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Fears mount over US economy


Friday, March 14th, 2008

 

The US economy has been hit by more bleak news, with a series of announcements adding to an already gloomy picture.

A slump in consumer spending, another drop in the dollar, and oil prices at new highs pushed the White House to admit that the next few months would be “difficult and challenging”.

First came the news of weaker than expected February retail sales figures, reflecting a lack of consumer confidence that could prove fatal for an economy where consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of total activity.

The commerce department reported that consumers, battered by falling home values, job losses, soaring energy costs and a severe credit squeeze, held back on spending in February. The 0.6 per cent drop was the second big drop in retail sales in the past three months, a pattern consistent with the onset of a recession, and many economists believe the country is in recession or will be soon.

‘Difficult and challenging’

The Bush administration rushed out new proposals to avoid a repeat of various problems that have led to a severe crisis in credit markets.

Tony Fratto, the White House deputy press secretary, said the government expected a “difficult and challenging” period but predicted an economic rebound once the impact of the Federal Reserve’s credit cuts and the recently passed economic stimulus package began to be felt. But private analysts were not as confident, worrying that the economy is being hit by multiple blows and noting that some of the problems, such as plunging home sales and mortgage defaults, are showing no signs of abating. “We’re in the belly of the recession beast right now and all we really can do is take defensive action,” Bernard Baumohl, managing director of the Economic Outlook Group, told the Associated Press. George Bush, the US president, is expected in

New York on Friday to deliver a speech on the economy. “I think it’s important for the president to get out and talk about how he sees the economy, and why he sees the economy improving as the year goes on,” Fratto said.  But Fratto conceded that surging energy prices were acting as a drag and “higher oil prices and higher gasoline prices are not going to go away overnight”. Crude oil prices hit all-time highs on Thursday with crude closing at $110.33 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Dipping dollar

February’s retail sales was weaker
than expected [AFP]

The dollar, meanwhile, dropped anew, dipping briefly below 100 yen for the first time in 12 years and falling to a new low against the euro.

Gold prices topped $1,000 an ounce on Thursday for the first time after the dollar’s plunge.


Gold, which is priced in dollars, becomes cheaper for buyers using other currencies when the US unit falls in value. There was also the troubling news that Chrysler, the country’s third largest car manufacturer, announced it was shutting down operations for two weeks in July to boost productivity and efficiency. 

‘End in sight’

On Wall Street, stocks slid more than 200 points but then rebounded to close up more than 30 points as traders grew hopeful about a Federal Reserve rate cut next Tuesday of up to three-quarters of a point. Investors’ moods were also bolstered after the Standard & Poor’s predicted that financial companies were nearing the end of the massive write-downs in the value of sub-prime mortgages and other assets. “The end of write-downs is now in sight for large financial institutions,” it said. The president’s Working Group on Financial Markets, led by Henry Paulson, the treasury secretary, put forward a broad blueprint of changes on Thursday aimed at correcting a variety of abuses such as mortgage brokers who pushed prospective buyers into loans they could not afford. While the recommendations could help prevent a repeat of the current crisis, critics said the administration still needed to go much further to stave off an expected tidal wave of foreclosures in coming months. 

Nearly 60 per cent more

US homes faced foreclosure in February than in the same month a year ago, according to a report on Thursday from California-based RealtyTrac.

Agencies


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WASHINGTON’S SUPPRESSED PROSTITUTION CASE


Friday, March 14th, 2008

ONE THING IS CLEAR about the so-called DC Madam - aka Deborah Jeane Palfrey - case: there is a stunning contrast between the lid being kept on the names of male clients in this matter and the interest of the media compared to the speed with which Eliot Spitzer name became notorious in a similar DC case. Admittedly the alleged charges for a prostitute in the DC Madam case were far less than in the Emperor’s Club operation, but both were sufficient to attract the police.

At least investigative journalist Wayne Madsen reported a name in the DC Madam case that was even more famous than Spitzers’ but there has been no denial and no libel suit, not to mention a striking lack of curiosity by the

Washington press. Our own best guess as to why the DC Madam client list is being handled so gingerly: the appearance on it of too many good news sources not to mention the possibility of a few well known. media types as well.

Having gotten estimates at the time for the cost to research and back-track telephone numbers, along with subsequent owner data (tens of thousands of dollars), we gladly accepted ABC’s offer of assistance. In return, ABC asked that they be given exclusivity regarding the first public interview with me and more importantly, all of the phone records for years 1993 to 2006.

While the laborious task of copying and transferring the enormous amount of data to ABC was ongoing, the government went to Judge Kessler and obtained the current restraining order prohibiting either my civil counsel, Mr. Sibley or me from further distribution of the records. The government’s justification for the temporary injunction was witness harassment and intimidation — having abandoned its prior rationalization, i.e. asset forfeiture. Consequently, ABC received only 80% of years 2002 thru 2006.

Contrary to popular belief, they never had a complete set of all 13 years. In the final analysis, it really didn’t matter whether ABC had 4 years or 13, their constant assurances and reassurances to Mr. Sibley and me that they could be trusted with my story — for the almost two months they researched 2002 to 2006 — fell flat on May 4, when the much hyped, sweep’s week 20/20 broadcast failed to deliver even one revelation; this despite, a major ad campaign blitz on the part of the network to the contrary. Both Mr. Sibley and I can attest to the fact — having been an integral part of the 7 1/2 week vetting process — that there were and are noteworthy names to be named, in the four years. Why ABC chose to jump ship seemingly at the eleventh hour would be pure speculation, here. The bottom line is that they did and by doing so, they did a tremendous disservice to the American people.. .

DeSales Street

bureau across the street from the Mayflower Hotel, one of the rendezvous points for some Pamela Martin clients. Our sources stated that Ross, Schwartz, Rood, and others at ABC tried their best to get the story out but were overruled by senior executives at ABC in New York and Disney headquarters in

Burbank, California who, in turn, were under heavy pressure from the Bush White House.

The Washington Madam case also involves criminal conspiracy and malfeasance within the Justice Department, Internal Revenue Service, and Postal Inspection Service. Palfrey’s case file was not opened until June 2004 after she had been in business for over a decade without any pressure from the government. After Baltimore Police Commissioner and later Maryland State Police Superintendent Ed Norris was charged in May 2004 with three criminal counts by US Attorney Thomas DiBiagio, the IRS opened a file on Palfrey the following month. It is clear that with Norris, a 20 year veteran of the New York Police Department, facing up to 30 years in prison, he entered into a plea bargain with DiBiagio. In return for his cooperation, which included Norris naming Pamela Martin as one of the recipients of Baltimore Police supplemental accounts money, he got six months in prison and six months home detention. Norris now hosts a radio show in

Baltimore.

DiBiagio’s assistant US Attorney Jonathan Luna, who once worked at the Brooklyn District Attorneys’ office when a probe was being conducted of both Norris and his friend, former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, was on to Norris’ corruption in

Baltimore. Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley appointed Norris as police commissioner but soon became disenchanted with his performance. After his relection as Governor in 2002, Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich appointed Norris as Maryland State Police Superintendent. Luna was brutally murdered near the Pennsylvania Turnpike in December 2003.

Washington madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey wants ABC News to disclose the identity of a federal prosecutor identified in a recent news report as a client of Palfrey’s escort service. In a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Palfrey’s civil lawyer, Montgomery Blair Sibley, contends that the Justice Department should compel ABC to disclose the prosecutor’s identity and whether he had any role in the Palfrey investigation. . .

BALTIMORE EXAMINER, MAY 2007 - A woman accused of running a Washington-area prostitution ring says former

University of

Maryland professor Brandy Britton worked for her. Britton told The Examiner before her death that she previously worked for an escort service called East Coast Elites, but she never mentioned Deborah Jeane Palfrey or her firm, Pamela Martin & Associates, during a series of interviews with this newspaper. . . Britton committed suicide in January, days before she was scheduled to stand trial on prostitution charges and be evicted from her $600,000

Ellicott City home. She faced up to a year in prison on each count, but

Howard County prosecutors said that if convicted, she likely wouldn’t have served any time. Britton’s

Howard County police file makes no mention of Palfrey or her escort service. Police said Britton was working alone when arrested in January 2006, and they have not connected her case to Palfrey. . . Although Britton said her clients included “police, lawyers and judges,” her notes don’t appear to include the names of prominent people. They contain many partial names and code names, including notes for appointments with men identified only as “Robert,” “Bernard” and “David.” Next to their names, she sometimes wrote the callers’ purported occupations, such as “Dr.” or “Accountant.” Britton was a former assistant professor of sociology and anthropology at

University of

Maryland,

Baltimore County. She resigned in 1999. . . . “I thought I would hate the job, and I’d just have to do it,” she said. “But I really liked it, and I made some really good friends, and I like men more than I ever did before. It’s a long story, but as a feminist it made me see things differently. They love their families and their kids. They’re good guys that really love their wives.”

According to e-mails the woman sent to Palfrey on her Akin Gump account, she “enjoyed and even missed” the work she did at night for Palfrey, who has been charged by federal prosecutors with running a large scale prostitution ring. “Perhaps not the weekly grind, but was thinking that a day a week would be fun and spa money,” the legal secretary wrote to Palfrey last year, after Palfrey had closed her business and was considering whether to re-open it.

The Akin Gump secretary was described by Palfrey as an “absolutely lovely gal,” who was working as an escort “to go back to school and get her education, to finish her college degree.”

Considered one of the most powerful firms in Washington, Akin Gump partners make up a who’s who of Washington insiders, including

Vernon Jordan, former Speaker of the House Tom Foley, former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson, former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman and co-founder Robert Strauss, an adviser to numerous presidents.

CAROL D. LEONNIG, WASHINGTON POST MAY 2007 - A former client of the woman accused of being the D.C. madam is trying to block his name from being aired on an ABC News program about her escort business and the men who patronized it, saying publicity would amount to witness intimidation, ABC said yesterday. In a letter to ABC, Steven Salky, the man’s attorney, wrote that he has “reason to believe” that his client could be named tomorrow in a “20/20″ report about an alleged prostitution ring run by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, ABC said. Salky would not identify the man. The client expects to be a prosecution witness in Palfrey’s federal trial on racketeering charges, Salky told ABC. Identifying him would violate a court order barring harassment of potential witnesses, he said. . .

Washington, D.C. madam who has recently threatened to go public with details about her former customers. In a motion filed Monday in U.S. District Court, investigators are seeking a protective order covering discovery material to be provided to Deborah Palfrey and her lawyers.

Palfrey, 50, was indicted last week on racketeering and money laundering charges stemming from her operation of the Pamela Martin & Associates escort service, which closed last summer after 13 years in business. In their motion, government lawyers claim that some discovery documents contain “personal information” about Palfrey’s former johns and prostitutes that is “sensitive.” . . .

Before closing her business, Palfrey operated a web site touting Pamela Martin & Associates as “the best adult agency around,” claiming that it had an “ongoing repeat clientele rate of 65-75%.” Palfrey’s site also advertised for escorts. Prospective hookers, she noted, had to be at least 23 years old with two or more years of college. And her $275-an-appointment employees had to be “weight proportionate to height.”


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It’s Maine vs. the feds over national ID cards


Friday, March 14th, 2008

Unless someone blinks, after May 11 air travel for Mainers will get a lot more complicated. So will entering a federal office building or courthouse. That is the day the Department of Homeland Security institutes new regulations that will gradually turn drivers’ licenses into national identification cards.

Whoops. We’re not supposed to say that. The new regulations, part of the Real ID program, are supposed to “enhance the integrity and reliability of drivers’ licenses and identification cards,” according to a press release from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Essentially Real ID sets common standards for all drivers’ licenses and state identity cards nationwide and creates the electronic infrastructure that gives states and the federal government access to each other’s databases of personal information. Early last year an outraged and skeptical Maine legislature almost unanimously passed a bill opposing the new rules and forbidding the state’s participation. Since then at least sixteen other states have passed bills or resolutions similarly opposing.

According to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Real ID will make America safe from terrorists, stop identity theft, and solve the illegal immigration problem. According to its opponents, Real ID is a massive invasion of personal privacy that offers no assurances of safety or security but will impose a multi-billion-dollar unfunded mandate on the states. Once in place, opponents add, Real ID presents the very real opportunity for “mission creep,” with its use expanding to include prescription drug purchases, banking, employment, and even access to a voting booth.

“The vote opposing Real ID in the legislature wasn’t about the money,” Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap explains. “Every caucus, Republican and Democratic, House and Senate, said we don’t trust the government to create databases of personal information and controls on how we move around.”

“Real ID fundamentally undermines Mainers’ privacy and security,” declares Shenna Bellows, executive director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union (MCLU). “The federal government is foisting a national identification card on Americans without any debate on the pros or cons.”

Opposition to the new regulations has brought together an unusual assortment of players, from the MCLU to George Smith of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine to legislative leaders of both parties. In truth, it’s difficult to find anyone in Maine who supports the measure outside the few dozen members of Mainers for a Sensible Immigration Policy, who hope that Real ID is the solution to the illegal immigration problem.

Maine Senator Susan Collins chaired the Homeland Security Committee when the original Real-ID legislation was passed and today is the ranking Republican member. She gets some of the credit for delaying implementation of the rules, and over the past several months, as public opposition to Real ID has mounted, she has adopted a progressively tougher stance against the program.

Among other points, she notes that in 2004 she and her then-Democratic counterpart on the committee, Senator Joe Lieberman, of Connecticut, had written a bill that called for a collaborative approach between the federal government and the states in developing a new, more secure ID. “Then Real ID was slipped through, and it repealed the language Joe and I had written,” she recalls. “We need a tamper-proof ID. We don’t need Real ID.”

When Collins says Real ID “was slipped through,” she isn’t exaggerating. A relatively obscure congressman from Wisconsin, F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., had been promoting Real ID for several years without success until 2005, when he managed to attach the program as a rider to a supplemental military appropriations bill. It sailed through Congress under the radar and without debate.

Originally Real ID was promoted as an anti-terrorist measure, but that argument faltered when opponents pointed out that all of the 9/11 hijackers carried valid identification papers that would have passed the Real ID test. Then supporters argued that it would prevent identity theft — until the DHS’ Transportation Security Administration created a Web site that left the personal information of air travelers open to the public.

Now Real ID is being pushed as an anti-illegal immigration program, which makes some people wonder what that has to do with air travel. And since it’s a federal program being implemented by state motor vehicle departments, does that also turn drivers’ license examiners into immigration agents? Matt Dunlap says that’s not in the job description of any of his employees.

Real ID was supposed to be fully implemented by this year, but critics won delays while DHS tried to reduce costs — originally estimated at twenty billion dollars — and answer questions about its effectiveness. If Maine and other recalcitrant states want their licenses and other state-issued IDs to remain valid for air travel after May 11, they must apply for a waiver claiming they need more time to comply.

As it now stands, people born on or after December 1, 1964, will have to obtain the new ID by December 1, 2014. Those born before December 1, 1964, will have until December 1, 2017. “The reason for that,” Dunlap says with a laugh, “is that DHS figures that people over fifty years old are less likely to be terrorists. Hello? Anyone care to guess how old Osama Bin Laden is?” (Bin Laden’s birth date is generally given as March 10, 1957.)

Collins hopes that Maine applies for the extension, which gives the state until the end of 2009. “The state has many legitimate points about the cost and privacy concerns,” she says. “But I don’t want to see Maine citizens suffering the consequences of Maine not asking for the extension.”

Mainers who cannot produce an acceptable ID after the May 11 deadline — a passport or a military ID card, for example — will face additional screening at airport security checkpoints. “There are practical implications for residents of states that don’t participate,” acknowledges DHS spokesperson Amy Kudwa. “The IDs of states that opt out are no longer valid for federal purposes. This is the law, and we are the enforcing agency.”

“Even if just Maine stays out of the program, it’s going to cause chaos at the airports in Portland and Bangor,” Dunlap says, “and in Chicago and Boston and Los Angeles, too, because Mainers travel. But it’s not just Maine — Montana, Georgia, New Hampshire, all those other states have refused to join the program.”

“DHS is trying to scare Maine into backing down,” warns the MCLU’s Bellows. “What’s really going to happen on May 11 is nothing is going to happen. It’s hard to believe that DHS is going to prevent the residents of all these states from boarding planes unless they go through enhanced security procedures. It would be a nightmare.”

Kudwa says DHS is hanging tough in the expectation that travelers who face the additional hassles will demand that their state governments comply with the program. She dismisses the possibility that citi-zens who already loathe the uncertainty and humiliation of modern air travel might direct their wrath at DHS instead.

There are other issues with Real ID beyond flight delays. Bellows points out that Chertoff could end up explaining himself to a federal judge if citizens are barred from entering a federal courthouse or office building without showing a Real-ID compliant document. “There are serious First Amendment problems relating to the right to assemble and right to petition the government for redress of grievances,” she notes. “If people are forced to show a Real ID license to enter a federal building, it imposes an unreasonable restriction on their access to their public servants.”

Collins notes that her constituent offices in Bangor and Augusta are both in federal buildings that will require the new identification to enter. “There is a list of alternative acceptable documents,” she explains, “but otherwise I do fear there will be inconveniences.” Both of Maine’s congressmen, Tom Allen and Michael Michaud, have expressed opposition to Real ID, and Senator Olympia Snowe has called for delays to work out a compromise.

Bellows says barring people who lack approved identification could be seen as imposing limits on the right of a federal court defendant to face his or her accuser or the right of a witness to testify. “The regulations do not address the constitutionality issue at all,” Bellows notes. “We think Real ID is constitutionally unsound, and the Department of Homeland Security is opening itself to immediate legal challenge.”

Dunlap notes that there is already talk of requiring Real ID-compliant identification for voters. “The Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform included it in their final recommendations,” he says. If that happens, the state will not be allowed to charge a fee for a driver’s license, because it would be interpreted as a poll tax, which is illegal.

Among the few people publicly supporting the program in Maine is Robert Casimiro, of Bridgton, executive director of Mainers for a Sensible Immigration Policy and a member of the Minutemen, which made headlines last year when its members highlighted illegal immigration by setting up their own patrols of the Mexican border. The Brunswick High School graduate returned to the state a year ago from Massachusetts, where he led a similar organization. Both, he says, are outgrowths of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, itself an offshoot of the bitter battle inside the national Sierra Club in the late 1990s over immigration policy and overpopulation.

“Personally I’m not too thrilled about Real ID,” Casimiro admits, “but if it will force Maine to do what it currently is not doing — requiring driver’s license applicants to prove they are legal residents of the United States — then I have to support it.” Casimiro notes that Vermont and New Hampshire already require proof of legal residence to earn a driver’s license. Both also oppose Real ID.

“We’re not asking state employees to be immigration agents. But they need to verify that people are who they say they are,” he argues. “Right now the rules for getting a hunting license in Maine are much more strict than for getting a driver’s license.”

George Smith, executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, has some experience with that issue. He fears that Real ID is a foot in the door to increasing government surveillance of citizens. “Look what happened with our Social Security numbers,” he says. Many older Mainers have Social Security cards from their youth that say prominently “Not to be used for identification.” Now the number is required for all sorts of things.

“I was refused a fishing license in Florida and a pheasant hunting license in North Dakota because I refused to give them my Social Security number,” Smith recalls. To him Real ID “smacks of needing a passport to travel in your own country.”

For now, Mainers can only wait to see if someone blinks. Collins says Chertoff, with whom she speaks frequently on DHS issues, “thinks he already has blinked by allowing the extension to 2009. He’s very unhappy with that delay.”

By early February, at least, Dunlap was predicting that Maine wouldn’t blink, either. “I hate to be alarmist and say our liberty is at stake,” he muses, “but we need to have that discussion. We don’t need to roll over to a bureaucratic automaton. Justice William O. Douglas once said that oppression doesn’t come suddenly, like turning off a light. It comes slowly, like nightfall, just getting darker and darker.”

Jeff Clark


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Web Hosting Company Silences Police Watchdog


Friday, March 14th, 2008

A new web service that lets users rate and comment on the uniformed police officers in their community is scrambling to restore service Tuesday, after hosting company GoDaddy unceremonious pulled-the-plug on the site in the wake of outrage from criticism-leery cops.Visitors to RateMyCop.com on Tuesday were redirected to a GoDaddy page reading, “Oops!!!”, which urged the site owner to contact GoDaddy to find out why the company pulled the plug.

RateMyCop founder Gino Sesto says he was given no notice of the suspension. When he called GoDaddy, the company told him that he’d been shut down for “suspicious activity.”

When Sesto got a supervisor on the phone, the company changed its story and claimed the site had surpassed its 3 terabyte bandwidth limit, a claim that Sesto says is nonsense. “How can it be overloaded when it only had 80,00 page views today, and 400,000 yesterday?”

Police departments became uneasy about RateMyCop’s plans to watch the watchers in January, when the Culver City, California, startup began issuing public information requests for lists of uniformed officers.

Then the site went live on February 28th. It stores the names and, in some cases, badge numbers of over 140,000 cops in as many as 500 police departments, and allows users to post comments about police they’ve interacted with, and rate them. The site garnered media interest this week as cops around the country complained that they’d be put at risk if their names were on the internet.

“Having a website like that puts a lot of law enforcement, in my eyes, in danger because it exposes us out there,” Officer Hector Basurto, vice president of the Latino Police Officers Association, told ABC television affiliate KGO.

Since undercover officers aren’t in the database, and the site has no personal information like home addresses, that fear seems unfounded. Chief Jerry Dyer, president of the California Police Chiefs Association, voices what sounds like a more honest concern: that officers will face  “unfair maligning” by the citizens they serve.

Sesto says police can post comments as well, and a future version of the site will allow them to authenticate themselves to post rebuttals more prominently.  Chief Dyer wants to get legislation passed that would make RateMyCop.com illegal, which, of course, wouldn’t pass constitutional muster in any court in America.

Unfortunately for the startup, the company it chose for hosting is known to be quick to censor its customers. In January of last year, GoDaddy took down entire computer security website – delisting it from DNS — to get a single, archived mailing list post off the web.

On that occasion, at least, it gave the site’s owner 60 seconds notice. GoDaddy notified Seto by posting its “Oops!” message to his public website.

“You put on my website for me to call you, when you have my phone number?,” says Sesto.

A GoDaddy spokeswoman says the company can’t comment on the RateMyCop takedown due to its privacy policy. Sesto says he’s already arranged hosting elsewhere, and hopes to have the site online Tuesday night.

March 12, 2008 | 6:00:00 PM RackSpace Cops Out. Sesto says he’d arranged for the Texas-based hosting firm RackSpace to take over permanent hosting for RateMyCop.com, and paid them $2,000 for the first two months of service. But he heard from RackSpace’s lawyer minutes ago, and the deal is off.

“We believe that the website to be found at www.ratemycop.com as described to our sales representative could create a risk to the health and safety of law enforcement officers,” wrote general counsel Beth Sherfy, in an e-mail to the startup provided by Sesto.

Sherfy didn’t immediately return a phone call from THREAT LEVEL.

At the moment, the site has temporary hosting on its own server, but Sesto says it won’t be able to handle the kind of traffic he expects as RateMyCop.com becomes more popular. He doesn’t sound too worried, and there’s little doubt that he’ll be able to find a hosting company.

Our prediction: A year from now RateMyCop.com will have won public service awards. Good cops, and clean departments, will have come to think of the site as a friend, and its founders will be sought-after speakers at police gatherings.  Hosting companies that reject them on “health and safety” grounds will look like fools and cowards.

March 12, 2008 | 19:40:00 PM GoDaddy Breaks Its Silence. The company insists the RateMyCop.com takedown had nothing to do with the content of the site.

“The site’s operator has publicly disclosed the concerns were over bandwidth,” spokeswoman Elizabeth Driscoll writes in an e-mail  “More accurately, GoDaddy’s concerns were about how the RateMyCop site was far exceeding the amount of server usage for which it had contracted.”

I asked for clarification, and Driscoll agreed with Sesto that RateMyCop.com hadn’t exceeded its monthly  bandwidth allotment.  But the spike in popularity that followed the police backlash resulted in far more simultaneous connections than GoDaddy can handle under the low-budget shared hosting plan Sesto signed up for.

There’s no hard contractual limit on the number of connections a customer can receive at once, but Driscoll says GoDaddy pulled the plug under a broad provision of its terms-of-service that lets it “remove your website temporarily or permanently from its virtual dedicated servers if GoDaddy is the recipient of activities that threaten the stability of its network.”

“Basically, he was paying for compact car, when he really needed a semi-truck,” Driscoll writes. “The customer was not willing to work with our staff to resolve the issue.”

Sesto refutes that last part, and says GoDaddy didn’t contact him before cutting off the site.

Kevin Poulsen


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Ex-Drug Sales Rep Exposes All


Friday, March 14th, 2008

Former Eli Lilly Rep Says He Wined and Dined Doctors to Make a Sale

To sell their drugs, pharmaceutical companies hire former cheerleaders and ex-models to wine and dine doctors, exaggerate the drug’s benefits and underplay their side-effects, a former sales rep told a Congressional committee this morning.

Shahram Ahari, who spent two years selling Prozac and Zypraxa for Eli Lily, told a Senate Aging Committee chaired by Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wisc., that his job involved “rewarding physicians with gifts and attention for their allegiance to your product and company despite what may be ethically appropriate.”

Ahari claims that drug companies like hiring former cheerleaders and ex-models, as well as former athletes and members of the military, many of whom have no background in science.

“On my first day of sales class, among 21 trainees and two instructors, I was the only one with any level of college-level science education,” Ahari told ABCNews.com on Tuesday.

During their five-week training class, Ahari claims that instructors teach sales tactics, including how to exceed spending limits for important clients, being generous with free samples to leverage sales, using friendships and personal gifts to foster a “quid pro quo” relationship, and how to exploit sexual tension.

“The nature of this business is gift-giving,” says Ahari. He claims that he’s heard stories about sales reps helping to pay the cost of a doctor’s swimming pool and another doctor who was routinely taken to a nightclub where a hostess was paid to keep him company.

Drug reps develop a positive view of their drug and a negative view of the competitors, according to Ahari. “You drink the Kool-Aid. We were taught to minimize the side effects and how to use conversational ploys to minimize it or to change the topic.”

According to Ahari, the benefits could be lucrative for sales reps, who tended to earn more than researchers. On top of a base salary for starting reps of $50,000, “there were four quarterly bonuses, an annual bonus, stock options, a car, 401K, great health benefits, and a $60,000 expense account.”

Included in his prepared remarks, Ahari cites a quote from a senior marketing executive at Parke-Davis: “I want you out there every day selling Neurotonin. Neurotonin is more profitable than Accupril, so we need to focus on Neurotonin. Pain management, now that’s money&. I don’t want to see a single patient coming off Neurotonin before they’ve been up to at least 4,800 milligrams a day. I don’t want to hear that safety crap, either.”

A spokesman for Parke-Davis did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.

A spokesman for Eli-Lilly emphasized that Ahari’s testimony didn’t allege any specific product misconduct on the part of the company but rather focused on industry practice.

“We think his examples are exaggerated. We have policies in place that allow us to engage in interactions with health care professionals at an appropriate level and they are intended to provide information about our products so that they will be able to make appropriate medical decisions for their patients,” the spokesman said.

One doctor who says he has resisted the pitches of sales reps is Dr. Jerome P. Kassirer, a professor at Tufts University School of Medicine.

“I don’t see drug reps and haven’t seen them for probably 35 years,” he tells ABCNews.com’s Audrey Grayson. “One important question: why would the drug industry spend so much money on advertising if they didn’t think they were influencing physicians? The notion that this is all for physician education is nonsense.”

Democrats in Congress are pushing for a bill to counter the pharmaceutical companies’ sales campaigns by paying nurses, pharmacists and other health professionals to present objective academic literature on prescription drugs to doctors.

A drug industry group, Coalition for Healthcare Communication, is not opposed to the measure but questioned the role of politicians and the federal government.

“The First Amendment provides everyone with a right to speak, including Uncle Sam,” John Kamp, CHC director told the Associated Press. “But I question whether the federal government needs to be in the business of countering pharmaceutical sales.”


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Newcastle star Joey Barton to face trial


Friday, March 14th, 2008

Newcastle star Joey Barton to face trial over alleged attack on teenager

Footballer Joey Barton is facing a crown court trial for allegedly attacking a teenager.

The Newcastle United player, 25, appeared before magistrates yesterday for the fourth time over the brawl at a McDonald’s in Liverpool on December 27.

He and brother Andrew, 20, face assault charges and girlfriend Nadine Wilson, 27, is up for common assault.

Barton is also accused of affray. All three will be in court on April 23.

13/03/2008


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British ‘link’ in torture case


Friday, March 14th, 2008

British special forces troops were involved in the investigation of a man who alleges he was tortured by US agents while held in secret jails for a period of nearly three years, it has been claimed in a report released by Amnesty International.

The claim led to renewed calls from the human rights group for the UK Government to allow a thorough, independent inquiry into all aspects of British involvement with secret “war on terror” detentions, including so-called rendition flights.

There is no suggestion in the report that British troops were themselves involved in torture or interrogation of the man, a Yemeni national who says he was detained by US troops during a sweep of a market place in the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004.

But Amnesty noted that the UK personnel apparently did nothing to raise the alarm about the man’s alleged mistreatment at the hands of American interrogators.

The latest report is based on the testimony of Khaled al-Maqtari, a 31-year-old former merchant, who says he was severely tortured while being held in three prisons before his release without charge in May 2007.

Its publication comes just weeks after Foreign Secretary David Miliband admitted to Parliament that, contrary to earlier denials, the UK territory of Diego Garcia had been used by US rendition flights carrying detainees.

Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen said: “Slowly but surely more information about the ultra-secretive US ‘war on terror’ detentions operation is trickling out and Khaled al-Maqtari’s extremely serious allegations must be met with a serious investigation by both the US and UK authorities.

“A full independent inquiry on both sides of the Atlantic into secret prisons and rendition flights is long overdue and should now happen as soon as possible.

“If his allegations are substantiated, Mr al-Maqtari’s tormentors must be brought to justice and he should receive proper reparation for his horrifying ordeal.”

Mr al-Maqtari told Amnesty that after his seizure, he was taken, handcuffed and hooded, to a military camp near Fallujah, where he was beaten by US soldiers before being transferred by helicopter to Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison. There, he says he was subjected to beatings with sticks while naked, hooded and handcuffed. Loud discordant music was played and he was doused in cold water and forced to hold a heavy box while standing in front of a powerful air-conditioning system.

© Copyright Press Association Ltd 2008, All Rights Reserved.


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‘FBI continues to break the law’


Friday, March 14th, 2008

The Justice Department’s Inspector General has reported the FBI continues to illegally obtain personal information about Americans.

‘It is too early to tell whether these measures will eliminate fully the problems,’ Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said in his second report in two years on the use of national security letters to obtain personal information.

Fine said the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Justice Department had made significant progress in implemented revised procedures since last year but some measures still are not fully implemented or tested.

The new procedures govern how FBI agents use national security letters, which allow them to obtain telephone, bank, Internet and credit records without first getting a warrant from a judge.

The revised procedures were announced after Fine’s report last year found 48 violations of law or rules in the bureau’s use of national security letters from 2003 to 2005.

Fine said that the number of abuses found and reported by the FBI itself in 2006 “was significantly higher than the number of reported violations in prior years.”

He said the improved self-policing ‘may be explained in large part’ by attention focused on these issues by his earlier audit, which was being conducted during 2006.

The errors included issuing national security letters without proper authorization, improper requests and unauthorized collection of telephone or Internet e-mail records.

FT/MMN


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War vets to talk about US atrocities


Friday, March 14th, 2008

In an event in Washington, veterans and soldiers have urged other members of the military to join them in speaking out against war in Iraq.

Thursday has kicked off the four-day ‘Winter Soldier’ event in Washington, organized by Iraq Veterans against the War (IVAW) that urged other military personal to speak out against US atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Camilo Mejia, the first conscientious objector to the Iraq war and chairperson of the board of Iraq Veterans against the War spoke of a groundswell of resistance within the US military to the war in Iraq, which will enter its sixth year later this month.

“Servicemen and women are refusing en masse to participate in this war. I have seen a rapid and inevitable growth of dissent within our ranks,” Camilo Mejia said.

At the ‘Winter Soldier’ event some 200 soldiers will give eye-witness testimonies about what they lived through during their deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and afterwards.

Vietnam veterans held a ‘Winter Soldier’ event in 1971 at which more than 100 servicemen and 16 civilians described atrocities committed against innocent civilians in South Vietnam.

The name ‘Winter Soldier’ is derived from the “summer soldier” described by American Revolutionary War writer Thomas Paine in “The Crisis:”

SG/HAR


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Public, media losing sight of Iraq, study finds


Friday, March 14th, 2008

Only 28 percent know that nearly 4,000 U.S. troops have been killed

Twenty-eight percent of the public is aware that nearly 4,000 U.S. personnel have died in Iraq over the past five years, while nearly half thinks the death tally is 3,000 or fewer and 23 percent think it is higher, according to an opinion survey released yesterday.

The survey, by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, found that public awareness of developments in the Iraq war has dropped precipitously since last summer, as the news media have paid less attention to the conflict. In earlier surveys, about half of those asked about the death tally responded correctly.

Related Pew surveys have found that the number of news stories devoted to the war has sharply declined this year, along with professed public interest. “Coverage of the war has been virtually absent,” said Pew survey research director Scott Keeter, totaling about 1 percent of the news hole between Feb. 17 and 23.

The Iraq-associated median for 2007, he said, was 15 percent of all news stories, with major spikes when President Bush announced a “surge” in forces in January of that year and when Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, testified before Congress in September.

“We try not to make any causal statements about the relationship between the absence of news and what the public knows,” Keeter said. “But there’s certainly a correlation between the two. People are not seeing news about fatalities, and there isn’t much in the news about the war, whether it be military action or even political discussion related to it.”

Although Iraq topped the list of the public’s most closely followed news stories in all but five weeks during the first half of 2007, according to Pew’s research, interest fell rapidly in the fall, and Iraq has not held the top spot since October. That corresponded with a sharp drop in the rate of U.S. casualties in Iraq and increased news coverage of the U.S. presidential campaign.

More track Ledger than war
During the last week in January, 36 percent of those surveyed said they were most closely following campaign news, while 14 percent expressed the most interest in the stock market and 12 percent in the death of actor Heath Ledger. In contrast, 6 percent said they were most closely following coverage of Iraq.

Compared with those Americans surveyed who correctly identified U.S. casualties at around 4,000 (3,975 as of yesterday morning, according to the Pentagon), 84 percent identified Oprah Winfrey as the talk-show host supporting Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) for the Democratic presidential nomination, and 50 percent knew that Hugo Chavez is president of Venezuela.

All education levels in the recent survey were similarly uninformed, Keeter said. The Pew “Political Knowledge Update” was based on nationwide telephone interviews of 1,003 adults conducted Feb. 28 through March 2. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

© 2008 The Washington Post Company


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Millions put at risk from Government ID records


Friday, March 14th, 2008

Millions of Britons face having their lives made a “misery” by mistakes on Government databases, it was claimed last night.Experts warned these errors could even put lives at risk by leading to inappropriate medical treatment.

Research by IT specialists found 4 per cent of the population - almost two million people - had discovered incorrect information stored under their name by Whitehall or local authorities.

The total climbs even higher when partial or incomplete information is included.

The British Computer Society said this left different departments holding conflicting pieces of information about a person.

When they tried to share information, it led to “mismatches” in an alarming 20 per cent of cases.

The society’s spokesman, Dr Louise Bennett, said this could have “potentially extremely serious” consequences, including someone being wrongly identified as diabetic, or someone suffering from the condition not being treated in an emergency.

It could even mean a person being wrongly recorded as dead, if he or she had very similar details to another individual.

The researchers urged every member of the public to check the records under their name.

This includes checking the DNA database - which contains more than half a million inaccurate entries - the identity and passport database, NHS records, the Department for Work and Pensions database and the tax credits and income tax computer system.

To access personal records each department suspected of holding a file has to be contacted individually and can charge up to £10 to provide the data.

But the Computer Society said the consequences of not checking could be months of “suffering”, dealing with the chaos incorrect entries can cause.

In a survey, the Society found that 26 per cent of people have asked or searched for information held on them. Of those who needed to correct one or more errors, 35 per cent said it was “difficult” and 36 per cent described it as “time consuming”.

The survey found confidence in the Government’s ability to handle sensitive data had fallen among two thirds of adults, following the loss of discs containing the details of 25million child benefit claimants.

The high number of database inaccuracies casts further doubt on the Government’s £4.5billion ID card scheme - which will store biometric details such as fingerprints alongside a person’s name and address.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said: “This is yet more evidence of the Government’s inability to handle people’s data and why they should abandon their dreadful ID card scheme which, far from improving people’s security, will clearly make it worse.”

The report came as a Parliamentary committee delivered a blistering verdict on recent Government data losses.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights said the losses were “symptomatic of the Government’s persistent failure to take data protection safeguards sufficiently seriously”.

Chairman Andrew Dismore said: “People were shocked by the recent loss of child benefit data but that was far from a oneoff. In fact, it was symptomatic of lax standards in the public sector.

“Information should be treated as sensitively and carefully as hard cash. It has taken the massive data loss by HMRC to bring the true consequences of the piecemeal approach to data management to light. The Government must demonstrate that it appreciates the seriousness of what needs to be done.”

© 2008 Associated Newspapers Limited


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Torture? We’ll just turn a very British blind eye


Friday, March 14th, 2008

bush-torture1.jpgWe were told that Saddam Hussein was an enemy of mankind because he used torture. Now we witness the gruesome spectacle of President Bush endorsing torture by vetoing the Bill from Congress outlawing “waterboarding” and other equivalently barbaric forms of interrogation.This must be the first time in modern history that a head of state has openly and officially endorsed torture.

Alongside that, there is reason to believe that the U.S. continues with its secret “extraordinary rendition” flights to take suspects - remember that is all they are - to countries where they apply even more savage torture.

This is an American President who prides himself on his moral sense, a born again Christian who starts the day with prayers and has forsworn alcohol following a very boozy youth. The humbug makes one gasp.

Scroll down for more…

President BushPresident Bush: Endorsing torture by vetoing the Bill from Congress

What does he say in his prayers? “Oh Lord, make me a decent human being, but not yet”?

So we have the free world, as we call it, the Western Alliance, the proclaimed centre of civilised values, led by a man endorsing methods applied by Hitler and Stalin. What do we do about it?

The British Government insists it is opposed to all torture and refuses the use of our air space for planes on rendition flights - a rule the CIA has not always obeyed. But our indignation stops there.

We continue to heap fulsome praise on the value of the Anglo-American special relationship which must never be upset.

The Foreign Office will say only that Washington knows our attitude to torture. There has been no protest about Bush’s latest move.

Just imagine what our Government would say if Russia, China or India were officially and openly to say they sanctioned torture. Our noisy indignation about human rights would know no bounds.

But in the American case, we do nothing. Perhaps that is part of the “Britishness” which even school children are now invited to celebrate.

The fact that it is considered “daring” for the BBC to make a series of programmes about the problems and fears of the white working class (i.e., the majority) tells you all you need to know about the BBC and much of what you need to know about Britain.

Richard Klein, the series commissioner, must have fought hard to get sanction for programmes about the mere majority.

The most daring programme so far (in media eyes) has been the sympathetic picture of Enoch Powell.

It conveyed his rage that the populace was never consulted about the drastic change being made in its composition and culture without so much as a by your-leave.

Politicians on both sides, furious about the “river of blood” speech in 1968, claimed then - and some still do - that Powell’s speech hindered reform.

It was so extreme, you see, that it made it difficult for us moderate men to do something about immigration, which we obviously had intended to do when the occasion was suitable, when the time was right, at the appropriate juncture, etc.

I promise you as God is my witness that what the two frontbenches wanted to do was nothing, nil, zero, rien and nicht. It was this conspiracy of silence and inertia which enraged Powell and much of the public.

It is understandable why he became hated by Labour figures like Roy Hattersley, interviewed on the programme. For it meant that he and his fellow socialists had been found out.

For all their supposed unique contact with the masses, and their beliefs that the proles would naturally trust Labour to be told what was right, here was an aroused and angry public indicating the opposite.

It undermined the very basis of many a Labour politician’s lifelong belief along with his faith in the universal brotherhood of man.

Powell was scarcely less hated by various Tory politicians because an election was looming and here was this bloody man turning everything upside down, enraging the opinion-forming elite and insisting that the party had jettisoned its responsibilities.

Interestingly enough, a middle-of-the-road Tory from that elite assured me the other day that immigration was not a problem, though he admitted “there are still some difficulties with the white working class”.

It is a remark worth treasuring. Framing, if not embalming.

Powell was always an uncomfortable man politically, his impassioned attack in 1959 on the official hushing-up of atrocities in Kenya’s Hola Camp for Mau Mau terrorists - Denis Healey describes it as the finest Parliamentary speech he ever heard - was a nuisance for the Macmillan Government.

Powell also deplored our nuclear deterrent: he wanted an end to our bases East of Suez and an end to posturing as a world policeman.

He saw the Soviet threat as greatly exaggerated and the Anglo-American alliance as a menace. Ted Heath’s prices and incomes policy was “madness”.

Enoch was my oldest friend in politics, and in later years he would regularly invite me to scrutinise his speeches in advance. I would sometimes comment that his remarks would upset many people. His usual reply was that they needed to be upset.

Daily Mail


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‘Israel must be tried for war crimes’


Friday, March 14th, 2008

DAKAR: The head of the world’s biggest Muslim body, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), called yesterday for Israelis to be tried by an international war crimes court for “heinous” attacks against Palestinians.
Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary-general of the 57-nation body - the second largest inter-governmental bloc after the UN - told an OIC summit in Senegal that Israel was repeatedly seeking to undermine foreign-brokered peace plans.

“The situation in Palestine remains deplorable due to the successive crises fabricated by Israel to stall the peace process and to thwart the many peace plans and initiatives proposed by the international community,” he said.

“It has become indispensable that these aggressions and heinous crimes be officially documented and their perpetrators be brought before international justice designed for these kind of acts … such as the International Criminal Court.”

Israel’s five-day offensive in Gaza last week killed more than 125 Palestinians.

An Israeli spokesman dismissed Ihsanoglu’s remarks, saying the source of the problem was rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israeli towns.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the summit that Israel’s “disproportionate and excessive use of force” had killed and injured many civilians including children and called for the violence to stop.
“I condemn these actions and call on Israel to cease such acts. Israel must fully comply with international humanitarian law and exercise utmost restraint,” Ban told the summit.

Renewed violence in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, following a week of relative calm, has threatened prospects for an Egyptian-brokered truce.

Islamic Jihad fired rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip yesterday after an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank.

No one was injured by the salvo against the border town of Sderot, the first such attack by Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian militant faction, since March 5.

Israel, which had not struck in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip in a week, attacked from the air a rocket launcher in the town of Beit Hanoun after Sderot was hit. No one was hurt.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas earlier accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” in Jerusalem by banning the building of Palestinian homes and cutting the city off from the rest of the occupied West Bank.

“Our people in the city are facing an ethnic cleansing campaign through a set of Israeli decisions such as imposing heavy taxes, banning construction and closing Palestinian institutions in addition to separating the city from the West Bank by the racist separation wall,” Abbas told the OIC summit.
A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Mark Regev, condemned Abbas’s “inflammatory” comments. – AFP

Gulf Times Newspaper, 2008


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A triple ring of security around Britain


Friday, March 14th, 2008

The Home Secretary yesterday set out her plans for a “triple ring of security around Britain”. This “triple ring” entails the funding of new Special Branch police to patrol UK borders; tougher checks at borders and ID cards for foreign nationals.

As the Troubles come to an end with their attendant measures of State control to watch over the people of Northern Ireland, we seem to be heading into a new era where the population is placed under permanent State suspicion and surveillance.

How can being more watched and controlled by the State make us any more safe? I don’t think it can.

Last week, it was reported that Meg Hillier MP, gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee that we should see ID cards as “passports in-country”. The Orwellian resonance of this MP’s title as Minister for ID cards already creates a sense of unease: Who voted to create this office? What next, a Ministry for Identity? This sense of unease only grows when you consider that the government seems to have forgotten all the lessons of history. Or is it ignoring them to meet its own authoritarian ends?

As our government intends first to apply the ID card system to migrants and foreign nationals, we should recall historical instances where ID documentation have been used for the State to control private lives by discrimination, segregation and exclusion. Recall the deportation of the Jews which was made possible by their identification and a gradual curtailment of their rights to move around and go about their business. Recall the South African passbooks, a despised symbol of apartheid. These passbooks – or ‘dompas’ – bore the bearer’s fingerprints, photograph and identification information. It was obligatory for black South Africans over sixteen to carry the pass book, and failure to do so was cause for arrest and imprisonment.

Two anecdotes from my own caseload of immigrants reveal the real impact of a controlling regime based on paper identification. An asylum-seeker in Northern Ireland whom I worked with was recently unable to travel to an urgent medical appointment with the Medical Foundation for Survivors of Torture because the airlines would not accept the forms of ID that he possessed for the flight from Belfast to London. Another young woman who had been granted leave in the UK was detained at Belfast Airport and interrogated for several hours about her right to be here, what she was doing, where she was going etc. She had been fingerprinted at the airport and the Home Office centralized database had not been updated to reflect her grant of leave; she came up on the system as ‘illegal’. Officers were loathe to believe the young woman’s word, or my word as her lawyer, instead of the computer record.

Comments by the Home Secretary that the ID cards will not be compulsory should be no comfort to civil liberties campaigners. If the alternative is an all-too-real fear of arbitrary detention, denial of travel rights and other infringements of our liberties, the population will have little choice but to sign up for the ID cards.

We do have the choice to ask questions of ourselves and those who govern us. We need to ask in the strongest possible way: where is the safety in a government which holds the power of fear and threat over its own people? Where is the humanity in an ID-based system of rights, which, as in the case of my two refugee friends above, ignores a person’s humanity and individual reasoning in favour of cynical paranoia and the certainty of a flickering number on a computer scheme?

I will be speaking at Queen’s University on 10 April (postponed from 6 March) about those forced to flee to Northern Ireland, looking at their experiences in the context of the erosion of the right to seek asylum and the curtailment of civil liberties in the UK. Please contact the Centre for Global Education in Belfast for more information on its ‘Global Issues Seminar Series 2008′ for more information and come along.

Anna


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MoD accused of schools propaganda


Friday, March 14th, 2008

The Ministry of Defence has been accused of supplying “misleading propaganda” to schools and attempting to recruit pupils into the army.The children’s secretary, Ed Balls, has written to officials in the MoD asking them to investigate teachers’ claims that their worksheets for 16- to 18-year-olds provide a one-sided view on the war in Iraq.

The National Union of Teachers said the MoD was “unethically” targeting recruitment materials at schools in disadvantaged areas.

Steve Sinnott, the union’s general secretary, said: “It is propaganda, it does not present a balanced position.

“When you are dealing with something as controversial as Iraq and different events which led up to the invasion, teachers are under an enormous duty to present material which is balanced.”

One worksheet supplied by the MoD and designed by a private marketing company, Kids Connections, describes the UK force’s efforts in Iraq as mainly targeted at “helping the Iraqis to rebuild their country after the conflict and years of neglect”.

It describes the work the armed forces have done in security and reconstruction, and notes the 2005 democratic elections. But union officials said it failed to mention the US-led invasion, Iraqi civilian deaths and the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were ever found.

The NUT will debate the issue at its annual conference in Manchester next week. Teachers are regularly sent model lesson plans, worksheets and other teaching materials by government departments, charities and private companies, but these are required by law to give a balanced political view. A report by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust in January highlighted websites set up by the MoD targeted at 12- to 17-year-olds, but noted that some recruitment tactics targeted children as young as seven. “Children are introduced to the potential benefits of a forces career, but not to its risks,” the report said.

The union wrote to Balls in October expressing concern over the materials. Balls in turn promised to take the issue up with MoD officials.

A motion to be discussed at the NUT conference would, if passed, commit the union to “actively opposing military recruitment activities in schools across England and Wales”. The Educational Institute of Scotland has already opposed military recruitment in Scotland.

The MoD said in a statement: “The … programme is a set of web-based resources whose use is completely voluntary. We have consulted widely with teachers and students during the development of these products and feedback from schools has been extremely encouraging. They are designed to support teachers in delivering a whole range of subjects across the national curriculum and its equivalents in Scotland and Wales. We are happy to engage with the NUT to discuss further.”

Polly Curtis
The Guardian


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