By Haider Rizvi | (IPS) -Numerous governments around the world are using anti-terror laws to suppress political dissent and civil liberties, according to a new report released by one of the world’s most respected human rights organisations.
Amid calls for increased U.N. scrutiny, in its report, the London-based group Amnesty International raises serious questions and concerns about the impact of the so-called war on terror on human rights and freedom of speech in many countries.
”There is a huge gap between governmental rhetoric and the reality of human rights observance on the ground,” said Amnesty in its report, entitled ”Security and Human Rights: Terrorism and the United Nations.”
The rights group released its report Thursday just a few hours before the U.N. General Assembly plenary was due to start biennial review of the ”Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy,” a documented adopted by the member states some two years ago.
The report’s authors say in a number of countries government leaders are violating human rights, although there is no provision in the document that would allow them to do so while pursuing anti-terror policies.
The report says that many governments have ”rushed through problematic laws formulating often vaguely-defined crimes, such as banning organisations, undermining fair trial standards, and suspending safeguards aimed at protecting human rights.”
The so-called war on terror, according to the report, is being used by both democratic governments and repressive regimes alike to justify restrictions on their political opponents and dissidents.
”Unfortunately,” the authors say, ”countries which have long claimed to be leaders in promoting human rights have now taken the lead the lead in enacting draconian laws.”
In addition to the United States and its close allies in the ”war on terror”, the report also names and shames several countries, including some Western democracies, for lowering their standards on human rights in the name of security.
Contrary to its image as a champion of human rights, Denmark, for example, has widened its definition of terrorism and the scope of ”aiding abetting terrorist activities,” raising concerns that the laws could be applied to those involved in non-violent activities.
Amnesty criticised the U.N. Security Council for its lack of emphasis on human rights and demanded it take responsibility for adverse impacts of the fight against terror on human rights situation worldwide.
”Human rights and security go hand in hand. Human rights are the key to achieving peace,” said Yvonne Terlingen, who represents Amnesty International at the U.N. ”The only way of countering terrorism is with justice.”
The 50-page report is laden with scores of cases illustrating human rights abuses in the name of security and counter-terrorism, such as extrajudicial trials and killings, use of torture, and enforced disappearances of suspects.
In its report, Amnesty urged the Security Council to adopt ”unambiguous and strong” language in its future resolutions on counter terrorism that member states meet their human rights obligations in the measures that it requires them to take.
The rights group also called for the Security Council to set up an independent review mechanism to examine delisting of terrorism suspects subjected to sanctions, and provide direct access to those listed to fair hearings providing basic human rights guarantees.
Amnesty’s findings appear be fully in line with those of the various U.N. rights bodies. In expressing their concerns as far back as October 2005, they warned that attempts by many states to adopt new anti-terror policies could undermine human rights standards.
In a report submitted to the General Assembly at the time, U.N. rights officials emphasised that terror required concerted action by the international community, not legislative steps that deny individual rights to a fair trial, freedom of speech, assembly, or to strike.
”Nothing can combat irrational acts and extreme forms of violence more effectively than the wisdom embodied in the rule of law,” U.N. special rapporteur on human rights Leandro Despouy told the General Assembly.
As in the past, the General Assembly meeting Thursday failed to reach a consensus on a definition of terrorism. While some think of terrorism in terms of extremists acts of non-state actors, others insist that certain states are also responsible for terrorism.
The fight against terrorism, according to a Cuban diplomat who spoke at the plenary session, is also used as a ”pretext to justify interference in the internal affairs of the other states, the aggression, and the breach of the states’ national sovereignty.”
”[It's] a phenomenon that has to be combated by the entire international community, in an environment of close cooperation and with due respect of the Charter of the United Nations and international law,” Cuban envoy IIena Nunez Mordoche told the General Assembly plenary meeting.
New Delhi - Indian security forces and Maoist rebels should end the use of child fighters in their long conflict in the central state of Chhattisgarh, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Friday.
The New York based rights group said both sides have long used children, some of them as young as 12, in armed operations.
While the Maoist rebels admit they recruit children, India’s federal Home Ministry has denied the allegations.
HRW, in its 58-page report on the involvement of children in the Chhattisgarh conflict, said the local police have recruited and used an unknown number of children as special police officers since mid-2005, though officials now say that they have been removed from the ranks.
It quotes eyewitnesses and interviews with villagers and children who say they were recruited by either the police or the Maoists.
The report says the Maoists, who have been recruiting and using children for over a decade, deploy them to gather intelligence, for sentry duty, to make and plant landmines and bombs and to fight government forces.
‘It’s shameful that both India’s government and the Naxalites (the name used for Maoist rebels in India) are exploiting children in this dangerous fashion,’ the HRW release said.
It urged India to conduct age verification tests and remove all those below 18 from policing duties and provide them education and alternative employment.
It said Maoist commanders should release all children from their ranks and take strict measures to prevent further recruitment.
Maoist rebels are active in at least 13 of India’s 29 states and say they are waging a war for the rights of poor landless and tribal people.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described the Maoists as the biggest threat to India’s internal security.
Thousands of people, mostly police, paramilitary personnel and government officials as well as rebels, have been killed in the Maoist insurgency since the late 1960s.
By Laura Smitherman | The Legislative Black Caucus and civil rights activists criticized yesterday Gov. Martin O’Malley’s plan for implementing a new program for collecting DNA samples from crime suspects, accusing the administration of turning its back on hard-fought compromises for safeguards and oversight.
O’Malley made the DNA bill one of his priorities this year and worked hard to win passage of the legislation in the Maryland General Assembly - but only after significant changes during lengthy negotiations, particularly with the Black Caucus. The law calls for DNA samples to be taken from those charged with violent crimes and burglary; previously, samples were taken only after a conviction.
The Maryland State Police issued the proposed regulations to implement the law last month. But concerns from lawmakers have prompted the Joint Committee on Administrative, Executive and Legislative Review to put a hold on the regulations. The committee doesn’t have the authority to overturn the regulations, but it often seeks tweaks during the promulgation of rules.
Leading black lawmakers, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the state public defender’s office say the proposed regulations don’t ensure that DNA samples are taken only when someone has been charged with a crime, rather than at the time of arrest as would have been the case under language originally proposed by O’Malley. They also say the regulations don’t adequately address access to DNA samples or procedures for expungement, which would be required when someone isn’t convicted.
“I am really challenging the O’Malley administration to come forth and put their cards on the table,” said Sen. Verna L. Jones, a Baltimore Democrat and caucus member. “If they were not going to be fair and aboveboard with us, they should not have been in negotiations with us just to make sure that legislation got passed.”
O’Malley said his administration would entertain any suggestions for changing the regulations. The Democratic governor had championed the expansion of the DNA database as a crime-fighting tool but ran into fierce objections in the legislature, where some said it would be unconstitutional and would exacerbate racial bias in the criminal justice system because the database would primarily comprise information about African-Americans and Latinos.
“We welcome the input of the Black Caucus. We welcome the input of the ACLU,” O’Malley said. “And we also welcome the ability that local enforcement will have to solve violent crimes, to solve murders and rapes, and to lock up people for very long periods of time once we have a case on them.”
It is unclear whether substantial changes will be made to the regulations. Kristen Mahoney, head of the Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention, disputed many of the issues raised by activists and emphasized that the administration would have no reason to circumvent the compromise provisions it agreed to during the General Assembly session.
“At some point, the ACLU and public defender needs to work with what the General Assembly passed rather than continuing to object to this. They just don’t like the law. That’s what this is,” Mahoney said. “And they are looking in every corner to take this tool away from law enforcement.”
The dispute could escalate. Lawmakers and activists called for hearings on the proposed regulations and threatened to sue if the administration doesn’t make changes. They argue that the proposed regulations fail to follow the spirit and letter of the newly enacted law, and in particular the negotiated provisions that were meant to limit potential abuses.
The critics contend the regulations do not explicitly address procedures for expungement from federal databases or how to prohibit familial searches that could give rise to racial profiling with DNA collected by the state when it is uploaded to the federal level. They also say the regulations invite excessive force by police officers by not defining the “reasonable force” that can be used in collecting samples.
But Mahoney said those concerns are unfounded. She said that when records are expunged from the state database, they are automatically deleted from the federal database, and she noted that Maryland regulations can’t be applied to the federal government. She also said that “reasonable force” is defined in case law and insisted that the regulations limit the taking of DNA samples to suspects who have been charged.
A number of problems with the state’s crime labs have surfaced in recent years. Last month, the Baltimore Police Department’s crime lab director was dismissed after revelations that analysts had contaminated evidence with their own DNA. A few years earlier, officials say, police practices and disorganization at the lab led to contamination and unreliable gunshot residue test results.
The legislature approved a bill in 2007 to bolster oversight of crime labs, and O’Malley is expected to appoint members to a forensic advisory board by the end of the year. While the board is expected to have support from existing state staff, lawmakers yesterday said the governor needs to step up oversight efforts not only in response to past problems but also as the database grows.
Sen. Delores G. Kelley, a Baltimore County Democrat, said, “We need to have staff and experts go out and certify to the public that we are not a kangaroo court with regard to the way we run forensic labs.”
Personal privacy is, of course, a major issue these days, particularly when it comes to authorities gathering data in schemes such as the UK’s proposed identity card program or France’s Edvidge electronic database.
Edvidge, the French government’s new repository of information aimed at keeping an eye on citizens who it deems merit surveillance, is currently drawing mass protests two months after it was signed into law.
Kids too
Among other things, it can track people from age 13 who are involved in unions, politics or who represent a threat to public order. Although those first two categories aren’t likely to attract many 13-year-olds, this hasn’t gone down too well in France.
Alluding to the new powers to record information about an individual’s appearance, finances and even friends, former education minister François Bayrou said, “With just a few clicks of the mouse, any government official or civil servant will have access to intimate data”.
Sign up online
So far, the main protest has been online – over 100,000 signatures are listed on the anti-Edvidge website – but more will surely follow.
According to Reuters, appeals to France’s highest courts are already underway with a view to nipping the government’s giant electronic monitor in the bud.
The Liberal Democrats yesterday accused both Labour and the Conservatives of ducking the hard decisions on police reform in favour of a sentencing arms race, as they launched their proposals for fundamental reform of the way the police are run.
The ideas, outlined in the paper Cutting Crime: Catching Criminals With Better Policing, highlight the urgent need to move the criminal justice debate away from what sounds tough to what actually works, with a shift away from prison towards policing and detection.
The main proposals include:
> 10,000 extra police on the streets, paid for by scrapping ID cards
> Reviewing the police contract including lifetime employment for 30 years, the single point of entry and pay levels
> Annual fitness tests for frontline officers
> Decentralising the force by scrapping counterproductive central targets, introducing the local setting of priorities and budgets and the direct election of the majority of police authority members
> Creating a National Crime Reduction Agency to assess police and criminal justice policies on evidence and to spread best practice
> Respecting police pay awards from the Police Arbitration Tribunal
Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Huhne said:
“For too long, policing and criminal justice policy have been decided by what sounds tough, rather than what works.
“Prison, a sentencing arms race between Labour and the Tories, and Labour’s legislative diarrhoea in creating 3,600 new criminal offences since 1997, have been used as a proxy for real action on crime.
“The radical proposals outlined by the Liberal Democrats today are designed to shift the debate away from posturing on penalties and towards catching criminals.
“Labour and the Conservatives have repeatedly ducked the difficult decisions on police reform. Only the Liberal Democrats are committed to a review of outdated working practices in the police.”
By Paul Mitchell | The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has indicted Florence Hartmann, the spokeswoman of the tribunal’s former Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte from 1999 to 2006, on two charges of contempt of court. Hartmann has been ordered to appear before the court on September 15, charged with revealing information relating to confidential decisions made by judges in the trial of the late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic. If found guilty, she could face seven years in jail or a fine of €100,000 (US$150,000).
According to the contempt charges, Hartmann—who has been critical of Western power—“knew that the information was confidential at the time of the disclosure was made, that the decisions from which the information was drawn were ordered to be filed confidentially, and that by her disclosure she was revealing confidential information to the public.”
The charges relate to Hartmann’s disclosure of the confidential information in her book Peace and Punishment: The Secret Wars of Politics and International Justice (Paix et Châtiment) published on September 10, 2007, and in an article entitled “Vital Genocide Documents Concealed,” published by the Bosnian Institute on January 21, 2008.
The charges say her book gives details of decisions by the appeals court between September 20, 2005, and April 6, 2006, and the confidential nature of those decisions. Lead prosecutor Sir Geoffrey Nice said he was denied “fundamental information.” The court also refused to hand the same evidence over to the International Court of Justice in a genocide case brought by Bosnia against Serbia for the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995 by VRS units under the command of General Ratko Mladic—officially the largest mass murder in Europe since World War Two. The ICJ could not prove the Serbian government’s direct responsibility for the actions of the VRS, finding instead that Serbia had violated the Genocide Convention by failing to use its influence to prevent genocide or arrest Mladic.
In her article, Hartmann criticises the ICTY for contributing to “concealing the truth” and violating the UN Security Council resolution that established the tribunal in 1993, which states “the work of the ICTY shall be carried out without any prejudice to the rights of the victims to seek compensation for damages incurred as a result of international humanitarian law.”
Hartmann denies the contempt charges, saying, “For me and my lawyers, it’s a question of free speech and the right to inform, with transparency, the public on a subject of public interest.
“We cannot say international justice is not a subject of public interest; it’s a subject even of humanity interest.”
Hartmann says she found out about the charges from a news release before she had been officially notified, explaining, “The registry sent me a copy yesterday night [August 27], three hours after the press was informed, and my lawyer who was representing me at the point I was a suspect had not been informed yet.”
Her lawyer, William Bourdon, denounced the charges, saying that they were “motivated by non-legal concerns,” and added, “Taking action against Ms. Hartmann means that all those who, legitimately, in the interest of the public and of history, wish to bear witness to their actions in the service of international penal justice will be muzzled.”
Hartmann also expressed surprise at the timing of the charges a year after her book was published. They come less than a month after her outspoken criticism of the Western powers following the arrest of fugitive Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic hit the world’s headlines. She accused the West of protecting Karadzic, who was arrested in July for genocide and other war crimes allegedly committed during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995, when he was president of the Bosnian Serb Republic and supreme commander of the Bosnian Serb army (VRS). Karadzic is also accused of responsibility for the 44-month shelling of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, and the Srebrenica massacre.
Karadzic asserts that he was granted an immunity deal by former US Ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke, who brokered the Dayton Accord that ended the Bosnian War, provided he disappeared from public life. He has asked the Tribunal to order the appearance of Holbrooke and former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and two other officials allegedly involved in the deal. Holbrooke and Albright deny the accusations.
Hartmann claims that the US, Britain and France “blocked” the arrest of Karadzic and Mladic in order to prevent them putting “the blame for the crimes they have committed on the international community by saying that they have been given a green or orange light to take over the Srebrenica enclave.”
“Sometimes arrest operations were halted by [former French President Jacques] Chirac personally, other times by Clinton.
“Western powers created the conditions for mass killings to happen,” she declared.
Hartmann also maintains that from the day the ICTY was created, “there was an effort to steer justice to justify the actions of the big powers in their response to the war, the genocide.”
“They consistently tried to overlook who was indicted, and then selectively provided evidence and even altered it depending if the Tribunal mandate to establish the truth would harm them or not.”
To date, Hartmann’s book has only been published in French and Bosnian. As a result of the charges, publishers will be less inclined to publish it in English and other languages, denying the book a wider audience. They also serve as a warning to anyone else before the Karadzic trial opens to keep quiet about the role of the Western powers at Srebrenica or in the break-up of Yugoslavia.
By Haroon Siddique | The Bush administration has spied on the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, and other senior figures in his government, the Washington Post reported today.
The claim is one of many in a new book by the paper’s associate editor Bob Woodward, who with Carl Bernstein uncovered the Watergate scandal that led to Richard Nixon’s resignation.
The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008 is based on more than 150 interviews with key figures in the Iraq war as well two interviews with the president himself. The books paints a picture of Bush often at loggerheads with his military advisers and other officials.
Woodward says groundbreaking surveillance techniques – and not the much-trumpeted surge by 30,000 additional troops - were the main reason for the reduction in violence in Iraq over the past 16 months.
In 2006, Bush maintained publicly that US forces were winning, while privately believing the strategy of training Iraq security forces and transferring responsibility to the new government was failing, according to the Post.
Woodward says the president lost confidence in General George Casey, then the commander of coalition forces in Iraq, and General John Abizaid, who was the head of US central command.
In October 2006 Bush asked his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, to carry out a review of the Iraq war. But the report ignored the military and was kept secret for fear of jeopardising the Republican party’s popularity in the mid-term congressional elections, the book says.
The Pentagon reluctantly agreed to a troop surge of two brigades, but the White House decided on five. Asked how this decision was reached, Bush told Woodward: “Okay, I don’t know this. I’m not in these meetings, you’ll be happy to hear, because I got other things to do.”
Woodward says Casey described the 2007 surge as a “troop sump”. Abizaid and the then defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, also opposed the scale of the operation, and the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, had reservations.
Casey told a colleague that Bush reflected the “radical wing of the Republican party that kept saying, ‘Kill the bastards! Kill the bastards! And you’ll succeed’”, writes Woodward.
The book says joint chiefs of staff were in near revolt in late 2006, with Admiral Michael Mullen, then serving as chief of naval operations, fearing the military would “take the fall” for failure in Iraq.
Woodward does credit the influx of troops with contributing to the fall in violence. But he cites as important factors the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s reining-in of his powerful Mahdi army, the so-called Anbar Awakening - in which Sunni fighters allied with US forces to fight against al-Qaida - and covert operations targeting key individuals in extremist groups.
While Bush developed a close relationship with Maliki, US officials feared the impact the surveillance of the prime minister would have, according to Woodward. “We know everything he says,” a source told Woodward.
The book is Woodward’s fourth on the Bush administration and its actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
By Neil McLaughlin | By now you have likely heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a tragic byproduct of the plastics industry and consumerism that is an island of garbage floating in the northern Pacific Ocean. Originally the size of Texas and approaching the size of the Sun, this gargantuan pile of plastic is collected by currents that swirl around in a big circle. Most of the debris is picked up from the shores of both China and North America that sandwich it.
As plastic never goes away, it eventually crumbles up into tiny bits (photo-degrades). These bits of plastic enter the food supply and are passed from the jelly fish all the way back up to humans where it is stored in their livers (that part is only fair). Plastic also pollutes the water with PCB’s (PolyChlorinated Biphenyls, dangerous carcinogens and hormone disruptors).
While no one person is to blame, every person has contributed to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (it’s a safe bet the Atlantic also has one lurking somewhere). Whether one throws litter on the ground or trusts in their municipal trash companies to do it for them, everyone throws away plastic and it ends up in the ocean and then back in our bodies.
While some say cleanup is impossible, hopefully someday someone will find a solution. Perhaps they will find a way to convert plastic to energy (it is made of oil after all), and they can make a ship refueling station out there that will produce energy from plastic. Or perhaps nanotech robots can disassemble it and bring it to the recycler. (Such technology would be extremely dangerous as it would have to be careful not to accidentally disassemble Kenny Rogers face). In the meantime there are many things people can do to at least help prevent this pile of garbage from getting any larger.
Ways to Reduce Plastic in Landfills
1) Avoid Products that use Plastic to Begin With
Plastic is made from petroleum hence it is so ubiquitous today. Plastic is convenient but most of the cheaper grades (the clear stuff) find its way into our food, often leaving a film on anything that is wrapped in it and which we then eat. Microwaving anything in plastic cooks plastic residues right into the food, vaporizing other chemicals that contaminate the food and air. Consider the amount of sheer waste a single meal or even serving produces (Kraft Singles is second only to Individually Wrapped Breaths of Air ™ in the Most Wasteful Products Award). Reuse glass or Tupperware containers for leftovers instead of plastic wrap. Store water in the high grade blue plastic bottles only. Prefer cheese that is made from raw milk.
2) Kick the Bottle
High on the list of most wasteful products is Individually Wrapped Drinks of Water, a lingering 1990’s fad for those pretending to be health conscious. Picture a lake compared to a lake of plastic bottles and that is basically what we now have in the Pacific. Corporations are taking over town aquifers and selling it back to the people for $2 per bottle. Shipping one bottle of water costs on average 1/3 bottle of fuel. It is best to filter or distill your own water and use metal or glass containers. Companies like Nalgene make trendy reusable water containers of high grade plastic. Opt for tap water with lemon in restaurants. Note: wait staff seem trained to always supply a plastic straw with every drink (probably so you don’t notice the lipstick on the rim of the glass), so remember to request no straw with your drink.
3) Recycle or Reuse Materials
Plastic can be recycled and you will find that when you start recycling you at least save money on trash bags. Many containers can be washed out and reused (though they should be sterilized with apple cider vinegar). Note that only the higher grade plastics can be reused.
4) Choose Products with Biodegradable Plastic
Now many plastic cups along with packaging peanuts and other supplies are available in a biodegradable form. Companies like Ecosafe and Natur-Tec are providing real solutions to the plastic problem.
5) Repair, Sell or Upgrade Gadgets
Many people run out and buy the latest new cell phone or iPod more often than needed, discarding their old phones in the rubbish where they not only add to plastic landfill but also leak out various other contaminants like Mercury. Meanwhile older components, while larger, are often superior as they tend to be constructed of much more solid materials. By repairing your items you can keep things in top shape much longer. Tackle small problems when they arise. Take the time to fix things right. Buy used products when possible and sell your items when they are no longer needed. Prefer products that offer replacement parts.
6) Recycle Computer Parts
If you must discard items like monitors or printers, at least take them to an electronics recycler. Staples accepts old monitors, etc. for a small fee.
7) Use Cloth Grocery Bags
While this is more of a challenge for men as they look like pocketbooks, it is important to avoid bringing home so many plastic bags. Cloth bags can help. Some shoppers at the farmers market seem afraid to let any vegetables touch any other vegetables, insisting that each be individually wrapped. A better method is to use as few bags as possible, to reuse those taken, recycle them when they tear, and especially to avoid using them to begin with by bringing your own bag. Eventually this will save money as stores are considering charging for them.
8)Do Sweat the Small Stuff
The worst pieces of plastic are the tiny bits. These are the ones that birds, turtles and fish mistake for food and eat and then can’t pass them. Eventually these poor animals become full of plastic and they die of starvation, or they are consumed by larger animals and the process continues. After these animals die, the plastic is the only part that is left behind where it kills again.
9)Don’t be a Litter Bug
Many feel that if they don’t litter, they will be putting the garbage man out of a job. Some will simply chuck their used car batteries (full of sulfuric acid) into the woods behind their home. The truth is that this debris will persist for decades and humans leave enough of a footprint without adding insult to injury. In the 1970’s there were TV commercials with Woodsy Owl reminding us to “Give a Hoot Don’t Pollute”. In today’s corporate controlled media the best we get is talk about the Carbon Tax. Even the threat of Nuclear War is brushed aside by the media in favor of the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, and the War on Manners.
10)Clean up your Neighborhood Ponds
Many neighborhoods have small ponds containing water that is cleaner than their municipal tap water. These ponds are often teeming with fish and turtles that help keep them pure. Sadly however these ponds (and wildlife) are normally loaded with plastic debris. By taking 15 minutes each week, one person can really help clean up their neighborhood. The process is surprisingly relaxing and the animals will appreciate it. Do note that random passerby will think you are out on parole, so wearing an orange jumpsuit is not recommended. Ideally, organize a neighborhood trash pickup (nowadays that may require legal waivers in case participants obtain a boo boo).
References
GPGP Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Paci…
It was a video that was supposed to elicit soaring patriotism and real emotions about the Pledge of Allegiance. But to do that, it used fake soldiers and a staged military funeral instead of the real thing.
On Tuesday night, 15-year-old Victoria Blackstone, a sophomore at the St. Agnes School in St. Paul, led the crowd at the Xcel Energy Center in the Pledge of Allegiance. The audience heard her 434-word essay, “Pledging myself to the Flag of the United States of America,” an essay she’d entered in the “Wave the Stars & Stripes” essay contest and won. The RNC turned that essay into a three and a half minute video, a visually stirring montage rolling over Victoria’s words about sharing the Pledge with Americans who have stood at important moments in history.
There’s the Continental Congress…A real WWII vet…Photos of workers at Ground Zero. A close-up of a folded flag presented to a grieving widow at a military funeral… profiles of soldiers swelling with pride in slo-motion.
But CBS News found that the footage of the ‘funeral’ and soldiers is what is called ‘stock’ footage. The soldiers were actors and the funeral scene was from a one-day film shoot, produced in June. No real soldiers were used during production.
The footage, sold by stock-film house Getty Images was produced by a commercial filmmaker in Chicago. Both Getty and the production company, Mr. Big Films, confirmed that the footage was shot on spec and sold to the Republican National Committee.
One of the actors, Perry Denton of Chicago, Ill. also confirmed that he was hired on a day-rate as an actor for the shoot and told CBS News he was surprised to learn the footage was shown at the convention.
A veteran’s advocate said that with soldiers still deployed and in harm’s way, there is an obligation not to sugar coat reality.
“What it does reveal is a serious lack of understanding and a lack of personal connection to the military,” said Paul Rieckhoff, Executive Director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
Rieckhoff, who is at the convention with a contingent of veterans added that a video tribute to Medal of Honor winner Michael Monsoor, a Navy Seal killed in Iraq, shown on Tuesday night, used combat video that appeared to him and several other veterans of the Iraq war to have been staged.
After a Web search of videos played at the Democratic National Convention last week, CBS News found no obvious use of stock footage.
The RNC did not respond to CBS News’ request for a comment.
Several people who refused to clear the area Thursday were arrested after a planned, anti-war march to the site of the Republican National Convention became a sit-in after police blocked the protest route.
Hundreds tried to cross two different bridges leading from the state Capitol to the Xcel Energy Center, where Sen. John McCain was accepting his party’s nomination for president. But they were met by lines of police, in gas masks and riot gear, who blocked the bridges after the marchers’ permit expired.
Police began making arrests about two hours into the standoff as the crowd dwindled from about 1,000 to around 100.
“The important thing is even though we didn’t have a permit to march, people have decided they want to keep protesting despite all these riot police,” said Meredith Aby, a member of the Anti-War Committee.
Even as police made arrests, the mood was more relaxed than earlier in the week, when violence erupted.
It even turned festive at times.
Younger people did cartwheels, and tourists came to check out the spectacle. The chants, which were political at the outset, turned silly a couple hours in.
“You’re sexy, you’re cute, take off the riot suit,” protesters serenaded those blocking their path.
Besides the arrests at the sit-in, a young couple lying on the Capitol lawn was arrested before the march began.
St. Paul Police Sgt. John Lozoya said the man was suspected of breaking a window at a Macy’s during a march downtown on Monday. He did not know why the other person, a young woman, was arrested.
Protesters circled the officers, chanting “Let them go, let them go,” as they made the arrests.
Speakers at a rally, which attracted about 500 people, angrily accused police of trying to intimidate protesters and vowed the march would go on.
“The kids were just sitting on the ground and the police walked up to them and jumped them,” said Lisa Stone, 41, of St. Paul, who witnessed the arrests. “This is a demonstration to try to promote peace. That’s not going to happen if this is the way they’re going to act. All it’s doing is hyping everyone up.”
More than 400 people have been arrested in the past week, most on Monday, when violence broke out at the end of another anti-war march.
The Anti-War Committee, which organized Thursday’s march, urged others to join in and denounced the increased presence of police in riot gear and acts of “intimidation” in the city.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty blamed the week’s violence on a small group of “anarchists, nihilists, and goofballs who want to break stuff and hurt people.”
“They need to be dealt with,” Pawlenty said in a radio interview with WCCO-AM of Minneapolis.
Earlier Thursday, about 150 people marched peacefully from the Capitol across the Mississippi River to a park near the Xcel center, chanting: “Hey hey, ho ho, Bush and Cheney need to go to Guantanamo.”
By Ann Scott Tyson | Suicides among active-duty soldiers this year are on pace to exceed both last year’s all-time record and, for the first time since the Vietnam War, the rate among the general U.S. population, Army officials said yesterday.
Ninety-three active-duty soldiers had killed themselves through the end of August, the latest data show. A third of those cases are under investigation by the Armed Forces Medical Examiner’s Office. In 2007, 115 soldiers committed suicide.
Failed relationships, legal and financial troubles, and the high stress of wartime operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are the leading factors linked to the suicides, Army officials said.
The officials voiced concern that an array of Army programs aimed at suicide prevention has not checked a years-long rise in the suicide rate. Still, they said, the number of deaths probably would have climbed even more without such efforts.
“What does success look like? Frankly, we do not know,” said Col. Eddie Stephens, deputy director for human resources under the Army’s personnel division.
The Army’s suicide rate has increased from 12.4 per 100,000 in 2003, when the Iraq war started, to 18.1 per 100,000 last year. Suicide attempts by soldiers have also increased since 2003, Stephens said.
This year the death rate is likely to exceed that of a demographically similar segment of the U.S. population — 19.5 per 100,000, Stephens said. According to service officials, the last time that occurred was in the late 1960s during the Vietnam War, when the United States had a draft Army that suffered from serious discipline problems. In 1973, the nation created an all-volunteer force that has generally enjoyed an above-average level of mental health, a condition contradicted by the recent rise in suicides.
The latest Army prevention efforts include the hiring of hundreds of new mental health providers, the production of an interactive video on the subject, to be released this fall, and the introduction of an intervention program aimed at teaching junior Army leaders not only suicidal symptoms but actions that can prevent suicides.
The ACE program includes handing out laminated cards decorated with the ace of hearts that advise three steps — “ask,” “care” and “escort” — that spell “ACE”: Ask your buddy direct questions such as “Are you thinking of killing yourself?”; care for your buddy by taking away weapons; and escort your buddy to a military chaplain or health provider.
“Take away the weapon if someone is playing Russian roulette with it. . . . Unfortunately, people have not always done that,” said Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum, the Army’s assistant surgeon general for force protection. Army prevention programs to this point have not trained soldiers adequately in what to do after they learn a comrade is in crisis, she added.
Another measure that Cornum said has proven effective is for Army commanders in combat zones to take a more “humanistic” approach and to return soldiers home so they can deal with personal crises and thereby “live another day to keep serving.”
Col. Scott McBride, commander of the 1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, said such measures have helped him prevent any suicides among his 4,000 soldiers, who have been deployed in northern Iraq for the past year.
“If they’re having a problem at home and we can keep a family together, reduce stress by sending a soldier home so he can take care of that problem, we’re doing that,” McBride said yesterday by video link from Iraq.
Amy Goodman and others were released, but the story is not over.
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In addition to these arrests, police with firearms drawn raided a meeting of the video journalists’ group I-Witness and arrested independent media, bloggers and videomakers. We’re also receiving late-breaking reports of other arrests.
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MOST RFID products – like passports and Oyster cards – leak data like sieves says Brit firm, Peratech.
By Tony Dennis | The scandal broke back in August but those affected – like government agencies and credit card companies – are trying to hush the problem up rather than fix it claims Peratech’s Taysom.
The worst offenders are the latest generation of ‘biometric’ passports, he says. These very easily leak information via RFID scanning. And the victims won’t even notice it is happening.
The information – garnered from airports – would be sufficient to enable a passport to be cloned, he reckons. But in Taysom’s opinion, the solution is easy. Just install an ultra-thin switch using Peratech’s QTC technology [see earlier INQ story].
This would mean that a biometric passport would only give its secrets up when somebody depresses the switch. That would make RFID sniffing extremely difficult.
Taysom argues that the USA is taking the whole RFID issue far more seriously than us Brits because the stakes are higher. On teh other hand they may be better at hushing it up too
Some RFID enabled credit cards have limits of around £250. In the UK, hacking an Oyster travel card would only earn you about three quid a go, so it’s currently not really worth it.
The trouble is that the wheels within the financial industry grind very slowly so Peratech shouldn’t hold its breathe waiting for credit card company execs to come knocking on its door.
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