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Tasers used on suicidal, mentally ill in Ottawa

Monday, July 14th, 2008

By Neco Cockburn | More than half the people shocked with a Taser by Ottawa city police over the last eight years have been suicidal, mentally ill or emotionally disturbed, reports obtained by the Ottawa Citizen say.

The newspaper obtained use-of-force reports for 115 Taser-related incidents between Oct. 15, 2000, and March of this year through a freedom of information request.

That time period begins just a few months after the Taser was introduced in the city as part of a pilot project.

Although most incidents occurred in houses or apartments, at least three people were hit with a Taser in hospitals and four others in police cellblocks, the reports said.

In one incident, Ottawa police officers arrived at an apartment one night about five years ago to find a suicidal male with four steak knives embedded in his stomach.

He did not follow their commands, so officers drew a gun, but used a Taser instead, and took him into custody within about 20 minutes.

The reports are regulated by the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services and are to be filled out and reviewed by the police service.

In another recorded incident, a man armed with a Taser was found in a public bathroom and was struck with a Taser by police after allegedly being unco-operative.

Several cases involved people who were allegedly actively resisting arrest or threatening and assaulting police officers or other people at a scene.

In 2000, a male threatened to shoot a paramedic crew that arrived at an apartment. Last year, a “very aggressive, very large six-foot-four, 250 pound male” was “not interested in verbal communications” and threatened three officers at the scene with “I’m going to punch your f—ing lights out.”

Sixty-five males and 13 females were involved in Taser incidents. The person’s sex was not indicated in 37 reports.

The high-profile deaths of several people in Canada who had been shocked by Taser have made the use of the device highly controversial. Some say the stun-guns should be banned pending further investigation into their safety, while others argue they save lives.

Much of the debate was prompted by the death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski, who died in October after RCMP officers used a Taser on him at Vancouver International Airport.

Last month, the RCMP’s watchdog agency issued a report probing the force’s use of Tasers, and recommended that no officer with less than five years experience be allowed to use the device.

The RCMP public complaints commission also recommended the force instruct its members to immediately seek medical attention for the target of a Taser and make changes to its reporting form in order to include more information.

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Printer dots raise privacy concerns

Monday, July 14th, 2008

By Thomas Frank | The affordability and growing popularity of color laser printers is raising concerns among civil liberties advocates that your privacy may not be worth the paper you’re printing on.

More manufacturers are outfitting greater numbers of laser printers with technology that leaves microscopic yellow dots on each printed page to identify the printer’s serial number — and ultimately, you, says the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the leading watchdogs of electronic privacy.

The technology has been around for years, but the declining price of laser printers and the increasing number of models with this feature is causing renewed concerns.

The dots, invisible to the naked eye, can be seen using a blue LED light and are used by authorities such as the Secret Service to investigate counterfeit bills made with laser printers, says Lorelei Pagano, director of the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group.

privacy advocates worry that the little-known technology could ensnare political dissidents, whistle-blowers or anyone who prints materials that authorities want to track.

“There’s nothing about this technology that limits its application to counterfeit investigations,” says Seth Schoen, a computer programmer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Some people who aren’t doing anything wrong may have their privacy threatened.” Schoen’s tests have found the dots produced by 111 color laser printers made by 13 companies including Xerox, Canon, Hewlett-Packard, Epson and Brother.

The dots are produced only on laser devices and not ink-jet printers, which are most commonly used at home. But laser printers, which produce more durable images, are becoming increasingly popular as their price has dropped to as low as $300, says Angele Boyd, a vice president of IDC Research.

Although laser printers made up only 4% of the 33 million printers sold last year in the USA, their sales have been growing by double digits since 2004, Boyd says.

The technology began as laser printers were first produced in the mid-1980s and governments and banks feared an explosion of counterfeiting, Xerox spokesman Bill McKee says. “In many cases, it is a requirement to do business internationally that the printers are equipped with this technology,” McKee says.

The dots tell authorities the serial number of a printer that made a document. In some cases, it also tells the time and date it was printed, Pagano says. “The Secret Service is the only U.S. body that has the ability to decode the information,” she says.

Printer makers “cooperate with law enforcement” and will tell authorities where a printer was made and sold, McKee says.

The Secret Service uses the dots only to investigate counterfeiting, agency spokesman Ed Donovan says.

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Failed asylum-seekers are abused by private security companies, says report

Monday, July 14th, 2008

By Robert Verkaik and Chris Green | Britain is responsible for the abuse of hundreds of failed asylum-seekers at the hands of private security guards during their forced removal from this country, a report into the treatment of refugees alleges today.

 

The findings, based on nearly 300 cases of alleged physical assault and racial abuse, follows a four-year investigation into concerns about the control and use of private security firms in the deportation process.

Many of the allegations were first published in The Independent in October last year when ministers then dismissed the cases as being unsubstantiated and requested more evidence.

Last week the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, was given the names and details of 48 of the claimants who want the Government to order fresh investigations into their cases.

Lord David Ramsbotham, a former chief inspector of prisons who sent the report to ministers, described the dossier of cases as “disturbing” and today calls on the Government to “recognise that our national reputation is not something to be treated lightly or wantonly, and that, if even one of the cases is substantiated, that amounts to something of a preventable national disgrace.”

Diane Abbott, MP, said the report was one of the most shocking she had read in the 20 years she has served as an MP: “This report is distressing and upsetting for anyone to read. But for ministers it is a damning verdict on their inability to inject even a shred of humanity into a failing immigration system,” she said.

A disturbing feature of the report is that many of the allegations of abuse are made by refugees who came to this country because they claim to have been tortured or persecuted in their own country.

Many of the refugees’ injuries, often corroborated by doctors’ reports, suggest that resistance to removal is often met with overwhelming force, including beatings and kickings as well as victims being violently dragged around by their handcuffs. Several of the accounts are given by children as either victims themselves or as witnesses to assaults on their parents.

The report’s authors – the law firm Birnberg Peirce, Medical Justice and the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns – conclude: “We have found an alarming and unacceptable number of injuries have been sustained by those subject to forced removals. This dossier provides evidence of widespread and seemingly systemic abuse of one of the most vulnerable communities of people in our society, who have fled their own countries seeking safety and refuge.”

The report, Outsourcing Abuse, says the Government’s removal policy is driven by apparently arbitrary targets on deportation and has announced a near doubling of detention centre capacity.

It warns: “Mass deportations may follow if the Government puts into effect its announcement to deal with 450,000 unresolved asylum cases within five years or less. The increased use of detention and target-driven deportations may lead to further injuries and assault allegations.”

All the allegations contained in the report have been made in the past four years to immigration workers, doctors and lawyers by asylum-seekers who claim to have been abused inside immigration detention camps and security transport, at airports, or on board aircraft. The authors say many of the alleged victims can no longer be contacted as they have been deported or are too frightened to put in claims in case it has an adverse effect on their applications.

Cases include that of Amos Alajaibo, a Nigerian who says he was beaten unconscious by guards after admitting he had talked to the media during a protest, and an Algerian man who was allegedly assaulted while in a wheelchair.

Suren Khachatryan, an Armenian, suffered a punctured lung after allegedly being stamped on by his immigration escorts in the back of a security van. Another detainee said he was “bound up like a parcel” by officials trying to force him on to a deportation flight.

A 39-year-old Ugandan, Noreen Nafuna, says she was bundled on to a flight wearing only her underwear and later punched in the face by an escort, and a 21-year-old woman from Cameroon claims that she was assaulted in front of her young daughter.

In another case, HM, a 16-year-old girl from Rwanda, who claimed asylum after coming to Britain as a sex-trafficking victim, says she was assaulted by guards who removed her from a shower unit in a detention centre. She says she suffered bruising when she was handcuffed from behind in a semi-naked state and taken to a holding cell. Her claim was investigated and dismissed by the Home Office, although there was criticism of the way the guards had handled a near-naked teenager.

It is understood that the UK Borders Agency has received 89 complaints since October 2006, of which three were substantiated. Another 10 were partly upheld, relating to issues such as rudeness or inefficiency.

A spokesperson for the agency said: “We have been asking for this information for at least nine months. We are glad that something has finally arrived. We will review it and where necessary will refer it to the police.”

Group4Securicor has told The Independent that it investigates all allegations properly and instructs its escort teams to treat all asylum-seekers with respect. Other firms have declined to comment on similar allegations.

‘I was beaten and kicked by guards’: RH, asylum-seeker from Burundi

The story of Mr RH highlights the alleged abuse suffered by asylum-seekers at the hands of British security guards. He fled to the UK in 2007 after being tortured in his home country of Burundi. His application for asylum was rejected by the Home Office, and he was taken to an immigration removal centre to await deportation.

In July last year, Mr RH was taken from his room by immigration escorts. He was handcuffed, and his legs were crossed at the ankle before being tied together with tape. After struggling on his way to the van, which was bound for Heathrow, he says he was beaten and kicked by the escorts before being dragged half-naked into the plane. During the alleged assault, his handcuffs caused him to incur severe injuries to his wrists which were clearly visible. The pilot came to investigate, and told the escorts he would not fly Mr RH out of the country in his state at the time.

After being returned, RH was examined by a medical officer. However, a later examination by an independent doctor revealed that this officer had only made limited notes about some of Mr RH’s injuries, while others were not documented. Although he has since been released from detention and has recovered, Mr RH’s case still hangs in the balance and he remains threatened with removal.

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Call for system to ensure proper use of CCTV

Monday, July 14th, 2008

By MICHAEL SETTLE | A new system should be introduced to ensure that the growing number of CCTV cameras are used properly, Ann McKechin, the Labour MP for Glasgow North, will propose in the House of Commons this week.

She said: “Seventy percent of CCTV is operated by private companies. There are 16 different types of system operated by public authorities in the Strathclyde Police area. We need a system that makes sure that cameras are used properly.”

The back bencher is proposing a statutory duty for public bodies such as local authorities, transport groups and housing associations to work together with their local police forces to achieve streamlining of public systems.

Ms McKechin wants shops, shopping centres and licensed premises to agree a code of conduct on the use and storage of CCTV images.

Her proposals would require private organisations which control large areas open to the public such as cinemas, hotels and shopping centres or large bars and clubs to provide the local police force with up-to-date information on the type of CCTV systems that they use and how they use them.

The 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain has led to accusations that the nation has become a “surveillance society”, which was one of the issues at the centre of the campaign by David Davis, the former Shadow Home Secretary, who last week regained the seat of Haltemprice and Howden in a by-election.

Last week, the latest row over CCTV cameras emerged in the idyllic fishing village of Elgol on Skye, where locals have complained over the siting of a £1200 camera by the local council, claiming it was an intrusion into the area’s tranquility.

However, Highland Council has made clear that the only reason it has installed the camera is to monitor a dispute between two rival boat-trip companies.

Ms McKechin will use the parliamentary device of the 10-minute rule bill on Wednesday to raise the issue of CCTV cameras. Without the backing of the UK Government, it will not become law.

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ID cards won’t solve society’s biggest problem

Monday, July 14th, 2008

As the current spate of murders and knife-related attacks reaches a new high with another four violent deaths, we should maybe get things in a proper context. Millions of pounds are being committed to the prevention of terrorism, not least of which is the proliferation of CCTV cameras and the government’s determination to force ID cards on us all. To my knowledge, few if any of these recent stabbings have been prevented or solved by these draconian measures, and to date there has been no mention of a terrorist involvement.

In order to achieve its own ends (public control), this government has, in the wider population, systematically created a fear of faceless terrorist threat - but so many murders among the indigenous young is of far greater concern.

We don’t need more consultations, cameras or cards. We need more policemen making a connection with the young and their parents, and we need to rid ourselves of this miasma of fear and uncertainty and get on with our lives.

Douglas Cardow

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Cotati CA Council Votes to Impeach Bush, Cheney

Monday, July 14th, 2008

Press Democrat | The Cotati City Council is the third in Sonoma County to weigh in on impeachment for President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

The council voted 3-2 Wednesday night to approve a resolution calling for impeachment proceedings against the nation’s two top officials.

Voting “yes” were Cotati Mayor Pat Gilardi, Councilwoman Janet Orchard and Councilman John Guardino.

The “nay” votes were cast by Councilwoman Patty Minnis and Councilman Geoff Fox.

City officials in both Sebastopol and Santa Rosa have passed resolutions supporting impeachment of the nation’s top two officials.

They are among what Progressive Democrats of Sonoma County say are more than 90 U.S. cities to have done so.

The cities of Rohnert Park and Petaluma rejected impeachment initiatives.

The resolution is considered symbolic because Democratic leaders in Congress have said they have no intention of bringing impeachment action as Bush’s second term nears its end.

The resolution votes will be recorded in the Congressional Record and sent to the House Judiciary Committee.

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Arizona JAG officer wants Bush tried for war crimes

Monday, July 14th, 2008

By Mark Yannone | From the KPHX radio station in Phoenix, Arizona, Colonel Joe Abodeely told his worldwide radio audience on Saturday exactly how and why he expects George W. Bush to be prosecuted for the war crimes he committed as president of the United States. Drawing on his considerable expertise in criminal law and his accomplished military career, Colonel Joe helped those of us who want the Bush crime family held accountable to see the distinct possibility on the horizon. [Listen] [MP3] 17:57

JAG: Judge Advocate General. Attorneys in the JAG Corps provide the legal services for each branch of the military.

Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley comments on George Bush’s war crimes and this “ignoble moment” where the United States could be forced by the international community to enforce our own laws and prosecute those who are responsible for torture.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3PvIFx-WDE

Law School Conference Will Plan Bush War Crimes Prosecution

The Massachusetts School of Law at Andover may be a good place to study law, but, come September, MSL will also be a place to plan for the prosecution and conviction of the war criminals in the Bush administration.

The dean, Lawrence Velvel, says in a statement that “plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth.”

Velvel added, “We must insist on appropriate punishments, including, if guilt is found, the hangings visited upon top German and Japanese war criminals in the 1940s.” [Full story]

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Khadr interrogation raises troubling questions

Monday, July 14th, 2008

Canadian officials knew youth was being tortured 

By Michelle Shephard  | The first time Omar Khadr was questioned, he was lying in a military hospital bed in Afghanistan with two gaping holes in his chest – the exit wounds of the bullets that were shot through his back before his capture by U.S. Special Forces.

Interrogators at the Bagram U.S. Military Base kept one eye on the 15-year-old Canadian while watching the beeping and buzzing machines to which he was attached.

“We asked him a few biographical questions and it was really neat. I know this sounds sick, but it was neat in the sense that you could see his pulse elevating on the machine and his respiration increasing if he got nervous,” former U.S. soldier Damien Corsetti said in an interview. “We’re taught to see the signs of it physically but you can (normally) never really see it actually happening on the monitor in front of you.”

Khadr was a prize captive. He grew up with many of Al Qaeda’s elite, had been hiding in Pakistan’s lawless tribal region where they had fled, and possibly knew about upcoming attacks. It wasn’t yet a year after the 9/11 attacks, and intelligence agencies and the military wanted to know what he knew.

That questioning in August 2002 was the first in a series of interrogations with the Toronto teenager that lasted for more than two years. In Bagram alone, he was interviewed more than 40 times, often for eight hours a day.

Over three separate weeks at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in 2003 and 2004, Canadians asked the questions. Then they provided Khadr’s answers to the U.S.

Revelations Thursday that a Canadian foreign affairs official knew Khadr had been subjected to a sleep deprivation regime the U.S. military calls the “frequent flyer program”, and that Khadr told the Canadians he had been tortured and was scared of his American captors, raise new questions about Canada’s legal liability and moral responsibility.

What Khadr told his interrogators is also expected to be key evidence at his October military trial in Guantanamo. The Pentagon has charged him with five war crimes, including murder for the death of Delta Force soldier Christopher Speer. Khadr is alleged to have thrown the grenade that fatally wounded Speer during a firefight in Afghanistan on July 27, 2002.

The following reconstruction of Khadr’s interrogations is based on interviews conducted over the past two years with more than a dozen sources, which include former detainees who knew Khadr, interrogators who questioned him, and prosecutors now trying him. It also includes an examination of hundreds of pages of court and government records and the statements made by Khadr himself.

Sgt. Joshua Claus was a slight, blond soldier with little experience and lots of responsibility when he became Khadr’s interrogator in the cavernous U.S. prison in Bagram detainees nicknamed “The Barn.”

Claus would later be convicted for his role in the death of another detainee at Bagram – an innocent Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar. Claus pleaded guilty to maltreatment and assault in return for a five-month jail sentence in 2005. The 2,000-page confidential army file on the investigation into the case, obtained by The New York Times, quotes another soldier saying that Claus twisted a hood over Dilawar’s head the day he died. “I had the impression that Josh was actually holding the detainee upright by pulling on the hood.”

During the only interview Claus has granted, he told the Toronto Star any allegations of Khadr’s mistreatment were false. “They’re trying to imply I’m beating or torturing everybody I ever talked to,” Claus said.

“Omar was pretty much my first big case,” Claus added. “With Omar, I spent a lot of time trying to understand who he was and what I could say to him or do for him, whether it be to bring him extra food or get a letter out to his family … I needed to talk to him and get him to trust me.”

Khadr also described his interrogations, but the U.S. Department of Defense has censored some of the details in his sworn affidavit.

“During this first interrogation, the young blond man would often (censored) if I did not give him the answers he wanted,” Khadr claimed. “Several times, he forced me to (censored), which caused me (censored) due to my (censored). He did this several times to get me to answer his questions and give him the answers he wanted.”

Later he writes: “I figured out right away that I would simply tell them whatever I thought they wanted to hear in order to keep them from causing me (censored).”

Guantanamo prosecutors initially claimed that Claus (who is identified in court documents only as Sgt. C) would be a key witness at Khadr’s military trial. They’ve recently changed their position.

“The government was confident we could prove our case beyond a reasonable doubt without Sgt C’s testimony,” prosecutor Marine Major Jeff Groharing wrote in a recent email to the Star. Khadr’s lawyers plan to argue that Claus abused the Canadian teen and that threat of harm overshadowed any subsequent interrogations, making anything Khadr said unreliable and inadmissible for his trial.

At Guantanamo, three months after his capture, Khadr’s interrogations began again in a military hospital. Still recovering from his wounds, he claims in his affidavit the first interrogators spoke to him for about six hours over two days.

“One interrogator was in civilian dress clothes and I think he told me he was with the (censored). The other was in military camouflage. They asked me questions about everything. I don’t think there was anything new.”

British detainee Ruhal Ahmed used to watch Khadr come and go. Sometimes Khadr would be excited and tell Ahmed about all the things his interrogator had let him do – like watch Hollywood movies, or eat candy, Ahmed said in an interview from Britain, where he now lives. Sometimes, Ahmed said, Khadr would return to his cell, put his blanket over his head and sob.

Khadr claims in his affidavit that during various interrogations at Guantanamo he was threatened with rape, extradition, he was hit, or left shackled for hours. “A military official then removed my chair and short-shackled me by my hands and feet to a bolt in the floor,” he claimed about one interrogation. “Military officials then moved my hands behind my knees. They left me in the room in this condition for approximately five to six hours, causing me extreme pain.”

During a December 2002 interview, the prosecution states Khadr told interrogators he “vowed to die fighting” in Afghanistan on the July 2002 day he was captured. He also told them he armed himself with an AK-47 assault rifle, put on an ammunition vest, and positioned himself by a window near the compound, according to a government court document.

Guantanamo’s chief prosecutor, Army Col. Lawrence Morris, told the Star the prosecution plans to enter “into evidence certain statements made by Omar Khadr.”

The Military Commissions Act under which the trial is governed forbids the use of evidence gleaned under torture. But the rules allow evidence “in which the degree of coercion is disputed,” if the military judge finds the information is “reliable” and “in the interests of justice.” Critics say this allows evidence obtained under what they call “torture lite.”

The Canadian spy who interviewed Khadr in February 2003 was a senior agent working out of the Toronto office of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and had followed the Khadr family for years (the Star is legally prohibited from disclosing the agent’s name).

Jim Gould, a now-retired foreign affairs official who worked for the department’s intelligence section, accompanied the agent on the interview but did not speak. He would return a year later to meet with Khadr alone.

Gould would not comment this week, but in interviews given last year, he said that, over the week of interviews with the CSIS agent, Khadr’s demeanour changed dramatically. “The first day we brought a Big Mac. It was just inhaled, like any teenager who hasn’t had a hamburger in six months,” Gould said.

“Second day he declared he had been tortured, tore his shirt off to show us how.”

In his affidavit, Khadr describes his disappointment in the Canadians. “I was very hopeful that they would help me. I showed them my injuries and told them that what I told the Americans was not right and true. I said that I told the Americans whatever they wanted me to say because they would torture me,” Khadr stated in his affidavit. “(But) the Canadians called me a liar and I began to sob. They screamed at me and told me that they could not do anything for me. I tried to co-operate so that they would take me back to Canada. I told them I was scared.”

When Gould returned by himself in March 2004, he was less interested in gleaning intelligence from Khadr, he said, but more concerned with learning about Khadr’s beliefs. “I met him two days for an hour-and-a-half each time. He was just playing with me. `You get me back to Canada and I’ll tell you everything you want to know. You give me this and I’ll tell you everything you want to know,’” Gould said. “In his eyes, (there was) recognition that he was playing. I think he had been hardened in that year since I’d seen him.”

Khadr claims Gould told him: “I’m not here to help you. I’m not here to do anything for you. I’m just here to get information.”

What wasn’t known until this week, when the government handed over uncensored portions of a 2004 Foreign Affairs document, is that Gould was told by a U.S. soldier that to “prepare” Khadr for the visit, the then-17-year-old had been subjected to the military’s “frequent flyer program.” This meant that, for three weeks, Khadr had been moved from cell to cell, never allowed to sleep for more than three hours.

The sleep deprivation was intended to make him more willing to talk. But international law, and even the U.S. Army’s own rules, classify this method as “mental torture.”

Canadian Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley wrote in a ruling last month that the practice described to Gould was a “breach of international human rights law.”

“Canada became implicated in that violation,” Mosley wrote, when Gould “chose to proceed with the interview.”

Michelle Shephard is the Star’s National Security Reporter and author of Guantanamo’s Child: The Untold Story of Omar Khadr, which was published this spring.

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Military commander rules out cutting UK’s force in Iraq

Monday, July 14th, 2008

By IAN BRUCE and MICHAEL SETTLE | The prospect of Britain’s 4100-strong force in Iraq being cut this year was yesterday ruled out by the nation’s top military commander but he made clear numbers look set to be reduced in 2009.

Sir Jock Stirrup, Chief of the Defence Staff, said that the numbers of British military personnel in Iraq should come down to a “more sustainable operational tempo” over the course of 2009.

However, The Herald understands almost all of the UK’s garrison on the outskirts of Basra could be withdrawn by the end of next year, leaving only special forces based in Baghdad and Balad as well as a training team to mentor Iraqi government forces.

Earlier this year, expectations had been high that the 4100 personnel would be cut to 2500 but a flare-up of insurgency activity in Basra meant this was put on hold.

Gordon Brown is due in the next few days to give a Commons statement, outlining the status of the UK’s role in Iraq. There had been an expectation the Prime Minister might signal a substantial cut in troop numbers to take place later in the year and as a means of bolstering levels in Afghanistan.

However, it appears that Sir Jock has pre-empted Mr Brown with his remarks yesterday. The Air Chief Marshall acknowledged that military numbers in Iraq had not come down as quickly as had been hoped.

He explained: “It is a delay caused by a number of factors, the principle one of which is that we trained the 10th Division of the Iraqi army in Basra but then the Iraqis decided to move the 10th Division out of Basra and form a new division, the 14th Division, and we are now busy training and mentoring that one.”

Sir Jock said that, while the international community’s involvement in Afghanistan would have to carry on for decades, Britain’s military commitment would continue for “a few years”. “The international community, if the enterprise is to be successful, will need to engage for decades,” he said.

“What I am talking about is across the full spectrum of effect in terms of reconstruction, governance, finance and the economy and so on.

“In terms of the military, we will be there for a few years.”

In America, the Pentagon has drawn up contingency plans to bring three of its 15 combat brigades, about 15,000 soldiers, home following the success of last year’s “surge” tactics and a continuing reduction in violence.

Pentagon officials said no additional US forces would go to Afghanistan until next spring, when fighting is expected to intensify again with the arrival of the traditional campaigning season.

Senior British commanders have told Downing Street that the continued deployment of more than 8000 troops in Afghanistan and 4000 in Iraq cannot be sustained for much longer.

Whitehall sources told The Herald politicians and the top brass were “keeping their fingers crossed” that the security situation in Basra would remain stable to allow an orderly withdrawal.

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Get spied on without doing anything wrong

Monday, July 14th, 2008

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Single Brain Neurons are Smarter Than You Think

Monday, July 14th, 2008

By David Gutierrez | Stimulation of a single brain cell is enough to transmit sensations, Dutch and German researchers have discovered, and report in a study published in the journal Nature.

Researchers have long believed that the key to the brain’s massive processing power lies in the network connections between its 100 billion nerve cells, or neurons.

“The generally accepted model was that networks or arrays make decisions and that the influence of a single neuron is smaller, but this work and other recent studies support a more important role for the individual neuron,” said Douglas Armstrong, the deputy director of the Edinburgh Center for Bioinformatics. “These studies drive down the level at which relevant computation is happening in the brain.”

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Mainstream Media Promotes Medical Myths by ‘Dispelling’ Them

Monday, July 14th, 2008

By Neil McLaughlin | The MSNBC TODAY Show recently teamed up with drug companies to help “dispel” several “medical myths” that were “passed down by your grandparents” and which may have led you to believe you were actually healthy.

In the conveniently anonymous article “7 Medical Myths That Can Kill You (5/21/08)“, which offered no means for reader feedback, TODAY reminds us that if we don’t treat diseases early and often, we will die. The ghostwriter of the article does not even hint at the idea that a healthy diet can be a factor in disease prevention. After all, the Chief Medical Editor of The TODAY Show (who ranks right up there with the Chief Medical Editor of the National Enquirer) Dr. Nancy Snyderman wants you to remember that only advances in patentable technology can prevent disease (oh and please buy her book).

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New Book Reveals Existence of Secret Red Cross Torture Report

Monday, July 14th, 2008

By Kate Klonick | In a secret report last year, the International Committee of the Red Cross found that the CIA’s interrogation techniques were “categorically” torture, a new book reveals.

From the New York Times:

The book, “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals,” by Jane Mayer, who writes about counterterrorism for The New Yorker, offers new details of the agency’s secret detention program, as well as the bitter debates in the administration over interrogation methods and other tactics in the campaign against Al Qaeda.. . .Citing unnamed “sources familiar with the report,” Ms. Mayer wrote that the Red Cross document “warned that the abuse constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the U.S. government in jeopardy of being prosecuted.”

Late Update: The book also reveals new specifics on Abu Zubaydah’s waterboarding. Contrary to administration reports that the technique was used “on only three occasions,” Abu Zubaydah told the Red Cross that he was waterboarded “at least 10 times in a single week and as many as three times a day.”

And there’s new info on Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as well. “KSM” says he was “kept naked for more than a month” and “kept alternately in suffocating heat and in a painfully cold room.”

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Chomsky: Bush & Cheney Always Saw Iraq as a Sweetheart Oil Deal

Monday, July 14th, 2008

By Noam Chomsky | U.S. war planners want an obedient client state that will house major U.S. military bases, right at the heart of the world’s major energy reserves.

The deal just taking shape between Iraq’s Oil Ministry and four Western oil companies raises critical questions about the nature of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq — questions that should certainly be addressed by presidential candidates and seriously discussed in the United States, and of course in occupied Iraq, where it appears that the population has little if any role in determining the future of its country.

Negotiations are under way for Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners decades ago in the Iraq Petroleum Company, now joined by Chevron and other smaller oil companies — to renew the oil concession they lost to nationalization during the years when the oil producers took over their own resources. The no-bid contracts, apparently written by the oil corporations with the help of U.S. officials, prevailed over offers from more than 40 other companies, including companies in China, India and Russia.

“There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract,” Andrew E. Kramer wrote in the New York Times.

Kramer’s reference to “suspicion” is an understatement. Furthermore, it is highly likely that the military occupation has taken the initiative in restoring the hated Iraq Petroleum Company, which, as Seamus Milne writes in the U.K. Guardian, was imposed under British rule to “dine off Iraq’s wealth in a famously exploitative deal.”

Later reports speak of delays in the bidding. Much is happening in secrecy, and it would be no surprise if new scandals emerge.

The demand could hardly be more intense. Iraq contains perhaps the second-largest oil reserves in the world, which are, furthermore, very cheap to extract: no permafrost or tar sands or deep-sea drilling. For U.S. planners, it is imperative that Iraq remain under U.S. control, to the extent possible, as an obedient client state that will also house major U.S. military bases, right at the heart of the world’s major energy reserves.

That these were the primary goals of the invasion was always clear enough through the haze of successive pretexts: weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein’s links with al Qaeda, democracy promotion and the war against terrorism, which, as predicted, sharply increased as a result of the invasion.

Last November, the guiding concerns were made explicit when President Bush and Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, signed a “Declaration of Principles,” ignoring the U.S. Congress, the Iraqi parliament and the populations of the two countries.

The declaration left open the possibility of an indefinite long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq that would presumably include the huge air bases now being built around the country, and the “embassy” in Baghdad, a city within a city, unlike any embassy in the world. These are not being constructed to be abandoned.

The declaration also had a remarkably brazen statement about exploiting the resources of Iraq. It said that the economy of Iraq — which means its oil resources — must be open to foreign investment, “especially American investments.” That comes close to a pronouncement that we invaded you so that we can control your country and have privileged access to your resources.

The seriousness of this commitment was underscored in January, when Bush issued a “signing statement” declaring that he would reject any congressional legislation that restricted funding “to establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq” or “to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.”

Extensive resort to “signing statements” to expand executive power is yet another Bush innovation, condemned by the American Bar Association as “contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers.” To no avail.

Not surprisingly, the declaration aroused immediate objections in Iraq, among others from Iraqi unions, which survive even under the harsh anti-labor laws that Hussein instituted and the occupation preserves.

In Washington propaganda, the spoiler to U.S. domination in Iraq is Iran. U.S. problems in Iraq are blamed on Iran. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sees a simple solution: “Foreign forces” and “foreign arms” should be withdrawn from Iraq — Iran’s, not ours.

The confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program heightens the tensions. The Bush administration’s “regime change” policy toward Iran comes with ominous threats of force (there Bush is joined by both U.S. presidential candidates). The policy also is reported to include terrorism within Iran — again legitimate, for the world rulers. A majority of the American people favor diplomacy and oppose the use of force. But public opinion is largely irrelevant to policy formation, not just in this case.

An irony is that Iraq is turning into a U.S.-Iranian condominium. The Maliki government is the sector of Iraqi society most supported by Iran. The so-called Iraqi army — just another militia — is largely based on the Badr brigade, which was trained in Iran and fought on the Iranian side during the Iran-Iraq War.

Nir Rosen, one of the most astute and knowledgeable correspondents in the region, observes that the main target of the U.S.-Maliki military operations, Moktada al-Sadr, is disliked by Iran as well: He’s independent and has popular support, and is therefore dangerous.

Iran “clearly supported Prime Minister Maliki and the Iraqi government against what they described as ‘illegal armed groups’ (of Moktada’s Mahdi army) in the recent conflict in Basra,” Rosen writes, “which is not surprising given that their main proxy in Iraq, the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, dominates the Iraqi state and is Maliki’s main backer.”

“There is no proxy war in Iraq,” Rosen concludes, “because the U.S. and Iran share the same proxy.”

Tehran is presumably pleased to see the United States institute and sustain a government in Iraq that’s receptive to its influence. For the Iraqi people, however, that government continues to be a disaster, very likely with worse to come.

In Foreign Affairs, Steven Simon points out that current U.S. counterinsurgency strategy is “stoking the three forces that have traditionally threatened the stability of Middle Eastern states: tribalism, warlordism and sectarianism.” The outcome might be “a strong, centralized state ruled by a military junta that would resemble” Saddam Hussein’s regime.

If Washington achieves its goals, then its actions are justified. Reactions are quite different when Vladimir Putin succeeds in pacifying Chechnya, to an extent well beyond what Gen. David Petraeus has achieved in Iraq. But that is them, and this is the United States. Criteria are therefore entirely different.

In the United States, the Democrats are silenced now because of the supposed success of the U.S. military surge in Iraq. Their silence reflects the fact that there are no principled criticisms of the war. In this way of regarding the world, if you’re achieving your goals, the war and occupation are justified. The sweetheart oil deals come with the territory.

In fact, the whole invasion is a war crime — indeed the supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes in that it encompasses all the evil that follows, in the terms of the Nuremberg judgment. This is among the topics that can’t be discussed, in the presidential campaign or elsewhere. Why are we in Iraq? What do we owe Iraqis for destroying their country? The majority of the American people favor U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Do their voices matter?

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Barack Obama doesn’t rule out Hillary Clinton for vice president

Monday, July 14th, 2008

By Peter Nicholas | Barack Obama told a potential donor to his campaign that Hillary Rodham Clinton is on his list of possible vice presidential running mates, but that her husband’s status as a former president makes matters “complicated.”

Jill Iscol, a faithful Democratic donor who was an ardent supporter of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, said Obama reached out to her because he heard she was unhappy about the way the New York senator had been treated by the Democratic Party and the media.

Iscol turned their phone conversation Thursday to the vice presidency — something the Obama campaign has refused to discuss publicly. She said she told him that Clinton would be his best running mate.

Obama replied that she is on his list, Iscol recounted, and that it would be a mistake not to have her on such a list. But he also explained that he was thinking through a potential “complication” — Bill Clinton.

“He said once you’re a president, even if you’re a former president, you’re always a president,” Iscol said.

That suggests Obama might be worried the White House could get crowded with Bill Clinton back on the scene.

Still, Iscol hung up believing Hillary Clinton had a shot.

Obama didn’t say that Bill Clinton would be a disqualifying factor, but he conveyed that he needed to grapple with what it would mean to have a former president as second spouse.

Obama also was willing to hear Iscol make the argument for Hillary Clinton as his No. 2.

“I said nobody has been vetted the way she has been vetted,” Iscol said. “We need to pick the most qualified, wisest, smartest, experienced person to serve our country alongside of Barack Obama. And I think it’s Hillary Clinton. We need her, and the party needs her, and it will be a ticket that will steamroll its way to the White House.”

Iscol, who lives in Westchester, N.Y., describes herself as a donor-activist.

She met Obama in 2004, at a dinner party on Martha’s Vineyard, she said. During the party, her son, a Marine Corps officer, phoned from Iraq. Obama “expressed concern about my son, and subsequent to that, whenever I saw Barack Obama he was kind and thoughtful.”

Along with many Clinton supporters, Iscol is closely watching the Obama campaign to see how it treats Clinton.

Asked if she might donate to Obama in the coming months, Iscol said she wanted to see if his campaign followed through on commitments to help Clinton pay down her debt.

Then there’s the matter of the vice presidency.

Iscol said she may wait to see whom Obama picks.

Have Your Say: Barack Obama doesn’t rule out Hillary Clinton for vice president
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