Cphpost |

“I cried when I saw my son. I couldn’t believe my own eyes.”

That was the reaction of 39-year-old Abdulmohsen Homoud, a Belgian resident visiting family in Copenhagen, after a police officer peppersprayed his 15-month-old son following a routine traffic stop.

According to eyewitness accounts, a police officer, described by Ekstra Bladet tabloid as “bald and heavily tattooed”, sprayed Homoud, his son and several other people after Homoud attempted to enter the youth sports club he was visiting in order to drop off his son.

According to Ekstra Bladet, Homoud was a passenger in his own vehicle when the driver — Homoud’s brother — went the wrong way on a one-way street. Police followed the car to a scout and karate club in the Nørrebro district. The driver of the car admitted he was at fault and said he would pay the fine. Homoud then attempted to enter the club to drop off his son, who was cold, to another brother so that he could produce his papers for the police officers.

Homoud, who does not speak Danish, attempted to explain the situation to the officer, but the officer refused to let him enter the club. The officer grabbed Homoud’s shirt and Homoud then raised his voice, but according to witnesses did not make any threatening gesture. After a short argument, the officer took out his pepperspray and sprayed Homoud in the face, as well as the surrounding area. The spray got in the face of the 15-month-old boy, who had since been handed to his uncle, as well as the uncle and two affiliates of the club.

During the incident there were a handful of other children in the club, which was honoured by Crown Princess Mary in 2009 for its integration work. According to Marianne Nielsen, a volunteer, the children were so scared of the police that they hid in a back room.

“The officers likely felt under pressure because they were faced with three large, grown men,” Nielsen told Ekstra Bladet. “But [Homoud and his brothers] didn’t do anything. It’s like Chicago here in Nørrebro, where the police are just scared. In some ways I can understand it.”

Two additional police vehicles and an ambulance then arrived, helping Homoud and his son to rinse their eyes. According to Nielsen, the newly-arrived police officers were helpful and apologised for their colleague’s behaviour.

In a video shot by one of Homoud’s brothers, the officer who peppersprayed the young child appeared to be outside the club smiling over the incident, which incensed the amateur cameraman.

Homoud said that all of his son’s clothing had to be changed because of the pepperspray’s lingering effects. While his son slept on a nearby couch, he told Ekstra Bladet that four hours after being sprayed in the face, he still had a headache and irritated eyes.

Homoud was not charged with any infraction and the club was forced to cancel a dinner for 50 children, resulting in a 5,000 kroner loss.

See video of the incident at Ekstra Bladet’s website

WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange, who is holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, has penned a new book about the internet entitled ‘Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet’ that will be released in November.

Press TV |

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will say in his Monday speech that additional sanctions would be imposed against Iran over the country’s nuclear energy program if he is elected, CBS News reported.

“I will not hesitate to impose new sanctions on Iran, and will tighten the sanctions we currently have,” he is set to say in an address at Virginia Military Institute on Monday.

The United States has so far imposed unilateral financial and energy sanctions on Iran over its nuclear energy program.

Putting more pressure on Tehran over its peaceful nuclear program is one of the main topics of foreign policy speeches by American presidential candidates Romney and Barack Obama.

The Obama administration also threatened Iran with more punitive measures last week.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta also warned on Saturday that more sanctions would be imposed against Iran and called on the country “to engage seriously with the international community to try to resolve this issue.”

AGB/HJ

NIGEL MORRIS, The independent |

Boris Johnson faced embarrassment last night over the disclosure of several previously unknown contacts with senior News International (NI) executives at the height of the storm over phone hacking.

Big Bird |

It’s important to realize too much of the Mainstream Media is spinning the same pact of lies the Romney camp spun regarding the debate at the University of Denver (and who apparently won). From an intellectual and rational position Romney lost.

First off the debate was too much on technical matters most Americans don’t much understand that well; and therefore were left groping to look for whatever impressions they could muster. This includes many people who work the media: they know less about economics than they like to pretend. They too are vulnerable to look for whatever prejudices suits their purposes.

This was somewhat of a scholarly debate between two college graduates. Whereas many viewers were hoping for a knock-down, emotionally exciting drag-out fight. Frankly the details were boring to most. How many Americans recognize anything behind the mention of the Bowles-Simpson Commission? Too few. Sure they have heard of it but they remember. It slips on past like much as quibbling between 97% versus 3% of small business enterprises taxed at different levels. This show was about as exciting as watching to two economic professors argue the merits of tax theory.

Most people came to this debate to have their prejudices confirmed. Many venues of media, including alternative media, have played both candidate as sinner and saint–to be either hated or loved. What we got instead was a somewhat collegial discussion on issues the majority has too little interest in understanding because every topic of complexity can be skewed with bias and it is hard to keep things in perspective. Where was the blood? Where was the slander and outrageous remarks that American people love to hate?

Plus there wasn’t even one commercial break during the entire hour and half. We are not used to concentrating this long. We were quite frankly bored.

Obama’s trainers should be fired (slapped) for even thinking that any kind of technical debate would actually go over. This is part of their naiveté to think the American public has such capacity to understand that which Presidential candidates should and need to understand on matters. Obama said he was looking forward to a “serious” debate. Watch out what you wish for. On an emotional level people were looking for something closer to a gladiatorial arena or Hunger Games entertainment.

And yet the mere “supposed” MSM fact that so many are being hoodwinked into thinking Romney actually won this debate shows that it is true the American education system is, and has been, a complete failure. The easy spin capacity by the mainstream media and various pundits is all about “impression management” and Romney has proved himself quite the actor.

Take the very first question by moderator Jim Lehr on creating jobs and Romney starts out addressing this issue with this sentence: “…this is obviously a very tender topic…a mother from Dayton Ohio asked about her husband’s unemployment ‘Can you help me?’…(we need to get on another path away from Obama’s path of the last for years)…”

Mitt Romney comes off sounding like some compassion person who has lived and worked in the Peace Corps. But Romney’s business background as real decision practice insinuates the opposite of what he projects as a political debater. Watch “Amy Goodman’s Fireside Chat With Workers Set to Lose their Jobs After Decades at Bain-Owned Plant”. Watch the secretly released video “ Romney Admits Slave Labor at Investment Fundraiser” (on Internet). This is not just a flip-flop. This is about political advisers attempting to create an alternative reality.

Further in his same first answer as he segues into his five-point plan of growing the economy, such as guaranteeing Americans have the skills to work a modern economy, do you really think this guy is going to throw a lot of money for education? (Instead he is talking about given more responsibility to states (but not saying about giving more money to states)? Or how can he possibly balance the budget if he intends to increase military spending? His answers are smooth but at odds with his overall stances, party, etc.

Plus in his first answer to the first question about jobs, as he talks about supporting small business he goes on a smear campaign that strongly suggests it has only been in the last four years that businesses have not been hiring (in respect to his usage of the current “path” we are on–more or less claiming the entire economy has taken a downturn simply by what has transpired in the last mere four years). He then said this Obama path is about “more” spending, “more” taxation, and “more” regulation. But get this from his word choice of “trickle down government” is not what we need to be doing. All this and more packed into his very first answer!

But apparently he doesn’t even understand the concept of trickle-down, which does “not” mean more spending, more taxation and more regulation. Trickle down (that every politician ought know especially if a business graduate) is the conceited notion that if big time investors and businesses get tax breaks then people in lower levels of the socioeconomic scale will realize some trickle down benefit. Yes they have–it just happens to be “where” investors have been investing–places like overseas where labor costs are a fraction of what Americans want as salary and wage.

But it was delivered all so smooth. Talk can be elusive and reassuring. Romney was sounding like a pillar for any community. None of this mattered because the mainstream punditry was about to paint whatever pictures they wanted to. Obviously Mitt is their corporatist answer since he smeared the “path-we-on-on” problem as because of the last four years as if there were no economic problems before Obama took office? Pretty snazzy even for American TV.

Americans, including America’s elites, had opportunity to learn more about economic theory but most did nothing. Several books have come out explaining the economy that go beyond a hodge-podge of media assumptions. In fact America’s “path” was foretold by Naomi Klein in her The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Granted there are a lot of books competing for attention, but if this culture had any real intelligentsia many people would have read and understood this book (in all its ramification) especially many politicians and their staffs. But we didn’t–including the airbags working the mainstream. Then there was Joseph Stiglitz’ Freefall:America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy (a book one can listen to on audio and doesn’t require as much effort!). There were others like Republican guru Kevin Phillips’ Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism (2008) before the last four year that Romney describes the problem? Plus other titles deserve commentary.

So how can we expect the naïve masses to understand what the presumed intelligentsia of this corrupt nation does not? Democracy is being proven a farce–save perhaps at least Amy Goodman’s attempt to “expand the debate” by adding two other candidates to this same debate in her “exclusive” Breaking the Sound Barrier inclusion with Green Party Candidate Jill Stein and Justice Party candidate Rocky Anderson participated (definitely worthy of the three hours).

Then into the second question on the deficit chameleon Romney portrays himself as our leading candidate fighting for middle class America. He is sounding like the real populist Democrat arguing about how people in this country are hurting! He should know? Can you believe it–in the very first two questions Mitt Romney has turned the truth about himself on its head and a naïve American population is sucking it up.

Also only technical people think about such things but it is important to understand the “angles” the cameras were focused on both candidates. There seems to have been bias created here worthy of consideration.

More importantly, Mitt said in this early discussion: “…but I’m ‘not’ going to increase the taxes on High income Americans, high income Americans are doing just fine (regardless of who is President)…but it is middle income people who are suffering (all this in his so-called defense of the middle class)? Is there any contradiction of logic here? The wealthy are doing fine so he is not going to increase their taxes but we should be very concerned about the middle class? Are Americans so stupid they can be lied to with such audacity? And this was just the beginning of a boring debate.

Progressives cannot concede to these media lies. Saturday Night Live should not play into this game. We need more independence of thought.

Re-listen and re-think if you really care.

There is a fox in the chicken coop.

Big Bird.

Richard Willingham and Dylan Welch |

JULIAN Assange has hired lawyers to find a way of suing Prime Minister Julia Gillard for defamation over the claim that WikiLeaks acted illegally in releasing a quarter of a million US diplomatic cables.

In an interview from Ecuador’s embassy in London, Assange said Ms Gillard’s comment, made in late 2010, influenced MasterCard Australia to join an online financial blockade of the organisation.

Since November 2010, WikiLeaks has released more than 250,000 classified US diplomatic cables.

The White House and the Gillard government denounced the release.

”I absolutely condemn the placement of this information on the WikiLeaks website,” Ms Gillard said several days after WikiLeaks began releasing the cables.

”It’s a grossly irresponsible thing to do, and an illegal thing to do.”

Australian activist group GetUp! recently interviewed Assange in his makeshift home inside Ecuador’s embassy. He has been sheltering at the embassy since June 19 as part of a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over sexual assault allegations.

Assange said he would be vulnerable to arrest in Sweden by the United States Justice Department, which is examining the possibility of charging people associated with WikiLeaks with espionage over the online publication of the classified cables.

He told GetUp! that WikiLeaks’ work had been stymied by Ms Gillard’s comments.

”MasterCard Australia, in justifying why it has made a blockade preventing any Australian MasterCard holder from donating to WikiLeaks, used that statement by Julia Gillard as justification,” he said.

”So the effects of the statement are ongoing and they directly affect the financial viability of WikiLeaks. We are considering suing for defamation. So I have hired lawyers in Sydney and they are investigating the different ways in which we can sue Gillard over that statement.”

Assange said the comments were particularly damaging because they ”licensed” other forms of attack on him and WikiLeaks.

During the interview, he also spoke of the impact of the past two years on his family, saying his children – a boy and a girl, of whom no details are known- have had to move homes and change their names.

The Age reported last month that declassified US counter-espionage reports revealed the US military considers Assange and WikiLeaks to be enemies of the United States under the terms of American military law.

GetUp! national director Sam McLean said the interview was the first step in a campaign calling on the Australian government to seek a commitment from American authorities that they will not attempt to extradite Assange over WikiLeaks.

”For too long the Prime Minister and the foreign ministers have put the interests of the US government ahead of Australian citizens. That is not good enough,” Mr McLean said.

”Our government must demand a binding agreement from the US that they will not seek the extradition of this Australian citizen for his work as a journalist and publisher.”

Reuters |

Republicans in Arkansas are struggling to get past the controversy generated by a state lawmaker who wrote that slavery might have benefited blacks and a candidate who has advocated expelling Muslims from the United States.

The Republican politicians’ comments have been roundly criticized and have created an opportunity for Democrats ahead of the November 6 election. Arkansas has a Democratic governor but has voted Republican in the past three presidential elections.

In his self-published 2009 book titled “Letters to the Editor: Confessions of a Frustrated Conservative,” state Representative Jon Hubbard of Jonesboro, Arkansas, writes that “the institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise.”

Hubbard, a retired teacher and Vietnam veteran who was elected to the statehouse in 2010, also wrote, “Wouldn’t life for blacks in America today be more enjoyable and successful if they would only learn to appreciate the value of a good education?”

His book also says that blacks “are likely much better than they ever would have enjoyed living in sub-Saharan Africa.”

Charles Fuqua of Batesville, Arkansas, is currently seeking a House of Representatives seat. His e-book “God’s Law: The Only Political Solution” came out in April on Amazon.

“I see no solution to the Muslim problem short of expelling all followers of the religion from the United States,” he writes in his book, according to The Arkansas Times newspaper.

Fuqua, an attorney, served as a state representative from 1995 to 1998 before losing a state senate race.

Neither Hubbard nor Fuqua could be reached for comment. Both are running for election in November.

The Republican Party of Arkansas denounced their comments and distanced itself from the two candidates.

“The reported statements made by Hubbard and Fuqua were highly offensive to many Americans and do not reflect the viewpoints of the Republican Party of Arkansas,” state party chairman Doyle Webb said in a statement on Saturday.

But Webb also blamed Democrats for drawing attention to the two books, which he called “distractions.”

Candace Martin, spokeswoman for the Democratic Party of Arkansas, said that “with these appalling views, Jon Hubbard cannot be trusted to represent Arkansans and set policy for our state.”

Jay Barth, a political science professor at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, said the controversial comments were a throwback to the 1960s when Arkansas was a civil rights battleground.

“It’s hard to remember a set of remarks this extreme on racial matters by an Arkansas official since the state’s politics modernized in the late 1960s than that by Mr. Hubbard,” Barth said on Saturday.

He added that Fuqua’s writing created a particular challenge for Republicans because it made it more difficult to frame Hubbard’s remarks as that of a single misguided party official. (Editing by Corrie MacLaggan, Alex Dobuzinskis and Paul Simao)

The New York World |

Lawsuits against the city’s police soared to a record 2,004 cases entering the courts in the year that ended July 1.

That’s a 28 percent increase over the previous fiscal year, as recorded in the recently released Mayor’s Management Report. It indicates that the flood of cases brought against the New York City police – which have seen a 63 percent rise over the last decade – has not subsided.

Because cases against the NYPD can take at least two to three years to conclude, a spike now means that payouts for court judgments and settlements are likely to squeeze the city budget in coming years.

“It suggests the city has a ticking time bomb for making payouts for police conduct,” said Mark Taylor, an attorney who represents plaintiffs in police misconduct cases. “There is tremendous pressure on the police to make arrests and keep crime numbers low but if there is little legal basis, that costs them money years later.”

Meanwhile, a federal judge ruled this week that the city is liable for hundreds of arrests the NYPD made during the Republican National Convention in 2004, opening up the possibility that plaintiffs could sue for false arrest and further exacerbate the problem.

In 2010, the NYPD became the city agency with the highest volume of tort claims with more than 8,100, surpassing the Department of Transportation and the Health and Hospitals Corporation, and accounting for $135.8 million of the city’s total expenditures for judgments and settlements, according to the New York City Comptroller.

The Mayor’s Management Report only includes claims that have been assigned a litigation start date, and not all claims result in litigation. Some claims may be settled between the city and the plaintiff outside of court, and others never develop into a lawsuit because the claim was baseless or too weak to build a case.

Though the Mayor’s Management Report does not break down its data on cases by type, in past years the rise has been fueled by civil rights lawsuits, which are handled by the Special Federal Litigation Divisionof the Law Department.

In the most recent five years documented by the Comptroller’s Office, civil rights claims brought against the NYPD increased by 70 percent, from around 1,500 in 2006 to more than 2,600 in 2010. The cost of those claims totaled about $78 million in fiscal year 2010.

The Comptroller’s Office has not yet released the 2011-’12 edition of its biannual report on legal claims against the city, but lawyers who file civil rights cases say the volume of litigation has likely continued to rise.

“All of us have noticed a huge increase in lawsuits against police,” said Joel Berger, a civil rights attorney for 45 years who was a senior litigator with city’s Law Department from 1988 to 1996. “People are going to the [Civilian Complaint Review Board] less and going to the courts more. The city is overloaded with complaints and lawsuits.” (The Mayor’s Management Report shows a 25 percent decrease in Civilian Complaint Review Board cases since the previous edition, to 5,724 last year.)

“Whether it’s stop and frisk, marijuana arrests, trespassing – this stuff is completely out of control,” said Berger.

The NYPD paid out $80 million to plaintiffs who had filed tort lawsuits against the department – a sharp decline from the $99.8 million it paid out last year and a return to a level last seen in 2008, according to the Mayor’s Management Report.

But that’s not the entire picture of the NYPD’s exposure to legal claims. The mayor’s official budget statement, filed earlier this year, shows that the NYPD expected to spend $154 million in 2012 on judgments and claims. For fiscal year 2013, now underway, the NYPD has budgeted $180 million for payouts.

New York City has made efforts in recent years to limit the extraordinary sums of money it spends on tort cases. While Los Angeles pays approximately $14 dollars per capita each year, New York City spends about $81.

In its 2011 bi-annual report on legal claims, the Comptroller’s Office recommended that the police department begin pilot programs to reduce risk and the costs of litigation. The number of claims, the report said, represent a “growing area of concern.”

In response to the rise, the city has been lawyering up, increasing the size of its Special Federal Litigation Unit staff from 92 to 127. Rose Weber, a plaintiffs’ attorney who previously worked for the Law Department, says she saw a clear shift in the city’s posture as the number of lawyers boomed. “They got really cocky, saying we’re not going to settle, we’re going to take them to trial,” said Weber.

However, the city’s eagerness to file motions for dismissal of cases angered some judges, according to Weber. “In two of my cases, the judges were furious. In one, the judge threatened sanctions. I think the city decided ‘let’s pull back on that strategy’ once they saw they were not going to get them all thrown out,” she said.

The Law Department declined to comment for this story. But its 2011annual report stated that the Special Federal Litigation Division expanded its trial practice and won an “unprecedented 21 consecutive defense verdicts.” The report also indicated that the department is advocating for tort reform measures in an effort to end what it calls the “litigation lottery.”

City Councilmember Peter Vallone, Jr., who chairs the council Public Safety Committee, contends that too many cases gets settled regardless of actual wrongdoing, and that the Law Department should be taking even more to trial.

“Their policy is to settle way too many cases,” said Vallone about the Law Department. “If the Corporation Counsel only settled cases where the police department were wrong, the police could learn a bunch of stuff from that. But if they settle for reasons unknown, then it makes it much harder for police to know.”

To save millions of dollars down the road, the city’s approach to police claims, said Vallone, should be “settle when you’re guilty, learn from it, and fight like hell if you’re not.”

In the past, some within police ranks have claimed the rise in cases is the result of a cottage industry of greedy plaintiffs’ lawyers. But the increasing media attention paid to the NYPD’s tactics might also explain the increase. Coverage of several high profile court cases challenging stop-and-frisk practices, for example, mean plaintiffs are more aware of their rights and the ability to use the courts as a forum for redress, said one attorney. 

“There’s been a lot of public analysis of whether police are engaging in these tactics and whether they are discriminatory,” said Katherine Rosenfeld, who represented 22,000 plaintiffs in a loitering class action settlement against the NYPD that resulted in a $15 million settlement this year. “I think it has filtered into the public consciousness, perhaps even more than other police misconduct lawsuits have in the recent past.”

During budget hearings in May, City Council members raised concernsabout the toll of NYPD judgments and claims on the city’s budget. “It is a significant amount, and some of it may be associated with Stop, Question and Frisk,” said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly in response to questioning. “You have to look at the totality, and you have to look at the effects of the tactics and strategies and practices that are in place.”

Berger maintains that the city has so far taken the wrong approach to decreasing litigation against the police and should be following the example of cities like Los Angeles and Chicago, which track litigation data and use it to identify problem officers and issues.

“It is absolutely absurd to respond to an increase in lawsuits by simply hiring more lawyers and defending to the hilt,” he said. “That is such poor public policy. What they should be doing is asking themselves, ‘Why?’”

CAHAL MILMO, The Independent |

A former Goldman Sachs banker in charge of private contracts for the Department for Transport was named yesterday as one of the officials suspended for their alleged role in the West Coast rail franchise fiasco. Kate Mingay, head of commercial at the DfT, is believed to be the most senior of three staff suspended on Wednesday.

Ben McGrath, WSWS |

Recent violent crimes in South Korea have been seized on by the government to justify granting the police more repressive powers. The new measures include arming officers with tear gas guns and Tasers at all times, and reviving a policy allowing police to stop and search anyone deemed suspicious. The government claims it is trying to prevent crime and protect citizens, but the real aim is to prepare for eruptions of social unrest.

On August 18, a knife-wielding man injured eight people at a subway station in Uijeongbu, in Gyeonggi province. Three days later, also in Gyeonggi province, another man stabbed a bar owner and a customer, before entering a nearby house and attacking the family there, resulting in one death. A day later, a man in Ulsan stabbed a shopkeeper, seemingly without motive. In another case, an unemployed man in Seoul stabbed two former co-workers and other people standing nearby. This spate of stabbings was followed by a particularly shocking crime, involving the kidnap and rape of a seven-year-old girl on August 30.

President Lee Myung-bak’s administration has exploited public fears over these incidents to increase police powers, running roughshod over longstanding opposition among ordinary Koreans towards any move to revive anti-democratic measures previously used to suppress demonstrations and strikes.

The National Police Agency last month sent out new directives to police stations and district police agencies, allowing officers to stop and question individuals when they deem that a crime is about to be committed. The questioned individual may be taken back to the police station. These pre-emptive stop and searches will be used mainly at places with large crowds of people, such as subway stations, and “high-crime” areas, i.e. typically poor, working class centres.

These kind of searches were significantly curtailed in 2010, following a warning from the National Human Rights Commission. They had previously been used by police against political demonstrations.

An unnamed National Police Agency official told the Korea Times: “The random checks are aimed at preventing violent crimes, so they won’t be conducted indiscriminately at rallies, as in the past. We also don’t plan to keep tallies of the number of random checks so that officers don’t feel pressured to compete for better performances.”

There is no reason to accept these claims. By stationing officers near subway stations, the police can intimidate people going to or from demonstrations. As happened before, police will easily be able to declare protesters potentially violent criminals and subject them to intrusive searches.

The government has also moved to employ another 1,000 police officers and 250 probation officers nationally. Most of these new recruits will be assigned to helping monitor and track people previously imprisoned for violent crimes, including through the use of electronic anklets. The government has insisted that sex offenders will be the subject of the stepped up surveillance measures, but the Ministry of Public Administration and Security stated that those convicted of any other violent crimes such as robbery or arson could also be targetted. Given that any sort of anti-government protest can be officially deemed “violent”, these methods may soon be used against workers and young people arrested during demonstrations.

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency (SMPA) now requires all its patrol units and riot squads to carry tear gas guns and Tasers at all times. Previously, the police agency only required officers to carry firearms, tear gas guns and Tasers depending on the situation. The change has been publicly justified as necessary for police to be able to quickly subdue violent criminals.

Arming officers with tear gas has particular political implications in South Korea. In the 1980s and 1990s, under the US-backed military dictatorship and subsequent Democrat administrations, the police used tear gas with such frequency against working class and student protesters that the gas was dubbed “Seoul perfume.”

In 1999, the use of tear gas was discontinued. Government and police officials stepped up their demands for its reintroduction in 2008, after protests and workers’ strikes against the importation of American beef amid fears of mad cow disease. Liquid tear gas was used in 2009 against workers occupying a Ssangyong Motor factory, and again in 2011, against protesters opposing the dismissal of shipbuilding workers in Busan.

Now the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency is purchasing tear gas guns for 23 patrol squads and 75 riot squads in the city. At the same time as the SMPA announced the new tear gas policy it stated that a greater police presence would be maintained in politically sensitive areas, including in Gwanghwamunm, where the US Embassy and a number of government buildings are located, and Yeouido, home to the National Assembly and many financial firms. This statement exposed the fraud that the new police measures are simply aimed at “preventing crime”.

The export-dependent Korean economy is being hard hit by the world crisis, and millions are suffering from rising unemployment and economic hardship. As it prepares to impose new burdens on workers, the country’s ruling elite is building up the police apparatus to suppress any opposition or resistance.

Organisations tasked with certifying systems individuals use for inputting personally identifying information should have to abide by a “common set of security requirements”, an EU privacy body has said.

The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) recommended that ‘trust service providers’, and those that issue individuals with electronic identification, should have to comply with a single set of data security standards under the EU’s proposed Electronic Trust Services Regulation.

“The EDPS considers that the proposed Regulation should establish a minimum set of requirements, in particular with respect to the circumstances, formats and procedures associated to security as well as the criteria, conditions and requirements, including the determination of what constitutes the state of the art in terms of security for electronic trust services,” it said.

The watchdog said that if common security requirements are not to be set out in the new laws, then provision should be put in place to allow the European Commission to “define where needed, through a selective use of delegated acts or implementing measures, the criteria, conditions and requirements for security in electronic trust services and identification schemes”.

Assistant EDPS Giovanni Buttarelli, who signed the opinion, said that the proposed new law should set out a requirement that trust service providers and electronic identification issuers should have to provide individuals who use their services with “appropriate information on the collection, communication, and retention of their data”. He added that those organisations should also have to provide individuals with “a means to control their personal data and exercise their data protection rights”.

He added that ‘privacy enhancing technologies’ (PETs) could be utilised “as enablers of trust by requiring that trust service providers and providers of identification services take PETs into consideration when defining an electronic service scheme”.

The European Commission proposed the draft Electronic Trust Services Regulation earlier this year in a bid to make it easier and more secure to complete e-commerce transactions across the EU without complication.

Currently lots of organisations operate electronic identification (e-ID) schemes to enable individuals to make online transactions. In some cases these organisations task third party companies to provide authentication of their services in a bid to provide security for users.

The Commission, though, wants individuals to be able to use their existing e-IDs for online transactions on similar schemes operated across the EU. Under its plans it wants EU Governments to “opt in” so that their e-ID schemes will be “mutually recognised” by other EU countries. In return for doing so those countries would be obliged to mutually recognise the schemes operated by the others who sign up to the scheme. Under the proposals EU Governments operating schemes would have to make sure that personal data is “attributed unambiguously to the natural or legal person” using the e-ID system.

As part of the plans the Commission has drafted laws around the way trust service providers should operate, but the EDPS has raised some data protection concerns around the proposals. It said that the trust service providers should be given a “set time limit” on how long they can legitimately retain individuals’ personal data.

Special attention for biometric data

The proposals should also be revised in order that the “data or categories of data will be processed for cross border identification of individuals” can be listed, whilst the EDPS also said that the amount of data categories included in an identification scheme should be minimised, with “special attention” given to biometric data.

“The Regulation should provide for … selective and partial disclosure of identity data, depending of the purpose for which the electronic identity is used for (for instance, a data subject that only needs to prove his/her age or that he/she lives in a specific town should not be obliged to disclose additional data),” Buttarelli added.

The watchdog said that safeguards around e-IDs should be as strong as is necessary to respond to the particular risks of those services for which they will be used.

“In the view of the EDPS, a competent authority issuing electronic identification means to interact with e-government services should be subject to higher security controls than a trust service provider issuing certificates to the clients of a supermarket in order to make their online shopping,” it added.

Buttarelli also stressed that e-ID schemes had to be interoperable, and claimed that the Regulation does not currently “include specific provisions detailing the mechanisms” to ensure this. He said interoperability of the schemes would improve the “effectiveness” of the Regulation.

“The EDPS recommends that the Regulation harmonises at least those aspects that are crucial for the interoperability, such as the data fields that will be used for identification of individuals, the security requirements and the data protection safeguards,” Buttarelli said.

The privacy watchdog also said that the draft Regulation should be altered so to include definitions of some terms relating to organisations’ data breach notification requirements.

The security requirements set out in the proposed Regulation require trust service providers to “without undue delay and where feasible not later than 24 hours after having become aware of it, notify the competent supervisory body, the competent national body for information security and other relevant third parties such as data protection authorities of any breach of security or loss of integrity that has a significant impact on the trust service provided and on the personal data maintained therein”.

The EDPS suggested that the Regulation could set out what is meant be the terms ‘breach of security’ and ‘loss of integrity’ whilst an explanation of ‘significant impact’ should also be included. It said those definitions “should be consistent with the obligations imposed on data controllers to mandatorily notify the national competent supervisory authorities of personal data breaches, and to notify individuals in case the data breach is likely to adversely affect them” under the terms of the EU’s Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive or the Commission’s proposed new data protection laws.

Copyright © 2012, Out-Law.com

AFP |

Vatican police testifying on Wednesday at the trial of Pope Benedict XVI’s former butler said they had found documents in code, research on spying and papers the pope had marked “Destroy” in his apartment.

More than 1,000 documents including copies and originals out of 82 boxes of material seized from Paolo Gabriele’s flat were considered relevant to the investigation into what has been dubbed the “Vatileaks” scandal.

The documents were many more than have been leaked and included some signed by the pope himself, along with letters from cardinals and politicians, officers said.

Gabriele, 46, is being tried for aggravated theft and faces up to four years in prison for allegedly leaking confidential documents that revealed claims of fraud and intrigue at the heart of the Catholic Church.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said a verdict in the trial “could be expected on Saturday” after prosecution and defence make their closing arguments and Gabriele is given a chance to make a final statement.

“There are more than 1,000 documents of interest including both photocopies and originals and some documents with the signature of the Holy Father,” said inspector Silvano Carli, one of four Vatican gendarmes to testify on Wednesday.

Carli said he had taken part in the examination of all the written material seized in Gabriele’s apartment behind the Vatican walls, where memory cards, hard disks, laptops and an iPad were also found and are still being analysed.

Kevin Rawlinson |

John Cooper QC said that police are monitoring key activists online and that officers and the courts are becoming increasingly savvy when it comes to social media

Political activists must watch what they say on the likes of Facebook and Twitter, sites which will become the “next big thing in law enforcement”, a leading human rights lawyer has warned.

John Cooper QC said that police are monitoring key activists online and that officers and the courts are becoming increasingly savvy when it comes to social media. But, speaking to The Independent, he added that he also expected that to drive an increase in the number of criminals being brought to justice in the coming months.

“People involved in public protest should use social media to their strengths, like getting their message across. But they should not use them for things like discussing tactics. They might as well be having a tactical meeting with their opponents sitting in and listening.

“For example, if antifascist organisers were discussing their plans on social media, they can assume that a fascist organisation will be watching. Social media sites are the last place you want to post something like that,” he said.

Mr Cooper QC’s warning comes after a New York court ordered Twitter to hand over messages posted on the site by a demonstrator belonging to the Occupy Wall Street movement in America. Malcolm Harris, 23, is accused of disorderly conduct after he was arrested on Brooklyn Bridge during a protest last October.

After a lengthy legal fight, Twitter eventually complied with an order to hand over the tweets on 14 September. Prosecutors hope to use them to disprove the demonstrator’s defence that police escorted the protesters on to the bridge before arresting them for allegedly blocking it.

Addressing the possibility of similar cases arising in the UK, Mr Cooper QC said: “The police are aware and are getting more aware of powers to force and compel platforms to reveal anonymous sites.” He cited the case of Nicola Brookes, in which he succeeded in forcing Facebook to hand over details exposing the identity of an anonymous online bully.

Mr Cooper QC added: “activists are putting themselves at more risk. Police will be following key Twitter sites, not only those of the activists but also other interesting figures. They know how to use them to keep up with rioting and to find alleged rioters.

“In the same way they used to monitor mobile phones when they were trying to police impromptu raves, they are doing the same with Twitter and Facebook, as those who say too much on social media will find.”

But some activists are trying to overcome that naivety. In London on Saturday, former members of the Occupy encampment outside St Paul’s Cathedral – among others – were among the 130 people who meet technical experts for lessons on how to keep themselves safe online. The so-called “Cryptoparty” was part of a global movement to arm those who want to carry out protests online with the skills to maintain their anonymity.

Attendees at the event at the Google Campus in east London’s Tech City were simply asked to bring a laptop and technology experts promised to teach them skills like encryption. The events were the brainchild of an Australian activist, who uses the online nickname Asher Wolf. She said: “The idea is to stay safe online and protect the privacy of personal communication.

She added that there were more secure forms of online communication than those commonly used and insisted that Cryptoparty was not a tutorial on how to hack but said that, once people have learned to maintain their online security, “what they choose to do in their private communications is their business”.

While some argue that genuinely peaceful protesters can have little fear of arrest regardless of what they say online, Mr Cooper QC said: “It would be wrong to establish a general rule that private communications should be handed over to the police. The principle that the law enforcement agencies should establish relevance first should not be diluted.”

The lead officer on digital media and engagement for the Association of Chief Police Officers Deputy Chief Constable Gordon Scobbie confirmed that police “monitor social media for potential issues” around protests but said they generally use them to engage with demonstrators, which he said was “key to the police service’s approach to policing peaceful protests”.

However, some have found themselves regularly the subject of unwanted police attention as a result of their attendance at demonstrations. In May, peaceful protester John Catt lost his legal fight to force police to delete information they hold on him on the National Extremism Database. Pictures of and references to him are held because of his links to protest groups.

But long-term activist Mr Catt argued that, since he has never been convicted of any crime, officers were not justified in recording the details. Lawyers for Mr Catt claimed that he is “logged and recorded wherever he goes” and that the surveillance at more than 55 protests had a “chilling effect” on people exercising the right to protest.

But Lord Justice Gross and Mr Justice Irwin sitting in the High Court refused to order police to remove references to him from the database, saying that recording his actions was a “predictable consequence” of regularly attending demonstrations.

And that ruling came around five months after it emerged that City of London Police included the Occupy London movement on a leaflet warning businesses in The City about terrorist threats. The CoLP dismissed the inclusion of the protest movement alongside the likes of al-Qa’ida as a clerical error.

But, Mr Cooper QC said, social media are “far too much of an important tool not to be used but they need used in a less naïve way”.

He added: “When people are acting within their rights of public protest, which are important but often become the ‘Cinderella right’ because they are subservient to their siblings, they should be very careful indeed about what they post because I would suspect that key activists are being followed anonymously by law enforcement agencies.

“These social networks are all, in my opinion, forces for good; I am a great fan. But they are liable to abuse and misuse. And, not only are the police catching up, the courts are too. The Lord Chief Justice is very social media-aware and in fact allowed tweeting from court.

“It is right to say the criminal courts are social media friendly; the law is beginning to understand them. If people continue to use social media in a naïve way then legitimate individuals are probably going to give too much away.”

While he supported the right of people exercising their rights to public protest without unnecessary disruption, Mr Cooper QC stressed that real criminality was a very different issue.

He said that an unambiguously positive effect of the police’s increased interest in social media would be an increasing numbers of criminals being caught because of their indiscretions online. He said: “With social media, it is amazing how many people involved with crime seem to let themselves down with it.

“More and more, the police and defence teams analyse the Facebook accounts of witnesses they are trying to undermine. It is accepted in criminal law that remarks made on these which are inconsistent can be put to the witness as inconsistencies in evidence or as evidence of bad character.”

DCC Scobbie agreed, saying: “The police service works hard to secure evidence from any source during the course of an investigation. Information which is openly and publically available on social media sites that links criminals to crimes and offences has been used to help secure successful prosecutions.”

Mr Cooper QC added: “One of the big revelations in crime detection in recent decades was the Filofax; it was amazing how often serious, professional criminals would record the weights of drugs in their conspiracies in little graphs in the back of their Filofaxes.

“The police soon learned to seize the Filofax when they searched a house. Things move on and the next big thing was mobile phones; they were a revelation. With mobiles, not only do we have a whole industry in forensic phone analysis, we can also work out where people were using the phone by the mast locations.

He cited a past client who insisted he was not at the scene of a murder he was accused of committing but who – mobile records showed – had made a call while standing next to the bin the victim’s body was later found in.

He said: “Police will use social media just as they used the Filofax and the mobile phone and why shouldn’t they?”

Kay Steiger, Raw Story |

A German court said Monday it was scrapping a probe into 17 former Nazi SS soldiers, eight of whom are still alive, for their alleged part in the wartime massacre of 560 citizens in an Italian village.

After a 10-year investigation, the court in the southwestern German city of Stuttgart said there was insufficient evidence the accused had personally taken part in the bloodbath in the Tuscan mountain village of Sant’Anna di Stazzema.

“The fact that a person belonged to a Waffen-SS unit that was deployed in Sant’Anna di Stazzema cannot replace the proof needed that an individual is guilty,” the court ruled in a lengthy statement.

“In fact, for every individual person accused, it must be established that – and in what way – he was involved in the massacre,” added the court.

The court also ruled it could not be proved that the massacre was a premeditated and ordered slaughter of the civilian population.

The Stuttgart court said it was not possible to establish exactly how many died in the atrocity of August 12, 1944, but noted that Italian authorities put the figure at 560 people, including 107 children under the age of 14.

In 2005, an Italian court found that 10 members of the 16th SS “Reichsfuehrer” division, including a lieutenant and nine enlisted men, were personally responsible for the massacre and sentenced them to life in absentia.

Julian Assange has spoken of the risks facing his family, including his young children, as he continues to live a life of exile in Britain.

One hundred days after he entered Ecuador’s embassy in London seeking asylum, the Queensland-born WikiLeaks founder has spoken out about his failing health and concern for his loved ones.

”I took certain risks. If you believe in philosophical or political ideas, you must pay the price and that is OK, but family members, they did not sign up to pay that price, most of all my children,” Mr Assange, 41, told The Mail on Sunday.

‘Right-wing bloggers in the US have called for them to be targeted to force us to stop publishing.

”They want to use my son as leverage against us. It is a significant, ongoing problem.”

Thought to be the father of a boy and younger girl, Mr Assange will not reveal details of his children amid concerns for their welfare.

”I raised my eldest son as a single father for more than 14 years in Australia,” he said. ”I was a busy father but not an absent one. I have not seen any of my children since before I was under house arrest.”

Mr Assange denies claims by two women of sexual assault, which led to his arrest in Sweden in December 2010. While he has confirmed having consensual sexual relations with the pair, he did not go into detail about the allegations which form the basis of a Swedish extradition order. Sweden says he is wanted for questioning in the matter.

”It does not do for a gentleman to complain,” Mr Assange said simply in response to the allegations.

Having exhausted British legal avenues of appeal against Sweden’s extradition request, Mr Assange turned to Ecuador in June.

While the Latin American nation has granted Mr Assange diplomatic asylum, he cannot leave their London headquarters because he is subject to arrest on British soil.

While he tries to maintain a healthy diet and exercises daily under the direction of a personal trainer, Mr Assange admits his detention is taking a toll. AAP

Paul Craig Roberts, Prisonplanet |

In my last column, “A Culture of Delusion,” I wrote that “Americans live in a matrix of lies. Lies dominate every policy discussion, every political decision.” This column will use two top news stories, Iranian nukes and Julian Assange, to illustrate how lies become “truth.”

The western Presstitute media uses every lie to demonize the Iranian government. On September 28 in a fit of unmitigated ignorance, the UK rag, Mail Online, called the president of Iran a “dictator.” The Iranian presidency is an office filled by popular election, and the authority of the office is subordinate to the ayatollahs. Assange is demonized alternatively as a rapist and a spy.

The western media and the US Congress comprise the two largest whore houses in human history. One of their favorite lies is that the Iranian president, Ahmadinejad, wants to kill all the Jews. Watch this 6 minute, 42 second video of Ahmadinejad’s meeting with Jewish religious leaders. Don’t be put off by the title. Washington Blog is making a joke. http://www.globalresearch.ca/horrifying-graphic-video-of-iranian-leader-savagely-abusing-jews/

Last week the news was dominated by the non-existent but virtually real Iranian nuclear weapons program. The Israeli prime minister, Netanyahu, blatantly intervened in the US presidential election, demanding that Obama specify the “red line” for attacking Iran.

Netanyahu believes his maximum leverage over Obama, the president of the “world’s only superpower,” is just prior to the election. Israel cannot attack Iran on its own without the risk of Israel’s destruction. But Netanyahu reasons that if he attacks Iran the week before the US election, Obama will have to join in or lose the Jewish vote for not supporting Israel in states such as Florida, which has a large Jewish population and many electoral votes. If the election is close, Netanyahu, a person consumed by arrogance and hubris, might exercise his threat and attack Iran, despite the opposition of former chiefs of Israeli intelligence and military, the opposition party, and a majority of the Israeli people.

In other words, the outcome of the “superpower’s” presidential election might depend upon whether the sitting president of the “superpower” is sufficiently obedient to the crazed Israeli prime minister.

That the outcome of the US presidential election could depend upon the agenda of the prime minister of a tiny country that exists only because of US financial, military, and diplomatic support, especially the UN veto, should disturb those Americans who think that they are the “indispensable people.” How indispensable are you when you have to do what the Israeli prime minister wants?

The US media makes certain that this question never enters american minds. Americans have been told that if Iran doesn’t have nukes, it has a nuke weapons program. This is what the politicians of both parties, the media, and the Israel Lobby tell them. Americans are told this despite the facts that the CIA and the National Intelligence Estimate stick to the conclusion that Iran abandoned its flirtation with a nuclear weapon in 2003 and the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors on the ground in Iran report no evidence of a nuclear weapons program and no evidence of any diversion of enriched uranium to a weapons program.

Moreover, what could Iran do with a nuclear weapon, other than use it against an aggressor? Any offensive use would result in Iran’s destruction.

Why do Americans believe Iran has nukes or is making nukes when the CIA says they are not? The answer is that Netanyahu says so, and the elected members of the US government in the House, Senate, and White House are afraid to contradict the Israeli prime minister, as are the American print and TV media. Some “superpower” we are! The “indispensable people” have to grovel in the dirt before Netanyahu. Americans are not even aware of their shame.

Iran, unlike Israel, signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Signatories to the treaty have the right to nuclear energy. Nuclear energy requires a low level of enrichment, 5% or less. The minute Iran announced a nuclear energy program, the Israeli government and its prostitutes in Washington lied that Iran was building a bomb. For exercising its legal rights under the treaty, Iran has been painted as a rouge criminal state and demonized.

A nuclear weapon requires 95% enrichment. To get to 5% from scratch and then to 95% is a long drawn out process. I think I first started hearing Israeli government claims of an Iranian nuke back in he 1990s of last century.

When Iran announced that, in view of the sanctions imposed by the US, sanctions that affect medical supplies, Iran was going to enrich uranium to 20% in order to supply itself with medical isotopes, the Israeli allegations that this would lead to a bomb resulted in Iran saying that the Iranian government was content for France or some other country to supply their medical isotopes and would not pursue enrichment beyond energy requirements. The US and Russia were also mentioned as suppliers.

According to the NY Times on September 29, 2011, “the Iranian president told the Washington Post and later, in basically the same terms, the New York Times: ‘if you [the United States and Europe] give us uranium grade 20 percent now, we will stop production.’”http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/opinion/30iht-edvaez30.html?_r=0

On Israel’s orders Washington vetoed the Iranian concession. Solving the problem is not what the Israeli government wants. The problem has to be kept alive so that it can be used to foment an attack on Iran.

The Iranian nuke is one of those grand hoaxes, a lie designed to hide the real agenda.

What is the real agenda?

The real agenda hiding behind the hysterical concern about an Iranian nuke, is the rightwing Israeli government’s design on the water resources of southern Lebanon.

Twice the Israeli government sent the Israeli army into southern Lebanon to occupy and eventually annex the territory. And twice Hizbollah defeated and drove out the vaunted Israeli army.

The few thousand Hizbollah fighters were able to defeat the Israeli army, which is equipped and supplied by US taxpayers’ dollars while Americans are foreclosed out of their homes and left unemployed as Washington applauds the offshoring of their jobs, because Syria and Iran provide Hizbollah with financial support and weapons that destroy Israeli tanks.

Syria, of course, is currently resisting its destruction by Israel and its american puppet state. The overthrow of Syria hasn’t gone well, because the Russians and Chinese didn’t go along with it, like they stupidly did in Libya. But the far rightwing Israeli government has concluded that with american prestige involved in the overthrow of the Assad government in Syria, the deed will be done.

That leaves Iran. The Israeli government knows that it cannot be forthright and say that it wants Americans to go to war with Iran so that Israel can steal southern Lebanon. But if fear over nonexistent nukes can muster the Western populations to support an attack on Iran, Iran can be eliminated as Hizbollah’s supplier, and Israel can steal the water from Lebanon.

There is no discussion whatsoever of the real agenda anywhere in the US print and TV media. I doubt there is any discussion anywhere in Europe, which is a collection of american puppet states.

Will we get World War III for Christmas? Possibly, if the US election is close as it approaches. If the election is too close to call, Netanyahu might throw the dice and rely on Obama following his lead. Iran will be attacked, and the consequences are unknowable.

Let’s turn to Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Like Iran, Assange has been demonized, not on the basis of facts but on the basis of lies.

Washington, which poses as a purveyor of human rights, has been mistreating if not torturing Bradley Manning since May 2010 without bringing him to trial in an effort to make Manning say that he and Assange constitute a spy team working against the US.

Assange is a celebrity, because Wikileaks publishes the news leaked to the organization that the Presstitute media suppresses. While in Sweden, Assange was picked up by two celebrity-hungry women who took him home to their beds. The women later bragged of their conquests on social media, but apparently when they found out that they were rivals, they turned on the “two-timer” Assange and made charges. One claimed that he had not used a condom as per her request, and the other claimed that she had offered one helping but he had taken two.

Whatever the accusations, the Swedish prosecutorial office investigated and dismissed the case.

Despite this known fact, the Western Presstitute media reports that Assange is a fugitive evading rape charges by hiding in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London. Even RT, an alternative media voice, has fallen for this disinformation.

After Assange was cleared in Sweden, a female prosecutor has tried to reopen the case. There is no evidence for her to bring charges, so she demand

LISA NANDY, New Statesman |

Since 1967, more than 730,000 Palestinian men, women and children are estimated to have been imprisoned by Israeli military courts. The majority of such prisoners are held in detention facilities inside Israel, in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the transfer of these prisoners into Israel.

The practical consequence of this violation is that many prisoners, including children, receive either limited or no family visits, due to freedom of movement restrictions. In the case of children, this lack of adequate family contact also violates their rights under article 37 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

According to Israeli Prison Service figures released in June of this year, 85 per cent of Palestinian prisoners, including children, were detained inside Israel. Of 4,706 prisoners, 285 were held in administrative detention, without charge or trial.

The UK government has confirmed that Israel’s policy of detaining Palestinians is contrary to Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, that they have raised this with the Israeli government and will continue to do so. In a recent letter to me, Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt MP stated that the FCO is lobbying Israeli authorities for a number of improvements, including a reduction in the number of arrests that occur at night, an end to shackling and the introduction of audio-visual recording of interrogations.

Such diplomatic pressure is important – but what of the British companies that keep Israel’s prisons running? According to corporate accountability campaigners, the security giant G4S, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange, signed a contract with the Israeli Prison Authority in 2007 to provide services to a number of prisons and detention facilities. Some of these are known to house prisoners transferred from the West Bank.

What’s more, the company has installed a central command room in Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank, which houses a centre where prisoners are tried under military law. Ofer Prison is located in what the Israeli military refers to as the “Seam Zone”, which means access for visiting families is highly restricted.

G4S have said that it will exit from all the contracts it holds in the West Bank at the earliest opportunity the contract terms allow. They also say that they have not violated any international laws, which on this specific issue may be correct, given that the Geneva Conventions apply only to Governments that have ratified their terms. Despite these limitations, the UK government can still act – yet it refuses to.

Alastair Burt told me that, despite being aware of G4S’s involvement in Israeli prisons, the Foreign Office has not discussed the issue with the company and believes that the “provision of services in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories is a matter for G4S.”

Last June the UK Government co-sponsored a UN resolution that places duties on states to protect against corporate abuse of human rights. The commitment is meaningless if the government refuses to take action in a clear-cut case such as this.

Companies that have been involved in grievous human rights abuse continue to be listed on the London Stock Exchange, seriously damaging the reputation of British business abroad and making it more difficult to compete for those businesses which are trying to uphold high ethical business and trade standards. Such abuse by any corporation is not merely a matter for the company, but for everyone who supports and believes in the basic concept of human rights.

ANDREA VANCE, Stuff |

Police officers told the Government’s spies in February that surveillance of Kim Dotcom may have been illegal.

But after its legal department reviewed the case, the Government Communications Security Bureau concluded their actions were legitimate.

A report by the inspector-general of intelligence and security, Justice Paul Neazor, released on Thursday, found the GCSB had illegally snooped on the tech mogul. The agency bungled by wrongly interpreting the law and is now reviewing all cases dating back to 2009, when immigration laws were changed.

The Green Party yesterday laid a complaint with police over the law breach and Labour Party leader David Shearer formally requested that Prime Minister John Key initiate an independent inquiry.

Inquiries by The Dominion Post have revealed police first raised the problem with GCSB agents at a meeting on February 16. Mr Key said this week GCSB became aware of the law-breaking about a fortnight ago.

Officially a debrief on Operation Debut, which had culminated in a raid on Dotcom’s mansion on January 20, it is understood the February meeting was a “back-slapping” exercise, with a Power Point presentation.

The potential problem and the subsequent legal review was not disclosed to Mr Key, who was unaware of the GCSB’s involvement in the high-profile case until last week.

The law-breaking only became public when Dotcom’s legal team questioned the identity of a “mystery group” of officials who attended a meeting to plan Dotcom’s arrest.

GCSB attempted to have its role covered up, asking acting prime minister Bill English to sign a ministerial certificate suppressing details in August, while Mr Key was in the United States.

The performance of the GCSB’s legal department will now be the subject of discussions between its director, Ian Fletcher, and State Services Commissioner Ian Rennie.

A police spokeswoman yesterday confirmed the operation debrief took place on February 16.

Justice Neazor refused to comment but confirmed Mr Key’s office asked about the meeting.

Mr Shearer believes the Neazor report, which was completed 11 days after it was commissioned by Mr Key, was “limited.”

Mr Shearer wants an independent “wide-ranging” probe “into the serious failures within our intelligence services and the Government’s management of them”.

“This isn’t just about whether a couple of people screwed up at the lowest levels of the Government Communications Security Bureau,” he said.

“It’s about many serious issues, including how a number of key agencies, like the Intelligence Co-ordination Group which reports directly to the prime minister, were either unaware of the issue or deliberately kept it from John Key.”

Mr Key yesterday ruled out an inquiry.

Greens co-leader Russel Norman said the GCSB flouted the same laws cameraman Bradley Ambrose was accused of breaching in the “teapot tapes” saga.

“When he [Mr Key] was taped in a public cafe by a media person discussing matters of public interest, Key kicked up an almighty fuss . . . If Prime Minister Key really feels so strongly about a person’s right to privacy, then he should back my call for the police to investigate the illegal surveilling of New Zealand residents by a government spy agency.”

– © Fairfax NZ News

Reuters |

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, speaking via a choppy video feed from his virtual house arrest in London, lashed out at U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday for supporting freedom of speech in the Middle East while simultaneously “persecuting” his organization for leaking diplomatic cables.

Assange, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy since June to avoid extradition, made the comments at a packed event on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

Assange mocked Obama for defending free speech in the Arab world in an address to the United Nations on Tuesday, pointing to his own experience as evidence that Obama has “done more to criminalize free speech than any other U.S. president.”

“It must have come as a surprise to the Egyptian teenagers who washed American teargas out of their eyes (during the Arab Spring) to hear that the U.S. supported change in the Middle East,” Assange said.

“It’s time for President Obama to keep his word … and for the U.S. to cease its persecution of WikiLeaks,” he said.

Assange’s combative comments, plus statements made by Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino and his other allies at the event, suggested no solution is in sight to the diplomatic standoff surrounding the 41-year-old Australian.

British authorities have surrounded the Ecuadorean Embassy and said if Assange sets foot outside, they will arrest him and extradite him to Sweden to face rape and sexual assault allegations.

Assange’s lawyers and Ecuador’s government fear that could lead in turn to extradition to the United States, where they say he would face “inhumane” prison conditions and even the death penalty.

Assange, who looked to be in good health as he sat at a desk in front of a bookshelf and addressed the 150 or so people at the event, said Britain and Sweden have so far refused to provide guarantees he would not be extradited to the United States.

U.S. and European government sources have countered that the United States has issued no criminal charges or launched any attempts to extradite Assange.

IN BRITAIN’S COURT

Patino is scheduled to meet with British Foreign Secretary William Hague in New York on Thursday to discuss Assange, and he said there are “multiple paths” that could lead out of the standoff. Yet, in an interview with Reuters following the U.N. event, Patino made clear that Ecuador is not willing to cede much ground.

“The ball’s in their court right now,” Patino said.

Patino held in his hands a mimeographed copy of an 1880 agreement signed between Britain and Ecuador, which he said prohibits extradition in cases such as Assange’s. He said he would show the document to Hague on Thursday.

Patino rigorously defended Ecuador’s decision to grant political asylum to Assange, expressing disbelief that Britain is “determined” to arrest the former computer hacker even though he said there are no criminal charges against him. “This means you have reason to suspect he’s being persecuted,” Patino said.

He said Assange is in relatively good spirits but expressed concern his physical and psychological condition could deteriorate.

“I think of myself, how I’d react in that situation, not being able to go outside, being isolated,” Patino said. “It’s practically like being jailed.”

(Editing by Eric Beech)

Adrian Pearson and Mark Summers, Sunday Sun |

HILLSBOROUGH cops appear to have tried to use a match-day testimony by Bobby Robson to slur Liverpool fans.

The Sunday Sun has trawled through documents kept secret for more than two decades to reveal the shocking hidden witness statement.

And we can reveal that unnamed officers went over Sir Bobby’s witness statement in a desperate attempt to find evidence of Liverpool fans misbehaving.

High level Hillsborough officers interviewed Sir Bobby following his appearance at the match and asked him if he saw fans drinking – a misguided line of police inquiry which has haunted the families of victims for more than 20 years.

The former Newcastle United manager was invited to the 1989 FA cup semi-final in his role as England manager, and witnessed from the directors’ box the horror of fans crushed as police packed them into pens.

What officers found was not enough to strengthen their claims that fans caused the crush, but that did not stop officers from South Yorkshire Police trying to use his words to their advantage.

In four pages of the statement Sir Bobby repeatedly sets out how fans behaved themselves and how he saw no evidence to suggest they were to blame.

Despite this, officers still seized on any hint from Sir Bobby that there might have been trouble, even when he was simply describing typical match day events such as a trip to the pub for a pre-match pint.

Even this was picked up on and underlined, suggesting police were looking for any support they could in a bid to back-up their discredited theory that drunken Liverpool fans were to blame for the death of 96 people.

Last night former solicitor general Vera Baird hit out what looks like an attempt to drag Sir Bobby into a police cover-up.

The former MP is seeking to be the first elected police commissioner for Northumbria and has already called for resignations over some of the actions of senior South Yorkshire officers.

She said: “The Hillsborough Panel found that 116 statements were doctored to remove criticisms of South Yorkshire Police, yet every criticism of the fans was left in.

“Some of the removals changed the facts as well and many were done without the consent of the writer . It looks to me as if they were teeing up Bobby’s statement to be used in the same way.

“He would have been appalled, as a great friend to the fans and would have been horrified to be seen as a pawn to be used against them.”

Trevor Hicks, the chair of Hillsborough families support group, said the Sunday Sun revelations were typical of how the police “twisted” evidence.

Mr Hicks, who lost both his daughters in the disaster, said: “Unfortunately it is hardly surprising to see this — we have come across far worse, but this just shows what was going on.

“I liked Bobby, my step son is a Newcastle United Supporter and Bobby Robson was one of those people who cut across club loyalty and was liked by many.

“But we saw that officers changed their evidence and removed bits that did not support their criticism of the fans.

“Evidence that shows the fans were not to blame is ignored, and criticism of the police as ignored. This is sadly just typical of what we saw.”

In his statement, Sir Bobby describes how he travelled with his brother by car to Sheffield for the match, arriving at around 12.15.

When he took his seat in the directors’ box at six minutes to three, he says he was not aware of any crowd surge and that there was no hint of trouble that he spotted.

About ten minutes in to the match, Sir Bobby records, he could see about 60 or 70 people on the pitch and that by that point there was crushing at the Leppings Lane end of the ground, but, he adds, there was slightly more room at either side of the two central pens. He also points out that at first he saw “police trying to prevent people from getting out of the enclosures or over the fence”.

When he adds that the police changed their tactics and “did everything possible to relieve the situation” his comments are underlined by an unnamed officer with the word “recognition” handwritten by this.

He adds: “As I was driving about a mile or two from the ground I saw one or two pubs between 12.00 and 12.15 with lots of people in them.”

This seemingly normal match day fact is underlined and ticked up twice by the force. Sir Bobby, who passed away in 2009, adds that he did not witness any unauthorised entry to any part of the ground, or any alcohol being consumed in the ground.

As Sir Bobby lists the various scenes he saw, none of which blame the fans, he adds that “I did see one single solitary Liverpool supporter running onto the pitch to taunt the Nottingham Forest supporters.”

Despite the scene described being a rare example, the police underline it and catalogue it as evidence of “disorder”.

A South Yorkshire Police spokeswoman said they were not in a position to comment because of the review of matters raised in the report by the Hillsborough Independent Panel, with a view to making a referral to the IPCC.

THE police statements released to the Hillsborough Independent Panel show for the first time the police paperwork and all the notes made on them.

We asked Vera Baird QC to gave her take on the notes. The former solicitor general here sets out her opinion.

:: Bobby’s statement shows that he had a trouble-free arrival at the match driving with his brother and going into the directors’ box.

He was interviewed on the 9th on a “selected person’s questionnaire” and his answers are put into this statement on 17th May. The questionnaire clearly asked about Liverpool fans committing criminal acts. He replies, as if he has been pressed hard to say so.

“I did see one single solitary Liverpool supporter running onto the pitch to taunt the Nottingham Forest supporters but he was quickly dealt with. I imagine this might have been a criminal act.”

This is not something he is likely to have mentioned on his own in the context of 96 deaths and his tone here suggests a bit of sarcastic resistance to what is being hinted at.

The way the statement is marked by police screening it later is revealing. Sentences are underlined and ticked if they can be categorised as “recognition” (of police good conduct) and “disorder” ( by Liverpool fans) but the rest is ignored.

Bobby says “there was no hint of trouble that I spotted prior to the game starting” but that is not underlined whereas “Just before the match was stopped after five minutes I saw one or two Liverpool supporters at the Liverpool end climbing the perimeter fence” is underlined and marked with large ticks.

At paragraph 7 his words: “I did see police trying to prevent people from getting out of the enclosures or over the fence” are ignored but when he says that the police subsequently changed tack and adds: “Police .. did everything possible to relieve the situation and assist people to get out” – this is heavily ticked and underlined.

So when he tells police at paragraph 10 “I did not witness any disorder around the ground”, he is ignored while the following sentence is underlined heavily, ticked and categorised as evidence of “disorder”.

“About a mile or two from the ground I saw one or two pubs at between 12 and 12 15 with lots of people outside drinking” is underlined and ticked into the category “disorder”

Truthdig |

Ladies: When it comes to equal pay, you’ve still got a long ways to go. That’s according to disturbing new data released this month that showed that, in 2011, women were making 77 cents for every dollar a man earned.

Here’s the sobering breakdown from NBC News:

For men who work full-time and year-round, inflation-adjusted median earnings fell about 2.5 percent between 2010 and 2011, to $48,202, according to the Census Bureau. For women working full-time, the median, or midpoint, of annual earnings also fell by about 2.5 percent, to $37,118.

… The wage gap has persisted even though women have made huge inroads in traditionally male-dominated fields and positions. There have been several high-profile examples of that phenomenon, including Yahoo Inc.’s decision to appoint a pregnant Marissa Mayer to the role of chief executive.

Despite such gains, research shows that women generally take home less money each week even when they are doing the same job.

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What’s more, that’s true regardless of where you live in the U.S. Data released Thursday by the National Partnership for Women & Families reveals that in 97 percent of congressional districts in this country, median annual pay is more for men than it is for women.

The National Partnership for Women & Families:

Nationally, full-time working women are still paid only 77 cents for every dollar paid to full-time working men, amounting to $11,084 each year, according to Census data. The congressional districts with the largest gender-based, cents-on-the-dollar pay differences are found in Louisiana, Virginia, New Jersey and West Virginia. The two districts with the largest gap in wages are in southern Louisiana; women there are paid just 61 cents for every dollar paid to men.

The Paycheck Fairness Act would close loopholes in the Equal Pay Act and establish stronger workplace protections for women. In the last two Congresses, the U.S. House of Representatives passed it, but it fell two votes short of moving forward in the Senate in 2010. It was reintroduced in the current Congress but blocked by a procedural vote in June of this year.

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