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Site Broken? Hacked? Abducted?

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

You may have noticed there’s many errors on the site at the moment, including a broken forum. We do not have an explanation just yet. After speaking with our ISP they are currently unable to determine what has caused these problems. On the face of it, it looks like a normal php error but we (and the ISP) are locked out of FTP access to the site and the log files have been deleted.

Our ISP are currently investigating and should know what is causing the problem by Wednesday morning. The main RINF database is still working as normal and I am able to update the site through the CMS admin panel. Comments also appear to be working as normal.

The forum should also return by Wednesday.

The ISP have said that it is unlikely that we have been hacked but find the current situation strange.

I personally think that if we had been hacked then the damage would have been greater.

I’ll update you with more information as it comes to me.

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Spying Telecoms Receive Billions in Government Contracts

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

By Kurt Opsahl | The telecoms who are being sued for their cooperation in the government’s illegal warrantless surveillance program have received billions in government contracts. According to Washington Technology magazine, Verizon received $1.3 billion, Sprint $839 million and AT&T $505 million in federal prime contract revenue for fiscal 2007, for a total of $2.6 billion. While the companies have been government contractors for a long time, it still represents a significant increase in revenue.

Telecom apologists like to suggest that the communications companies’ motivation was not financial. As Judge Walker noted when examining EFF’s allegations of dragnet surveillance: “AT&T cannot seriously contend that a reasonable entity in its position could have believed that the alleged domestic dragnet was legal.” Yet, the prospect of $2.6 billion per year can go a long way to explaining why an industry might cooperate with a program far outside the limitations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), despite the difficulty of believing it was legal.

Note that the numbers represent publicly available information for prime contracting only and do not include subcontracting revenue. Any monies paid for the secret NSA surveillance program would be in addition to the public contracting numbers.

According to former Qwest chief executive Joseph Nacchio “the government withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars after Qwest refused to participate in an unidentified National Security Agency program that the company thought might be illegal.” In light of these allegations and the vast sums awarded to the participating telecoms, before Congress votes on the pending FISA legislation or considers any form of immunity for the telecoms, it should hold thorough hearings, and find out if there was any quid pro quo.

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Significance of DNA ‘matches’ in cases not always definitive

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

By Jason Felch and Maura Dolan | The 22-year-old San Francisco nurse had been sexually assaulted and stabbed in the heart. She lay on her back, her neck laced with scratches and her mouth open as if frozen in a scream.

For more than three decades, Sylvester’s slaying went unsolved. Then, in 2004, a search of California’s DNA database of criminal offenders yielded an apparent breakthrough: Badly deteriorated DNA from the assailant’s sperm was linked to John Puckett, an obese, wheelchair-bound 70-year-old with a history of rape.

The DNA “match” was based on fewer than half of the genetic markers typically used to connect someone to a crime, and there was no other physical evidence.

Puckett insisted he was innocent, saying that although DNA at the crime scene happened to match his, it belonged to someone else.

At Puckett’s trial earlier this year, the prosecutor told the jury that the chance of such a coincidence was 1 in 1.1 million.

Jurors were not told, however, the statistic that leading scientists consider the most significant: the probability that the database search had hit upon an innocent person.

In Puckett’s case, it was 1 in 3.

The case is emblematic of a national problem, the Los Angeles Times has found.

Prosecutors and crime labs across the country routinely use numbers that exaggerate the significance of DNA matches in “cold hit” cases, in which a suspect is identified through a database search.

Jurors are often told that the odds of a coincidental match are hundreds of thousands of times more remote than they actually are, according to a review of scientific literature and interviews with leading authorities in the field.

Two national scientific committees, including the FBI’s DNA advisory board, have recommended portraying the odds more conservatively. But interviews with expert witnesses and DNA analysts from crime labs across the country show that few if any have adopted that approach.

“It is only a matter of time until someone is wrongfully convicted because of this,” said Keith Devlin, a Stanford mathematician who has studied the problem.

For years, police used DNA only to compare a crime-scene sample to a single person they had other reasons to suspect. In court, prosecutors could legitimately cite the remote odds that someone selected at random off the street would share the same genetic profile.

In cold hit cases, the investigation starts with a DNA match found by searching thousands, or even millions, of genetic profiles in an offender database. Each comparison increases the chance of a match to an innocent person.

Nevertheless, police labs and prosecutors almost always calculate the odds as if the suspect had been selected randomly from the general population in a single try.

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U.S. defends removal of Guantanamo judge

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

By Michelle Shephard | The military judge in charge of the U.S. war crimes trials at Guantanamo Bay is defending the removal of the army colonel who presided over Omar Khadr’s case as critics of the process and the Canadian suspect’s lawyers continue to cry foul.

In a statement yesterday, Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann said Col. Peter Brownback was removed because the army had turned down an application to extend his active-duty status.

“It is my understanding that this decision was based on a number of manpower management considerations unrelated to the military commission process,” Kohlmann wrote, noting that “as a general rule, it is inappropriate” to comment on such matters but that the controversy convinced him to speak out.

“My detailing of another judge,” he wrote, “was completely unrelated to any actions that Col. Brownback has taken in this or any other case.”

The surprise announcement of Brownback’s retirement came in an email to senior officials last Thursday. Khadr’s military lawyer, navy Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler then forwarded the email to the media, speculating that Brownback’s removal was politically motivated.

While Brownback has denied dozens of the defence’s motions – most importantly, one to dismiss the proceedings because Khadr should be treated as a child soldier and rehabilitated not prosecuted – he has also repeatedly frustrated the prosecution’s attempts to set a trial date.

There’s a push from the Pentagon to have a trial completed before the Nov. 4 U.S. presidential election in an effort to salvage Guantanamo’s tarnished reputation and criticism about the indefinite imprisonment of terrorism suspects without trial.

Kohlmann’s comments yesterday did not end the debate. Soon after his statement was made public, Kuebler sent a press release saying the explanation “raised more questions than answers.”

“Brownback was the judge on one of the first two commission cases to go to trial – are we really supposed to believe that `manpower management considerations’ would cause the army to remove him from such a high-visibility, high-priority assignment?” he asked.

Toronto-born Khadr, now 21, was 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan in July 2002 following a firefight with U.S. forces. The Pentagon has charged him with five war crimes, including murder in the death of Sgt. Christopher Speer.

He is expected to return to court June 18 for a pre-trial hearing.

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EU-wide ID card scheme could use mobile phones

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

Computerworld UK | The European Commission is testing cross-border electronic identity systems in an effort to create pan-European recognition of the 30 million national ID cards currently used in 13 member states.

The European Commission has announced that EU citizens will be able to prove their identity and use national electronic identity systems - which includes electronic passwords, ID cards, PIN codes and others - throughout the EU, not just in their home country.

National electronic ID (eID) cards are used by citizens to access a variety of public services such as claiming social security and unemployment benefits or filing tax returns. The plan is to align and link these systems without replacing existing ones.

The project, called Stork (Secure idenTity acrOss boRders linKed), is being led by the UK Identity & Passport Service and the Government Gateway.

The Stork project will run for three years and receive €10m funding from the European Commission and an equal contribution from the participating partners.

The European Commission has said the new system would allow citizens to identify themselves electronically in a secure way and deal with public agencies either online or “ideally” from mobile devices.

“Electronic Identities do not yet do enough for mobile EU citizens,” said Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media. “By taking advantage of the development in national eID systems and promoting mutual recognition of electronic identities between Member States, this project moves us a step closer to seamless movement between EU countries that Europeans expect from a borderless Single European Market.”

While only 13 of the 27 EU member states are participating in the pilot, the solutions developed and the experience gained by the project team will be shared with all states with the view to establish a number of trans-border pilot projects based on existing national systems.

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Indicators Point to a Softening of America’s Marijuana Laws

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

By Alexander Zaitchik | With key medical marijuana ballot initiatives likely to pass, and a more pot-friendly majority in Congress, there is room for optimism. You have to hand it to the Republican National Committee: Those guys really know how to pick the wrong fight.John McCain, already running against the public opinion grain in support of the Iraq War and Bush tax cuts, received no help from headquarters last month when the RNC made medical marijuana a campaign issue. After Barack Obama told an Oregon weekly that he would end federal raids on medical marijuana users and providers in states with compassionate use laws, the RNC pounced. Obama’s position, said an RNC statement, “reveals that (he) doesn’t have the experience necessary to do the job of President (and) lacks the judgment to carry out the most basic functions of the Executive Branch.” Because the Supreme Court has ruled that federal drug laws trump state drug laws, the RNC reasons that halting federal raids would be tantamount to ignoring the law.

They’re right. But the RNC might want to get some new pollsters. What they and their candidates don’t seem to realize is that a steadily shrinking minority of Americans oppose the controlled medicinal use of cannabis — around 20 percent, according to the last Gallup poll. It’s a safe bet that an even smaller number considers paramilitary raids on the homes of peaceful cancer patients to be among the “basic function of the Executive Branch.” During the New Hampshire primary, every Democratic candidate recognized this political reality by promising to end federal harassment of state-approved medical marijuana facilities and users. Republican candidates Tom Tancredo and Ron Paul pledged the same.

And John McCain? When pressed by activists from the group Granite Staters for Medical Marijuana, the Arizona senator responded in lockstep with most of his GOP peers, sounding less like a maverick than a Reagan-era after-school special. “I do not support the use of marijuana for medical purposes,” McCain said. “I believe that marijuana is a gateway drug. That is my view, and that’s the view of the federal drug czar and other experts.”

Given current trend lines, it may not be long before it’s possible to count McCain’s “other experts” on two hands. In February, the 125,000-member American College of Physicians, the second-largest physicians group in the country, published a position paper endorsing the merits of medical marijuana and recommending the end of marijuana’s classification as a Schedule 1 drug. “The ACP endorsement is massive,” says Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group. “It blows to splinters the assertion that the medical community doesn’t support medicinal cannabis.”

As goes the ACP, so may go the American Medical Association, an endorsement from which would leave the anti-medical marijuana position of the Food and Drug Administration very lonely indeed.

To its credit, the country has not waited for the medical establishment before moving forward on marijuana policy reform. Over the last decade, support for compassionate use laws and broader decriminalization efforts has been growing, if not at weed’s pace, then fast enough for one veteran marijuana reform lobbyist to now speak of being “within striking distance of a national tipping point.”

Since California passed Proposition 215 legalizing medical marijuana in 1996, an average of one state per year has followed suit, some through ballot initiatives, others through legislation. Even in states that have yet to enact reform, a flurry of bills has been introduced. This activity hasn’t been limited to usual-suspect states like Oregon and Vermont. Recent years have seen medical marijuana laws introduced in Ohio, Alabama, Missouri and Tennessee. In staunchly conservative South Carolina, it was a Republican state senator, whose wife lost a battle with brain cancer, who introduced his state’s medical marijuana bill. In Texas, the state government last year passed a bill that is a halfway house for decriminalization, allowing police to issue citations instead of arresting adults who possess less than 4 ounces of marijuana.

The next big test on the horizon is the Midwestern swing state of Michigan, where voters in November will decide on a medical marijuana law, the first such statewide ballot initiative since South Dakotans narrowly rejected theirs in 2006. If passed, Michigan will be the only state with its geographical and electoral profile to pass a medical marijuana law. According to the Inside Michigan Politics newsletter, polls show two-thirds voter support. “Michigan looks set to become the 13th medical marijuana state this November,” says Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project.

The other big initiative in November will appear on ballots in Massachusetts. If passed, the maximum penalty for possession of up to an ounce of marijuana in the Bay State would drop from up to six months in jail and a $500 fine to a $100 civil fine.

There is also still a chance that the New York state legislature will take up medical marijuana this session, a move that would enjoy overwhelming in-state support. Post-Giuliani New York City is the marijuana arrest capital of the world, with nearly 40,000 arrests in 2007 alone. The situation has gotten so out of hand that the New York Times recently urged Gov. David Paterson to take the lead in drug policy reform. Few governors are better positioned to do this than Paterson, who is not only on good terms with state Republican leaders, but has the moral authority that comes from suffering from glaucoma, a painful condition known to be alleviated by marijuana. Before becoming governor, Paterson was a leading activist for drug policy reform and was once arrested protesting the draconian and racially biased Rockefeller Drug Laws, which turn a brittle 35 this year. (Incidentally, the Drug Enforcement Agency is celebrating the same birthday in 2008, its website proudly declaring “35 Years of Excellence.”)

But whatever happens inside Michigan, Massachusetts and New York, the 2005 Supreme Court decision in Gonzales v. Raich still leaves marijuana users open to federal prosecution under the Controlled Substances Act. As highlighted by the RNC statement critical of Obama’s pledge, this decision will continue to undermine state- and local-level reforms until Congress changes federal law. Although only 1 percent of marijuana cases are prosecuted at the federal level, DEA raids on patients, caregivers and providers have been on the rise in states that have passed medical marijuana laws. This is especially true of California and Oregon, where in many cases individual patients have been detained and terrorized. In Los Angeles, the DEA has begun threatening the owners of buildings used for medical marijuana activities with seizure of their property, a development the Los Angeles Times has called “a deplorable new bullying tactic.” According to Mirken, “The DEA has become the single largest obstacle to effective regulation of (medical marijuana) establishments.”

At the moment there are three bills in Congress that seek to put a stop to these raids and set a precedent for federal-level reform.

The young granddaddy of this legislation is the bipartisan Hinchey-Rohrabacher Amendment, which has been introduced every year since 2003. Essentially, the amendment would strip the Department of Justice of funds to prosecute medical marijuana cases in states that have medical marijuana laws on the books. Named after Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., the legislation wouldn’t legalize marijuana at the federal level or prevent the feds from prosecuting medical marijuana use in states without medical marijuana laws. It would simply enforce respect for state marijuana laws. When first introduced in 2003, Hinchey-Rohrabacher received 152 votes. Last year, that number had risen to 165. Later this summer, Congress will tackle the amendment again when it votes on the Department of Justice Appropriations bill. Reform advocates hope the amendment will benefit from racking up endorsements from groups like the right-leaning Citizens Against Government Waste, which came out in favor of Hinchey-Rohrabacher as a way for Congress to “start sending a signal that its priorities are in order.”

But every year so far has been a 10-yard fight, and its sponsors don’t expect that to change this year. “This will continue to be a tough battle,” says Jeff Lieberson, Hinchey’s spokesperson. “Many politicians are still behind the voters on this issue.” Other analysts also warn against high expectations, pointing out that the timing is especially unfavorable for drug policy reform at the federal level.

“The movement on this issue in 2008 is going to be almost nonexistent because politicians are focused on the election,” says Alex Coolman, a former attorney with the Drug Policy Alliance and author of the Drug Law Blog. “Nobody in Washington wants to do anything that could be perceived as controversial.”

In April, Hinchey-Rohrabacher was joined by two other marijuana policy reform bills, both co-sponsored by Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Ron Paul, R-Texas. HR5842, the Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act, would deny the federal government the right to employ the Controlled Substances Act to intervene in states that have legalized medical marijuana; it would also remove marijuana from the list of Schedule 1 drugs. HR5843, meanwhile, known as the Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act, would effectively decriminalize possession of up to 1 ounce. “We’re in the early stages here,” says Frank spokesperson Peter Kovar. “Nothing like this ever comes quick.”

But it may be coming more quickly than some people expect. “All the indicators are prompting in the right direction,” says Kampia. “Every major new ballot initiative looks set to pass. Infrastructure is growing: email lists, organizations, allies — it’s across the board. Public opinion is moving steadily in favor of decriminalization. State laws are moving forward, and none are going backward. We’re constantly picking up votes in the House. The 110th is the most supportive Congress we’ve ever had.”

If the RNC keeps attacking Democrats on medical marijuana, the 111th will be that much better.

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“Enough Is Enough, It’s Time to Get Out”

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

Dozens of veterans from the U.S. occupation of Iraq converged in this west coast city over the weekend to share stories of atrocities being committed daily in Iraq, in a continuation of the “Winter Soldier” hearings held in Silver Spring, Maryland in March.

By Dahr Jamail | At the Seattle Town Hall, some 800 people gathered to hear the testimonies of veterans from Iraq. The event was sponsored by the Northwest Regional Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), and endorsed by dozens of local and regional anti-war groups like Veterans for Peace and Students for a Democratic Society.

“I watched Iraqi Police bring in someone to interrogate,” Seth Manzel, a vehicle commander and machine gunner in the U.S. Army, told the audience. “There were four men on the prisoner…one was pummeling his kidneys with his fists, another was inserting a bottle up his rectum. It looked like a frat house gang-rape.”

Manzel joined the army after 9/11 for economic reasons — he’d just been laid off, and his wife had just had a baby. Manzel told another story of military medics he was with in Tal Afar who refused to treat an elderly man in their detention centre. Manzel described the old man as being jaundiced and lying on the ground, writhing in pain.

“The medics said the old man was just being lazy and they were not authorised to treat detainees,” Manzel said.

Jan Critchfield worked as an army journalist while attached to the 1st Cavalry in Baghdad during 2004. “I was with a unit that shot at a man and wife near a checkpoint,” Critchfield said, “She had been shot through her shinbone, and that was the first story I covered in Iraq.”

Critchfield told the audience that his unspoken job in Iraq was to “counter the liberal media bias” about the occupation.

“Our target audience was in the U.S., and the emphasis was reporting on humanitarian aid missions the military conducted,” Critchfield said. “I don’t know how many stories I reported on chicken drops (distributing frozen chickens in a community). I don’t know what else you can call that, other than propaganda. I would find the highest ranking person I could get, and quote them verbatim without fact checking anything they said.”

Other veterans told of lax rules of engagement that led to the slaughter of innocent civilians in Iraq.

“We were told we’d be deploying to Iraq and that we needed to get ready to have little kids and women shoot at us,” Sergio Kochergin, a former Marine who served two deployments in Iraq, told the audience. “It was an attempt to portray Iraqis as animals. We were supposed to do humanitarian work, but all we did was harass people, drive like crazy on the streets, pretending it was our city and we could do whatever we wanted to do.”

As the other veterans on the panel nodded in agreement, Kochergin continued, “We were constantly told everybody there wants to kill you, everybody wants to get you. In the military, we had racism within every rank and it was ridiculous. It seemed like a joke, but that joke turned into destroying peoples’ lives in Iraq.”

“I was in Husaiba with a sniper platoon right on the Syrian border and we would basically go out on the town and search for people to shoot,” Kochergin said. “The rules of engagement (ROE) got more lenient the longer we were there. So if anyone had a bag and a shovel, we were to shoot them. We were allowed to take our shots at anything that looked suspicious. And at that point in time, everything looked suspicious.”

Kochergin added, “Later on, we had no ROE at all. If you see something that doesn’t seem right, take them out.” He concluded by saying, “Enough is enough, it’s time to get out of there.”

Doug Connor was a first lieutenant in the army and worked as a surgical nurse in Iraq. While there he worked as part of a combat support unit, and said most of the patients he treated were Iraqi civilians.

“There were so many people that needed treatment we couldn’t take all of them,” he said. “When a bombing happened and 45 patients were brought to us, it was always Americans treated first, then Kurds, then the Arabs.”

Connor added quietly, “It got to the point where we started calling the Iraqi patients ‘range balls’ because, just like on the driving range (in golf), you don’t care about losing them.”

Channan Suarez Diaz was a navy hospital corpsman who returned from Iraq with a purple heart, among other medals. He served in Ramadi from September 2004 to February 2005 with a weapons company. He is now the Seattle Chapter president of IVAW.

“Our commanding officer wanted us to go through a route that another platoon did and was completely wiped out in an ambush,” Diaz explained. “We refused. They canceled that mission and we didn’t go. I don’t think these are isolated incidents. I think this is happening every day in Iraq. The military doesn’t want you to know about this, because it’s kind of like lighting a fire in a prairie.”

The first Winter Soldier event was organised in 1971 by Vietnam Veterans Against the War in response to a growing list of human rights violations occurring in Vietnam.

From Mar. 13-16, 2008, IVAW held a national conference titled “Winter Solider: Iraq and Afghanistan” outside Washington, DC. The four-day event brought together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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The desperation of Hillary Clinton’s campaign

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

By Clarence Lusane | Sen. Hillary Clinton has disgracefully pursued a disturbing strategy of racial opportunism. Since early March, when Sen. Barack Obama racked up victory after victory in states that were, in some instances, overwhelmingly white and, in others, significantly black and Latino, the strategy of the Clinton campaign has whitened day by day.Despite support from some key black politicians and a black campaign manager, the Clinton operation determined that low-income, lower-educated, non-urban whites were worth pandering to and that black voters were worth ignoring.

There were clearly white supporters of Clinton in Kentucky and West Virginia who stated strong and unambiguous racism toward Obama. Rather than repudiate these voters, Clinton silently clung to them.

Clinton’s strategy is a disaster for the general election.

The reality is that Clinton cannot win independents and moderate Republicans, and her support is concentrated in a narrow region of white and perhaps Latino Democratic voters.

Whatever black support she and Bill Clinton once enjoyed and felt entitled to — she led by as much as 57-33 percent over Obama in December 2007 — has vanished, perhaps permanently.

And there is not a single party official with a brain who does not know that if Clinton somehow manages to wrestle the nomination away from Obama through a combination of rule manipulation, superdelegate chicanery and race-baiting, the party will suffer a black-and-white withdrawal and November beat-down of historic and long-lasting proportions.

The Democrats have to be very careful not to be suckered into the Clintons’ argument that the only winning strategy in the fall is the pursuit of white lower-income voters. Clinton supporter Paul Begala, for instance, belittled Obama’s based by saying that it consisted of “eggheads and African-Americans.”

In fact, the party can win by going to (and expanding) its natural base, pulling in significant independent voters and carving off enough dissatisfied Republican moderates.

With Obama, there are more states in play, thus forcing the Republicans to more widely disperse their resources. And he generates a black turnout that will perhaps be the largest the country has ever seen, a preview of which has already contributed decisively to Democratic victories in Louisiana and Mississippi in recent special elections.

Finally, the grim reference to the assassination of Robert Kennedy, whatever the motivation, and in the context of the very real death threats that Obama has faced, reveals in Clinton the triumph of calculation over sensitivity.

It is unfortunate that the Clinton campaign has succumbed to blind ambition and turned a history-making election into a history-repeating voyage of racial ugliness and accommodation.

They had a choice, and they took the low road.

Clarence Lusane is an associate professor at American University and author of many books, including, most recently, “Colin Powell-Condoleezza Rice: Foreign Policy, Race and the New American Century.” He can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.

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Islamic extremists to be given counselling

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

Islamic extremists could escape prosecution and instead receive therapy and counselling under new Government plans to “deradicalise” religious fanatics.

By James Kirkup | The Home Office is to announce an extra £12.5 million to support new initiatives to try to stop extremism spreading.

The central element of the Home Office plan is a new national “deradicalisation” programme that would persuade converts to violent and extremist causes to change their views.

Controversially, the new plan makes clear that people who fall under the influence of violent organisations will not automatically face prosecution.

Instead, the presumption should be that some such individuals would face therapy and counselling from community groups instead of criminal charges.

Documents being distributed to local councils explain that many people who get drawn into extremism have often suffered some sort of personal trauma or crisis that makes them vulnerable to exploitation.

“We do not want to put through the criminal justice system those who are vulnerable to, or are being drawn into, violent extremism unless they have clearly committed an offence,” a Home Office report says.

“It is vital that individuals and communities understand this and have the confidence to use the support structures that we shall be developing.”

Most of the new funding will be set aside for grants to community groups that challenge the messages of violent extremists should be supported.

The plan includes a suggestion that local councils should map their areas religion, surveying and recording the faiths and denominations of local residents.

New guidelines for councils say: “A deeper understanding of local communities should be developed to help inform and focus the programme of action - this may include mapping denominational backgrounds and demographic and socio-economic factors.”

The Home Office has told councils they must be prepared to ask police to vet anyone involved in projects that receive government anti-radicalisation funding.

If a group is found to be promoting violent extremism, local agencies and the police should consider disrupting or removing funding, and deny access to public facilities, the document added.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said: “A key element of our strategy aims to stop people getting involved in extremist violence.

“We are investing at local level to build resilient communities, which are equipped to confront violent extremism and support the most vulnerable individuals.”

Shadow home secretary David Davis said of today’s publication: “This is pointless when the Government is fuelling the problem it is seeking to solve with its draconian approach to 42 days.”

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Blair/Brown ‘pretend society’ exposed

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

Via UK Watch | It all seems rather silly now, but it was not so long ago that many on the liberal left fully expected the Gordon Brown coronation to deliver a significant change of political direction rather than a mere, though welcome, change of style.

It was always a fantasy, of course, and Brown did not waste much time in disillusioning them. But what was the basis for the wishful thinking in the first place? In part it can be put down to Brown seeking to out-manoeuvre Blair with a series of ‘dog-whistles’ to the party faithful. These supposed ‘values’ were in turn given undue credibility as a result of a febrile media constantly delivering bulletins on the teeth-bared battle behind the scenes between the so-called Blairities and Brownities for control of the party, and, as too many allowed themselves to think, for the soul of it. After all, if the intense internecine warfare was not evidence of a deep ideological divide, what was it about? After the wretched dithering over the autumn election, the fêting of Thatcher, the delay in nationalising Northern Rock, the 10p debacle and much more, culminating in the tactics leading up to the Crewe & Nantwitch by-election, the mystery may have been resolved. New Labour’s strategy at Crewe is what caused the penny to drop.

First of all, here was a party that once grandly announced that it had ‘no problem with people getting filthy rich’ and had spent a decade and half of bowing at the altar of privilege now attempting to dupe voters by playing the class card. More than anything it is the little details that suggest the gig is up. For example it has been reported that voters had been woken up at 4am by callers pretending to be Tory canvassers. And four-by-four vehicles festooned with blue balloons according to an article in The Independent have been careering through council estates – more pretend Tory canvassers. Next minute they’re pointing the finger at the Tories for being soft on immigrants. A chorus of ‘You don’t know what you’re doing!’ would have mocked these clunking inconsistencies in the New Labour message in any football ground in the country. The sheer desperation, panic and by-any-means-necessary approach is not, however, matched by the ruthlessness characteristic of the Blair regime in terms of delivery. Instead, there is an absurdly amateur element that would have had Blair apparatchiks recoiling in horror. Which raises an interesting question. If, as is now almost universally accepted, the Brown v Blair tug of war never was ideologically based, why then were there ‘Brownites’ at all? What were they for? It is when you check out the Brown Cabinet, jam-packed as it is with sycophantic time-servers who could never have hoped to have made the cut in the Blair era, that it starts to make sense. There never was any genuine Brownite faction devoted either to leader or cause at all. What there was were individuals who, aware of the Blair-Brown pact, hitched themselves to Brown’s bandwagon out of nothing more than grinding personal ambition matched deep down with a cold-eyed estimate of their true abilities. In short, sub-prime ‘Blairites’ to a man/woman—and they all know it.

One senior Labour MP quoted in the London Evening Standard said, on the disastrous Crewe Nantwitch by-election campaign, “It has been juvenile and counter-productive. And if they think this has played badly in the North of England, that’s nothing to the way it looks to people in the South and London who thought class warfare was a thing of the past. Down here people do not hate those who are better off—they aspire to join them.”

Many indeed may well ‘aspire’ but jumping classes is an altogether different matter, as a recent survey shows. Millions of Britons are getting into debt to finance a lifestyle beyond their means simply because they want to give the appearance of being middle class.

An astonishing 15 million people have racked up debts of £35billion despite their income being below the national average, the survey found.

Six million wannabe middle class households bring in less than £15,000 a year and many rely on credit cards and bank loans to fund their spending.

The average income for working class people is £23,000 and £33,000 for the middle class.

But rent and mortgage payments are nearly the same at £366 for a working class household compared with £334 for the middle classes.

Those considered to be in the ‘upper middle class’ were found to earn more, with average earnings of almost £52,000 a year.

Richard Mason, director of moneysupermarket.com, which carried out the research, said: ‘It’s worrying to see that so many people are spending and borrowing beyond their means to try to keep up with the lifestyles of others.’

Rather optimistically, personal finance expert Sue Hayward said that it all showed ‘the class divide was shrinking’. Actually what it shows is that together with the ever-expanding wealth divide between rich and poor, the politically more significant class divide between working and middle classes is also keeping pace. More significant because in the real world, contrary to myth, it is the working class, not the middle class, that is really expanding. But if Ms Hayward is confused it is understandable. With his slogan ‘we’re all middle class now’ Blair seemed to promise a meritocracy. But as repeated surveys show, neo-liberalism did not and indeed could not deliver. Social mobility stalled or went in to reverse. So what we have instead is not a society based on solid achievement but on the appearance of achievement; a facsimile of a true meritocracy. And while ‘pretend canvassers’ might be risible, a pretend society, with all the attendant psychoses, will in the long run be the real Blair/Brown legacy that will prove altogether more damning.

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Urgent Appeal from Iraqi Oil Workers

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

From US Labor Against the War | We have just received an urgent message from Hassan Juma’a Awad, President of the Iraq Federation of Oil Unions. A translation follows below. The action he reports represents a dangerous escalation of the Oil Minister’s hostility to the IFOU and its leadership. Oil Minister Hussein Al-Shahirstani is the same Maliki government official who some months ago directed the management of the oil companies not to have any dealings with the union.

USLAW calls on all its affiliates, members and supporters to immediately send a letter of protest to the Iraqi Embassy in Washington, DC. Some suggested text and the address are provided below.

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Here is the translation:

The Iraqi Oil Minister, Hussein Al-Shahirstani, has ordered the transfer of eight Oil Union activists. They used to work at the oil refineries in the south. This act reflects the minister’s anti-union policy, and lack of respect for unions and union activists in the oil sector. Those activists, through their hard work, are well known for fighting corruption and corrupt-ministry gangs in the oil sector.

They have been transferred to Baghdad Al-Dorah neighborhood (known for worsening security situation, and high level of sectarian killings). In the context of Iraqi security situation, such a transfer is rightfully regarded as human rights crime.

We call upon all people of good will in the world to take a stand to denounce these despicable and criminal acts by the Iraqi Oil Ministry against trade unions and their activists. The trade unions have been reestablished and revitalized through the hard work of union activists without any protection from the state, which keeps bragging about democracy. [The Maliki government, taking its lead from the U.S. Occupation Authority, continues to enforce the 1987 Saddam Hussein labor code that prohibits unions and bargaining for workers in the oil sector and all other public enterprises, which constitute 80% of all Iraqi jobs.]

This act is a clear evidence that the Iraqi state seeks to liquidate trade unions in this important Iraqi economic sector, oil. It is important to note that the south is the main source of oil in Iraq. The oil sector there employs more than 39,000 workers. The Iraqi state has no intention of allowing an Oil Trade Union in that sector because it represents a threat to its authority.

We call upon you from all parts of the world to stand with us, for the sake of labor and workers interests.

Respectfully,

Hassan Juma’a Awad, President
Iraq Federation of Oil Unions

To assure that your message is received, please send it to both fax numbers and in or attached to an email message.
Please send a copy to USLAW, 1718 M Street NW, #153, Washington, DC 20036 // info@uslaboragainstwar.org.

Samir Sumaida’ie, Ambassador
Embassy of the Republic of Iraq
1801 P Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036

Phone: 202-483-7500
Fax: 202-462-8813 // 202-462-5066

Email: wasemb@iraqmofa.net
URL: http://www.iraqiembassy.us

Mr. Ambassador:

We have been informed that Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein Al-Shahirstani has ordered the transfer of eight leaders and activists of the Iraq Federation of Oil Unions from their long-standing assignments at the South Oil Company in Basra to work in the Al-Dorah neighborhood of Baghdad, known for its worsening security situation and high level of sectarian killings. In doing so, the Minister knowingly exposes these trade unionists to a heightened risk of injury or even death. As such, this decision constitutes a grave violation of these workers’ human rights, as well as an assault on their labor rights and the rights of all those workers who they represent in their capacity as IFOU leaders.

This action escalates the Iraqi government’s continuing, repeated and blatant violations of internationally recognized labor rights as enshrined in the Conventions of the International Labour Organization of the United Nations, including those to which Iraq is a signatory. Iraq continues to enforce the dictatorship era labor codes that ban unions and collective bargaining for public sector and public enterprise employees in clear violation of ILO conventions. Iraq has failed to adopt a basic labor law (as called for by its own Constitution) to protect the rights of all workers to free association, to form unions of their own choosing, to negotiate the terms and conditions of their labor, and to strike when necessary in defense of their interests.

We soundly and most strongly condemn these gross violations of labor and human rights. No democracy can ever be established in Iraq unless and until its workers enjoy the full range of core labor rights recognized by the ILO. No democracy can ever be sustained in Iraq without its workers and their unions being free of government intervention in their internal affairs.

Iraq must completely erase all vestiges of its authoritarian and repressive past if it is to earn the respect of the world community. We demand that your government immediately rescind the transfer order for these workers, cease harassing unions and union activists, and that it recognize and respect the rights of all Iraqi workers to form unions of their own choosing, to negotiate the terms and conditions of their employment, and to act collectively in defense of their own interests.

We intend to monitor this situation closely to learn what actions you have taken to remedy these gross violations of labor and human rights.

Yours truly,
Learn more about the Iraqi labor movement and labor rights in Iraq.
Support the Work of USLAW

U.S. Labor Against the War counts on people like you and its organizational affiliates in the labor movement for the resources needed to sustain this important work. Please make a financial donation in whatever amount you can afford. (Consider investing a portion of the tax rebate you receive from the IRS in the struggle to end the immoral and illegal military occupations with a donation to USLAW.) Thanks in advance for whatever support you can provide.

Have Your Say: Urgent Appeal from Iraqi Oil Workers
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‘Iraq Troop Pullout Would Harm Israel’

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

US presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain on Monday criticized Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama’s calls for withdrawing US troops from Iraq, saying that such a pullout would harm Israel’s security.

Speaking to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), McCain also blasted Obama’s calls for talks with Iran.

“The Iranians have spent years working toward a nuclear program,” McCain said, “and the idea that they now seek nuclear weapons because we refuse to engage in presidential-level talks is a serious misreading of history.”

“Even so, we hear talk of a meeting with the Iranian leadership offered up as if it were some sudden inspiration, a bold new idea that somehow nobody has ever thought of before,” he said.

“Yet it’s hard to see what such a summit with President Ahmadinejad would actually gain, except an earful of anti-Semitic rants, and a worldwide audience for a man who denies one Holocaust and talks before frenzied crowds about starting another,” the Arizona senator continued. “Such a spectacle would harm Iranian moderates and dissidents, as the radicals and hardliners strengthen their position and suddenly acquire the appearance of respectability.”

McCain seemed to be responding to Sen. Obama’s previous statements made during a debate in 2007 in which he expressed willingness to hold talks with leaders of Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria.
An Obama campaign spokesman, Hari Sevugan, was quick to retort. “John McCain stubbornly insists on continuing a dangerous and failed foreign policy that has clearly made the United States and Israel less secure.”

“Here are the results of the policies that John McCain has supported, and would continue. During the Bush Administration, Iran has dramatically expanded its nuclear program, going from zero centrifuges to more than 3000 centrifuges,” the Obama camp spokesman added.

“During the Bush Administration, Iran has expanded its influence throughout a vitally important region, plying Hamas and Hizbullah with money and arms. During the Bush Administration, Hamas took over Gaza. Most importantly, the war in Iraq that John McCain supported and promises to continue indefinitely has done more to dramatically strengthen and embolden Iran than anything in a generation.”

McCain also criticized Obama’s calls for removing US troops from Iraq. “You would never know from listening to those who are still caught up in angry arguments over yesterday’s options, but our troops in Iraq have made hard-won progress under General Petraeus’ new strategy.” he said.

“[Withdrawal from Iraq] would surely result in a catastrophe,” McCain said. “If our troops are ordered to make a forced retreat, we risk all-out civil war, genocide, and a failed state in the heart of the Middle East. Al Qaida terrorists would rejoice in the defeat of the United States.

“Allowing a potential terrorist sanctuary would profoundly affect the security of the United States, Israel, and our other friends, and would invite further intervention from Iraq’s neighbors, including an emboldened Iran. We must not let this happen.”

In his speech, McCain called for measures aimed at increasing pressure on Iran, such as severely limiting Iranian imports of gasoline, targeted sanctions such as denying visas and freezing assets and a worldwide campaign to divest from companies doing business with Iran.

McCain called for financial sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran, which he said aids in terrorism and weapons proliferation, and he criticized Obama for opposing a measure to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization responsible for killing US troops in Iraq.

McCain has warm relations with the group, which is influential in the Jewish community. His call for sanctions against gasoline imports is a priority that AIPAC’s members plan to lobby for in Congress later in the week.

In contrast, Obama has worked to reassure Jewish voters who have expressed some unease about his candidacy.

“I welcome the Muslim world’s accurate perception that I am interested in opening up dialogue and interested in moving away from the unilateral policies of George Bush, but nobody should mistake that for a softer stance when it comes to terrorism or when it comes to protecting Israel’s security or making sure that the alliance is strong and firm,” Obama said in an interview last month with The Atlantic magazine. “You will not see, under my presidency, any slackening in commitment to Israel’s security.”

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