will target teenagers.

A Department of Health spokesperson said: “In line with other countries, we expect smoke-free legislation to increase the number of smoke-free homes, as awareness of the risks of second-hand smoke is raised. We will take stock after 1 July and look at what further action is needed on tobacco control.”

Martin Dockerell, Ash spokesman, said: “Around one in four adults smoke and that number is falling but only very slowly - around 0.4 per cent per year. We’ve seen in other countries how easy it is to allow smoking rates to creep back upwards. Any sense in the Department of Health that the smoking box has been ticked would be a disaster.”

Although the ban in England has been motivated by concerns over the dangers of second-hand smoke to non-smokers, a bitter debate continues over the scientific evidence. Tobacco companies dispute the claims of medical experts such as the WHO and US Surgeon General who say that second-hand smoke kills and that there is no safe level of exposure. Imperial Tobacco is unmoved by the concerns, stating that “a ban on smoking in public places cannot be justified on health grounds”.

But in an effort to go on enjoying the profits of one of the world’s most lucrative industries, worth an estimated $400m (£200m) globally, behind the scenes tobacco companies are racing to develop a range of smokeless nicotine products in anticipation of even greater restrictions to come.

England is the last part of the UK to bring in a smoking ban. It follows Scotland, which banned smoking last April, and Northern Ireland and Wales, where bans began earlier this year. In Scotland and Ireland, doomsday predictions of the negative effects on business have yet to materialise. Instead, restaurants and pubs have invested millions in transforming traditional beer gardens into open-air smoking dens, with people puffing away under parasols and outdoor heaters. In Ireland, a study of bar workers before and after the introduction of the ban in 2004 revealed a reduction of more than 80 per cent in “particulate matter” caused by tobacco smoke. In Scotland, which banned smoking in public places more than a year ago, the Scottish Licensed Trade Association claims there has been a 20 per cent drop in sales and some bar staff have lost jobs. But in a country where 19 per cent of 15-year-olds smoke and an average of 13,000 Scots die every year from tobacco-related illnesses, the ban is regarded as having brought the biggest change to everyday life for decades. In both countries, though, the expected decline in smoking has yet to happen.

International opposition to smoking continues to grow. Britain is supporting new proposals from the World Health Organisation at a meeting in Bangkok tomorrow. More than 140 countries that have already signed up to an international treaty on tobacco control will be asked to ban all smoking in public indoor places like the UK, as well as pressure people - particularly parents - not to smoke at home.

Smoking causes more than 100,000 deaths in the UK each year and costs the NHS about £1.7bn annually. In anticipation of a surge in smokers wanting to stop, £56m has been allocated for stop-smoking programmes this year. Meanwhile, the market for nicotine replacement therapy products is worth more than £100m, a 40 per cent increase since 2002, according to research analysts Mintel.

The Department of Health estimates that less than 10 per cent of England’s 10 million smokers will quit. But the latest statistics, for April to December 2006, show that the number of smokers that managed to quit actually fell by 10 per cent last year - 188,000 compared to 208,878 for the same period in 2005. Even so, the Government says that it is on track to reach its target of reducing smoking to 21 per cent of the population by 2010.

Despite all this, Chris Ogden, director of the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association, remains confident his product will survive: “The predicted ‘meltdown’ in tobacco sales [in Scotland and Ireland] has not materialised,” he said. “Smokers adapt to the new rules and after an initial dip in consumption, sales volumes recover.”

Additional reporting by Marie Woolf, Liam Collins, Nina Lakhani and Paul Kelby

Opinion: Fanning the flames of dissent

The debate has always inflamed passions - not least among smokers who have experienced years of price rises and curbs on where they can and cannot smoke. Here six influential smokers have their say.

‘I am appalled at it. They are treating us like children. I’m not a schoolboy. Mr Brown thinks he’s a prefect’

David Hockney, Artist

‘We’re suppressing everyone these days, not allowing adults to make their own minds up’

Antony Worrall Thompson, Chef

‘The alleged danger of so-called second-hand smoke is so phoney it stinks to high heaven’

Joe Jackson, Musician

‘You would have to search the world very hard to find a single government that would say it was abolitionist’

Paul Adams, British American Tobacco

‘Smokers should not be discriminated against simply because they smoke’

Chris Ogden, Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association

‘I’m inventing bike sheds to attach to buildings so it’s somewhere people can go to smoke’

Joanna Lumley, Actress

Further viewing: ‘Thank You for Smoking’, Jason Reitman’s satirical comedy about spin in the tobacco industry, is available on DVD

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MPs to demand inquiry into abuse of prisoners in Iraq

Sunday, July 1st, 2007

By Andrew Johnson

An influential committee of MPs meets tomorrow to decide on holding a full inquiry into whether the Attorney General’s office or the MoD gave soldiers the green light to abuse detainees in Iraq.

Last Tuesday, Lord Goldsmith, the outgoing Attorney General, was asked by Parliament’s Joint Select Committee on Human Rights whether he gave the go-ahead for torture techniques used by British soldiers on Iraqi prisoners.

Baha Mousa, an innocent hotel worker, was beaten to death in military custody in 2003, despite warnings that the techniques breached the Geneva Convention, the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act.

Lord Goldsmith denied any knowledge of the torture until after Mr Mousa, 26, died. He also denied having any hand in, or knowledge of, an exchange of emails between Rachel Quick, a legal adviser to the armed forces’ Permanent Joint Headquarters, and Lieutenant-Colonel Nicholas Mercer, the Army’s legal chief in Basra.

Lt-Col Mercer had seen about 40 hooded prisoners kneeling in the hot sun with their hands cuffed behind their backs in March 2003, six months before Baha Mousa died. He considered what he saw illegal and told his superiors. He got an email from Ms Quick saying the Human Rights Act did not apply in Iraq and referred to advice given by the Attorney General. But Lord Goldsmith denied this, saying he had always believed the Human Rights Act did apply and called for a full inquiry, which the committee will consider.

In April 2003, the Red Cross made representations to Britain about its treatment of detainees in Iraq. Then Major-General Robin Brims, commander of the UK ground forces in Iraq, ordered hooding to be stop-ped. But hooding and subjecting prisoners to stress continued. Iraqis held with Mr Mousa said that torture techniques including sleep deprivation, food deprivation and noise were applied. These were banned by the government in 1972.

Mr Mousa’s father and nine former detainees are to sue the MoD after the Law Lords ruled that the Human Rights Act applies to areas abroad under British occupation, paving the way for the legal challenge by human rights solicitor Phil Shiner, of Birmingham’s Public Interest Lawyers.

Mr Shiner is seeking a judicial review in an effort to secure the release of documents referred to during the court martial of seven soldiers, which resulted in six acquittals and one soldier being jailed for a year.

He said: “Exactly what did Goldsmith advise at the time as to whether the higher standards should be applied in detention facilities or not? When Lt-Col Mercer blew the whistle, was he ever told of this, and if not, why not?

“It is not good enough for [Lord Goldsmith] to blithely tell us that although he accepts these banned techniques were reintroduced as a matter of policy - and Iraqis died as a result - it is nothing to do with him. I for one do not accept that.”

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Civilians Die In U.S.-NATO Air Assault In Afghanistan

Sunday, July 1st, 2007

By Griff Witte and Javed Hamdard

Just a week after Afghan President Hamid Karzai chastised international forces for being “careless,” Afghan officials reported Saturday that possibly 100 or more civilians had been killed in a NATO and U.S.-led assault.

The battle in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, which was prompted by a Taliban ambush, began Friday night and continued into Saturday morning, Afghan officials said. It ended with international forces bombing several compounds in the remote village of Hyderabad.

“More than 100 people have been killed. But they weren’t Taliban. The Taliban were far away from there,” said Wali Khan, a member of parliament who represents the area. “The people are already unhappy with the government. But these kinds of killings of civilians will cause people to revolt against the government.”

Another parliament member from Helmand, Mahmood Anwar, said that the death toll was close to 100 and that the dead included women and children. “Very few Taliban were killed,” he said.

Spokesmen for the international forces acknowledged that civilians were killed in the battle, though they disputed the numbers. Maj. John Thomas, a spokesman for the NATO force, said the civilian death toll was “an order of magnitude less” than what Afghan officials reported.

Thomas said U.S. ground forces helping to carry out a NATO mission had come under fire by Taliban insurgents using small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. Thomas said the troops responded by firing on insurgents who were shooting from a compound and a network of trenches. U.S. helicopters and NATO bombers were later brought in for support, he said.

Thomas said troops returned to the area after the battle and found what appeared to be civilian bodies among the dead insurgents in the trenches. “This confirms for us again that militants are willing to fire from among civilians,” he said.

“We are deeply saddened by any loss of innocent lives,” U.S. Army Maj. Chris Belcher, a coalition forces spokesman, said in a statement. “Insurgents are continuing their tactic of using women and children as human shields in close combat.”

Karzai has not accepted that argument, repeatedly criticizing international troops for not doing more to protect noncombatants. After a series of particularly deadly incidents in June that Karzai blamed on poor coordination, he told reporters that international troops would have to “work the way we ask them to work.”

Violence has increased in recent months in Afghanistan, especially in Helmand. A NATO soldier was killed and another injured in a separate incident in the province Saturday. The force did not identify the soldiers’ nationalities.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan on Saturday, three civilians were killed and seven injured when a Taliban rocket missed a NATO base in the eastern province of Kunar.

More than 2,800 people have been killed in violence in Afghanistan so far this year, compared with 4,000 killed in all of last year, according to a tally by the Associated Press. The AP counts hundreds of civilians killed. Slightly more have been killed by NATO and U.S.-led forces than by the Taliban, according to several independent assessments.

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How Cheney abused his power in war on terror

Sunday, July 1st, 2007

By Tim Shipman

Vice-President Dick Cheney was personally responsible for American policies that subjected terrorist suspects to cruelty and denied them the right to a fair trial, according to revelations from senior US government officials.

	Dick Cheney now looks like a ‘comic book villain’

The details have laid bare more than ever before the remarkable influence of Mr Cheney in shaping the prosecution of the war on terror which led to the scandals at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

The claims that Mr Cheney manoeuvred to circumvent both American and international law came as the vice-president last week faced three new congressional demands that he release information on his activities.

Even his supporters admitted that the disclosures have left Mr Cheney looking like a “comic-book villain” whose contempt for process, including within the White House, has undermined public support for President Bush.

A year-long investigation by The Washington Post uncovered details of how in November 2001 - two months after the September 11 atrocities - Vice-President Cheney went behind the backs of the secretary of state, Colin Powell, and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to deny foreign terrorist suspects access to a court.

In a private dinner with President Bush, Mr Cheney presented him with an order written by his own lawyer, David Addington, denying suspects a civilian trial or a court martial and ordering that they could be confined indefinitely without charge.

Within an hour of the meal, the document had been signed by the president, having been whisked straight to his desk on Vice-President Cheney’s orders, without being seen by senior White House staff. Miss Rice was described as “incensed” and when Mr Powell learnt of the decision from television news he snapped: “What the hell just happened?”

Mr Cheney then ordered his legal team secretly to draw up orders for intelligence agencies to intercept letters, telephone calls and electronic communications to and from America, without a warrant - something forbidden by federal law since 1978.

Last week, the powerful Senate judiciary committee issued subpoenas to Mr Cheney and the White House, demanding access to documents relating to that decision.

Then, in January 2002, Mr Cheney decided that America must abandon the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of enemy prisoners, which outlawed torture.

He personally commissioned legal opinions that would maintain a ban on torture but permit “cruel, inhuman or degrading” interrogation methods. A document drawn up by Mr Addington was adopted, verbatim, by President Bush.

In August that year, the vice-president’s lawyer inserted a paragraph into a memo of instructions for the CIA on torture which claimed that laws forbidding any person to “commit torture do not apply” to the president because that would be a restriction of his right to wage war.

The US Supreme Court has since given three rulings contradicting Vice-President Cheney’s view of the president’s powers, culminating in June with a demand for the Guantánamo inmates to face trial.

But Mr Cheney is accused of continuing to try to bypass international law. When the Senate voted in 2005 to support the Geneva Conventions, Vice-President Cheney - defying opposition from the CIA, the Pentagon, and state and justice departments had a clause inserted into the bill, which meant that the US military is bound by it but not the CIA.

The revelations paint a picture of a man obsessed by secrecy and the accumulation of power. The vice-president keeps even routine papers in a safe in his office, refuses to disclose the names or the size of his staff and has ordered the Secret Service to destroy his visitor logs.

He has even created his own security designation, stamping “Treated As: Top Secret/SCI” (special compartmented intelligence) on mundane papers, in an attempt to protect what are in fact unclassified documents. The classification suggests that their disclosure could cause “exceptionally grave damage to national security”. He even put the Top Secret stamp on a paper detailing talking points for officials to use with the press - information he actually wanted to be made public.

Mr Cheney also ordered that images of his official residence be pixelated on the Google Earth website, which features satellite photographs, while the White House and Capitol remain fully visible.

He is now under investigation by the House of Representatives committee on government oversight for refusing to follow a long-standing directive ordering his office, among other government agencies, to hand over to the National Archives details of how he uses classified information. When challenged, he recommended abolition of the archive office.

Last week Mr Cheney and Mr Addington tried to argue that he was not bound by the rules, claiming that he is not part of the executive branch of government because he also acts as president of the Senate. They abandoned that position when congressional Democrats threatened to strip him of his executive funding. “He’s saying he’s above the law,” said Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the oversight committee.

Vice-President Cheney has previously claimed executive privilege - the opposite excuse - in refusing to hand over details of which oil companies he consulted when drawing up American energy policy.

The Washington Post series also detailed how he ordered the diversion of a river to irrigate farms in Oregon, in pursuit of farmers’ votes, despite scientific evidence that this would endanger two protected species of fish. The move killed 80,000 salmon. Last week that issue became the subject of an inquiry by another House committee.

Allies say Mr Cheney is unrepentant. “The only person in Washington who cares less about his public image than David Addington is Dick Cheney,” said a former White House ally.

“What both of them miss is that in times of war, a prerequisite for success is people having confidence in their leadership. This is the great failure of the administration - a complete and total indifference to public opinion.”

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Fifth terrorist suspect arrested in Britain

Sunday, July 1st, 2007

A person was arrested in the British city of Liverpool in connection with the attempted car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow, police reported Sunday, bringing the total number of suspects detained to five.

Details were not yet known about the Liverpool arrest.

The four previous arrests included two men who were in a burning vehicle driven into Glasgow airport Saturday and two suspects arrested in Cheshire in connection with Friday’s discovery of two car bombs in London.

The fifth arrest comes as British police were searching for terrorism suspects at several houses near Glasgow airport, British media reported.

Lord Stevens, an adviser to the new British government, stated that there was a connection between terrorist activities in Iraq and recent attempts in Britain, the British Sunday News of the World reported Sunday.

The report cited Lord Stevens as saying Friday and Saturday’s would-be attackers in Britain were using the same bomb-making techniques that are used in the current Iraq insurgency and in the Bali terrorist attacks in 2005.

The British adviser said that it was not credible that disaffected young British Muslims were simply learning terror methods over the internet, but rather the tactics were being ‘imported from Baghdad.’

In an interview with the BBC on Sunday, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the failed car bomb attacks were attempts to kill many people and cause major damage.

The new prime minister, who replaced Tony Blair on Wednesday, said that it is clear Britain is confronted by people with connections to the al-Qaeda terror network.

‘The first duty of the government is the security and safety of all the British people, so it is right to raise the level of security at airports and in crowded places in the light of the heightened threat,’ the prime minister said.

Britain’s threat level is ‘critical,’ the highest level and one that indicates that attacks are ‘imminent.’

Brown warned that the terrorist threat will be ‘long-term and sustained’ and he asked the public to be ‘constantly vigilant.’

‘We have to fight it in a number of different ways - militarily, by security, by police, by intelligence,’ Brown said. ‘We’ve got to also fight it as a battle of hearts and minds.

On Saturday a Jeep Cherokee was driven into the curbside doors of the airport’s terminal building. The vehicle burst into flames as it crashed into the glass front doors of the check-in terminal about 3:15 pm (1415 GMT) but it did not fully explode.

The car did not completely enter the terminal building, but the ensuring fire did extensive damage. One person was slightly injured.

One of the two suspects arrested after climbing out of the blazing Jeep was being treated at Royal Alexandria Hospital in nearby Paisley.

Scottish Police Chief Constable William Rae said the suspect had suffered severe burns and was in critical condition. Witnesses said that the man’s hair and much of his clothes and skin were burned off.

The second suspect arrested at the airport was being held at high- security Govan police station.

Scottish police said late Saturday that the attack on Glasgow Airport seemed linked to Friday’s two foiled car bombings in London.

‘There are clearly similarities,’ Rae told a press conference. ‘And we can confirm that this is being treated as a terrorist incident.’

In both the London and Glasgow attacks, automobiles appeared to have been rigged as fuel-air bombs, fuelled by both petrol and propane gas. Broadcaster BBC reported late Saturday that the wreckage of the Jeep Cherokee contained several propane cylinders, as did the undetonated London car bombs.

Source

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Coca Cola Illuminati Symbolism

Sunday, July 1st, 2007

Cremation of Care

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Military judge stands by Guantanamo dismissal

Sunday, July 1st, 2007

DAVID McFADDEN

A military judge has refused a Pentagon request to reconsider his dismissal of charges against a Guantanamo Bay detainee accused of killing an American soldier in Afghanistan.

The judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback, ruled Friday that the government’s renewed legal argument has not resolved a lack of jurisdiction in the case of Omar Khadr, a Canadian who was 15 when he was arrested on an Afghan battlefield in 2002.

Khadr is one of two detainees whose military trials fell apart because they were not identified as “unlawful” enemy combatants.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, said Saturday that the military is preparing to file a challenge to the Court of Military Commissions Review, a Washington-based appeals court that was set up within a week of the dismissal of the two detainees’ charges on June 4.

“We’re disappointed with the judge’s decision in this matter,” Gordon said.

Another judge who threw out the case against Yemeni detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan has not yet ruled on prosecutors’ motion to reconsider, Gordon said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to review whether Guantanamo Bay detainees can use federal courts to challenge their confinement, reversing an April decision not to hear arguments on the issue.

Like the rest of the detainee population, Khadr and Hamdan previously were identified by military review panels only as enemy combatants, lacking the “unlawful” designation required by the law that authorized the new trials. Pentagon officials have described the problem as largely semantics.

But the cases have dealt a blow to the Bush administration in its efforts to begin prosecuting dozens at the detention center in southeastern Cuba.

Last year, Republicans and the White House pushed through legislation authorizing the war-crimes trials after the Supreme Court threw out Bush’s previous system as illegal and in violation of international treaties.

Khadr and Hamdan are the only ones currently in the roughly 380-prisoner population at Guantanamo who have been charged with crimes under a reconstituted military trial system.

One other detainee charged under the new system, Australian David Hicks, pleaded guilty in March to providing material support to al-Qaida and is serving a nine-month sentence in Australia.

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Another NSA Whistleblower Speaks Out

Sunday, July 1st, 2007

By David Swanson
RINF Alternative News

A former member of U.S. military intelligence has decided to reveal what she knows about warrantless spying on Americans and about the fixing of intelligence in the leadup to the invasion of Iraq.

Adrienne Kinne describes an incident just prior to the invasion of Iraq in which a fax came into her office at Fort Gordon in Georgia that purported to provide information on the location of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The fax came from the Iraqi National Congress, a group opposed to Saddam Hussein and favoring an invasion. The fax contained types of information that required that it be translated and transmitted to President Bush within 15 minutes. But Kinne had been eavesdropping on two nongovernmental aid workers driving in Iraq who were panicked and trying to find safety before the bombs dropped. She focused on trying to protect them, and was reprimanded for the delay in translating the fax. She then challenged her officer in charge, Warrant Officer John Berry, on the credibility of the fax, and he told her that it was not her place or his to challenge such things. None of the other 20 or so people in the unit questioned anything, Kinne said.

Kinne dates this incident to the period just before the official invasion of Iraq or possibly just after. She says that because the US engaged in so much bombing prior to the official invasion, she cannot recall for sure.

Prior to September 11, 2001, Kinne says, it was unacceptable to listen in on or collect information on Americans. The practice was barred by United States Signals Intelligence Directive (USSID) 18. Kinne recalls an incident in 1997 in which an American’s name was mentioned, and she and her colleagues deleted every related record because they took very seriously the ban on collecting information on Americans. Kinne was serving from 1994-1998 on active duty as an Arabic linguist for military intelligence at Fort Gordon in Georgia, sending reports to and collaborating with the NSA. She served at the same station after 9-11 when she was activated as a reservist.

Kinne says that post-9-11 she and others routinely collected information on people even after identifying them as aid workers for non-governmental organizations. A common rationale was that the phones of such organizations could conceivably be seized by terrorists. She recalled one case in which she was listening to an American talk to his British colleague in an international aid organization. The Brit expressed concern about the American military eavesdropping, and the American replied that they couldn’t possibly be doing that because of USSID 18. Kinne recalls that her colleagues got quite excited and behaved as if the American had divulged secrets by mentioning that directive. They continued eavesdropping on the man although they were unclear at that point whether they were permitted to spy on Americans.

Shortly after this incident, however, in mid-2002, they were given a waiver to spy on Americans. This waiver was communicated to Kinne and her colleagues orally, and she assumed that it had come from the President or someone very high up. The waiver, she says, also permitted spying on Canadian, French, German, Australian, and British citizens without probable cause.

Many of the people, including Americans, whom Kinne spied on were journalists. These included journalists staying at a hotel in Baghdad that later showed up on a list of targets. Again, Kinne says, she expressed concerns to her officer in charge, letting him know that the military should be informed or the journalists should be warned to move to another location. Kinne says Berry brushed her off. He was, she says, “completely behind the invasion of Iraq. He told us repeatedly that we needed to bomb those barbarians back to kingdom come.”

Berry was promoted to Chief Warrant Officer. Kinne left, went back to school, and took a job at the Veterans Administration helping some of the victims of the fixing of intelligence that she had witnessed. And early this year she joined a tour of Vermont with activists Cindy Sheehan, John Nichols, Dan DeWalt, and veterans of the war, a tour promoting the passage of impeachment resolutions in Vermont towns, a tour that helped effect the passage of those resolutions in over 40 towns up and down the state. Kinne found the experience “life-changing”, and she’s now decided to tell everything she knows, and to encourage others still in the government to speak out and release documentation.

“I wish that I had said something back then, but I don’t think people would have listened,” Kinne said.

Kinne, who now works for the VA at White River Junction, Vermont, said that she has written to Senator Patrick Leahy, who has not replied to her. Kinne has become active in Iraq Veterans Against the War. She said that the news of the current escalation of the war also helped move her to act. “That’s the only reason why I am choosing to break whatever rules I may have just broken by telling you about it,” Kinne said. “Because I think that this all needs to stop, and it needs to stop now. And the only way it’s going to stop is if people start speaking out.”

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NASA Scientist Finds a New Way to the Center of the Earth

Sunday, July 1st, 2007

NASA/JPL

Humans have yet to see Earth’s center, as did the characters in Jules Verne’s science fiction classic, ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth.’ But a new NASA study proposes a novel technique to pinpoint more precisely the location of Earth’s center of mass and how it moves through space.

Knowing the location of the center of mass, determined using measurements from sites on Earth’s surface, is important because it provides the reference frame through which scientists determine the relative motions of positions on Earth’s surface, in its atmosphere and in space. This information is vital to the study of global sea level change, earthquakes, volcanoes and Earth’s response to the retreat of ice sheets after the last ice age.

The accuracy of estimates of the motion of Earth’s center of mass is uncertain, but likely ranges from 2 to 5 millimeters (.08 to .20 inches) a year. Donald Argus of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., developed the new technique, which estimates Earth’s center of mass to within 1 millimeter (.04 inches) a year by precisely positioning sites on Earth’s surface using a combination of four space-based techniques. The four techniques were developed and/or operated by NASA in partnership with other national and international agencies. Results of the new study appear in the June issue of Geophysical Journal International.

Scientists currently define Earth’s center in two ways: as the mass center of solid Earth or as the mass center of Earth’s entire system, which combines solid Earth, ice sheets, oceans and atmosphere. Argus says there is room for improvement in these estimates.

‘The past two international estimates of the motion of the Earth system’s mass center, made in 2000 and 2005, differ by 1.8 millimeters (.07 inches) a year,’ he said. ‘This discrepancy suggests the motion of Earth’s mass center is not as well known as we’d like.’

Argus argues that movements in the mass of Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are seasonal and do not accumulate enough to change Earth’s mass center. He therefore believes the mass center of solid Earth provides a more accurate reference frame.

‘By its very nature, Earth’s reference frame is moderately uncertain no matter how it is defined,’ Argus said. ‘The problem is very much akin to measuring the center of mass of a glob of Jell-O, because Earth is constantly changing shape due to tectonic and climatic forces. This new reference frame takes us a step closer to pinpointing Earth’s exact center.’

Argus says this new reference frame could make important contributions to understanding global climate change. The inference that Earth is warming comes partly from observations of global sea level rise, believed to be due to ice sheets melting in Greenland, Antarctica and elsewhere. In recent years, global sea level has been rising faster, with the current rate at about 3 millimeters (.12 inches) a year. Uncertainties in the accuracy of the motion of Earth’s center of mass result in significant uncertainties in measuring this rate of change.

‘Knowing the relative motions of the mass center of Earth’s system and the mass center of the solid Earth can help scientists better determine the rate at which ice in Greenland and Antarctica is melting into the ocean,’ Argus explained. He said the new frame of reference will improve estimates of sea level rise from satellite altimeters like the NASA/French Space Agency Jason satellite, which rely on measurements of the location and motion of the mass center of Earth’s system.

‘For scientists studying post-glacial rebound, this new reference frame helps them better understand how viscous [gooey or sticky] Earth’s solid mantle is, which affects how fast Earth’s crust rises in response to the retreat of the massive ice sheets that covered areas such as Canada 20,000 years ago,’ he said. ‘As a result, they’ll be able to make more accurate estimates of these vertical motions and can improve model predictions.’

Scientists can also use the new information to more accurately determine plate motions along fault zones, improving our understanding of earthquake and volcanic processes.

The new technique combines data from a high-precision network of global positioning system receivers; a network of laser stations that track high-orbiting geodetic satellites called Laser Geodynamics Satellites, or Lageos; a network of radio telescopes that measure the position of Earth with respect to quasars at the edge of the universe, known as very long baseline interferometry; and a French network of precise satellite tracking instruments called Doppler Orbit and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite, or DORIS.

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U.S. soldiers held in Iraqi killings

Sunday, July 1st, 2007

JOSHUA PARTLOW

Two American soldiers, including one from Laredo, were charged with the premeditated murders of three Iraqis in separate incidents south of Baghdad over the past three months, the U.S. military said Saturday.Army Staff Sgt. Michael A. Hensley of Candler, N.C., was charged with three counts of premeditated murder, obstruction of justice and wrongfully placing weapons next to the victims’ bodies.

Spc. Jorge G. Sandoval Jr. of Laredo was charged with one count of premeditated murder and planting a weapon.

Both soldiers, assigned to the headquarters of the 1st Battalion, 501 Infantry Regiment of the 25th Infantry Division, based at Fort Richardson, Alaska, are being held in Kuwait until trial.

The killings took place near Iskandariyah, which is in the Sunni insurgent territory south of Baghdad where U.S. soldiers committed one of the most notorious atrocities of the war.

In March 2006, soldiers raped and killed a 14-year-old girl and killed her family in the town of Mahmudiyah. Two soldiers have been convicted in the case, and three are awaiting trial.

Presumed innocent

U.S. military officials said in a statement that the charges against Hensley and Sandoval were “merely an accusation of wrongdoing” and that they are “presumed innocent unless and until they are proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of any alleged offense.”

Editors Note: You mean like the detainees at Guantanamo Bay?

The investigation, conducted by the U.S. Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, was opened after fellow soldiers informed commanders of their suspicions. The men face so-called Article 32 hearings, which will determine the veracity of the charges and, if merited, send them on for court martial proceedings.

Sandoval, 22, was detained on June 26 while home on two-week leave and was sent to Kuwait, where both soldiers are being held in solitary confinement.

Sandoval’s mother, Alicia Sandoval, said her son was visiting his family when authorities came and asked to speak to him. They said he would be back shortly, but she heard nothing since and had no idea where he was taken until an Associated Press reporter called.

“I haven’t had any news,” she said in Spanish on Saturday from her home in Laredo. “It was all very sudden.”

Juan Dominguez, a second cousin reached by telephone in Laredo, said he lives two doors from Sandoval’s parents. He said Sandoval had served in ROTC and was eager to go to Iraq.

“He always liked Army stuff,” Dominguez said. “He was really into going to Iraq. He wanted to see what it was like. I told him, ‘Nobody wants to go over there, but I just hope God brings you back.’ ”

No troublemaker

“I never knew him to be a troublemaker,” said Domin- guez, who added that he had been unaware of the arrest.Members of Hensley’s family could not be reached for comment.

The charges were announced on a day when U.S. soldiers clashed with residents of Sadr City, the densely populated Shiite district of eastern Baghdad.

The U.S. military said in a statement that shooting started before dawn after they raided a house believed to be used by a militant network that has ties to Iran and is involved in terrorist activities.

The soldiers encountered roadside bombs, fierce gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades, and killed about 26 suspected militants and detained 17, the military said.

Residents in the area and officials linked to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia is prevalent in the district, disputed the U.S. account and said the U.S. soldiers killed innocent civilians.

Salah al-Ubaidi, a Sadr spokesman in Najaf, said U.S. bombings killed four members of a family, including women, and that 16 young men were killed in Sadr City.

“There were no clashes between the Mahdi army and occupation forces,” he said. “We are condemning this attack, which targeted the innocent people in their homes, and we are calling on the government to open an investigation with the occupation forces to find out what happened.”

A 29-year-old member of the Mahdi Army in the neighborhood, who gave only his nickname, Abu Bakr, said the fighting took place between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. He said U.S. soldiers killed the four family members in their house, shot up cars and left.

He acknowledged that there was “random shooting” in the neighborhood but said he saw no direct attacks on U.S. troops.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a statement calling on U.S.-led forces to explain what happened in Sadr City and demanding that the U.S. military notify Iraqi security forces in advance of operations.

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Schools Biometric Company Linked To Gitmo

Sunday, July 1st, 2007

By Mick Meaney
RINF Alternative News 

VeriCool, one of the companies responsible for fingerprinting thousands of British school children, has been linked to inhumane detention centres, Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

A startling development as the British government seemingly knows no limits when it comes to - not only the risks of mass surveillance - but is also willing to support immoral and unethical corporations using their technology on our children.

VeriCool has installed fingerprinting systems including registration and cashless lunch systems in at least 22 British schools. Anteon, parent company of VeriCool, was recently bought by General Dynamics Information Technology, a defence who also trained Guantanamo Bay interrogators.

VeriCool has partnered up with Capita Education Services, who boast a client base of over 22,500 British schools - and 5,000 are already using VeriCool compatible software.

Parent company, Anteon, currently runs interrogation and counterintelligence courses at US Army Intelligence Centre headquarters, Fort Huachuca in Arizona.

How blatant can the government make it that Britain is becoming a nation of suspects, where personal data can be accessed without just reason in a complete surveillance society, while they reward corporations that are willing to push the limits of human decency.

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‘Up to 80 civilians dead’ after US air strikes in Afghanistan

Sunday, July 1st, 2007

Witnesses claim a village in British-run Helmand was bombed for three hours after the Taliban attempted to ambush a US-Afghan army convoy

Jason Burke
Sunday July 1, 2007
The Observer

Air strikes in the British-controlled Helmand province of Afghanistan may have killed civilians, coalition troops said yesterday as local people claimed that between 50 and 80 people, many of them women and children, had died.In the latest of a series of attacks causing significant civilian casualties in recent weeks, more than 200 were killed by coalition troops in Afghanistan in June, far more than are believed to have been killed by Taliban militants.

The bombardment, which witnesses said lasted up to three hours, in the Gereshk district late on Friday followed an attempted ambush by the Taliban on a joint US-Afghan military convoy. According to Mohammad Hussein, the provincial police chief, the militants fled into a nearby village for cover. Planes then targeted the village of Hyderabad. Mohammad Khan, a resident of the village, said seven members of his family, including his brother and five of his brother’s children, were killed.

‘I brought three of my wounded relatives to Gereshk hospital for treatment,’ he told the Associated Press news agency by phone. The villagers were yesterday burying a ‘lot of dead bodies’, Khan said.

He spoke as American forces in Iraq also found themselves heavily criticised over civilian deaths when eight people died, apparently caught in crossfire from a gunfight between insurgents and soldiers in Baghdad’s Sadr City yesterday. But residents, police and hospital officials said eight civilians were killed in their homes and angrily accused US forces of firing blindly on innocent people. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki condemned the raids and demanded an explanation for the assault on a district where he has barred American operations in the past.

In Afghanistan, the civilian deaths caused by US and Nato-led troops have infuriated local people and prompted President Hamid Karzai to publicly condemn foreign forces for careless ‘use of extreme force’ and for viewing Afghan lives as ‘cheap’. The increasingly fragile President has urged restraint and better co-ordination of military operations with the Afghan government, while also blaming the Taliban for using civilians as human shields.

Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations Secretary-General, raised the issue of civilian casualties on a four-hour visit to Afghanistan on Friday on which he met the senior Nato commander there, the American General Dan McNeill.

Senior British soldiers have previously expressed concerns that McNeill, who took command of the 32,000 Nato troops in Afghanistan only recently, was ‘a fan’ of the massive use of air power to defeat insurgents and that his favoured tactics could be counter-productive.

‘Every civilian dead means five new Taliban,’ said one British officer who has recently returned from Helmand. ‘It’s a tough call when the enemy are hiding in villages, but you have to be very, very careful,’ he added.

The American general has been dubbed ‘Bomber McNeill’ by his critics.

But Nato has ‘never killed and will never intentionally kill innocent civilians’, its secretary-general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, told a conference in Macedonia on Friday. ‘The majority of civilian casualties in Afghanistan have been caused by Taliban suicide bombs and roadside bombs.’

US Air Force Major John Thomas said that, after a long skirmish and under constant fire from the Taliban, troops of Isaf (the International Security Assistance Force), called for close air force support during an operation in Helmand, where the Taliban have been resurgent this year.

‘All enemy positions were destroyed, but after friendly forces surveyed the area, there were reports of some possible civilian deaths,’ Thomas said.

‘The remains of some people who appeared to be civilians were found among enemy fighters in a trench line,’ he added. The level of violence has soared in Afghanistan, with more than 2,800 people - mostly Taliban fighters - killed in fighting this year, according to an Associated Press tally of figures issued in the last few days by Western military and Afghan officials.

A count by the United Nations and an umbrella organisation of Afghan and international aid groups shows the number of civilians killed by international forces was slightly greater than the number killed by insurgents in the first half of the year.

In Helmand’s Sangin district, Nato-led and Afghan troops clashed with Taliban fighters on Friday, leaving 15 of the militants dead, said Ezatullah Khan, a district chief. Helmand is the primary area of operations for the British troops deployed in Afghanistan.

There were no casualties among Nato and Afghan troops, the official said.

More than 3,000 British troops have been deployed in Helmand to combat both the Taliban and the drugs trade. Also in the south, two suspected Taliban members were killed while trying to place a homemade bomb on the side of a road in Zhari district of Kandahar province on Friday, said Ghulam Rasool, the district’s police chief.

Three children were also killed on Friday and another wounded when an old rocket they were playing with exploded in Zabul province in the south, said General Yaqoub Khan, the provincial police chief.

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