Sunday, December 30, 2007

UN joins forces with Marvel Comics








UN joins forces with Marvel Comics

By Deborah Brewster in New York

December 26 2007

He has fought against foes ranging from the Green Goblin to Doctor Octopus, but Spider-Man now faces an even more formidable challenge: improving the battered image of the United Nations.

In a move reminiscent of storylines developed during the second world war, the UN is joining forces with Marvel Comics, creators of Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk, to create a comic book showing the international body working with superheroes to solve bloody conflicts and rid the world of disease.

The comic, initially to be distributed free to 1m US schoolchildren, will be set in a war-torn fictional country and feature superheroes such as Spider-Man working with UN agencies such as Unicef and the “blue hats”, the UN peacekeepers.

Camilla Schippa, chief of office at the UN Office for Partnerships, told the Financial Times the script was being written now and the final storyline was due to be approved in February. The cartoonists are working for free.

After publication in the US, the UN hopes to translate the comics into French and other languages and distribute them elsewhere, Ms Schippa said.

The idea originally came from French film-maker, Romuald Sciora, who had been working on other UN projects and is making a DVD about the international organisation that will be distributed to schoolchildren along with the comic books.

Although the UN did not come up with the initiative, the measure could help revive the body’s troubled image in the US, where relations have been strained, in particular during US President George W. Bush’s administration.

John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the UN, once said that “if the UN building in New York lost 10 storeys, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference”.

The latest UN initiative is not the first time US comics have been used for political purposes. During the second world war, superheroes were shown taking on Germany’s Nazi regime. Marvel’s Captain America, together with other characters such as Superman, were shown beating up Adolf Hitler.

The UN’s goals are somewhat different: according to its website, it hopes the comics will teach children the value of international co- operation and sensitise them to the problems faced in other parts of the world.

Marvel Entertainment, which has a library of 5,000 characters, began as a comic book company 60 years ago. Its superheroes include the Fantastic Four, Avengers and Uncanny X-Men.

Mexican Government To Use “biochips” To Curb Immigration Into Mexico


Team4News

MEXICO CITY - Mexico is going high tech to better track the movements of Central Americans who regularly cross the southern border to work or visit.

Starting in March, the National Immigration Institute will distribute cards containing electronic chips.

Those items will record every arrival and departure of so-called temporary workers and visitors, mostly from Guatemala.

The cards will replace a non-electronic pass formerly given to area residents.

Officials say the purpose is to guarantee security for workers and visitors.

Statistics from the institute show that more than 182,000 undocumented migrants were detained in Mexico in 2006. Most were Central Americans from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador en route to the U.S.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

U.S. Says Iran Ended Atomic Arms Work

Mark Mazzetti
December 3, 2007
NY TIMES

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 — A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb.

The conclusions of the new assessment are likely to reshape the final year of the Bush administration, which has made halting Iran’s nuclear program a cornerstone of its foreign policy.

The assessment, a National Intelligence Estimate that represents the consensus view of all 16 American spy agencies, states that Tehran is likely keeping its options open with respect to building a weapon, but that intelligence agencies “do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.”

Iran is continuing to produce enriched uranium, a program that the Tehran government has said is designed for civilian purposes. The new estimate says that enrichment program could still provide Iran with enough raw material to produce a nuclear weapon sometime by the middle of next decade, a timetable essentially unchanged from previous estimates.

But the new estimate declares with “high confidence” that a military-run Iranian program intended to transform that raw material into a nuclear weapon has been shut down since 2003, and also says with high confidence that the halt “was directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure.”

The estimate does not say when American intelligence agencies learned that the weapons program had been halted, but a statement issued by Donald Kerr, the principal director of national intelligence, said the document was being made public “since our understanding of Iran’s capabilities has changed.”

Rather than painting Iran as a rogue, irrational nation determined to join the club of nations with the bomb, the estimate states Iran’s “decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs.” The administration called new attention to the threat posed by Iran earlier this year when President Bush had suggested in October that a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to “World War III” and Vice President Dick Cheney promised “serious consequences” if the government in Tehran did not abandon its nuclear program.

Yet at the same time officials were airing these dire warnings about the Iranian threat, analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency were secretly concluding that Iran’s nuclear weapons work halted years ago and that international pressure on the Islamic regime in Tehran was working.

Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, portrayed the assessment as “directly challenging some of this administration’s alarming rhetoric about the threat posed by Iran.” He said he hoped the administration “appropriately adjusts its rhetoric and policy,” and called for a “a diplomatic surge necessary to effectively address the challenges posed by Iran.”

But the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, quickly issued a statement describing the N.I.E. as containing positive news rather than reflecting intelligence mistakes.

“It confirms that we were right to be worried about Iran seeking to develop nuclear weapons,” Mr. Hadley said. “It tells us that we have made progress in trying to ensure that this does not happen. But the intelligence also tells us that the risk of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon remains a very serious problem.”

“The estimate offers grounds for hope that the problem can be solved diplomatically — without the use of force — as the administration has been trying to do,” Mr. Hadley said.

The new report comes out just over five years after a deeply flawed N.I.E. concluded that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons programs and was determined to restart its nuclear program — an estimate that led to congressional authorization for a military invasion of Iraq, although most of the report’s conclusions turned out to be wrong.

Intelligence officials said that the specter of the botched 2002 N.I.E. hung over their deliberations over the Iran assessment, leading them to treat the document with particular caution.

“We felt that we needed to scrub all the assessments and sources to make sure we weren’t misleading ourselves,” said one senior intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Israeli officials reject U.S. findings on Iran

By Dion Nissenbaum, McClatchy NewspapersTue Dec 4, 1:29 PM ET

JERUSALEM — Israeli officials, who've been warning that Iran would soon pose a nuclear threat to the world, reacted angrily Tuesday to a new U.S. intelligence finding that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons development program in 2003 and to date hasn't resumed trying to produce nuclear weapons.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak directly challenged the new assessment in an interview with Israel's Army Radio, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the new finding wouldn't deter Israel or the United States from pressing its campaign to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability.

"It seems Iran in 2003 halted for a certain period of time its military nuclear program, but as far as we know, it has probably since revived it," Barak said.

"Even after this report, the American stance will still focus on preventing Iran from attaining nuclear capability," Olmert said. "We will expend every effort along with our friends in the U.S. to prevent the Iranians from developing nuclear weapons."

Probably no country felt more blindsided than Israel by the announcement Monday that 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, in a stunning reassessment, had concluded with "high confidence" that Iran had halted its nuclear program in 2003 and with "moderate confidence" that it hadn't restarted that program as of mid-2007.

For years, Israel has been at the forefront of international efforts to isolate Iran , with Israeli intelligence estimates warning that Iran was on the brink of a nuclear "point of no return," an ominous assessment that often fueled calls for a military strike.

Israeli officials also have sought to isolate Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , citing his calls for Israel's destruction and his skepticism that the Holocaust took place.

The U.S. intelligence finding said that evidence "suggests" that Iran isn't as determined as U.S. officials thought to develop a nuclear weapon and that a diplomatic approach that included economic pressure and some nod to Iranian goals for regional influence might persuade Iran to continue to suspend weapons development.

On Tuesday morning, Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper called the U.S.

findings "a blow below the belt." An analysis in the competing Haaretz newspaper suggested that Israel might come to be viewed as a "panic-stricken rabbit" and said that the U.S. intelligence estimate established "a new, dramatic reality: The military option, American or Israeli, is off the table, indefinitely."

"This is definitely a blow to attempts to stop Iran from becoming nuclear because now everybody will be relaxed and those that were reluctant to go ahead with harsher sanctions will now have a good excuse," said Efraim Inbar , the director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Israel's Bar-Ilan University .

The estimate created an awkward situation for Israeli leaders, who mostly tried to sidestep direct criticism of the Bush administration.

Olmert sought to focus on the report's finding that Iran had been deterred in 2003 from pursuing its nuclear weapons program by international pressure. That, said Olmert, made continued sanctions essential.

Barak was tougher and promised that the report wouldn't influence Israeli policy.

"We cannot allow ourselves to rest just because of an intelligence report from the other side of the earth, even if it is from our greatest friend," he said.

Israeli officials also highlighted where the U.S. and Israeli assessments agree.

They noted that while the latest U.S. assessment said that the earliest Iran was likely to develop enough weapons-grade material for a nuclear bomb was 2010, Israeli assessments weren't dramatically different, finding that Iran could develop the workings for a nuclear bomb by 2009.

Gerald Steinberg , the chairman of the political science department at Bar-Ilan University , suggested that the findings might increase the chances that Israel will attack Iran because they reduce the chances that the United States will act.

"I think it may introduce a lot of stress in the Israeli-American relationship," he said.

But Emily Landau , the director of the Arms Control and Regional Security Program at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies , said it would be very difficult for Israel to launch an attack without explicit support from the United States .

"If Israel were to carry out a military action, it would have to be in coordination with the United States , so if the United States is moving away from that option, it would have implications for Israel as well," she said.

( McClatchy special correspondent Cliff Churgin contributed to this report from Jerusalem .)

Check out the latest from the Middle East at Checkpoint Jerusalem:

http://washingtonbureau.typepad.com/jerusalem

Adroit online, Ron Paul backers hit the streets of N.H.

By Ari Pinkus

Christian Science Monitor
Tue Dec 4, 3:00 AM

They're coming from Miami and Seattle, from the "big sky" state of Montana, and from close to home here in New Hampshire. They're coming to help political iconoclast Ron Paul get elected president – many as campaign first-timers who, characteristically independent, may not even feel obliged to tell the Paul camp what exactly they're planning to do on the candidate's behalf.

The Paulites' push for old-style, on-the-ground politicking in New Hampshire, coming just five weeks before the primary, marks a change for a support network that has always relied on websites and online fundraising. They're here now because they see the Granite State – with its reputation as antitax, anti-big government, and pro-individual freedom – as especially fertile ground for a libertarian-leaning Republican candidate like Mr. Paul.

"New Hampshire is really important because it's the first primary and it sends a message to other states about who's viable and who the leading candidates are. There was all this Internet enthusiasm, but we didn't have enough boots on the ground," says Vijay Boyapati, a Google engineer who recently left the Seattle firm to work on Paul's campaign.

Mr. Boyapati arrived Saturday in Manchester, N.H., to head up a project of his own invention: Operation Live Free or Die, named after the state motto. His aim is to bring 1,000 volunteers to New Hampshire to canvass for Paul. He calculates that if each volunteer, working seven to eight hours a day, meets 100 people daily, then the project can reach out personally to almost all 100,000 residents of Manchester before the Jan. 8 primary.

Then there's Linda Lagana of Merrimack, N.H. Using her graphic-design talent and a small print shop, she has been creating Paul-for-president ads and fliers for months on the cheap. Her materials have ended up in the hands of voters across the state – and are even preferred to official campaign literature. Her highest-profile project so far: designing an advertisement published in USA Today the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

Trevor Lyman, an online music promoter, already helped raise $4.2 million for Paul in a one-day Internet event Nov. 5. Two weeks ago he moved from Miami to Manchester, where he lives in a "frat house" with seven bedrooms, he says. He spends his days and nights working on other "money bomb" campaigns for the GOP candidate. At 37, Mr. Lyman plans to cast his first vote ever – for Paul on Jan. 8.

Once politically apathetic, these Paul supporters join many others who have become turbocharged almost overnight.

Now they've launched Five for Freedom, a campaign to get people to contribute $5 each to help those who want to live and volunteer in New Hampshire. So far, the cause has received more than 1,200 pledges.

Another money campaign is Lyman's bid to raise $10 million online on Dec. 16, the anniversary of the 1773 Boston Tea Party protest of taxation without representation. Nearly 24,000 people have pledged to donate $100. Lyman's fundraiser highlights an "inflation tax." The donation website, teaparty07.com, links to a YouTube video in which Paul, during a TV appearance, explains the toll on citizens as the cost of living rises and the dollar declines in value.

Paul's bricks-and-mortar campaign, for its part, is not involved in these "day to donate" efforts and uses more traditional methods, such as phone banking and literature drops, to court Granite State voters. It bought $1.1 million in local TV ad time and has nine people on staff in New Hampshire, up from five a few months ago, according to the campaign.

There are signs that Paul is beginning to make a dent here, after months of registering in the low single digits in polls of likely GOP voters. In several polls he is running fourth or fifth, with 8 percent. But the American Research Group, which released the latest survey Friday, shows Paul at 2 percent among that GOP group. He's at 7 percent among independents.

Paul draws support from those who are disaffected with both the Republican and Democratic parties, says Andrew Smith, who directs the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. "He has a cap of about 10 to 15 percent of the electorate and hasn't reached it yet," he says.

Paul's campaign and grass-roots supporters say they can reach beyond that.

"New Hampshire is uniquely suited to be a springboard for Ron Paul, since it's a small-government-minded state," says Kate Rick, media coordinator for the Paul campaign in the state.

Boyapati, the former Google engineer, wants to be that springboard. He plans to meet with a real estate agent this week to rent out 50 to 100 vacation homes in the state to Paul backers, he says, and has been flooded with e-mails from prospective volunteers, including a single mother with no savings and a retired couple from Montana.

When volunteers arrive, the plan is for them to go straight to Paul campaign headquarters, where they'll get information packets about the obstetrician-turned-congressman and his issues.

"They're going to train canvassers to be respectful, not leaving materials in the mailbox when people aren't home. Etiquette is important. We're all guests in New Hampshire," says Boyapati.

It probably won't be too long before volunteers find Paulites' watering holes, as Boyapati did. Murphy's Taproom, an Irish pub in downtown Manchester, is one venue where supporters meet to talk strategy, particularly on Tuesday nights. Boyapati was there the day he arrived and got a surprise: Paul himself showed up, stood on a chair, and gave an impromptu speech. "It was kind of explosive," says Boyapati. "The whole place was cheering and screaming."

Many Paul supporters cite their man's opposition to the Iraq war as the key reason he has their support. Paul is the only Republican candidate to call for pulling US troops out of Iraq, and he voted against going to war in 2002.

"The wake-up point was the 2006 election. The Democrats ran on a campaign of let's get out of the war. It was a betrayal," says Lyman. "What they did was a 'surge.' There was more war after a campaign that was against the war."

Not all Paul's issues are in the mainstream. Some supporters seize upon his call to legalize competing currencies, including gold and silver, and eventually abolish the Federal Reserve, eliminate the Internal Revenue Service, and renounce America's membership to the United Nations. But they share a common trait: wanting to restore the Constitution, says a Paul campaign spokeswoman.

"I'm a big constitutionalist. Everyone falls under the constitutionalism umbrella, whether it's the war or other issues," says the campaign's Ms. Rick.

Paul does have huge hurdles to overcome. In focus groups, some women see him as "inconsistent" in that he holds libertarian views but is opposed to a woman's right to choose abortion, says Dick Bennett of the American Research Group in Manchester. Sixty-one percent of likely GOP voters in New Hampshire say they will not vote for him under any circumstances, according to a University of New Hampshire poll.

But some say that if Paul is smart he'll stay focused on the Granite State. "New Hampshire is where the Republicans are going to be duking it out," says Arnie Arnesen, a TV and radio talk-show host here.

"He has a passionate base, and this is a numbers game." With so many candidates in the race, she adds, "he just needs to get a majority of the minority."

Saturday, December 01, 2007

Glen Beck Smears Ron Paul Supporters As Terrorists

Glen Beck Endorses Ron Paul on ebay!


Well, from a certain point of view.

en-dorse
also in·dorse,
en·dorsed, en·dors·ing, en·dors·es
1. To write one's signature on the back of (a check, for example) as evidence of the legal transfer of its ownership, especially in return for the cash or credit indicated on its face.
2. To place (one's signature), as on a contract, to indicate approval of its contents or terms.
3. To acknowledge (receipt of payment) by signing a bill, draft, or other instrument.
4. To give approval of or support to, especially by public statement; sanction: endorse a political candidate.

Glen Beck Endorses Ron Paul on ebay!


Monday, November 12, 2007

Ron Paul Earns a Curtain Call


An invitation to appear on one of the Sunday morning talk shows is a privilege that every presidential candidate—even Duncan Hunter—is afforded at some point.

The no-shot curiosities—like Mr. Hunter or Mike Gravel—usually show up early in the campaign for their perfunctory segment or two in a nationally-televised hot seat. Ron Paul was supposed to among this class of candidates, and for a while it seemed that his Sunday morning exposure would be limited to being told by George Stephanopoulos over the summer that he had zero chance of winning the presidency.

But now, less than two months before the first primary and caucus votes will be cast, the networks want an unexpected second serving of the 72-year-old Texas congressman, thanks to the stunning fund-raising success he’s enjoyed—capped, for now at least, with the $4 million he took in over the internet in one day last week.

Dr. Paul sat down with Bob Schieffer on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, and this time was treated by the host much more as a serious presidential candidate—albeit one with some ideas that don’t often get aired in big-time American politics—than some freaky side-show at a circus.

In addition to revealing that he didn’t own a computer until 1997, Dr. Paul advanced his usual arguments in favor of the gold standard (paper money, he believes, is the main source of inflation, “an invisible tax on the poor”) and against an interventionist foreign policy. (“We defended Seoul, Korea, better on 9/11 than we did Washington, DC,” he said.)

He also fielded the obligatory can-you-really-win question by pointing out the strides his campaign has made in the last year, none of which anyone in politics thought were remotely possible.

“I also know what the odds are,” he said. “But I'll tell you what: Don't try and tell my supporters that there's not a chance, because they believe it…My name is out there. I may well win.”

Determining where precisely Dr. Paul fits in the G.O.P. mix is a perplexing task. Judged by his standing in the polls, he has barely distinguished himself from the likes of Tom Tancredo and Mr. Hunter, although lately he’s begun to edge into mid-to-high single digits in some surveys. But if you judge him by the money he’s raised, and the number of donors he’s attracted, Dr. Paul is a giant.

No matter how he ultimately fares, though, Dr. Paul has made a contribution to the G.O.P. race and to the national political dialogue in a way that the other long-shot Republicans haven’t and can’t—simply because he’s the only Republican candidate willing to defy the foreign policy orthodoxy that has emerged within his party during the Bush years.

While the other Republican candidates refuse to break with the Bush administration on Iraq or any other weighty foreign policy questions, Dr. Paul proudly trumpets his outrage and tells his fellow Republicans that they are following their President off a cliff. A strong Paul showing in the primaries will make a powerful statement about how a significant chunk of the party’s grass-roots really feel about the cheerleading for the White House they’ve been asked to do for the last seven years.

On “Face the Nation,” Dr. Paul once again played the role of refreshing contrarian, this time on Iran. With President Bush and the architects of the Iraq war now training their sights on the Islamic republic, the jockeying has been intense among Republican candidates to strike the most muscular posture against Iran.

But Dr. Paul questioned the two very basic premises behind all of the drum-beating now going on: the assumptions that Iran has to be our enemy and that a nuclear-armed Iran would somehow represent an unprecedented threat to regional and global stability.

“I think our policy towards Iran is a threat,” Dr. Paul said. “That's what I fear. You know, I fear that tomorrow we might bomb Iran. That really scares me.”

Mr. Schieffer asked whether we should simply allow Iran to build the bomb.

“We have a more sensible policy,” Dr. Paul replied. “We talk to them. And we trade with them. We remove the sanctions. I mean, the Soviets had 40,000 [nuclear warheads].” The U.S., he pointed out, continued to talk with the U.S.S.R. throughout the Cold War.

In raw political terms, Dr. Paul is obviously on the wrong side of the Iran issue within the Republican Party. But he’s got all of that contrarian terrain to himself—and Iran is hardly the only issue where this is the case. And that goes a long way to explaining why Ron Paul is getting second and third invitations to Sunday morning news shows, while the other Republicans who began as asterisks in the polls have already exhausted their 15 minutes.


Guard kills unarmed Iraqi taxi driver

By SAMEER N. YACOUB, Associated Press


BAGHDAD - A private security guard fatally shot an Iraqi taxi driver, Iraqi officials said Monday, in the latest incident involving what Iraqis believe are unprovoked killings by contractors hired to protect Americans.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Philip T. Reeker said DynCorp International, a Falls Church, Va.-based company, reported a "security incident" Saturday involving one of its teams and that the embassy's regional security office was "following this closely."

But Reeker could not confirm any details of the incident, including whether anyone was killed or wounded.

"These are very upsetting incidents for everyone involved," Reeker told reporters.

DynCorp International is among three firms — along with Blackwater Worldwide and Triple Canopy — under contract to protect American diplomats and other officials in Iraq.

Iraqi officials said the shooting took place Saturday at 12:45 p.m. across from a children's playground in Baghdad's Atafiyah neighborhood, when a taxi driver pulled up close to a convoy of seven U.S. vehicles driving through the area.

Security personnel signaled for the taxi to pull away, and then one of the guards opened fire on the car, they said.

The driver was shot in the chest and head, but was still alive when local shopkeepers and police rushed to help him, witnesses and police said. He died in a police car on the way to the hospital, said Ahmed Adel, a barber who watched the events unfold outside his shop.

"The convoy stopped at an intersection where there was little traffic jam. ... Suddenly, guards from the last SUV opened fire on the taxi while it was totally motionless and no threat whatsoever to the convoy," Adel said. "We rushed to the car and helped the police pull him out."

He added that the taxi's gearshift was in neutral when they pulled the driver out, suggesting that his car was not moving when he was shot.

Afterward, police searched the taxi and found no weapons or other signs of threatening activity, police and the Interior Ministry said. The convoy did not stop for the investigation, an officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release information.

Another witness said that after the shooting, a guard stepped out of the last vehicle in the convoy — from which the shots were fired — and walked over to the taxi to see what had happened, but then turned back quickly.

"They simply did not care about the shot taxi driver, and the convoy sped away," the man said, refusing to give his name because of the situation's sensitivity.

The shooting occurred on an exit ramp next to a bridge spanning the Tigris River. Atafiyah is a mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhood that has not seen as much violence as other Baghdad enclaves. Piles of soft drink cans and other groceries line sidewalks outside dozens of retail shops.

It was the latest shooting by private security contractors perceived by many here as operating above the law. The U.S. government has offered some guards limited immunity under deals that have slowed prosecution of other shooting cases and angered Iraqis.

In September, another shooting left 17 Iraqis dead and prompted the Iraqi government to call for the expulsion of the firm involved, Blackwater Worldwide. The company has said its convoy was under attack before it opened fire, but initial investigations by Iraqi and U.S. authorities have concluded otherwise.

Iraq's Interior Ministry immediately opened an investigation into Saturday's shooting, said spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf.

The incident came just two days before the arrival of two top U.S. officials sent from Washington to investigate the role of private security companies in Iraq.

Last month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ordered new measures to improve government oversight of bodyguards, including tighter rules of engagement and a board to investigate any future killings.

The steps would also require contractors to undergo training intended to make them more sensitive to Iraqi culture and language.

The changes to rules of engagement would bring the State Department closer to military rules, although the moves will not have much visible effect on the way private guards operate in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq.

Gregory Starr, acting assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, and P. Jackson Bell, deputy under secretary of defense for logistics and materiel readiness, arrived in Baghdad on Monday to help implement the new rules, Reeker said.

Meanwhile, violence continued Monday, but at drastically reduced levels from several months ago. At least 13 people were killed or found dead across Iraq, including five bodies found in Baghdad, police and morgue officials said.

The U.S. military issued tallies of mortar and rocket attacks across the country, saying October's total marked a 21-month low.

Last month saw 369 "indirect fire" attacks — the lowest number since February 2006. October's total was half of what it was in the same month a year ago. And it marked the third month in a row of sharply reduced insurgent activity, the military said.

(This version CORRECTS that Embassy spokesman Reeker did not specify that a DynCorp guard was involved in a fatal shooting.)






Intel official: Expect less privacy

By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer 1 minute ago

As Congress debates new rules for government eavesdropping, a top intelligence official says it is time that people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information.

Kerr's comments come as Congress is taking a second look at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Lawmakers hastily changed the 1978 law last summer to allow the government to eavesdrop inside the United States without court permission, so long as one end of the conversation was reasonably believed to be located outside the U.S.

The original law required a court order for any surveillance conducted on U.S. soil, to protect Americans' privacy. The White House argued that the law was obstructing intelligence gathering because, as technology has changed, a growing amount of foreign communications passes through U.S.-based channels.

The most contentious issue in the new legislation is whether to shield telecommunications companies from civil lawsuits for allegedly giving the government access to people's private e-mails and phone calls without a FISA court order between 2001 and 2007.

Some lawmakers, including members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, appear reluctant to grant immunity. Suits might be the only way to determine how far the government has burrowed into people's privacy without court permission.

The committee is expected to decide this week whether its version of the bill will protect telecommunications companies. About 40 wiretapping suits are pending.

The central witness in a California lawsuit against AT&T says the government is vacuuming up billions of e-mails and phone calls as they pass through an AT&T switching station in San Francisco.

Mark Klein, a retired AT&T technician, helped connect a device in 2003 that he says diverted and copied onto a government supercomputer every call, e-mail, and Internet site access on AT&T lines.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed the class-action suit, claims there are as many as 20 such sites in the U.S.

The White House has promised to veto any bill that does not grant immunity from suits such as this one.

Congressional leaders hope to finish the bill by Thanksgiving. It would replace the FISA update enacted in August that privacy groups and civil libertarians say allows the government to read Americans' e-mails and listen to their phone calls without court oversight.

Kerr said at an October intelligence conference in San Antonio that he finds concerns that the government may be listening in odd when people are "perfectly willing for a green-card holder at an (Internet service provider) who may or may have not have been an illegal entrant to the United States to handle their data."

He noted that government employees face up to five years in prison and $100,000 in fines if convicted of misusing private information.

Millions of people in this country — particularly young people — already have surrendered anonymity to social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, and to Internet commerce. These sites reveal to the public, government and corporations what was once closely guarded information, like personal statistics and credit card numbers.

"Those two generations younger than we are have a very different idea of what is essential privacy, what they would wish to protect about their lives and affairs. And so, it's not for us to inflict one size fits all," said Kerr, 68. "Protecting anonymity isn't a fight that can be won. Anyone that's typed in their name on Google understands that."

"Our job now is to engage in a productive debate, which focuses on privacy as a component of appropriate levels of security and public safety," Kerr said. "I think all of us have to really take stock of what we already are willing to give up, in terms of anonymity, but (also) what safeguards we want in place to be sure that giving that doesn't empty our bank account or do something equally bad elsewhere."

Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group that defends online free speech, privacy and intellectual property rights, said Kerr's argument ignores both privacy laws and American history.

"Anonymity has been important since the Federalist Papers were written under pseudonyms," Opsahl said. "The government has tremendous power: the police power, the ability to arrest, to detain, to take away rights. Tying together that someone has spoken out on an issue with their identity is a far more dangerous thing if it is the government that is trying to tie it together."

Opsahl also said Kerr ignores the distinction between sacrificing protection from an intrusive government and voluntarily disclosing information in exchange for a service.

"There is something fundamentally different from the government having information about you than private parties," he said. "We shouldn't have to give people the choice between taking advantage of modern communication tools and sacrificing their privacy."

"It's just another 'trust us, we're the government,'" he said.

___

On the Net:

Kerr's speech: http://tinyurl.com/23dycq

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Satellite Images show suspicious facility in Syria

By LEE KEATH, Associated Press

Wed. Oct 24, 4:07 PM ET

Commercial satellite images show construction in Syria that resembles the early stages of a small North Korean-model nuclear reactor, a report said Wednesday, speculating that it was the site hit last month by an Israeli airstrike.

The photos, taken nearly a month before the Sept. 6 strike, show a tall box-like building near the Euphrates River that the report said was similar in shape to a North Korean five-megawatt reactor building in Yongbyon.

It cautioned that the Syrian building was "not far enough along in its construction to make a definitive comparison." The photo also shows a smaller building that the report says appears to be a pump station, which would be needed to provide water to cool a reactor.

The report was written by David Albright, a former U.N. nuclear inspector and now head of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, and researcher Paul Brannan.

In Damascus, a Syrian Foreign Ministry official denied the satellite photos in the report showed a nuclear reactor.

"Syria strongly denies the reports that the targeted site is a nuclear facility," the official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. The official described the reports as "part of a continuing campaign of accusations against Syria."

Syria has repeatedly denied it is building a nuclear facility, and President Bashar Assad has said that Israel bombed an "unused military building" in the raid.

The Israeli airstrike has been shrouded in mystery. Israel has been extremely secretive about the incident, only recently relaxing censorship to allow Israel-based journalists to report that its aircraft attacked a military target deep inside Syria.

Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that the strike had targeted a partially built nuclear reactor, made with North Korean help, that was years away from completion, citing U.S. and foreign officials. The Washington Post also cited U.S. officials as saying the building had characteristics of a small but substantial nuclear reactor similar to North Korea's facility.

The report offered no evidence that the site shown in the photos was the one hit by Israel. The photo was taken Aug. 10 by the private satellite imagery firm DigitalGlobe, and the report did not say if images of the site after the strike were available.

The authors of the report did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

An image published in the report shows a tall, square building in the desert about 750 yards from the Euphrates River, near the town of Deir al-Zour, 250 miles northeast of Damascus.

If the building does contain a reactor similar to the Yongbyon site, it would likely be a 20-25 megawatt gas-graphite reactor, large enough to make about one nuclear weapon's worth of plutonium each year, the report said. To build nuclear weapons from such a reactor, Syria would need a separate facility to extract plutonium from the spent fuel from the reactor, it said.

The roof of the building makes it impossible to see what is inside. The building is 47 square yards, similar to the 48-by-50-yard Yongbyon reactor, the report said.

Another structure is visible near the main building, which the report said could not be identified. Several trucks are also visible, along with heavy machinery tracks around the site, which "indicated recent construction activity," the report said. A wider satellite photo shows an airstrip located two miles to the north.

The report said the images left many questions unanswered, including how much of the construction was completed and whether Syria had obtained any reactor components.

U.N. diplomats last week told the AP that experts from the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, had begun analyzing satellite imagery of the Syrian site.

Diplomats familiar with the situation said that initial perusal had found no evidence the target hit by Israel was a nuclear installation. They emphasized that it was too early to draw definite conclusions.

Syria has not declared a nuclear program to the IAEA beyond a small, Chinese reactor it uses for research, which it allows the agency to inspect.

North Korea, which is in the process of dismantling its nuclear weapons program, provides missile technology to Syria but strongly denies accusations it spreads its nuclear expertise beyond its borders.

___

Associated Press Writer Albert Aji contributed to this report in Damascus, Syria.

More than 755,000 on US terrorist watch list


Wed Oct 24, 7:17 PM ET

The US terrorist watch list includes more than 755,000 names and continues to grow, the US Government Accountability Office said Wednesday.

The list exploded from fewer than 20 entries before the September 11, 2001 attacks to more than 150,000 just a few months later, after the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) was created in December 2003 to keep tabs on terrorist suspects, according to the GAO, the non-partisan investigative arm of Congress.

Including known pseudonyms of suspects, the list's 755,000 names as of May 2007 represents, in fact, around 300,000 people, according to TSC estimates.

Tasked with gathering data on individuals "known or appropriately suspected to be or have been engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of or related to terrorism," the TSC gets its information from Federal Bureau of Investigation intelligence and passes it on chiefly to immigration authorities.

Since 2003, the list has been used around 53,000 times to single out individuals for possible arrest or to prevent them from entering the country, the GAO said.

More often, however, people whose names are included on the list for reasons of caution are merely questioned and released, and left to face the same annoyance each time they enter the country, GAO said.

Despite the precautionary zeal, there have been mistakes, it said, adding that many suspects have been stopped by immigration authorities on arrival at US airports when their entries in the TSC list should have prevented them from boarding their planes in the first place.

Describing the list as "quicksand" that traps innocent people for the sake of security, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has called on the US Congress to step in.

"How much safer are we when the government turns so many innocent people into suspects?," ACLU senior legislative counsel Timothy Sparapani said in a statement.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Putin visits Iran, sends warnings to US

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV

Associated Press

Russian leader Vladimir Putin met his Iranian counterpart Tuesday and implicitly warned the U.S. not to use a former Soviet republic to stage an attack on Iran. He also said nations shouldn't pursue oil pipeline projects in the area if they weren't backed by regional powers.

At a summit of the five nations that border the inland Caspian Sea, Putin said none of the nations' territory should be used by any outside countries for use of military force against any nation in the region. It was a clear reference to long-standing rumors that the U.S. was planning to use Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic, as a staging ground for any possible military action against Iran.

"We are saying that no Caspian nation should offer its territory to third powers for use of force or military aggression against any Caspian state," Putin said.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also underlined the need to keep outsiders away from the Caspian.

"All Caspian nations agree on the main issue — that all aspects related to this sea must be settled exclusively by littoral nations," he said. "The Caspian Sea is an inland sea and it only belongs to the Caspian states, therefore only they are entitled to have their ships and military forces here."

Putin, whose trip to Tehran is the first by a Kremlin leader since World War II, warned that energy pipeline projects crossing the Caspian could only be implemented if all five nations that border the Caspian support them.

Putin did not name any specific country, but his statement underlined Moscow's strong opposition to U.S.-backed efforts to build pipelines to deliver hydrocarbons to the West bypassing Russia.

"Projects that may inflict serious environmental damage to the region cannot be implemented without prior discussion by all five Caspian nations," he said.

Other nations bordering the Caspian Sea and in attendance at the summit are: Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan.

The legal status of the Caspian — believed to contain the world's third-largest energy reserves — has been in limbo since the 1991 Soviet collapse, leading to tension and conflicting claims to seabed oil deposits.

Iran, which shared the Caspian's resources equally with the Soviet Union, insists that each coastal nation receive an equal portion of the seabed. Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan want the division based on the length of each nation's shoreline, which would give Iran a smaller share.

Putin's visit took place despite warnings of a possible assassination plot and amid hopes that a round of personal diplomacy could help offer a solution to an international standoff on Iran's nuclear program.

Putin's trip was thrown into doubt when the Kremlin said Sunday that he had been informed by Russian intelligence services that suicide attackers might try to kill him in Tehran, but he shrugged off the warning.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini dismissed reports about the purported assassination plot as disinformation spread by adversaries hoping to spoil good relations between Russia and Iran.

Putin has warned the U.S. and other nations against trying to coerce Iran into reining in its nuclear program and insists peaceful dialogue is the only way to deal with Tehran's defiance of a U.N. Security Council demand that it suspend uranium enrichment.

"Threatening someone, in this case the Iranian leadership and Iranian people, will lead nowhere," Putin said Monday during his trip to Germany. "They are not afraid, believe me."

Iran's rejection of the council's demand and its previous clandestine atomic work has fed suspicions in the U.S. and other countries that Tehran is working to enrich uranium to a purity usable in nuclear weapons. Iran insists it is only wants lesser-enriched uranium to fuel nuclear reactors that would generate electricity.

Putin's visit to Tehran is being closely watched for any possible shifts in Russia's carefully hedged stance in the nuclear standoff.

The Russian president underlined his disagreements with Washington last week, saying he saw no "objective data" to prove Western claims that Iran is trying to construct nuclear weapons.

Putin emphasized Monday that he would negotiate in Tehran on behalf of the five permanent U.N. Security Council members — United States, Russia, China, Britain and France — and Germany, a group that has led efforts to resolve the stalemate with Tehran.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the U.S. government expected Putin to "convey the concerns shared by all of us about the failure of Iran to comply with the international community's requirements concerning its nuclear program."

Putin's schedule also called for meetings with Ahmadinejad and the Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

While the Kremlin has shielded Tehran from a U.S. push for a third round of U.N. sanctions, Iran has voiced annoyance about Moscow's foot-dragging in building a nuclear power plant in the southern port of Bushehr under a $1 billion contract.

Russia warned early this year that the plant would not be launched this fall as planned because Iran was slow in making payments. Iranian officials have angrily denied any payment arrears and accused the Kremlin of caving in to Western pressure.

Moscow also has ignored Iranian demands to ship fuel for the plant, saying it would be delivered only six months before the Bushehr plant goes on line. The launch date has been delayed indefinitely amid the payment dispute.

Any sign by Putin that Russia could quickly complete the power plant would embolden Iran and further cloud Russia's relations with the West. But analysts said Putin's trip would be important for Iran even if it yielded no agreements.

___

Associated Press writers Ali Akbar Dareini and Nasser Karimi contributed to this report.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Judge rules part of Patriot Act unconstitutional


Provisions allow search warrants issued without probable cause, she says


The Associated Press
Updated: 8:40 a.m. ET Sept 27, 2007

PORTLAND, Ore. - Two provisions of the USA Patriot Act are unconstitutional because they allow search warrants to be issued without a showing of probable cause, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as amended by the Patriot Act, "now permits the executive branch of government to conduct surveillance and searches of American citizens without satisfying the probable cause requirements of the Fourth Amendment."

Portland attorney Brandon Mayfield sought the ruling in a lawsuit against the federal government after he was mistakenly linked by the FBI to the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people in 2004.

The federal government apologized and settled part of the lawsuit for $2 million after admitting a fingerprint was misread. But as part of the settlement, Mayfield retained the right to challenge parts of the Patriot Act, which greatly expanded the authority of law enforcers to investigate suspected acts of terrorism.

Mayfield claimed that secret searches of his house and office under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act violated the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure. Aiken agreed with Mayfield, repeatedly criticizing the government.

"For over 200 years, this Nation has adhered to the rule of law — with unparalleled success. A shift to a Nation based on extra-constitutional authority is prohibited, as well as ill-advised," she wrote.

By asking her to dismiss Mayfield's lawsuit, the judge said, the U.S. attorney general's office was "asking this court to, in essence, amend the Bill of Rights, by giving it an interpretation that would deprive it of any real meaning. This court declines to do so."

Elden Rosenthal, an attorney for Mayfield, issued a statement on his behalf praising the judge, saying she "has upheld both the tradition of judicial independence, and our nation's most cherished principle of the right to be secure in one's own home."

Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said the agency was reviewing the decision, and he declined to comment further.

Received apology from FBI
Mayfield, a Muslim convert, was taken into custody on May 6, 2004, because of a fingerprint found on a detonator at the scene of the Madrid bombing. The FBI said the print matched Mayfield's. He was released about two weeks later, and the FBI admitted it had erred in saying the fingerprints were his and later apologized to him.

Before his arrest, the FBI put Mayfield under 24-hour surveillance, listened to his phone calls and surreptitiously searched his home and law office.

The Mayfield case has been an embarrassment for the federal government. Last year, the Justice Department's internal watchdog faulted the FBI for sloppy work in mistakenly linking Mayfield to the Madrid bombings. That report said federal prosecutors and FBI agents had made inaccurate and ambiguous statements to a federal judge to get arrest and criminal search warrants against Mayfield.




Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Wheelchair-Bound Woman Dies After Being Shocked With Taser 10 Times

Wed Sep 19, 9:38 AM ET

A Clay County woman's family said it's seeking justice after their loved one died shortly after being shocked 10 times with Taser guns during a confrontation with police.

The family of 56-year-old Emily Delafield said it would take the Green Cove Springs Police Department to court, according to a WJXT-TV report.

In April 2006, officers with the police department said they were called to a disturbance at a home in the 400 block of Harrison Street just before 5 p.m.

In a 911 call made to the Green Cove Springs, Delafield can be heard telling a dispatcher that she believed she was in danger:

Dispatcher: And what's the problem?

Delafield: My sister is waiting on my property.

Dispatcher: Your what?

Delafield: My sister (inaudible) is on my property trying to harm me.

Officers said they arrived to find Delafield in a wheelchair, armed with two knives and a hammer. Police said the woman was swinging the weapons at family members and police.

Within an hour of her call to 911, Delafield, a wheelchair-bound woman documented to have mental illness, was dead.

Family attorney Rick Alexander said Delafield's death could have been prevented and that there are four things that jump out at him about the case.

"One, she's in a wheelchair. Two, she's schizophrenic. Three, they're using a Taser on a person that's in a wheelchair, and then four is that they tasered her 10 times for a period of like two minutes," Alexander said.

According to a police report, one of the officers used her Taser gun nine times for a total of 160 seconds and the other officer discharged his Taser gun once for a total of no more than five seconds.

A medical examiner found Delafield died from hypertensive heart disease and cited the Taser gun shock as a contributing factor, the report said. On her death certificate, the medical examiner ruled Delafield's death a homicide.

The family said it plans to sue the Green Coves Springs Police Department now that it has all the reports regarding their loved one's death.

"We're going to try to compensate the estate and the family and try to get justice," Alexander said.

He said he believes the evidence weighs heavily in favor of Delafield's family and that justice will be served.

"I think that this evidence is going to show, along with some of the evidence we've collected outside of here, that there is no reason Emily Delafield should have died that day," Alexander said.

He said he plans to file a notice to sue sometime before the end of the year.

Monday, September 17, 2007

US security firm Blackwater banned from Iraq

US security contractor Blackwater has been banned from operating in Iraq, after eight civilians were killed in Baghdad yesterday.

Blackwater offers personal security to US officials working in Iraq, and is one of the better known firms involved in what critics call the privatisation of the war in Iraq.

Yesterday, a US diplomatic convoy came under fire in the Iraqi capital's western al-Yarmukh neighbourhood.

Blackwater members accompanying the convoy returned fire, leaving nine people dead, one of whom was an Iraqi police officer.

All of the other fatalities were civilian bystanders.

Iraqi Brigadier-General, Abdul-Karim Khalaf, confirmed that a mortar had landed close to the convoy and said the US firm had 'opened fire randomly at citizens'.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has strongly condemned the company's actions and denounced what he called the criminal response of the US contractors.

And today Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani issued an order to cancel Blackwater's licence and prohibit the company from operating anywhere in Iraq.

Mr Bolani also confirmed that a criminal investigation had been launched following the incident.

A US embassy official only said that security vehicles of the 'Department of State' were involved in an incident near al-Nissur Square.

Blackwater representatives were not immediately available for comment.

Thousands of private security contractors, many of them US and European, have worked in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003.

Following a number of similar incidents in recent years, foreign private security firms have been accused of operating outside the law with little or no accountability either to the Iraqi government or US military forces.

Story from RTÉ News:
http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0917/iraq.html


Sunday, September 09, 2007

Cunning, Conniving Mustachioed Madman Geraldo Falsly Claims 9/11 Activists are Homosexual Anarchists, shows true colors of FAUX News

Watch as the wildly effeminate mustachioed Geraldo puts his fist up and acts tough while threatening the activists with violence. Here he is, slandering a group of individuals who are speaking their minds in a supposed free and open society, and he wants to play the roll of Gestapo. Where have all the watchdogs gone? Are we to stand by and let the corporate media shill get away with defamation and disinformation?

Saturday, September 08, 2007

Chip implants linked to animal tumors




By TODD LEWAN, AP National WriterSat Sep 8, 2:04 PM ET

When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved implanting microchips in humans, the manufacturer said it would save lives, letting doctors scan the tiny transponders to access patients' medical records almost instantly. The FDA found "reasonable assurance" the device was safe, and a sub-agency even called it one of 2005's top "innovative technologies."

But neither the company nor the regulators publicly mentioned this: A series of veterinary and toxicology studies, dating to the mid-1990s, stated that chip implants had "induced" malignant tumors in some lab mice and rats.

"The transponders were the cause of the tumors," said Keith Johnson, a retired toxicologic pathologist, explaining in a phone interview the findings of a 1996 study he led at the Dow Chemical Co. in Midland, Mich.

Leading cancer specialists reviewed the research for The Associated Press and, while cautioning that animal test results do not necessarily apply to humans, said the findings troubled them. Some said they would not allow family members to receive implants, and all urged further research before the glass-encased transponders are widely implanted in people.

To date, about 2,000 of the so-called radio frequency identification, or RFID, devices have been implanted in humans worldwide, according to VeriChip Corp. The company, which sees a target market of 45 million Americans for its medical monitoring chips, insists the devices are safe, as does its parent company, Applied Digital Solutions, of Delray Beach, Fla.

"We stand by our implantable products which have been approved by the FDA and/or other U.S. regulatory authorities," Scott Silverman, VeriChip Corp. chairman and chief executive officer, said in a written response to AP questions.

The company was "not aware of any studies that have resulted in malignant tumors in laboratory rats, mice and certainly not dogs or cats," but he added that millions of domestic pets have been implanted with microchips, without reports of significant problems.

"In fact, for more than 15 years we have used our encapsulated glass transponders with FDA approved anti-migration caps and received no complaints regarding malignant tumors caused by our product."

The FDA also stands by its approval of the technology.

Did the agency know of the tumor findings before approving the chip implants? The FDA declined repeated AP requests to specify what studies it reviewed.

The FDA is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, which, at the time of VeriChip's approval, was headed by Tommy Thompson. Two weeks after the device's approval took effect on Jan. 10, 2005, Thompson left his Cabinet post, and within five months was a board member of VeriChip Corp. and Applied Digital Solutions. He was compensated in cash and stock options.

Thompson, until recently a candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, says he had no personal relationship with the company as the VeriChip was being evaluated, nor did he play any role in FDA's approval process of the RFID tag.

"I didn't even know VeriChip before I stepped down from the Department of Health and Human Services," he said in a telephone interview.

Also making no mention of the findings on animal tumors was a June report by the ethics committee of the American Medical Association, which touted the benefits of implantable RFID devices.

Had committee members reviewed the literature on cancer in chipped animals?

No, said Dr. Steven Stack, an AMA board member with knowledge of the committee's review.

Was the AMA aware of the studies?

No, he said.

___

Published in veterinary and toxicology journals between 1996 and 2006, the studies found that lab mice and rats injected with microchips sometimes developed subcutaneous "sarcomas" — malignant tumors, most of them encasing the implants.

• A 1998 study in Ridgefield, Conn., of 177 mice reported cancer incidence to be slightly higher than 10 percent — a result the researchers described as "surprising."

• A 2006 study in France detected tumors in 4.1 percent of 1,260 microchipped mice. This was one of six studies in which the scientists did not set out to find microchip-induced cancer but noticed the growths incidentally. They were testing compounds on behalf of chemical and pharmaceutical companies; but they ruled out the compounds as the tumors' cause. Because researchers only noted the most obvious tumors, the French study said, "These incidences may therefore slightly underestimate the true occurrence" of cancer.

• In 1997, a study in Germany found cancers in 1 percent of 4,279 chipped mice. The tumors "are clearly due to the implanted microchips," the authors wrote.

Caveats accompanied the findings. "Blind leaps from the detection of tumors to the prediction of human health risk should be avoided," one study cautioned. Also, because none of the studies had a control group of animals that did not get chips, the normal rate of tumors cannot be determined and compared to the rate with chips implanted.

Still, after reviewing the research, specialists at some pre-eminent cancer institutions said the findings raised red flags.

"There's no way in the world, having read this information, that I would have one of those chips implanted in my skin, or in one of my family members," said Dr. Robert Benezra, head of the Cancer Biology Genetics Program at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Before microchips are implanted on a large scale in humans, he said, testing should be done on larger animals, such as dogs or monkeys. "I mean, these are bad diseases. They are life-threatening. And given the preliminary animal data, it looks to me that there's definitely cause for concern."

Dr. George Demetri, director of the Center for Sarcoma and Bone Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, agreed. Even though the tumor incidences were "reasonably small," in his view, the research underscored "certainly real risks" in RFID implants.

In humans, sarcomas, which strike connective tissues, can range from the highly curable to "tumors that are incredibly aggressive and can kill people in three to six months," he said.

At the Jackson Laboratory in Maine, a leader in mouse genetics research and the initiation of cancer, Dr. Oded Foreman, a forensic pathologist, also reviewed the studies at the AP's request.

At first he was skeptical, suggesting that chemicals administered in some of the studies could have caused the cancers and skewed the results. But he took a different view after seeing that control mice, which received no chemicals, also developed the cancers. "That might be a little hint that something real is happening here," he said. He, too, recommended further study, using mice, dogs or non-human primates.

Dr. Cheryl London, a veterinarian oncologist at Ohio State University, noted: "It's much easier to cause cancer in mice than it is in people. So it may be that what you're seeing in mice represents an exaggerated phenomenon of what may occur in people."

Tens of thousands of dogs have been chipped, she said, and veterinary pathologists haven't reported outbreaks of related sarcomas in the area of the neck, where canine implants are often done. (Published reports detailing malignant tumors in two chipped dogs turned up in AP's four-month examination of research on chips and health. In one dog, the researchers said cancer appeared linked to the presence of the embedded chip; in the other, the cancer's cause was uncertain.)

Nonetheless, London saw a need for a 20-year study of chipped canines "to see if you have a biological effect." Dr. Chand Khanna, a veterinary oncologist at the National Cancer Institute, also backed such a study, saying current evidence "does suggest some reason to be concerned about tumor formations."

Meanwhile, the animal study findings should be disclosed to anyone considering a chip implant, the cancer specialists agreed.

To date, however, that hasn't happened.

___

The product that VeriChip Corp. won approval for use in humans is an electronic capsule the size of two grains of rice. Generally, it is implanted with a syringe into an anesthetized portion of the upper arm.

When prompted by an electromagnetic scanner, the chip transmits a unique code. With the code, hospital staff can go on the Internet and access a patient's medical profile that is maintained in a database by VeriChip Corp. for an annual fee.

VeriChip Corp., whose parent company has been marketing radio tags for animals for more than a decade, sees an initial market of diabetics and people with heart conditions or Alzheimer's disease, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The company is spending millions to assemble a national network of hospitals equipped to scan chipped patients.

But in its SEC filings, product labels and press releases, VeriChip Corp. has not mentioned the existence of research linking embedded transponders to tumors in test animals.

When the FDA approved the device, it noted some Verichip risks: The capsules could migrate around the body, making them difficult to extract; they might interfere with defibrillators, or be incompatible with MRI scans, causing burns. While also warning that the chips could cause "adverse tissue reaction," FDA made no reference to malignant growths in animal studies.

Did the agency review literature on microchip implants and animal cancer?

Dr. Katherine Albrecht, a privacy advocate and RFID expert, asked shortly after VeriChip's approval what evidence the agency had reviewed. When FDA declined to provide information, she filed a Freedom of Information Act request. More than a year later, she received a letter stating there were no documents matching her request.

"The public relies on the FDA to evaluate all the data and make sure the devices it approves are safe," she says, "but if they're not doing that, who's covering our backs?"

Late last year, Albrecht unearthed at the Harvard medical library three studies noting cancerous tumors in some chipped mice and rats, plus a reference in another study to a chipped dog with a tumor. She forwarded them to the AP, which subsequently found three additional mice studies with similar findings, plus another report of a chipped dog with a tumor.

Asked if it had taken these studies into account, the FDA said VeriChip documents were being kept confidential to protect trade secrets. After AP filed a FOIA request, the FDA made available for a phone interview Anthony Watson, who was in charge of the VeriChip approval process.

"At the time we reviewed this, I don't remember seeing anything like that," he said of animal studies linking microchips to cancer. A literature search "didn't turn up anything that would be of concern."

In general, Watson said, companies are expected to provide safety-and-effectiveness data during the approval process, "even if it's adverse information."

Watson added: "The few articles from the literature that did discuss adverse tissue reactions similar to those in the articles you provided, describe the responses as foreign body reactions that are typical of other implantable devices. The balance of the data provided in the submission supported approval of the device."

Another implantable device could be a pacemaker, and indeed, tumors have in some cases attached to foreign bodies inside humans. But Dr. Neil Lipman, director of the Research Animal Resource Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, said it's not the same. The microchip isn't like a pacemaker that's vital to keeping someone alive, he added, "so at this stage, the payoff doesn't justify the risks."

Silverman, VeriChip Corp.'s chief executive, disagreed. "Each month pet microchips reunite over 8,000 dogs and cats with their owners," he said. "We believe the VeriMed Patient Identification System will provide similar positive benefits for at-risk patients who are unable to communicate for themselves in an emergency."

___

And what of former HHS secretary Thompson?

When asked what role, if any, he played in VeriChip's approval, Thompson replied: "I had nothing to do with it. And if you look back at my record, you will find that there has never been any improprieties whatsoever."

FDA's Watson said: "I have no recollection of him being involved in it at all." VeriChip Corp. declined comment.

Thompson vigorously campaigned for electronic medical records and healthcare technology both as governor of Wisconsin and at HHS. While in President Bush's Cabinet, he formed a "medical innovation" task force that worked to partner FDA with companies developing medical information technologies.

At a "Medical Innovation Summit" on Oct. 20, 2004, Lester Crawford, the FDA's acting commissioner, thanked the secretary for getting the agency "deeply involved in the use of new information technology to help prevent medication error." One notable example he cited: "the implantable chips and scanners of the VeriChip system our agency approved last week."

After leaving the Cabinet and joining the company board, Thompson received options on 166,667 shares of VeriChip Corp. stock, and options on an additional 100,000 shares of stock from its parent company, Applied Digital Solutions, according to SEC records. He also received $40,000 in cash in 2005 and again in 2006, the filings show.

The Project on Government Oversight called Thompson's actions "unacceptable" even though they did not violate what the independent watchdog group calls weak conflict-of-interest laws.

"A decade ago, people would be embarrassed to cash in on their government connections. But now it's like the Wild West," said the group's executive director, Danielle Brian.

Thompson is a partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, a Washington law firm that was paid $1.2 million for legal services it provided the chip maker in 2005 and 2006, according to SEC filings.

He stepped down as a VeriChip Corp. director in March to seek the GOP presidential nomination, and records show that the company gave his campaign $7,400 before he bowed out of the race in August.

In a TV interview while still on the board, Thompson was explaining the benefits — and the ease — of being chipped when an interviewer interrupted:

"I'm sorry, sir. Did you just say you would get one implanted in your arm?"

"Absolutely," Thompson replied. "Without a doubt."

"No concerns at all?"

"No."

But to date, Thompson has yet to be chipped himself.

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Staging Nukes for Iran?

By Larry Johnson on Sep 5, 2007 in Current Affairs

Why the hubbub over a B-52 taking off from a B-52 base in Minot, North Dakota and subsequently landing at a B-52 base in Barksdale, Louisiana? That’s like getting excited if you see a postal worker in uniform walking out of a post office. And how does someone watching a B-52 land identify the cruise missiles as nukes? It just does not make sense.

So I called a old friend and retired B-52 pilot and asked him. What he told me offers one compelling case of circumstantial evidence. My buddy, let’s call him Jack D. Ripper, reminded me that the only times you put weapons on a plane is when they are on alert or if you are tasked to move the weapons to a specific site.

Then he told me something I had not heard before.

Barksdale Air Force Base is being used as a jumping off point for Middle East operations. Gee, why would we want cruise missile nukes at Barksdale Air Force Base. Can’t imagine we would need to use them in Iraq. Why would we want to preposition nuclear weapons at a base conducting Middle East operations?

His final point was to observe that someone on the inside obviously leaked the info that the planes were carrying nukes. A B-52 landing at Barksdale is a non-event. A B-52 landing with nukes. That is something else.

Now maybe there is an innocent explanation for this? I can’t think of one. What is certain is that the pilots of this plane did not just make a last minute decision to strap on some nukes and take them for a joy ride. We need some tough questions and clear answers. What the hell is going on? Did someone at Barksdale try to indirectly warn the American people that the Bush Administration is staging nukes for Iran? I don’t know, but it is a question worth asking.

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Big Brother: How MI5 kept watch on Orwell



By Cahal Milmo
The Independent
Published: 04 September 2007

"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment," wrote George Orwell in the opening pages of 1984. "How often, or on what system the Thought Police plugged in ... was guess work."

Winston Smith, the pallid and ill-fated hero of Orwell's dystopian masterpiece, is left under no illusions about the all-encompassing nature of Big Brother's surveillance society. Placed under the relentless scrutiny of the Thought Police, Smith's flirtation with free thought and sexual rebellion is ruthlessly expunged.

What Orwell, the Eton-educated author and passionate socialist, could not have known, however, was the uncanny parallel between his nightmarish vision of an all-seeing dictatorship and his own status for more than a decade as a target for the close scrutiny of the British security services.

The personal MI5 file of the literary standard bearer of the British Left, published today after being kept secret for nearly 60 years, reveals how Orwell was closely monitored for signs of treacherous or revolutionary political views by Scotland Yard's Special Branch from 1929 until the height of the Second World War. While toiling as a cash-starved foreign correspondent and a struggling author, detectives formed the view that Orwell was a louche "bohemian" who held "advanced communist views".

But while Winston Smith was ultimately crushed in the infamous Room 101, the documents show that Orwell was cleared of any "Thought crime" himself in a clash between the two organisations tracking his conduct. The documents make clear that, rather than condemning the writer as a out-and-out communist, the journalist and novelist was stoutly defended against the Special Branch allegations by his own MI5 case officer.

Released by the National Archives in Kew, west London, the slim Security Service file casts new light on the uneasy relationship between one of the 20th century's most influential writers and the institutions of the British state, which he frequently criticised as unwieldy and unjust.

Shortly before his death in 1950, Orwell handed a female friend working for an anti-communist propaganda unit in the Foreign Office a list of 35 names of people, including Charlie Chaplin and fellow author JB Priestley, who he considered "crypto-communists and fellow-travellers". The revelation in 1996 brought allegations that Orwell had betrayed left-wing friends and acquaintances while pandering to the Big Brother tendencies of an Establishment in the grip of what became the Cold War.

Little did Orwell know that his relationship with the more shadowy elements of the British state had begun more than 20 years earlier while he was scratching a living in Paris as a freelance correspondent for several British newspapers, including the Daily Express, after resigning from the colonial Indian Police Service.

The MI5 documents show the extent of the anti-communist surveillance network set up by the British to monitor Soviet influence by citing an unnamed informer in the French capital who warned Special Branch in 1929 that Orwell, at the time a complete unknown to the authorities, had offered his services to Workers' Life, later the Daily Worker, the official paper of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

The informer sought to substantiate any suspicion by reporting that the author of Animal Farm and 1984, who was still using his birth name, Eric Blair, and only used Orwell as his literary pseudonym, was to be found in Parisian cafés reading left-wing newspapers and had, supposedly, not mixed with French communists to avoid attracting the attention of the Parisian authorities.

The file makes it clear that the interest in Orwell, who was the son of a senior civil servant in the Raj, was heightened because of his abrupt departure from his post in the Indian police. He had resigned his post a year earlier while on leave in London.

A subsequent Scotland Yard report hinted at his status as a suspected potential dissenter, stating: "Blair gave no official reason for terminating his appointment but is reported to have told his intimate friends he could not bring himself to arrest persons for committing acts which he did not think were wrong."

The episode, which came seven years earlier than any previously known surveillance of the author, was the beginning of a series of regular appearances by Orwell in the annals of anti-communist surveillance by Special Branch over 13 years. His passport application in 1936, carefully copied into his Security Service file, described him as: "6ft 2in, eyes grey, hair brown, tattoo marks on backs of hands." When asked to state why he needed the passport, Orwell wrote "for the purpose of amusement [and] gathering literary material".

But it was the arrival of the journalist in the less exotic climes of Wigan in February 1936 to research a book on the privations of the working classes in the North that next brought Orwell to the attention of Special Branch.

The Wigan chief constable wrote to Scotland Yard reporting that Orwell had attended a communist meeting in the town and been found accommodation by local party members while collecting information on matters from the number of churches to the state of the surrounding mines.

In return, the Yard sent a detailed account of its information on the "ex-Indian policeman/journalist", explaining how he had spent time researching "Down and Out in London and Paris, his account of life as a derelict, before returning to Britain to work as prep school teacher before becoming ill in 1933 "principally through his experiences as a 'down and out'".

The steady stream of memos from Special Branch, which included reports on Orwell's female acquaintances and his visits to a friend who owned a bookshop in Hampstead, continued until January 1942, when the author seems to have set alarm bells ringing by complaining about a security vetting process while working for the BBC.

Orwell, who used his experience of heading the unit responsible for wartime broadcasts in English to India as the basis for the Ministry of Truth and Room 101 in 1984, made clear his displeasure when the Indian Office turned down a friend and Marxist novelist, Mulk Raj Anand, for a post and vowed to challenge the decision.

On the basis of that and Orwell's attempts to recruit two more Indian intellectuals to his unit, a Yard detective reached some steadfast conclusions about the author's politics. A report from a Sergeant Ewing said: "This man [Orwell] has advanced communist views and several of his Indian friends say they have often seen him at communist meetings. He dresses in a bohemian fashion both at his office and in his leisure hours"

Orwell experts have long pointed out that while he was unapologetic in his embrace of socialism, at one point supporting the formation of a socialist government by "revolutionary means", he was deeply opposed to Soviet communism, not least due to his experiences while fighting in the Spanish Civil War, when he became deeply anti-Stalinist.

But the documents show that support for Orwell came from an unexpected source while he was still working for the BBC. Noting that his recent books had been printed by the avowedly anti-communist publisher Victor Gollancz, whose Left Book Club funded his visit to Wigan, MI5 flatly contradicted the findings of Sergeant Ewing and his superiors.

It was Orwell's case officer, named only as W Ogilvie, who was to play down the bulk of the speculation. Writing in February 1942, he said: "He has been a bit of an anarchist in his day and in touch with extremist elements. But he has lately thrown in his lot with Victor Gollancz who, as you probably know, has severed all connection with the Communist Party. Blair undoubtedly [has] strong left wing views but he is a long way from orthodox communism."

In a separate note, the Security Service officer ridiculed his Special Branch colleague's grasp on the subtleties of left-wing political theory. Ogilvie wrote: "Sgt Ewing described Blair as being 'an unorthodox communist' apparently holding many of their views but by no means subscribing fully to the party's policy.

"I gathered that the good Sergeant was rather at a loss as to how he could describe this rather individual line, hence the expression 'advanced communist views'. It is evident from [Orwell's] recent writings ... that he does not hold with the Communist Party, nor they with him."

The documents suggest that the rebuff was sufficient to curtail the Yard' s interest in Orwell, who was rapidly becoming an established author but was still to write his two best-known books, 1984 and the anti-Stalinist allegory Animal Farm. The only subsequent memos on the file relate to a routine security check on his wife, Eileen, who died during surgery in 1944, and a request for Orwell to be given press accreditation for a visit to Allied Forces headquarters in North Africa in 1943.

But students of Orwell believe he would have been astonished at the closeness and the extent of the scrutiny of his private life. His biographer, Bernard Crick, said: "It is clear from these documents that Orwell was being watched as early as the late 1920s, when he was a complete unknown. It says something about how worried, or indeed almost paranoid, the British state was about communism.

"Orwell made it clear he expected there would be a file on him but he also thought it would have contained little more than his service record with the Indian police. In my opinion, he would have had absolutely no idea that he was being watched to this extent."

Indeed, Orwell was close to the cloak and dagger world of espionage throughout his adventures. It emerged last year that the commander of his militia unit in Spain was an agent for MI5 and the Vichy regime that controlled southern France on behalf of the Nazis.

Georges Kopp, who was a close friend of Orwell and helped to save his life when he was shot in the throat by a Francoist sniper in 1937, worked for both the British and the French during the Second World War. It was also long thought he had an affair with Eileen Blair, who accompanied her husband to Spain but that was recently dispelled in a letter written by Eileen.

The revelations that MI5 believed Orwell was not seeking to undermine the British state after all will cast further light on his motivation for supplying his list of 38 names to Celia Kirwan, a glamorous friend working for the Information Research Department, a semi-clandestine Foreign Office unit set up to counter Soviet propaganda.

His death-bed classification of eminent figures such as the historian EH Carr as an "appeaser" or the actor Michael Redgrave as a suspected crypto-communist was widely held to blacken Orwell's name as an informer. His defenders point out that the literary "Cold Warrior" was acting to safeguard a democratic system against what he considered a potential Soviet insurgency.

Whether he would have changed his mind had he known the Big Brother tendencies of the country he ultimately sought to defend is unclear. Professor Crick said: "Orwell rather over-cooked his own image as the plain man who solely wrote about his own experience. He read everything he could on the Nazis and Communists. That was the basis for the world he describes in 1984. I think he would have been rather surprised to know he was being watched in Britain."

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

SPP Agent Provocateur Cops Caught Red Handed Attempting To Incite Violence


Boots give away undercover cops as real protesters expose criminality

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Peaceful protestors at the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) summit in Montebello have captured sensational video of hired agent provocateurs attempting to incite rioting and turn the protest violent, only to encounter brave resistance from real protest leaders.

A video, posted on YouTube, shows three young men, their faces masked by bandannas, mingling Monday with protesters in front of a line of police in riot gear. At least one of the masked men is holding a rock in his hand, reports the Canadian Press.

The three are confronted by protest organizer Dave Coles, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. Coles makes it clear the masked men are not welcome among his group of protesters, whom he describes as mainly grandparents. He urges them to leave and find their own protest location.

Watch the video:



Notice how the "anarchists" begin to become uncomfortable when Coles and others accuse them of really being cops, while pulling at their face masks. They are seen to edge closer to the uniformed police and engage in some form of discussion. The police then let them pass through their line with very little resistance and "arrest" them in what is plainly a total charade.

More damning proof that the radicals were in fact cops was revealed with the release of photographs of the incident which show that the anarchists have exactly the same footwear on as the cops.

On the soles of their boots are yellow triangles, exactly the same as on the boots of a police officer kneeling beside the men.

While some have said the marks could represent Canadian Safety Industry seals, it seems very coincidental when placed in context with the way the rioters were "subdued".

To compound the evidence, police have stated that only 4 protestors in total have been arrested and charged, two of them being women. Veteran protest organizers have confirmed the identity of the four as genuine protesters.

So what happened to the rock wielding anarchists?

The few radical protestors at the summit have provided police with the pretext to use rubber bullets, tear gas and pepper spray on peaceful protestors.

Neither the RCMP nor the Surete du Quebec would comment on the video or even discuss generally whether they ever use the tactic of employing agents provocateurs, however it has been common practice at previous protests for authorities to employ police or special forces to intentionally infiltrate peaceful protests and cause violence.

In Seattle in 1999 at the World Trade Organisation meeting, the authorities declared a state of emergency, imposed curfews and resorted to nothing short of police state tactics in response to a small minority of hostile black bloc hooligans. In his film Police State 2, Alex Jones covered the fact that the police allowed the black bloc to run riot in downtown Seattle while they concentrated on preventing the movement of peaceful protestors. The film presents evidence that the left-wing anarchist groups are actually controlled by the state and used to demonize peaceful protesters.

At WTO protests in Genoa 2001 a protestor was killed after being shot in the head and run over twice by a police vehicle. The Italian Carabinere also later beat on peaceful protestors as they slept, and even tortured some, at the Diaz School. It later emerged that the police fabricated evidence against the protesters, claiming they were anarchist rioters, to justify their actions. Some Carabiniere officials have since come forward to say they knew of infiltration of the so called Black Bloc anarchists, that fellow officers acted as agent provocateurs.

At the Free Trade Area of Americas protests in Miami in late November 2003, more provocateuring was evident. The United Steelworkers of America calling for a congressional investigation, stating that the police intentionally caused violence and arrested and charged hundreds of peaceful protestors. The USWA suggested that billions of dollars supposedly slated for Iraq reconstruction funds are actually being used to subsidize ‘homeland repression’ in America.