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EU visitors to have fingerprints taken

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

BRUSSELS Every visitor to the European Union would have to provide fingerprints before being allowed to enter, under plans unveiled yesterday to clamp down on illegal immigration.

The move to record the arrival and departure of non-EU citizens and to store the data in a single European database is part of a wider overhaul of border security. It is aimed at the largest single category of illegal migrants: people who remain once their visa or permit has expired.

Franco Frattini, the EU Justice Commissioner, argued that the existence of the electronic register containing a visitor’s personal details and final destination would make it possible to identify overstayers.

The scheme, which must be approved by all 27 EU governments before it can come into force in 2013 as proposed, has been criticised by civil rights groups. They fear that it could lead to a “fortress Europe” mentality against foreigners and to identity theft if the data were lost or stolen.

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Business spies for FBI eyes

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

By Jerry Mazza

In George Bush’s mania to outdo George Orwell’s 1984, we bring you more than 23,000 members of private industry working quietly with the FBI and Department of Homeland Insecurity under the banner of InfraGard, i.e., the joint government/business program to guard (not rebuild) our infrastructure. Get it? Wanta forget it? Can’t. They’ll be climbing up your nose soon. Or shooting to kill in the case of Martial Law. Argh!

It’s eerily reminiscent of Orwell’s novel, in which the superstate Oceana’s three PARTY slogans are WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.” Yes, that George was a genius, the other a nebbish. In fact Wikipedia tells us, “Each of these is of course either contradictory or the opposite of what is normally believed, and in 1984, the world is in a state of constant war, no one is free, and everyone is ignorant.”

“The slogans are analysed in Goldstein’s [a writer character’s] book. Though logically insensible, the slogans do embody the Party. If anybody (like Winston) becomes too smart, they are whisked away for fear of rebellion. Through their constant repetition, the terms become meaningless, and the slogans become axiomatic. This type of misuse of language, and the deliberate self-deception with which the citizens are encouraged to accept it, is called doublethink.” Say that again . . .

“One essential consequence of doublethink is that the Party can rewrite history with impunity, for “The Party is never wrong.” The ultimate aim of the Party is, according to O’Brien, to gain and retain full power over all the people of Oceania; he sums this up with perhaps the most distressing prophecy of the entire novel: If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.” Get your iron mask. I hear the boot stomp.

Secret warnings of terrorist threats

The members of InfraGard receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does. In fact, former California Governor Gray Davis got a tip on so-called terrorists in California from his brother, Barry, a Morgan Stanley broker/InfraGard member. Gray, being a normal human being, phoned it in to authorities, thinking that if he knew (and his brother did as well as Enron), so should law enforcement, which pissed off the FBI abundantly. Somebody let the secret out of the bag, which is a no-no in SecretLand.

This story was also picked up by The Progressive in a report, titled “Exclusive! The FBI Deputizes Business.” Editor Matthew Rothschild wrote, “InfraGard is ‘a child of the FBI,’ says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm.

“InfraGard started in Cleveland back in 1996, when the private sector there cooperated with the FBI to investigate cyber threats.

“’Then the FBI cloned it,’ says Phyllis Schneck, chairman of the board of directors of the InfraGard National Members Alliance, and the prime mover behind the growth of InfraGard over the last several years.

“InfraGard itself is still an FBI operation, with FBI agents in each state overseeing the local InfraGard chapters. (There are now eighty-six of them.) The alliance is a nonprofit organization of private sector InfraGard members.

“’We are the owners, operators, and experts of our critical infrastructure, from the CEO of a large company in agriculture or high finance to the guy who turns the valve at the water utility,’ says Schneck, who by day is the vice president of research integration at Secure Computing.” Doesn’t her double-life give you a warm and fuzzy feeling inside?

FBI Director Robert Mueller spoke to an InfraGard convention on August 9, 2005. He suggested “Those of you in the private sector are the first line of defense.” And so he asked InfraGard members to call the FBI if they “note suspicious activity or an unusual event.” Personally, I find InfraGard to be both “suspicious activity and an unusual event.” Who do I call?

Mueller also suggested members could sic the FBI on “disgruntled employees who will use knowledge gained on the job against employers,” a sort of quid pro quid. On the InfraGard website, Mueller tells us, “It’s a great program.” Yeah, Bob, especially that “shoot to kill under Martial Law” part.

The ACLU not so enthusiastic

“This special status concerns the ACLU,” Rothschild wrote.

“The FBI should not be creating a privileged class of Americans who get special treatment,” says Jay Stanley, public education director of the ACLU’s technology and liberty program. “There’s no ‘business class’ in law enforcement. If there’s information the FBI can share with 22,000 corporate bigwigs, why don’t they just share it with the public? That’s who their real ‘special relationship’ is supposed to be with. Secrecy is not a party favor to be given out to friends. . . .

“This bears a disturbing resemblance to the FBI’s handing out ‘goodies’ to corporations in return for folding them into its domestic surveillance machinery.

“When the government raises its alert levels, InfraGard is in the loop. For instance, in a press release on February 7, 2003, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Attorney General announced that the national alert level was being raised from yellow to orange. They then listed ‘additional steps’ that agencies were taking to ‘increase their protective measures.’ One of those steps was to ‘provide alert information to the InfraGard program.’”

“They’re very much looped into our readiness capability,” says Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security. “We provide speakers, as well as do joint presentations [with the FBI]. We also train alongside them, and they have participated in readiness exercises.”

“On May 9, 2007, George Bush issued National Security Presidential Directive 51 entitled ‘National Continuity Policy.’ In it, he instructed the Secretary of Homeland Security to coordinate with ‘private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure, as appropriate, in order to provide for the delivery of essential services during an emergency.’”

Asked if the InfraGard National Members Alliance was involved with these plans, Schneck said it was ‘not directly participating at this point.’ Hershman, chairman of the group’s advisory board, however, said that it was.”

“InfraGard members, sometimes hundreds at a time, have been used in ‘national emergency preparation drills,’ Schneck acknowledges.

“’In case something happens, everybody is ready,” says Norm Arendt, the head of the Madison, Wisconsin, chapter of InfraGard, and the safety director for the consulting firm Short Elliott Hendrickson, Inc. ‘There’s been lots of discussions about what happens under an emergency.’ Which brings us to InfraGard members’ right “to shoot to kill in a Martial Law’ situation.’” Funny, how this keeps popping up.

Shoot to kill under Martial Law

The ACLU goes on to report, Rothschild noted, “One business owner in the United States tells me that InfraGard members are being advised on how to prepare for a martial law situation — and what their role might be. He showed me his InfraGard card, with his name and e-mail address on the front, along with the InfraGard logo and its slogan, ‘Partnership for Protection.’ On the back of the card were the emergency numbers that Schneck mentioned.

“This business owner says he attended a small InfraGard meeting where agents of the FBI and Homeland Security discussed in astonishing detail what InfraGard members may be called upon to do.

“’The meeting started off innocuously enough, with the speakers talking about corporate espionage,’ he says. ‘From there, it just progressed. All of a sudden we were knee deep in what was expected of us when martial law is declared. We were expected to share all our resources, but in return we’d be given specific benefits.’ These included, he says, the ability to travel in restricted areas and to get people out. But that’s not all.

“’Then they said when — not if — martial law is declared, it was our responsibility to protect our portion of the infrastructure, and if we had to use deadly force to protect it, we couldn’t be prosecuted,’ he says.

“I was able to confirm that the meeting took place where he said it had, and that the FBI and Homeland Security did make presentations there. One InfraGard member who attended that meeting denies that the subject of lethal force came up. But the whistleblower is 100 percent certain of it. ‘I have nothing to gain by telling you this, and everything to lose,’ he adds. ‘I’m so nervous about this, and I’m not someone who gets nervous.’

”Though Schneck says that FBI and Homeland Security agents do make presentations to InfraGard, she denies that InfraGard members would have any civil patrol or law enforcement functions. ‘I have never heard of InfraGard members being told to use lethal force anywhere,’ Schneck says.

“The FBI adamantly denies it, also. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ says Catherine Milhoan, an FBI spokesperson. ‘If you want to quote a businessperson saying that, knock yourself out. If that’s what you want to print, fine.’ But one other InfraGard member corroborated the whistleblower’s account, and another would not deny it.

“Christine Moerke is a business continuity consultant for Alliant Energy in Madison, Wisconsin. She says she’s an InfraGard member, and she confirms that she has attended InfraGard meetings that went into the details about what kind of civil patrol function — including engaging in lethal force — that InfraGard members may be called upon to perform.

“’There have been discussions like that, that I’ve heard of and participated in,’ she says.

Curt Haugen is CEO of S’Curo Group, a company that does ‘strategic planning, business continuity planning and disaster recovery, physical and IT security, policy development, internal control, personnel selection, and travel safety,’ according to its website. Haugen tells me he is a former FBI agent and that he has been an InfraGard member for many years. He is a huge booster. ‘It’s the only true organization where there is the public-private partnership,’ he says. ‘It’s all who knows who. You know a face, you trust a face. That’s what makes it work.’

“He says InfraGard ‘absolutely’ does emergency preparedness exercises. When I ask about discussions the FBI and Homeland Security have had with InfraGard members about their use of lethal force, he says: ‘That much I cannot comment on. But as a private citizen, you have the right to use force if you feel threatened.’

“’We were assured that if we were forced to kill someone to protect our infrastructure, there would be no repercussions,’ the whistleblower says. ‘It gave me goose bumps. It chilled me to the bone.” And probably most everyone else, which led probably to the following . . .

The ACLU’s ‘Surveillance-Industrial Complex”

Based on-going activities like the above, the ACLU developed a much larger, in-depth study, The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: How the American Government Is Conscripting Businesses and Individuals in the Construction of a Surveillance Society. Its Table of Contents includes . . .

Recruiting Individuals
“Watch” programs
Citizen vigilance
Recruiting Companies
Voluntary sharing of data
Purchasing data on the open market
Plentiful legal powers to demand private-sector data
Building in surveillance
The Patriot Act: Drafting industry into the government’s surveillance net
Enlistment in the government’s surveillance web hurts business
Mass Data Use, Public and Private
Data mining
Data aggregators
The advantages of private surveillance
Pro-Surveillance Lobbying and
Six Conclusions

This study’s 47 pages detail programs that turn the US into a national spy-fest, neighbors on neighbors, business on consumers, et al. It concludes with a series of convoluted FBI rationales for a self-inflicted oppression echoing Orwell’s 1984 and then some. You wonder what else is going on as you sleep, work, spend time with your family, and try to have a life.

Bottom line, this perverse, thousand-eyed Argus is here for one reason alone, to inspire fear, which in turn will diminish questioning and independent thought or criticism, which in turn will turn us into a nation of robots, who in turn will go unquestionably to fight the Empire’s endless wars and avoid considering 9/11 as an inside job, the keystone to this arch of misery.

I personally would like to tell InfraGard right now to go to hell, which is what they are trying to create in what is my beloved America. I grew up in World War II and this crap tops “Loose lips sink ships,” and all the various “please speak low” programs. It’s more redolent of the Hitler Youth Program, which encouraged youth to turn in their parents, family members, or neighbors who might speak ill of the Reich or der Fuhrer. This is the worst garbage imaginable, posing as patriotism.

It is nothing short of WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH doublespeak. And now is the time, in the name of the Constitution of the United States of America to stop it.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer living in New York. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.

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Bin Brother is watching you

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

Eye-spy binmen will soon be knocking on doors in Wolverhampton – to tick off residents for not recycling their rubbish.

Officials are keeping records on which households do not put out their recycling boxes each fortnight and will be personally visiting addresses to ask why.

The move, which will come into force from April, has prompted concern from some councillors, who say the policy smacks of Big Brother.

Currently, council teams are placing red and white labels on the bins of addresses identified as not recycling paper, glass and cans.

Wolverhampton City Council insisted today its staff are not looking inside people’s bins to see what they are throwing away.

But they admit noting down which homes do not use their recycling boxes.

Bosses say they will now knock on doors from April to remind people to use the boxes, which are emptied every fortnight.

Wolverhampton Waste and Recycling Partnership found that use of the green boxes is “particularly poor” in areas like Bilston, The Scotlands, Low Hill, Bushbury, Whitmore Reans and Dunstall Park.

But the stickers have also been found on bins in Tettenhall.

Councillor Barry Findlay, who represents Tettenhall Regis, said: “It does seem a bit like spying and I can understand why some people will not like this.”

Councillor Wendy Thompson, who represents Tettenhall Wightwick and has been given a sticker, said: “I have raised this with the council as I think the stickers could be taken the wrong way.”

Jayne Willis, waste policy manager at the city council, said: “We do not look inside people’s bins but we carried out a survey before Christmas.

“In one area where we put the stickers out we increased the amount recycled on that round by five tons that week.

“If, on the day we did the survey the household did not put the recycling box out, we will visit them. Of course, this is not 100 per cent accurate as someone may have just forgotten that week or may have been on holiday.

“We certainly have no plans to fine anybody for not recycling but we want to do all we can to encourage them to participate.”

http://www.expressandstar.com/2008/02/14/bin-brother-is-watching-you/

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Bush Spy Bill Stance Called Fear-Mongering

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

President: U.S. Could Face Attacks That Would Make 9/11 “Pale By Comparison”

CBS

President Bush, in remarks meant to spur House Democrats into accepting a controversial new bill that would expand the government’s ability to spy on Americans, warned that the country faced terror strikes that would make September 11 “pale by comparison.”

In response, critics of the new bill accused Mr. Bush of “fear mongering,” and of trying to deflect attention from the bill itself. Its most controversial provision would prevent Americans from suing phone companies that helped the administration spy on them since the White House surveillance program was instituted in 2001.

Mr. Bush has made immunity from civil prosecution for the telecoms a must-have element for revamping the nation’s surveillance laws, repeatedly saying he would veto any bill that does not exempt telecoms from lawsuits.

The battle lines are being dug in more deeply as House and Senate members prepare to meet in conference to match competing versions of the legislation, an update of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (or FISA).

The House-passed version does not include telecom immunity. This past week, the Senate approved a similar version which includes a provision that protects telecoms from civil lawsuits.

There are approximately 40 lawsuits now brought by citizens and consumer groups against companies that enabled the government to illegally eavesdrop on Americans’ phone and Internet communications.

Opponents of the administration’s program, which engaged wiretaps against any and all Americans without obtaining court-ordered warrants, say the telecoms’ participation was illegal. They say that, given the Bush administration’s penchant for secrecy, lawsuits against the telecoms are the only way to obtain disclosure about the facts from the government.

Information being sought includes details about the origins of the program. The administration admitted that the sweeping domestic surveillance originated in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. However, declassified documents obtained by the National Security Archive and testimony that is part of these lawsuits suggest the National Security Agency program was put into place shortly after Mr. Bush was inaugurated, long before 9/11.

Mr. Bush claims that unless the telecoms received assurance that they will not be sued for breaking the law (and therefore be liable for damages), those companies will not agree to enact future wiretaps, therefore undercutting the government’s intelligence capabilities:

“If these companies are subjected to lawsuits that could cost them billions of dollars, they won’t participate; they won’t help us; they won’t help protect America.”

On Wednesday, after the Senate approved a bill granting immunity, the president for the first time admitted that the telecoms participated in the wiretaps which were not authorized by court-issued warrants - a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Mr. Bush also raised the specter of what would happen if telecom immunity is not accepted by the House, by recalling the crime scene on 9/11:

“At this moment, somewhere in the world, terrorists are planning new attacks on our country. Their goal is to bring destruction to our shores that will make September the 11th pale by comparison.”

Yet Mr. Bush said he would choose to allow current surveillance law (which expires at midnight Saturday) to pass without an extension, rather than sign a bill that does not contain immunity. Instead, he wants the House to rubber-stamp the Senate bill so he can sign it into law immediately.

House Republicans managed to defeat a House proposal to grant a 21-day extension of current law.

Critics jumped on the president’s refusal to extend FISA.

“The President and House Republicans refused to support the extension and therefore will bear the responsibility should any adverse national security consequences result,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Expiration of the current Protect America Act would not mean an immediate end to wiretapping. Existing surveillance could continue under the law for a year from when it began - at least until August. Any new surveillance the government wants to institute could be implemented under underlying FISA rules, which may require warrants from the secret court.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., accused the president and Senate Republicans of being more interested in politicizing intelligence than resolving the debate.

Reid said the issue would not even be before Congress if Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, “in their unyielding efforts to expand presidential powers,” had not created a system to conduct wiretapping, including on U.S. citizens, outside the bounds of federal law.

“The president could have taken the simple step of requesting new authority from Congress … but whether out of convenience, incompetence, or outright disdain for the rule of law, the administration chose to ignore Congress and ignore the Constitution,” Reid said.

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s legislative office in Washington, lambasted the president for scare tactics and urged the House not to pass the Senate bill.

“The House should stand up to the bullying from the president and reject the administration’s lies and fear mongering,” she said. “This administration has abused its power over and over again and it is time for the House to reject any attempts to consider the unconstitutional Senate Intelligence Committee FISA bill.

She also demanded that Americans not be denied their day in court in their suits against phone and Internet companies. “Let the American system of justice decide this case,” Frederickson said. “Do not give the phone companies a ‘get out of jail free’ card. If the companies really ‘did the right thing’ as the president said, then they have nothing to fear from going to court.

“Terrorism is a threat. But ignoring the Constitution is also a threat.”

The 68-29 Senate vote Tuesday to update the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act belied the nearly two months of stops and starts and bitter political wrangling that preceded it. The two sides had battled to balance civil liberties with the need to conduct surveillance on potential adversaries.

While giving the White House what it wanted on immunity for the phone companies, the Senate also expanded the power of the court to oversee government eavesdropping on Americans. An amendment would give the FISA court the authority to monitor whether the government is complying with procedures designed to protect the privacy of innocent Americans whose telephone or computer communications are captured during surveillance of a foreign target.

The Senate bill would also require FISA court orders to eavesdrop on Americans who are overseas. Under current law, the government can wiretap or search the possessions of anyone outside the United States - even a soldier serving overseas - without court permission if it believes the person may be a foreign agent.

CBSNews.com producer David Morgan contributed to this report.

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Wanted By The FBI: Everyone’s Data

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

By LEONARD PITTS JR.

In the beginning was the fingerprint.

It was in the 19th century that scientists realized the ridged whorls on the tip of the finger constituted a unique marker that could be used to tell one person from another. And eventually, the FBI built a massive database of fingerprints.

Then came DNA. In the 20th century, scientists learned to use the double helix nucleic acid molecule as a means of identification even more definitive than the fingerprint. And the FBI built a DNA database as well.

Now the feds are building yet another database. And it has some folks worried.

Maybe you missed it in the run-up to Super Duper Tuesday when the Associated Press reported last week that the FBI will soon award a $1 billion, 10-year contract for construction of an electronic file that would store not just fingerprints and DNA, but a vast compendium of other physical characteristics. We’re talking eye scans, facial shape, palm prints, scars, tattoos and other biometrics, all for the purpose of identifying and capturing bad guys.

But at least one privacy advocate thinks even good guys — and gals — have cause for concern. Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Project, told CNN, “It’s the beginning of the surveillance society where you can be tracked anywhere, any time and all your movements, and eventually all your activities will be tracked and noted and correlated.”

I know what some of you are saying and it makes a certain amount of sense: If you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. Well, I haven’t done wrong, but it worries me just the same.

The government has for years collected fingerprints — not just of criminals, but also of certain job applicants. What’s happening now, it could be reasonably argued, is only a high-tech extension of that. Except that instead of just your fingerprints, the government will also have on file the shape of your iris, that scar from your appendectomy and the tattoo on your inner thigh.

It’s a discomfiting reminder of the totalitarian states of “Fahrenheit 451″ and “1984,” oppressive regimes that saw everything, knew everything, regulated everything. Given the advances in technology and the ominous, Orwellian turn our government has lately taken, the comparison seems far less far-fetched than once it might have.

It’s not just the government, though. In recent years, the right to privacy, the right to simply be left alone, has also been eroded by the corporate community — everything from supermarket discount cards that track your buying habits to online businesses that install secret spyware in your computer. And we haven’t even mentioned that there is a camera on every street corner nowadays.

“I always feel like somebody’s watching me.” That used to be just the hook from a schlocky ’80s song. Increasingly, it is an apt description of modern life.

Now the FBI proposes to collect and collate still more personal information. It swears the information will be protected, and will be used only to ferret out criminals.

But I can’t help a certain wariness when I consider the ease with which the program could expand far beyond that mission. As Steinhardt sees it, first criminals, then job applicants and then, “Eventually, it’s going to be everybody.”

I admit, he might be wrong. But you know something? He might not.

Leonard Pitts Jr. is a syndicated writer in Washington.

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9/11 accused can seek compensation

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

Lotfi Raissi, the Algerian wrongly accused of training pilots involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, should be allowed to claim compensation, the Court of Appeal ruled.

Mr Raissi, a pilot, was arrested at his home under the Terrorism Act in September 2001, 10 days after the World Trade Centre atrocity.

He was released after seven days but re-arrested under an extradition warrant issued at the request of the United States government.

He remained in jail for four-and-a-half months, when he was granted bail despite objections from the Crown Prosecution Service which was representing the US. Raissi, 33, was finally released after no evidence was put before a court to support the terrorism allegations.

Lord Justice Hooper, giving the judgment of the Court of Appeal, said: “The public labelling of the appellant as a terrorist by the authorities in this country, and particularly by the CPS, over a period of many months has had and continues to have, so it is said, a devastating effect on his life and on his health. He considers that, unless he receives a public acknowledgement that he is not a terrorist, he will be unable to get his life back together again.”

Raissi applied for compensation in March 2004 under a scheme operated by the Home Office for people who had lost their liberty because of a miscarriage of justice. His application was rejected by the Home Secretary and Raissi took his case to a judicial review at the High Court where he was unsuccessful.

Lord Justice Hooper said: “We have allowed his appeal ordering that the appellant’s application for compensation be referred back to the Home Secretary for reconsideration in the light of this judgment.”

The judge said the appeal court, which also included the Master of the Rolls, Sir Anthony Clarke, and Lady Justice Smith, considered that there was a “considerable body of evidence” to suggest that the police and the CPS were responsible for what the scheme describes as “serious defaults”.

Speaking outside court Mr Raissi said: “I wept with relief when I heard the judgment. I have always said that I believed in British justice and I finally got it today. Surely I can expect to hear from the Home Secretary with the long-awaited apology very soon.”

Commenting on the ruling, the Ministry of Justice said: “We are considering the implications and whether or not to appeal.”

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Banking with Hitler during World War II

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

thecounterpunch

This investigative film shows in detail the roles played by the Anglo-German banking Cartel (notably the Bank of England controlled by the Rothschild and the Chase National Bank controlled by the Rockfeller as well as the Harriman/Bush’s Bank) through the BIS the Bank of International Settlement not only before the war but during the war. The BIS was originally established in May 1930 by bankers and diplomats of Europe and the United States to collect and disburse Germany’s World War I reparation payments (hence its name).

On its board were key Nazis such as Walther Funk and Hjalamar Schact The president of BIS was an American, Thomas McKittrick, who readily socialized with leading Nazis. Not only the BIS, but other allied banks worked hand in hand with the Nazis. One of the biggest American banks (Chase Bank) kept a branch open in Occupied Paris and, with full knowledge of the managers in the U.S., froze the accounts of French Jews. Deprived of money to escape France, many ended up in death camps.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YauM5dHLn1s[/youtube]

According to Investigative Journalist Edward Epstein, “even though an isolationist Congress officially refused to allow the U.S. Federal Reserve to participate in the BIS, or to accept shares in it (which were instead held in trust by the First National City Bank [owned by William Rockefeller]), the chairman of the Fed quietly slipped over to Basel for important meetings.”

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4 million Iraqis struggling for food - UN

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

The Irish Times

Four million Iraqis are struggling to feed themselves, and 40 per cent of the country’s 27 million people have no safe water, the UN said today.

Iraq has annual economic growth of around 7 per cent, according to UN estimates, and a national budget of €33 billion, buoyed by oil exports of 1.6 million barrels per day.

But insurgency and sectarian attacks have displaced more than two million people and left nearly twice as many hungry.

“Four million Iraqis cannot guarantee they’re going to have food on their table tomorrow,” the United Nations humanitarian co-ordinator for Iraq, David Shearer, said as he unveiled a €182 million appeal to donor governments for 2008.

The United Nations says the number of displaced people has roughly doubled since 2006 to nearly 2.5 million. High unemployment has left many others unable to feed themselves.

The Iraqi government said it would for the first time give €27.5 million from its own coffers to the aid appeal.

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US judge blocks CIA flight case

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

BBC

A US judge has dismissed a case alleging that a subsidiary of Boeing illegally helped the CIA fly terror suspects abroad on rendition flights.

The American Civil Liberties Union brought the case against Jeppesen Dataplan, saying it “falsified flight plans… to avoid public scrutiny”.

But a San Francisco judge halted the case, as the CIA director had urged.

“The very subject matter of this case is a state secret,” Judge James Ware wrote in a ruling.

CIA director Michael Hayden had earlier urged the judge to dismiss the case because he said that covert operations overseas could be exposed.

CIA flights

ACLU brought the case on behalf of five men who alleged the CIA had flown them to foreign prisons, where they were interrogated and tortured.

The plaintiffs were an Ethiopian living in the UK, an Italian working in Pakistan, an Egyptian citizen living in Sweden, a Yemeni, and an Iraqi who was a British resident.

The lawsuit against Jeppesen had claimed the services they provided were crucial to the flights.

However, Jeppesen had said it could not confirm if it was involved with the flights.

A report approved by a European Parliament committee last year said more than 1,000 covert CIA flights had crossed European airspace or stopped at European airports in the four years after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

Jeppesen’s participation allegedly included securing necessary landing and overflight permits for the flights between the US, Pakistan, Ireland, Cyprus, Morocco, and Afghanistan.

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US Senate votes to ban waterboarding by CIA

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

Irish Sun

The US Senate has voted to prevent the CIA from using torture-like waterboarding and other forms of coercion on prisoners, completing work on a bill already passed by the other chamber in December.

The bill, passed in a 51 to 45 vote Wednesday, will now be sent to the White House, the Washington Post reported online. US President George W. Bush has threatened to veto the measure.

The bill requires the CIA and other intelligence agencies to follow the US army regulations in questioning prisoners, the Washington Post reported online.

In intense debate over the past two weeks, the White House has refused to rule out the possibility of using waterboarding, which simulates drowning.

CIA director Michael Hayden has admitted to Congress that the agency used the technique to get information from three top Al Qaeda operatives, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sep 11, 2001 terrorist attacks who was captured in Pakistan in 2003.

Congress previously banned waterboarding and other harsh tactics, but the Bush administration said the law did not apply to intelligence agencies.

The top US law enforcement official, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, has also refused to tell the Senate whether he believed waterboarding is legal or not.

‘If this were an easy question, I would not be reluctant to offer my views on this subject,’ Mukasey said.

Lawmakers have based the contents of the bill on the contents of the US Army’s handbook for interrogation techniques, which expressly prohibits mock drowning. The House version of the bill banned sexual humiliation, mock executions, the use of attack dogs and the withholding of food and medical care, the report said.

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UK Legalizes Taser Use On Children

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

LRC

The Brits have taken a giant leap ahead in the race towards totalitarianism. The police have been given permission to zap all violent suspects, even if they are unarmed and even if they are children. Home Office Police Minister Tony McNulty said medical assessments had confirmed the risk of death or serious injury from Tasers was “low”. The relaxing of restrictions on the use of the weapons comes despite warnings that they could trigger a heart attack in youngsters. But it’s not just children:

The Government scientists were also asked to test whether the weapons could cause a miscarriage if used on a pregnant woman.While not saying whether police would be allowed to Taser an expectant mother, the Home Office said the DSAC committee had “specifically asked” for computer simulations to be carried out to analyse the effect on “a pregnant female”.

Men, women and children shall all face the voltage.

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Jose Padilla Brings Torture to Trial

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

Can a DOJ lawyer be held accountable for advocating the inhumane?

By Doug Cassel

When on Jan. 22 a federal court judge sentenced Jose Padilla to 17 years in prison for conspiracy to commit terrorism, it was a one-day story. But, in fact, the Padilla case goes on.

Padilla, a U.S. citizen and former Chicago gang member, alleges that he was tortured during the more than three and a half years he spent behind bars at a Navy brig in South Carolina. He is now suing John Yoo, the former Justice Department lawyer who reportedly devised the legal theories to justify the interrogation techniques used against him.

While Padilla’s suit raises a number of constitutional claims—including that the military violated his rights to counsel and to exercise his Muslim religion—the heart of his argument is that Yoo gave legal advice to justify his torture, in violation of due process of law as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Padilla, who is separately appealing his recent conviction, asks the court to rule that his treatment violated the Constitution, and to order Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, to pay him $1 in damages.

The suit raises important questions of law and fact. Are lawyers liable for giving bad legal advice to federal officials?

In August 2002, Yoo, then an attorney in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, wrote a formal opinion letter advising that interrogation techniques are not torture unless they inflict pain equivalent to “organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death.” The new head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith, later withdrew Yoo’s opinion.

Goldsmith, now a Harvard law professor, explains in his book, The Terror Presidency, that Yoo’s reasoning was “legally flawed” and “tendentious.” It seemed “more an exercise of sheer power than reasoned analysis.” Even so, was it the proximate cause of any mistreatment of Padilla?

However such questions are resolved, Padilla’s allegations of his treatment, if true, ought to shame a civilized society.

‘Measurably abnormal’

Padilla charges he was imprisoned in a seven-foot by nine-foot cell in the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., for nearly four years. For the first 21 months, he says he was denied all contact with anyone outside the brig, including family and lawyers, leaving him with interrogators and guards as his only human contact.

He alleges he was allowed no watch or clock, nor any news about the outside world. The only window in his cell was blacked out. When he was allowed out of his cell, his eyes and ears were covered.

Periodically, he says, he was subjected to absolute light or darkness for periods in excess of 24 hours. He was subjected to extreme temperature variations in his cell, where his bed consisted of a cold steel slab with no mattress, pillow or blanket. He says brig guards and others deliberately banged on his walls and bars at all hours of the night. For hours at a time, he says guards kept him shackled and manacled, or forced him to sit or stand in uncomfortable and painful positions.

Worse, his interrogators allegedly threatened to cut him with a knife and pour alcohol in the wounds. He says they also threatened to kill him, or send him to a country where they said he would receive far worse treatment. Against his will, they allegedly administered chemicals, which Padilla believes were psychotropic drugs.

When his lawyers were finally allowed access to him, he was not permitted to tell them about prison conditions.

If Padilla’s allegations are true, they qualify as torture under international law: the intentional infliction of severe physical or mental pain for purposes such as interrogation. The U.N. Committee on Torture and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights have held that incommunicado detention—even for periods far shorter than Padilla endured—is torture. They have also ruled that combinations of sensory deprivation techniques amount to torture, as well.

According to Padilla’s complaint, a “substantial body of clinical literature and expert opinion … holds that restriction of environmental and social stimulation has a profoundly deleterious effect on mental functioning, and that even a few days of solitary confinement predictably causes brain patterns to become measurably abnormal.”

It would drive anyone mad.

Waging ‘lawfare’

Yoo has castigated Padilla and his lawyers at the Yale Law School clinic for waging “lawfare,” which Yoo calls “another dimension” of the terrorist war against the United States.

In a Jan. 16 op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Yoo complained that terrorists use cases like Padilla’s to press “novel theories that have failed at the ballot box.”

If their legal theories are novel, Yoo can thank himself: Never before has the Justice Department sanctioned prolonged, mind-altering brutality on a U.S. citizen.

Still, suing a government lawyer for rendering legal advice, no matter how injudicious, ought to give pause. Such lawsuits could deter creative thinking by attorneys trying to protect the public. If allowed at all, they should be confined to rare and extreme cases, such as Yoo’s torture memo.

There are limits on what advice lawyers may give. After World War II, German government lawyers who wrote memos and orders depriving Russian prisoners of war of their Geneva Conventions protections, and authorizing the forced disappearances of political prisoners, were convicted at Nuremberg. Would authorizing torture of prisoners have made them any less guilty?

Although the suit against Yoo does not seek to convict him of a crime, it does aim to hold him civilly liable—for a symbolic $1 in damages—not only for the torture, but also for his legal advice that allegedly led to violations of Padilla’s constitutional rights. Those include the rights to counsel, access to court, due process of law, freedom of religion, rights to information and association, and his rights to be free from inhumane conditions of confinement, cruel and unusual punishment, coercive interrogations and improper military detention.

In pressing these wide-ranging claims, Padilla’s lawyers face daunting legal obstacles. Unlike most damages suits for violations of basic rights, civil rights law does not authorize their lawsuit. By necessity, Padilla’s suit rests directly on the Constitution. While the Supreme Court has authorized suits for damages based solely on violations of the Constitution, it does so sparingly—when the violations would not otherwise be subject to judicial or effective oversight and, even then, only if no special factors weigh against the wisdom of creating a new cause of action.

Only one of Padilla’s claims—under the Eighth Amendment—has arguable Supreme Court precedent. Some claims may fail on the ground that they are subject to judicial oversight in the criminal proceedings against him. Others may be rejected because they deal with gray areas of national security law, where legal mistakes should not result in damages suits.

But Padilla should probably be allowed to try at least his core claims—that the torturous confinement and interrogation techniques violated his Fifth Amendment right to due process, and possibly his Eighth Amendment right not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. To the extent the prosecution in his criminal trial did not rely on any coerced confession by Padilla, these alleged violations have not been subject to judicial oversight.

Curbing an imperial presidency

If Padilla overcomes this hurdle, others remain. Yoo may contend that he is entitled to absolute immunity, as are prosecutors when presenting their cases to a court. But Yoo more likely will be granted only the “qualified immunity” afforded to prosecutors when they advise police on interrogation techniques, or to the attorney general when he authorizes national security wiretaps without a judicial warrant.

If Yoo is granted qualified immunity, he can be held liable for his erroneous legal advice only if it violated “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” In this case, his legal advice plainly did: Yoo’s memo legally authorized torture.

But the issue is not so simple.

Yoo’s overriding legal rationale is that the president’s powers give him constitutional license to override any law—including laws against torture—if he deems it necessary to wage a war. The courts may thus need to consider whether any reasonable lawyer could advise that the Constitution allows the president to disregard all law during wartime.

Finally, the government might decide to assert the “state secrets” privilege to quash Padilla’s claims, on the ground that the claims cannot fairly be adjudicated without probing secret intelligence methods and communications.

Unless barred by the state secrets privilege, Padilla’s suit will likely break new ground. Far from a case of “lawfare,” it promises to strengthen the rule of law by clarifying whether and when government lawyers can be held accountable for ill-considered legal advice.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 5:39 pm and is filed under Surveillance, Civil Liberties & Human Rights News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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