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40,000 innocent children on police DNA files

Saturday, August 16th, 2008

Yorkshire Post | The national DNA database contains the profiles of almost 40,000 innocent children, the Home Office has admitted.

Junior Minister Meg Hillier said the profiles of an estimated 39,095 10 to 17-year-olds who “had not been convicted, cautioned, received a final warning/reprimand and had no charge pending against them” were on the database.

Opposition parties said it was evidence the Government was building a national DNA database by stealth and called for a parliamentary debate.

Ms Hillier was responding to a parliamentary question from Tory Grant Shapps (Welwyn Hatfield).

She said figures obtained from the National DNA Database and Police National Computer in April showed there were 349,934 DNA profiles relating to under-18s, equivalent to around 303,393 individuals because of replication rates.

“Of those estimated 303,393 persons, 264,297 (87.1 per cent) had a conviction, caution, reprimand or had received a final warning,” she said.

“And 39,095 (12.8 per cent) had not been convicted, cautioned, received a final warning/reprimand and had no charge pending against them.”

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said it was wrong to store the DNA of innocent people.

“These startling figures show that the Government is building a national DNA database by stealth,” he said.

“There can be no excuse for storing the DNA of innocent adults, let alone children, who are entirely blameless.”

Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve echoed the concerns. “This is yet more evidence that the DNA database is totally arbitrary, with tens of thousands of innocent kids on it but not every offender in our prisons,” he said.

Last month a Government-appointed advisory body said there should be a more straightforward system for innocent people to have their samples removed from the database.

The Ethics Group said samples obtained during police investigations should be destroyed at the end of an inquiry.

At present, people who agree to have their samples put on the database cannot have their details removed.

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Older generation could scupper £4.4bn National Identity Scheme

Saturday, August 16th, 2008

By Ian Grant | The cost of the government’s controversial £4.4bn national identity card scheme, could rise significantly because of the difficulties reading fingerprints of older people, a government watchdog says.Chief Scientist John Beddington, chairman of the Biometrics Assurance Group, an independent government advisor, said in his 2007 annual report that elderly people often had hard-to-read fingerprints. This might produce a large number of exceptions that would strain the ability of the Identity and Passport Service to handle them.

“Exception handling has a large impact not only on the technical elements of the scheme, but on business processes, schedules and costs,” Beddington said.

There were more than four million people in the UK aged over 75, the report said.

The Identity and Passport Service said it had paid for research into how to enrol people with hard-to-record biometric characteristics. It had asked the usability and performance working group to align its research programme with the scheme’s procurement schedule and to use more people in their tests.

The House of Lords Science & Technology select committee warned two years ago that more than one in 1,000 fingers are missing or have no fingerprint due to scar tissue. People who work a lot with their hands or who have very fine-grained skin may also produce poor quality fingerprints.

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U.S. May Ease Police Spy Rules

Saturday, August 16th, 2008

By Spencer S. Hsu and Carrie Johnson | The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years.

The proposed changes would revise the federal government’s rules for police intelligence-gathering for the first time since 1993 and would apply to any of the nation’s 18,000 state and local police agencies that receive roughly $1.6 billion each year in federal grants.

Quietly unveiled late last month, the proposal is part of a flurry of domestic intelligence changes issued and planned by the Bush administration in its waning months. They include a recent executive order that guides the reorganization of federal spy agencies and a pending Justice Department overhaul of FBI procedures for gathering intelligence and investigating terrorism cases within U.S. borders.

Taken together, critics in Congress and elsewhere say, the moves are intended to lock in policies for Bush’s successor and to enshrine controversial post-Sept. 11 approaches that some say have fed the greatest expansion of executive authority since the Watergate era.

Supporters say the measures simply codify existing counterterrorism practices and policies that are endorsed by lawmakers and independent experts such as the 9/11 Commission. They say the measures preserve civil liberties and are subject to internal oversight.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said the administration agrees that it needs to do everything possible to prevent unwarranted encroachments on civil liberties, adding that it succeeds the overwhelming majority of the time.

Bush homeland security adviser Kenneth L. Wainstein said, “This is a continuum that started back on 9/11 to reform law enforcement and the intelligence community to focus on the terrorism threat.”

Under the Justice Department proposal for state and local police, published for public comment July 31, law enforcement agencies would be allowed to target groups as well as individuals, and to launch a criminal intelligence investigation based on the suspicion that a target is engaged in terrorism or providing material support to terrorists. They also could share results with a constellation of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and others in many cases.

Criminal intelligence data starts with sources as basic as public records and the Internet, but also includes law enforcement databases, confidential and undercover sources, and active surveillance.

Jim McMahon, deputy executive director of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, said the proposed changes “catch up with reality” in that those who investigate crimes such as money laundering, drug trafficking and document fraud are best positioned to detect terrorists. He said the rule maintains the key requirement that police demonstrate a “reasonable suspicion” that a target is involved in a crime before collecting intelligence.

“It moves what the rules were from 1993 to the new world we live in, but it maintains civil liberties,” McMahon said.

However, Michael German, policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the proposed rule may be misunderstood as permitting police to collect intelligence even when no underlying crime is suspected, such as when a person gives money to a charity that independently gives money to a group later designated a terrorist organization.

The rule also would allow criminal intelligence assessments to be shared outside designated channels whenever doing so may avoid danger to life or property — not only when such danger is “imminent,” as is now required, German said.

On the day the police proposal was put forward, the White House announced it had updated Reagan-era operating guidelines for the U.S. intelligence community. The revised Executive Order 12333 established guidelines for overseas spying and called for better sharing of information with local law enforcement. It directed the CIA and other spy agencies to “provide specialized equipment, technical knowledge or assistance of expert personnel” to support state and local authorities.

And last week, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said that the Justice Department will release new guidelines within weeks to streamline and unify FBI investigations of criminal law enforcement matters and national security threats. The changes will clarify what tools agents can employ and whose approval they must obtain.

The recent moves continue a steady expansion of the intelligence role of U.S. law enforcement, breaking down a wall erected after congressional hearings in 1976 to rein in such activity.

The push to transform FBI and local police intelligence operations has triggered wider debate over who will be targeted, what will be done with the information collected and who will oversee such activities.

Many security analysts faulted U.S. authorities after the 2001 terrorist attacks, saying the FBI was not combating terrorist plots before they were carried out and needed to proactively use intelligence. In the years since, civil liberties groups and some members of Congress have criticized the administration for unilaterally expanding surveillance and moving too fast to share sensitive information without safeguards.

Critics say preemptive law enforcement in the absence of a crime can violate the Constitution and due process. They cite the administration’s long-running warrantless-surveillance program, which was set up outside the courts, and the FBI’s acknowledgment that it abused its intelligence-gathering privileges in hundreds of cases by using inadequately documented administrative orders to obtain telephone, e-mail, financial and other personal records of U.S. citizens without warrants.

Former Justice Department official Jamie S. Gorelick said the new FBI guidelines on their own do not raise alarms. But she cited the recent disclosure that undercover Maryland State Police agents spied on death penalty opponents and antiwar groups in 2005 and 2006 to emphasize that the policies would require close oversight.

“If properly implemented, this should assure the public that people are not being investigated by agencies who are not trained in how to protect constitutional rights,” said the former deputy attorney general. “The FBI will need to be vigilant — both in its policies and its practices — to live up to that promise.”

German, an FBI agent for 16 years, said easing established limits on intelligence-gathering would lead to abuses against peaceful political dissenters. In addition to the Maryland case, he pointed to reports in the past six years that undercover New York police officers infiltrated protest groups before the 2004 Republican National Convention; that California state agents eavesdropped on peace, animal rights and labor activists; and that Denver police spied on Amnesty International and others before being discovered.

“If police officers no longer see themselves as engaged in protecting their communities from criminals and instead as domestic intelligence agents working on behalf of the CIA, they will be encouraged to collect more information,” German said. “It turns police officers into spies on behalf of the federal government.”

Civil liberties groups also have warned that forthcoming Justice Department rules for the FBI may permit the use of terrorist profiles that could single out religious or ethnic groups such as Muslims or Arabs for investigation.

Mukasey said the changes will give the next president “some of the tools necessary to keep us safe” and will not alter Justice rules that prohibit investigations based on a person’s race, religion or speech. He said the new guidelines will make it easier for the FBI to use informants, conduct physical and photographic surveillance, and share data in intelligence cases, on the grounds that doing so should be no harder than in investigations of ordinary crimes.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said that updating police intelligence rules is a move “in the right direction. However, the vagueness of the provisions giving broad access to criminal intelligence to undefined agencies . . . is very troubling.”

Staff writers Joby Warrick and Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report.

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The CIA is training landscapers, poolmen, and interior designers

Saturday, August 16th, 2008

By Tim Swanson | The US military recently accused Iran of training “death squads” whose primary goal is carrying out assassinations. The information is being made public to supposedly “pressure” Iranian leadership into halting these operations.

So if Iranian assassins are called “death squads” what are similarly trained operatives from the CIA or Army called?

Perhaps the euphemisms that Pentagon officials use are: customer service representatives, safety patrol officers, personal assistants, and make-over specialists.

While the actions of both sides are essentially premeditated murder, the CIA and Army special forces should also come clean about their decades old operations involving the execution of foreign nationals. Come clean on operations in Guatemala, El Salvador, Vietnam, and even Iran itself.

Contemporaneously, after deafening calls to reinstate the official sanctioning of assassinations, the legacy of director Richard Helms continues unabated,as the Pentagon continues to fund and operate the notorious School of the Americas at Fort Bragg which has trained hundreds of foreign nationals with assassination tactics.

Furthermore, despite being banned in the 1970s — after revelations disclosed by the Church and Pike committees — with the assistance of Israeli Defense Forces, the US Army has been actively training “hunter-killer” squads in Iraq under a program called Operation Gray Fox.

And the latest act of bellicosity: this hypocritical condemnation comes a month after an exposé showed that last year, Congress appropriated $400 million for the CIA to conduct clandestine operations in Iran.

While the exact nature of the operations are undisclosed, it is difficult to fathom that the funds are financing more plumbers, carpenters, and electricians in a covert attempt to build new homes and infrastructure for local residents.

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VIDEO: The “Magic” of Disappearing Votes

Saturday, August 16th, 2008

In segment 3, Stephen Spoonamore explains how election fraud can happen even if the voting machines are registering votes correctly. One way is through the haphazard custody of memory cards after voting. But it gets worse. No one has ever inspected the code inside the vote tabulators, so alarming issues like tabulators that decrease votes remain unanswered. They produce negative numbers, which should never happen in a vote tabulator. Why would there be a need to decrease - subtract - votes? To steal votes, plain and simple. How does he know? Under the guise of “proprietary software” Diebold refuses to allow its code for voting machines to be inspected. The real irony is that Diebold allows their code for cash machines to be inspected. Since statistical analysis is the method by which all computer fraud is discovered, Diebold’s rejection of their code inspection is an ominous indicator of election fraud.

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CIVILIANS PAY THE PRICE FOR IMPERIAL RIVALRIES IN GEORGIA

Saturday, August 16th, 2008

SchNews | Despite the Olympics, you had probably noticed there’s another war on, this time in the mountainous region of the Caucuses, in a previously little mentioned place called South Ossetia.

Whether or not Georgia’s president Mikheil Saakashvili went it alone, or if he was given a nod and a wink from the crazies in the White House, we won’t know until Dubya writes his memoirs (but don’t hold your breath - he’ll have to learn to write first).

The question many people are asking is, of course, “what the fack was the Georgian president doing taking on Russia in the first place?” Did he hope that no-one would notice ‘cos everyone’s watching Bejing? Or, more likely, was it a calculated move based on a naive view of US / NATO support?

Saakashvili has been promised NATO membership for some time now, ever since he hosted Dubya in ‘05. As a potential member (other former USSR states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have already joined), he probably thought he was invincible. It’s kind of like Don Corleone saying he wants to be the godfather of your next son. And with that and a string of corruption allegations dogging him, he decided to play the nationalist card. The plan: whip up a bit of righteous fury against the pro-Russian separatists and then send in the boys to take back South Ossetia with NATO blessing.

Unfortunately for the Georgian president, it was a calculation that was way, way out.

You see, the Russia of today is not the Russia of the ‘90s. Partly due to some old-fashioned state intervention, but mostly due to its control of so much of the world’s precious oil and gas, Russia is once again a very big and powerful player in the new great game of world power.

Russia’s military has been growing and growing under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, but it’s not really this that the West is afraid of. It’s the Russian energy weapon that strikes fear into the hearts of US / EU capitalists. When Ukraine started kissing western backsides a few years ago, all Russia had to do was turn off the gas (in the wintertime-brrr!) and wait for an apology. And Russia could easily do the same to Europe.

As US political economist F William Enghadhl put it, “Saakashvili made a colossal miscalculation in that he would have the immediate backup of NATO - but all he has are a few harsh words from a lame duck president in Washington.”

This is why of course the West has been trying so hard to build an alternative route for Asian gas to reach European consumers. They even recently built a pipeline - the second largest in the world - to bypass Russia via, er… Georgia (called the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline – see SchNEWS 555). That pipelines is now about a 20-minute tank drive from the Russian army. BP, seeing which way the wind blows, have pre-emptively shut down their bit of the pipeline. And that’s not been the only problem for the BTC Pipeline. Only last week the Kurdish separatists, the PKK, bombed it, and there are reports that the Rooskies have had a go since then. So its back to the drawing board, and it’s back to Russia if you want to boil your spuds.

So one in the eye for NATO and the US of A then. Hurrah. Only the problem with Caucasus politics is that whichever Empire gains, the people lose - Russia’s brutality in Chechnya is at least as bad as the US’s in Iraq, only colder.

Another way of looking at the carnage in the Caucuses is that it’s the chickens of Kosovo rapidly coming home to roost. In February this year, Kosovo declared independence, supported by 90% of the population, following a referendum on the region’s future. Bush, in his guise as hero of democracy, said that the world must respect the will of the people and recognise Kosovo as the 193rd member of the UN, effectively partitioning Serbia and further dividing the Balkan states that used to be known as Yugoslavia. Cool! - the rights of nations, independence, freedom fries and all that.

Russia, meanwhile, points out that South Ossetia also had a referendum, in which 90% of South Ossetia voted for union with North Ossetia (and Russia). If, so the Russian logic goes, Kosovo can leave Serbia, then South Ossetia (as well as Abzhazia) can leave Georgia.

But this rank hypocrisy of the USA is also equaled by Russia, who didn’t exactly respect the people’s wishes when it came to that other Caucasian republic of Chechnya. After declaring their independence straight after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia has fought two bloody wars, flattened the capital, Grozny, and exterminated perhaps one tenth of Chechnya’s population, all in a bid to keep it part of Russia.

In Central Asia at least, the new shape of the world is now clear. From post-Cold War / New World Order, it’s back to the 19th century and the era of the Great Game between rival empires - with the inhabitants stuck between a Russian rock and an American (OK, it used to be British) hard place.

Currently about 2,000 civilians have been murdered for the crime of living in a geopolitical fault line, and around 100,000 people have been displaced. The Russians bombed - then occupied - the Georgian town of Gori, outside of Ossetia and deep in Georgia proper, barely 20 miles from the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. As it so happens, Gori is the birthplace of a certain Joseph Stalin. He would be proud of what they’ve done to his town - bombed the shit out of it for defying Russia.

What’s been most illuminating about this war is just how quickly and how far the US / West / NATO have distanced themselves from the Georgian president following his disastrous military ‘reintegration’ of South Ossetia.

Both America and their every willing allies, Israel, have been deeply involved in Georgian affairs for many years now. In fact, President Saakashvili owes his job to the USA, courtesy of the National Endowment for Democracy.

The NED, part of the US State Department, is the first choice for pro-American regime change around the world. All of the various ‘colour revolutions’ that have brought pro-US regimes to power (Rose Revolution in Georgia - see SchNEWS 433, Orange in Ukraine, Cedar in Lebanon, and Saffron in Burma) have the NED’s fingerprints all over them. They sent some thousand US special forces to train the Georgian military. In fact, the ‘Georgia-US Immediate Response Military Exercise 2008′ had ended just one week before the Ossetia invasion. Since the rout of the Georgian army, those advisors and any hint of US military involvement have been nowhere to be seen. As the separatist leader of Abzkhazia put it, Georgian forces had received “American training in running away.’’

The Israelis’ response has been just as telling. As soon as events turned sour, they froze all high tech arms sales to Georgia - fearful of Russians wrath if they’re seen as supporting Georgia. But supporting Georgia is exactly what they’ve been doing for years. Not only have the Israelis provided weapons and training, but over a thousand advisors - mostly ex-officers freshly retired out of the Israeli Defense Force - found employment in Georgia’s military. The Georgians should have looked a bit closer. A lot of these officers left the IDF in disgrace after Israel’s own lost war of ‘06 against Hezbollah. Fresh from one defeat, they appear to have taught the Georgians how to lose another war.

This conflict (well, war really) is possibly the most dangerous on the planet at the moment. If Georgia ever gets to join NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty states that an attack on one country is an attack on all NATO members. Were round three of this conflict to kick off with Georgia as a full NATO member, NATO could be forced by its own logic into full scale war with Russia - with South Ossetia occupying the place in history that Sarajevo held in 1914 just before the start of World War One, only this time round both sides are nuclear armed…

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Britain: Policing of climate camp a major attack on democratic rights

Saturday, August 16th, 2008

By Paul Bond | A week-long climate protest camp in north Kent has ended, amidst widespread claims of disproportionate and aggressive policing. Around 100 people were arrested over the course of the protest, 46 of whom have been charged, mostly with obstruction offences. The multimillion-pound policing of the camp marked a significant attack on democratic rights and civil liberties.

The camp was held to protest the building of a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth, on the Medway estuary. Energy company E.ON UK is proposing replacing the existing coal power station with a new one. This would be the first new coal power station built in Britain in more than 30 years. The proposal has yet to be agreed by John Hutton, whose portfolio as secretary of state for business, enterprise and regulatory reform includes energy security issues. The proposal has been passed to Hutton’s office following its agreement by the local authority, Medway Council.

Kingsnorth is the first of several new coal-fired power stations proposed for sites across the UK. The government has made these stations a key factor in ensuring energy supplies. Protestors argue that coal power stations, with their high CO2 emissions, are the most polluting means of producing electricity. Between 1,000 and 2,000 protestors came to the camp over the course of the week to protest at the development of Kingsnorth. Aside from their direct protest activities, the camp also staged workshop and discussion events.

Assistant Chief Constable Gary Beautridge of Kent Police acknowledged in a press conference that the police had been planning their response to the camp since April of this year. That response saw 1,400 officers, from 26 different forces across Britain, being brought into the area. They were supported by constant air surveillance. The Medway Ports Authority also authorised the police to “enforce” sections of their bylaws to prevent protestors approaching the power station from the river.

The final cost of the policing operation is not yet known, but has been estimated variously between £1 million and £8 million. It is understood the Kent Police are considering applying to the Home Office for financial support in footing the bill.

There has been a noticeable trend in recent years for the police to underreport numbers of demonstrators and protestors. In the case of Kingsnorth, the police set the attendance at 1,000. According to their own figures, therefore, they had provided a level of policing intended to overwhelm the protestors. The organisers’ own estimate of attendance was 1,500, giving a 1:1 ratio of police to protestors. Even the highest estimate only put attendance at 2,000.

That the police levels were aimed at discouraging protest was reinforced when Beautridge said he regarded “the majority of the protestors” as “law-abiding people there for a legitimate reason.” He justified the policing levels as a response to “a small hard core of people…prepared to use criminal tactics and criminal activity.” According to one report, this “small hard core” was set at just 150 people. As the camp’s legal spokesman Kevin Smith noted, “Every year police use the supposed existence of a hardcore minority as justification for the heavy-handedness and every year this hardcore minority fails to materialise.”

It is quite evident that the policing was aimed at deterring any form of protest. Protestors at the camp have described the constant attention of police helicopters, which served to disrupt meetings and speeches. There are also reports of police impounding vehicles being used by protestors to bring supplies into the camp.

In particular, protestors drew attention to the aggressive tactics of the riot police, who used batons and shields in making arrests. Several protestors were injured when police baton-charged them as they tried to enter a cornfield. Beautridge maintained that such a response was “proportionate…. Because of the level of resistance, officers were authorised to carry batons during two days of the protest. There are strict legal standards for their use and we gave clear warnings when any specialist team was deployed.”

Green MEP Caroline Lucas, who visited the camp, said she was “horrified that [the] police…have used pepper spray, riot gear, [and] physical intimidation.” The police controlled demonstrators with horses, dogs and trail bikes, as well as with constant helicopter coverage.

To sustain this level of intimidation and intrusion, the police sought extraordinary powers to stop and search protestors. Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act was implemented to authorise this. Initially, the Section 60 provisions were applied only to the immediate area of the camp. They were subsequently extended to cover the whole of the Hoo peninsula. The provision allows police to stop and search a suspect if an officer of superintendent rank or above believes there may be incidents of serious violence.

At Kingsnorth, Section 60 was used to monitor all visitors to the camp. One eyewitness describes joining a queue to be searched. The searching officer did not know who had authorised the searches. Having been frisked and had his bag searched, the witness was then issued with a pink slip. He had to show this to another three officers before he actually reached the camp. He was searched again when he tried to leave the camp. There were also reports of protestors being threatened with strip searches. Elsewhere there were reports of police attempting to use Section 60 to justify destruction of homemade rafts.

Lucas, along with Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker and Labour MP Colin Challen, wrote to Kent Police to express concern about such use of discretionary powers. Lucas warned that this was “undermining our civil liberties.”

Lucas, amongst others, has also drawn attention to a booklet apparently dropped by an officer policing the camp. The booklet, “Policing Protest,” is produced by the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit and offers “tactical advice and guidance on policing single-issue domestic extremism.”

Police mounted a systematic programme of confiscation from the protestors during the searches. The police told press that they had confiscated many knives, although demonstrators described this as a smear tactic. Police also showed journalists a satirical board game (“War on Terror”) they had confiscated. There seems to have been a policy of making life as uncomfortable and awkward as possible for protestors. Other items confiscated included glue, soap, a clown costume, bits of carpet, toilet paper, disabled ramps, marker pens, blackboard paint, nuts and bolts for toilet cubicles, and banners.

They also confiscated demonstrators’ emergency radios and lifejackets. One demonstrator involved in the river-borne protest described a meeting with a local coast guard crew. The coast guards were complimentary about the demonstrators’ attention to safety, but criticised the police confiscations of lifejackets, saying, “It was irresponsible and could have put lives at risk.”

Such tactics were clearly designed to stifle any form of dissent and deter any future protests. Of particular concern in this regard is the complaint by the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) that its members were also subject to the same searches, manhandling, and observation. The NUJ is looking at legal challenges against “this unwarranted conduct by the police.” According to the NUJ, journalists were searched as they entered and left the camp. Searches continued after police were shown press cards. Journalists were also “pushed and shoved” by police, and filmed whilst using WiFi facilities at a local McDonalds.

Such developments indicate a determination to clamp down on any form of legitimate protest, and should be taken as a very serious attack on democratic rights.

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DENVER PLANS ITS OWN GITMO FOR PROTESTERS

Saturday, August 16th, 2008

DENVER (CBS4) ― CBS4 News has learned if mass arrests happen at the Democratic Convention, those taken into custody will be jailed in a warehouse owned by the City of Denver. Investigator Rick Sallinger discovered the location and managed to get inside for a look.

The newly created lockup is on the northeast side of Denver. Protesters have already given this place a name: “Gitmo on the Platte.”

Inside are dozens are metal cages. They are made out of chain link fence material and topped by rolls of barbed wire.

“This is a secured environment,” Capt. Frank Gale of the Denver Sheriff’s Department told CBS4. “We’re concerned about how that’s going to be utilized by people who will be potentially disruptive.”

In past conventions, mass arrests have taken place.

With Denver’s jails already overflowing, new space had to be created and officers trained.

Each of the fenced areas is about 5 yards by 5 yards and there is a lock on the door. A sign on the wall reads “Warning! Electric stun devices used in this facility.”

CBS4 showed its video to leaders of groups that plan to demonstrate during the convention.

“Very bare bones and very reminiscent of a political prisoner camp or a concentration camp,” said Zoe Williams of Code Pink.

Williams was one of those arrested at the Republican Convention in New York in 2004.

“That’s how you treat cattle,” said Adam Jung of the group Tent State University. “You showed the sign where it said stun gun in use and you just change the word gun for bolt and it’s a meat processing plant.”

Gale would not discuss the facility at this time.

“We want to make sure we got our game plan set,” he said, “We want to make sure the entire procedure is laid out all the personnel know what they are supposed to do.”

The plans were to keep this lockup a secret, at least for now. The sheriff’s department said late Tuesday the mayor’s office would be releasing a statement about it early next week.

The American Civil Liberties Union is asking the City of Denver how prisoners will get access to food and water, bathrooms, telephones, plus medical care, and if there will be a place to meet with attorneys.

Mayor’s Office News Release

On Wednesday afternoon Mayor John Hickenlooper’s office sent a news release to CBS4 and other media explaining the purpose of the holding facility. It says there will be a community outreach program this week to explain the facility’s function.

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Russia signs Georgia ceasefire deal

Saturday, August 16th, 2008

guardian.co.uk | The Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, has signed a ceasefire pact to end hostilities in Georgia.

The deal calls for Russian troops to pull back from Georgia but also grants them limited patrols inside the country.

The Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, reluctantly signed the plan yesterday while accusing the Russians of being “evil” and “21st century barbarians”.

Russia had been refusing to pull back their forces until Saakashvili signed the six-point ceasefire plan which was brokered by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, earlier this week.

Kremlin sources today confirmed that Russia had signed the pact.

“The president informed participants of the security council meeting that he had just now signed the six-point plan,” said the Kremlin’s chief spokeswoman, Natalia Timakova.

Under the plan, some emotive issues remain open to interpretation – including whether Georgia is able to send troops back into areas of South Ossetia.

The ceasefire agreement should prompt international talks to define the status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Meanwhile, the risk of a new era of east-west confrontation triggered by Russia’s invasion of Georgia heightened yesterday when Moscow reserved the right to launch a nuclear attack on Poland because it agreed to host US rockets as part of the Pentagon’s missile shield.

As Washington accused Russia of “bullying and intimidation” in Georgia, Russia’s deputy chief of staff turned on Warsaw and said it was vulnerable to a Russian rocket attack because of Thursday’s pact with the US on the missile defence project.

“By deploying, Poland is exposing itself to a strike - 100%,” warned Colonel General Anatoly Nogovitsyn. He added that Russia’s security doctrine allowed it to use nuclear weapons against an active ally of a nuclear power such as America.

The warning worsened the already dismal mood in relations between Moscow and the west caused by the shock of post-Soviet Russia’s first invasion of a foreign country.

There were scant signs of military activity on the ground in Georgia, but nor were there any signs of the Russian withdrawal pledged on Tuesday under ceasefire terms mediated by the European Union.

Instead, the focus was on a flurry of diplomatic activity that exposed acute differences on how Washington and Berlin see the crisis in the Caucasus.

Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, went to Tbilisi to bolster Georgia against the Russians as President George Bush denounced Russian “bullying and intimidation” as “unacceptable”.

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, met Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev on the Black Sea close to Georgia’s borders and sent quite a different message, offering a mild rebuke of Moscow.

“Some of Russia’s actions were not proportionate,” she said.

Unlike the Americans and some European states who are saying the Russians should face “consequences” for their invasion, Merkel said negotiations with Moscow on a whole range of issues would continue as before and spread the blame for the conflict. “It is rare that all the blame is on one side. In fact, both sides are probably to blame. That is very important to understand,” she said.

In Tbilisi, Rice was much more forthright, saying that the invasion had “profound implications for Russia … This calls into question what role Russia really plans to play in international politics.

“You can’t be a responsible member of institutions which are democratic and underscore democratic values and on the other hand act in this way against one of your neighbours.”

Saakashvili said: “Russia has every time been testing the reaction of the west. It’s going to replicate what happened in Georgia elsewhere,” said Saakashvili. “We are looking evil directly in the eye. Today this evil is very strong, and very dangerous for everybody, not just for us.”

Rice’s show of solidarity with Georgia’s beleaguered president was theatrically undermined when Russia dispatched a column of armoured personnel carriers towards the Georgian capital.

As the talks were taking place, 10 armoured personnel carriers laden with Russian troops set off from Gori, penetrating to within 20 miles of Tbilisi.

“Georgia has been attacked. Russian forces need to leave Georgia at once,” said Rice. The withdrawal “must take place, and take place now … This is no longer 1968,” she added in reference to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia 40 years ago next week.

The ceasefire terms favour the Russians who routed the Georgians. But the secretary of state argued the plan would not affect negotiations over the central territorial dispute between Georgia and the two breakaway pro-Russian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The deal allows Russian troops to remain in the two provinces and to mount patrols and “take additional security measures” on Georgian territory beyond the two enclaves.

Senior Russians continued to insist yesterday that Russian troops had not stepped outside South Ossetia and Abkhazia despite the fact they have been deep inside Georgian territory in several places all week.

“Our ground forces never crossed the border of the conflict zone,” said Sergei Ivanov, the deputy prime minister.

Moscow also indicated it would resist possible European attempts to deploy international peacekeepers in the contested territories.

“We are not against international peacekeepers,” the Russian president said. “But the problem is that the Abkhazians and the Ossetians do not trust anyone except Russian peacekeepers.” He also attacked the agreement between Washington and Warsaw on the missile shield and said claims that the shield was aimed at Iran were “fairy tales”

“This clearly demonstrates the deployment of new anti-missile forces in Europe has as its aim the Russian Federation,” said Medvedev. “The moment has been well chosen.”

The timing of Thursday’s agreement on missile defence means that tensions are soaring on Russia’s southern and western borders.

Polish armed forces yesterday paraded in Warsaw to mark a rare defeat of the Russians 888 years ago and President Lech Kaczynski hailed the accord on the Pentagon project as a boost for Poland’s security.

In return for hosting 10 interceptor rockets said to be intended to destroy any eventual ballistic missile attacks from Iran, Poland is to receive a battery of US Patriot missiles for its air defences and has won a mutual security pact with Washington.

Have Your Say: Russia signs Georgia ceasefire deal
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Funding the White House campaign

Saturday, August 16th, 2008

The road to the seat of power in the White House is not easy, and certainly not cheap.

This year’s US presidential race is on track to be the most expensive in history. Al Jazeera’s senior Washington correspondent Rob Reynolds discovers there are some unconventional methods being used to finance the campaigns.

Have Your Say: Funding the White House campaign
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