revulsion: November 2005

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

U.S. Customs now reads your blog entries?

November 29, 2005 7:40 PM PST

An Iranian trying to enter the U.S. says border guards barred him from entering because his blog said he was based in New York.

Hossein Derakhshan, who writes a blog on Hoder.com, said in a post last week that he's "homeless" because he was prevented from re-entering the country. Derakhshan says he was born in Tehran and then moved to Toronto, Canada in December 2000.(...)

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Photos: Kids Killed in Iraq, Part 1

Captions by Associated Press.

Two dead Iraqi children lie together shortly before a funeral ceremony in Ramadi, Iraq, west of Baghdad, Wednesday, May 19, 2004. A U.S. helicopter fired on a wedding party in the remote desert near the border with Syria, killing more than 40 people, most of them women and children, Iraqi officials said. The U.S. military said it was investigating. (AP Photo/Emad Al-Mula)

9-year-old Ibtihal Jassem is rescued by her uncle Jaber Jouda, in Basra, Iraq, in this photo dated Saturday March 22, 2003, after the bombing of the Mshan neighbourhood by coalition warplanes. Born deaf and mute, Jassem not only lost her right leg in the U.S. bombing of Basra two days after the war in Iraq began, but also all seven members of her family. After she was rescued by Jaber Jouda, who found her with her right leg almost severed, Jassem has lived with her grandparents.(AP Photo/Nabil El Jourana)

Posing for the camera, 9-year-old Ibtihal Jassem sits near her destroyed home in Basra, Iraq, Wednesday, March 17, 2004. Born deaf and mute, Jassem not only lost her right leg in the U.S. bombing of Basra two days after the war in Iraq began, but also all seven members of her family. After she was rescued by her uncle Jaber Jouda, who found her with her right leg almost severed, Jassem has lived with her grandparents since the March 22 2003 bombing of the Mshan neighbourhood by coalition warplanes. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

** EDS NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT ** Doctors try to revive baby Abdul Khalil after he sustained fatal injuries during an air raid in Fallujah, Iraq, Thursday, Sept. 9, 2004. American warplanes fired missiles on a building used by an al-Qaida-linked militant group in the rebel stronghold of Fallujah early Thursday, the U.S. military said.The military said intelligence showed that three associates of Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were in the area when jets unleashed a precision strike. Dr. Ahmad Thair of the Fallujah General Hospital said five people were killed, including two women and a child, and nine others injured in the strike. The U.S. military had no information about casualties. (AP Photo / Abdul Khader Sadi)

Iraqi children cry next to the body of a boy killed in U.S. airstrikes in Ramadi, Iraq, in this Monday Oct. 17 2005 file photo. U.S. warplanes and helicopters bombed two villages near the restive city of Ramadi, killing an estimated 70 militants, the military said Monday, though witnesses said at least 39 of the dead were civilians. The number of Iraqis who have died violently since the U.S.-led invasion is many times larger than the U.S. military death toll of 2,000 in Iraq. In one sign of the enormity of the Iraqi loss, at least 3,870 civilians were killed in the past six months alone, according to an Associated Press count. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

A relative touches the face of eight-year old Iraqi girl Maha Hassan in the morgue of Baqouba, about 40 miles (60 kms) northeast of Baghdad, Saturday, Nov 22, 2003. Maha was killed in front of the police station in Baqouba on Saturday after it was attacked by a car bomb. Suicide attackers detonated two vehicles Saturday at police stations in towns northeast of Baghdad, and at least 14 people were killed, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)

At nine tonight I got word that 50 people had been killed in an explosion in a shopping center outside Baghdad. Some of the victims had been taken to a nearby mosque. "Can I go in?" I asked when the door opened, though I didn't know what was inside. And maybe because I am a woman, I was ushered into a stark room with signs saying tktkt, where two women were bathing the body of a young relative in preparation for burial. It is unclear whether the explosion was caused by a U.S. bomb or an Iraqi missile, but in the end, it doesn't really matter for this 12-year-old girl. March 29, 2003. (AP Photo/Alexandra Boulat/VII)

Zenab Abas, 12 , lies in her hospital bed in Tikrit surrounded by teddy bears Thursday, Oct 16, 2003 after her sister Channar Abas, 4, died from injuries they sustained after a roadside bomb exploded. The two girls, Zenab Abas, 12 and Channar Abas, 4, were playing on the street when they explosion occurred Thursday morning in Tikrit, 200 kilometers (120 miles) north of Baghdad. (AP Photo/Karel Prinsloo)

A girl, seriously wounded by a cluster bomb bomblet and identified as Tamara Hamze, 12, is transferred to a bed at the Al-Shaheed-Adnan hospital in Baghdad Saturday, April 19, 2003. According to witnesses, Hamze approached soldiers from the 3rd Battalion, 187th Regiment,101st Airborne Division on foot patrol, handed them an explosive, and it blew up. Four U.S. soldiers were injured, two seriously, and two children were killed . It is not clear if the act was an accident or an attempt to kill Americans. (AP Photo/Jean-Marc Bouju)

A child who was wounded by a car bomb explosion is treated at a local hospital in Hillah, Bahdad, Iraq, Friday, Nov. 25, 2005. A car bomb exploded Thursday evening in Hillah, a Shiite city south of Baghdad, killing at least 11 people and injuring 17, hospital officials said. The bomb went off near a crowded soft drink stand, police Capt. Muthanna Khalid said. He said it was unclear whether the car was driven by a suicide attacker. (AP Photo/Alaa al Marjani)

A child cries at Yarmouk hospital in Bahdad, Iraq, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2005, after being wounded by a car bomb explosion. A car bomb detonated outside Mahmoudiya hospital in the center of a town south of Baghdad Thursday, killing 30 and wounding 35, a doctor said. Among the dead were four police guards, three women and two children, said Dr. Dawoud al-Taie, the director of the Mahmoudiya hospital. (AP Phoot/Hadi Mizban)

** EDS NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT ** The lifeless body of a child killed by a suicide car bomber is carried inside the morgue of Mahmoudiya hospital, Iraq, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2005. A suicide car bomber detonated outside Mahmoudiya hospital in the center of a town south of Baghdad on Thursday, killing 30 and wounding 35, a doctor said. Among the dead were four police guards, three women and two children, said Dr. Dawoud al-Taie, the director of the Mahmoudiya hospital. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

** EDS NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT ** A man carries the lifeless body of a child inside the morgue of Yarmouk hospital, in Bahdad, Iraq, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2005. A car bomb detonated outside Mahmoudiya hospital in the center of a town south of Baghdad Thursday, killing 30 and wounding 35, a doctor said. Among the dead were four police guards, three women and two children, said Dr. Dawoud al-Taie, the director of the Mahmoudiya hospital. (AP Phoot/Hadi Mizban)

A boy is consoled by his mother as he is treated at Yarmouk hospital, in Bahdad, Iraq, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2005. A car bomb detonated outside Mahmoudiya hospital in the center of a town south of Baghdad on Thursday, killing 30 and wounding 35, a doctor said. Among the dead were four police guards, three women and two children, said Dr. Dawoud al-Taie, the director of the Mahmoudiya hospital. (AP Phoot/Mahmoud al Badri)

** EDS, NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT ** A child holds a picture of a man carrying a wounded girl, during a protest in Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, Nov. 20, 2005. Hundreds of Iraqis marched in western Baghdad on Sunday demanding an end to the torture of detainees and calling for the international community to put pressure on Iraqi and U.S. authorities to ensure that such abuse does not occur. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

** EDS NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT ** The lifeless body of a child is laid near dead bodies inside the morgue of Yarmouk hospital, in Bahdad, Iraq, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2005. A car bomb detonated outside Mahmoudiya hospital in the center of a town south of Baghdad on Thursday, killing 30 and wounding 35, a doctor said. Among the dead were four police guards, three women and two children, said Dr. Dawoud al-Taie, the director of the Mahmoudiya hospital. (AP Phoot/Hadi Mizban)

The dead bodies of two children lie inside the morgue of Baqouba hospital, Iraq, Monday, Nov. 21, 2005. U.S. forces mistakenly fired on a civilian vehicle outside of an American military base north of Baghdad on Monday, killing at least three people, including one child, a U.S. spokesman said. Five people returning from a relative's funeral, including three children, were killed and two others wounded, said Dr. Ahmed Fouad of the Baqouba city morgue. U.S. officials said they only knew of three deaths in the incident, including one child, and three others wounded. (AP Photo/Mohammed Adnan)

An Iraqi policeman holds a picture of a missing child, handed out to him by the mother of the baby, at the site where two suicide car bombers detonated vehicles in Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, Nov. 18, 2005. A hotel housing foreign journalists was the apparent target, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. The blast was also close to an Interior Ministry building at the center of a torture dispute. At least six people were killed and 43 injured in the blast near the Hamra hotel in the Jadriyah district, officials said. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

A man holds his baby who was injured by a car bomb which exploded near a restaurant in eastern Baghdad, Iraq, early Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2005. The blast killed four people and wounded seven others, including two children playing on the street, police said. The attack appeared to be aimed at a group of policemen having breakfast. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

A child looks on as he stands in front of the wreckage of a car bomb which exploded near a restaurant in eastern Baghdad, Iraq, early Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2005. The blast killed four people and wounded seven others, including two children playing on the street, police said. The attack appeared to be aimed at a group of policemen having breakfast. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

A young girl lies on a bed in Yarmouk hospital awaiting medical attention as her uncle stands beside her, after the car she was travelling in with her family, was shot at along the road leading to the airport, in Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday, May 14, 2005. The girl's father, who was driving, was killed and her mother wounded when American troops fired on their car, the girl's mother said. (AP Photo/Mohammed Uraibi)

A child is treated at a local hospital after being wounded by a mortar round, allegedly targeting a US military base, which hit his house in Al-Karma town, near Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, Nov. 4, 2005. Sunni-led insurgents killed at least 10 Iraqi security forces in two separate attacks in Iraq on Friday, as Shiites began celebrating a major Muslim holiday. (AP Phoot/Hadi Mizban)

** EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT ** Four dead children, belonging to a Kurdish Shiite family, lie inside a morgue in Baqouba, Iraq, Sunday, Nov. 6, 2005. Eleven members of a Kurdish Shiite family were killed Saturday when gunmen sprayed their minibus with automatic weapons' fire northeast of Baghdad, police said. Three other family members were wounded, police added. (AP Photo/Mohammed Adnan)

An Iraqi student, wounded when a rocket hit a school, cries in pain at a hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Oct. 20, 2005. A rocket hit a public school for students aged 12 to 15 in the western al-Mansour neighborhood of the capital, killing one child and wounding five, said police Capt. Qassim Hussein. The blast also killed a nearby shopkeeper, said Hussein.(AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

The body of a child is buried after being found dead in the rubble of collapsed homes, in Ramadi, Iraq, Thursday, Nov. 3, 2005. According to local residents the homes collapsed on Wednesday after a U.S. fighter jet dropped two 500-pound bombs on what the U.S. military described as an "insurgent command center" about 400 yards from where a U.S. helicopter went down, near Ramadi.(AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

A man with a blood stained shirt walks away after carrying an Iraqi student, laying on the bed, to a hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Oct. 20, 2005 after the girl was wounded when a rocket hit a school. A rocket hit a public school for students aged 12 to 15 in the western al-Mansour neighborhood of the capital, killing one child and wounding five, said police Capt. Qassim Hussein. The blast also killed a nearby shopkeeper, said Hussein.(AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

Iraqis grieve around the body of a 6 year old girl killed by a car bomb in Samarra, Iraq, Friday Oct. 7 2005. Three other people from the same family were also wounded in the explosion late Thursday.(AP Photo/Hameed Rasheed)

Ali Hussein, an Iraqi child, lies on a hospital bed in Mosul, Iraq, where he was transferred after being wounded in a suicide bombing in Tal Afar, Wednesday, Oct. 12 2005.The bomber set off explosives hidden beneath his clothing at the first of two checkpoints outside the recruiting center in Tal Afar, where men were gathering to apply for jobs, said army Capt. Raad Ahmed and town police chief Brig. Najim Abdullah. They said at least 30 people were killed and 35 wounded.(AP Photo/Mohammed Ibrahim)

An Iraqi man carries a wounded child into an emergency room in Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday Oct. 4 2005, following a suicide attack on the edge of the Green Zone. A suicide attacker set off a car bomb at the main entrance to the heavily fortified Green Zone, a district of Iraqi government buildings and the U.S. and British Embassies. The powerful blast killed two policemen.(AP Photo/Mohammed Uraibi)

** GRAPHIC CONTENT **An Iraqi medic washes a child as it cries in pain after suffering burns when mortar rounds landed on a market in Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday Oct. 11 2005. Insurgents determined to wreck Iraq's constitutional referendum killed nearly 45 people and wounded dozens in a series of attacks Tuesday, including a suicide car bomb that ripped apart a crowded market in a town near the Syrian border, police said.(AP Photo/Karim Kadim)

Family members stand around coffins of five of the seven members of an Iraqi family, incuding two young children, in school in Samarra, Iraq, Sunday, Sept. 25, 2005 who were killed when their home was hit by mortar shells. In Baghdad a suicide car bomber struck an Interior Ministry convoy on Sunday, killing seven police commandos and two civilians. (AP Photo/Hameed Rasheed)

An Iraqi woman reacts next to a wounded child in Hillah, Iraq, Friday Sept. 30, 2005 following a car bomb attack by Sunni-led insurgents. On Friday, a car bomb exploded in a bustling vegetable market in the mostly Shiite city of Hillah, killing at least nine people, including three women and two children, and wounding 41, said Dr. Mohammed Beirum of Hillah General Hospital. (AP Photo/Alla Al-Marjani)

An Iraqi boy receives treatment for head wounds he received in an explosion at a mosque, Friday Aug. 12, 2005, in Al-Nasaf, 25 kms. (15 miles) east of Ramadi, central Iraq. Locals claim that during Friday prayers an artillery shell was fired into the Ibn Al-Jawzi Mosque killing 4 and injuring at least 19, of which 3 dead were children. Iraqis blamed U.S. forces, but an American military spokesman disputed the Iraqi account. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

A father carries his two children Abdulla, 8, and Samar, 9, from the Kindi hospital after treatment for wounds sustained in one of the three massive car bomb attacks, Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2005, in Baghdad, Iraq. Two car bombs exploded Wednesday morning at the al-Nahda bus station and one in front of neighboring Kindi hospital that was receiving injured people, killing over 40 and injuring over 80. (AP Photo/Mohammed Hato)

** CORRECTS ARTILLERY SHELL TO EXPLOSION ** An Iraqi boy receives treatment for head wounds he received in an explosion at a mosque, Friday Aug. 12, 2005, in Al-Nasaf, 25 kms. (15 miles) east of Ramadi, central Iraq. Locals claim that during Friday prayers an artillery shell was fired into the Ibn Al-Jawzi Mosque killing 4 and injuring at least 19, of which 3 dead were children. Iraqis blamed U.S. forces, but an American military spokesman disputed the Iraqi account. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

** CORRECTS ARTILLERY SHELL TO EXPLOSION ** An Iraqi boy is carried into the main hospital for massive head wounds he received in an explosion at a mosque, Friday Aug. 12, 2005, in Al-Nasaf, 25 kms. (15 miles) east of Ramadi, central Iraq. Locals claim that during Friday prayers an artillery shell was fired into the Ibn Al-Jawzi Mosque killing 4 and injuring at least 19, of which 3 dead were children. Iraqis blamed U.S. forces, but an American military spokesman disputed the Iraqi account. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

An Iraqi boy receives stitches for a face wound he received in an explosion at a mosque, Friday Aug. 12, 2005, in Al-Nasaf, 25 kms. (15 miles) east of Ramadi, central Iraq. Locals claim that during Friday prayers an artillery shell was fired into the Ibn Al-Jawzi Mosque killing 4 and injuring at least 19, of which 3 dead were children. Iraqis blamed U.S. forces, but an American military spokesman disputed the Iraqi account. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

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What's the buzz? Teens can't stand it

By Sarah Lyall
The New York Times

BARRY, Wales--Though he did not know it at the time, the idea came to Howard Stapleton when he was 12 and visiting a factory with his father, a manufacturing executive in London.

Opening the door to a room where workers were using high-frequency welding equipment, he found he could not bear to go inside.

"The noise!" he complained.

"What noise?" the grownups asked.

Now 39, Stapleton has taken the lesson he learned that day--that children can hear sounds at higher frequencies than adults can--to fashion a novel device that he hopes will provide a solution to the eternal problem of obstreperous teenagers who hang around outside stores and cause trouble.

The device, called the Mosquito ("It's small and annoying," Stapleton said), emits a high-frequency pulsing sound that, he said, can be heard by most people younger than 20 and almost no one older than 30. The sound is designed to so irritate young people that after several minutes, they cannot stand it and go away.

So far, the Mosquito has been road-tested in only one place, at the entrance to the Spar convenience store in this town in South Wales. Like birds perched on telephone wires, surly teenagers used to plant themselves on the railings just outside the door, smoking, drinking, shouting rude words at customers and making regular disruptive forays inside.(...)

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CDC Proposal Would Help U.S. Track Travelers

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 23, 2005; A02

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a phone-book-thick proposed rule yesterday that would give the federal government new powers to track the comings and goings of individual travelers and expand the circumstances under which passengers exposed to a serious communicable disease could be isolated or quarantined.

The proposed changes are the latest in a series of preparatory moves aimed at solidifying federal health officials' legal authority to take actions aimed at slowing the spread of emerging contagious diseases, such as pandemic flu.

The new provisions -- the costs of which would fall mostly on the travel industry -- call for greater scrutiny of passengers for signs of illness and greater efforts by airlines and others to obtain personal contact information from travelers. They also broaden the list of symptoms that would make people subject to quarantine.

Although the rules strengthen federal authority to isolate passengers suspected of being infected, they also spell out in unprecedented detail key legal rights, including appeals processes, for citizens. The agency will accept public comment for 60 days before issuing a final regulation.

Officials said they are confident that the vast majority of Americans will support the changes so the government could better protect them from a major outbreak -- whether naturally occurring or from a bioterrorism attack.

"We're not talking about quarantining anybody for a sniffle or a cough," said Martin Cetron, director of the CDC's division of global migration and quarantine, in a conference call with reporters.

He added that although travelers would be asked to provide more personal information -- including phone numbers and e-mail addresses -- the goal is simply to be able to contact people if it becomes apparent they sat near an infected person while traveling.(...)

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Spy in the sky to spot energy-wasting homes.

November 23, 2005

erial thermal imaging is being used to record heat loss from residential properties, enabling councils to pinpoint energy "hotspots" across the country.

Leicester city council is using the system to target homeowners for free cavity and roof insulation.

At the centre of the scheme is an aerial thermal imaging service from BlueSky. Coupled with digital mapping and geographical information systems, a thermographic map of any given area can be produced to indicate which properties are emitting the most heat.

Thermal scanning works by picking up differences in surface heat. BlueSky uses a modified military-use scanner mounted on the underside of a twin-engine aircraft to record the analogue images.

Via The Guardian.

Check also Future Currents, a Design Council website full of ideas for putting householders in control of the energy they use, produce or even sell. It also has a downloadable windmill application, which tells you how much energy you could produce with your own wind turbine and how much power it takes to produce a slice of toast.

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Feds to Fund Controversial School Surveillance

In what some allege is a thinly veiled attempt to normalize surveillance, a federal agency is pumping more money into Big Brother programs that track students despite declining needs for school security.

by Catherine Komp

Nov 29 - As debate over government surveillance rages in adult society, the US Department of Justice is quietly enticing school districts to implement controversial technologies that monitor and track students. Critics fear these efforts will normalize electronic surveillance at an early age, conditioning young people to accept privacy violations while creating a market for companies that develop and sell surveillance systems.

A few of the nation’s schools are already running pilot programs to monitor students’ movements using radio frequency identification (RFID). The highly controversial programs, implemented in the name of student protection, see pupils wearing tags around their necks and submitting themselves to electronic scanning as they enter and leave school property. Now, a new federal grant could lure more districts into using these or similar technologies.(..)

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Ever-Expanding Powers

The Pentagon's Domestic Spying Operation

By MIKE WHITNEY

The strategy to militarize the country is moving forward as planned despite apparent setbacks in Iraq. As the Washington Post reported on Nov. 27 the Dept of Defense is expanding its domestic surveillance activity to allow Pentagon spies to track down and "investigate crimes within the United States".

An alarmed Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore) said, "We are deputizing the military to spy on law-abiding Americans in America. This is a huge leap without a congressional hearing".

Is this the first time that the naïve Wyden realized that the war on terror is actually directed at the American people?(...)

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Monday, November 28, 2005

Music industry seeks access to private data to fight piracy

Bobbie Johnson
Saturday November 26, 2005
The Guardian

The music and film industries are demanding that the European parliament extends the scope of proposed anti-terror laws to help them prosecute illegal downloaders. In an open letter to MEPs, companies including Sony BMG, Disney and EMI have asked to be given access to communications data - records of phone calls, emails and internet surfing - in order to take legal action against pirates and filesharers. Current proposals restrict use of such information to cases of terrorism and organised crime.(...)

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French MPs back surveillance plan

France's lawmakers have voted to accept anti-terror measures which would boost video surveillance in public places.
The bill will allow cameras to be used on public transport and in places of worship, shops and other public areas.

The bill has been criticised by civil rights groups, but Mr Sarkozy says it strikes the right balance between security and personal freedoms.

The house will take a final vote on the whole bill on Tuesday. The upper house will discuss it in January.(...)

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It keeps the men happy...

posted by lenin
November 26, 2005

The revelation that the US has been running a mini-Guantanamo prison in Kosovo may not be a surprise to any of those who remember the involvement of UNMIK and K-FOR in the dramatic escalation of sex-slavery in the 'protectorate'. Not to mention in Bosnia where DynCorp, a private military contractor with close links to the US government was found to have been involved in sex-slavery. (The same company is running security operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and the US-Mexico border, while also piloting the aircrafts that dump poison on Colombian farmland. Dyncorp was also charged with the task of protecting Aristide, who had disbanded the Haitian army, which is why he was so easily deposed, and they have since trained the new national police force, bringing several Tonton Macoutes leaders back into state power).

Similarly, in South Korea, where US troops are stationed, the International Organisation for Migration reports that local US military commanders have forged agreements with local business and government to promote a prostitution complex in camp-towns, based on the enforced trafficking of sex slaves from former Soviet states and the Phillipines. The idea, it seems, is to "keep the men happy". (...)

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Thursday, November 24, 2005

Madonna's 9/11 Comments Underline Danger Of Political Celebrity Bandwagon

Paul Joseph Watson
November 22 2005

In one sense it's a positive development, Bush-bashing has reached an all time high of 'trendyness'.

Hollywood celebrities are falling over one another in the scramble to give their two cents about recent events. It has turned into a bandwagon.

While some may view a cultural climate of government cynicism as healthy for American freedom, its artificial sheen disguises underlying dangers for the information war.(...)

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DRONES 'TO FLY OVER CITIES'

By Matt Drudge

HONEYWELL is developing a micro flying spy drone -- that would be used for civilian law enforcement!
The device, a hovering robot carrying video cameras and other sensors, is being created and tested at HONEYWELL's Albuquerque, NM plant.
The first round of testing on the drone [MICRO AIR VEHICLE] has been completed, reports Bob Martin of CBS affiliate KRQE.
The battery powered craft can stay in the air for 50-60 minutes at a time, and moves around at up to 55 kilometers an hour.
The Micro Air Vehicle has flown more than 200 successful flights, including flying in a representative urban environment.
"If there is an emergency, you could provide "eyes" on whatever the emergency is, for police or Homeland Security," explains Vaughn Fulton of HONEYWELL.
In the meantime, the U.S. Army has prepared a promotional video showing the craft zooming over war-zone streets.
Drones have been given to the military to test during training exercises.
"It has the same system most fighter jets would have," explains Fulton.
The vehicle will be used for reconnaissance, security and target acquisition operations in open, rolling, complex and urban terrain; it will be equipped with Global Positioning Satellite.
HONEYWELL and government officials are meeting to discuss the status of the project.
Troops in Iraq could get the craft in a year or two.
The spy drone would be deployed for domestic use shortly thereafter.
Developing...

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Strom Thurmond High School eliminates ID cards; deploys BIO-key's Biometric Identification software

Thursday, November 10 2005

A South Carolina high school has abandoned regular student ID cards, choosing instead to go with an ID system that would work with its current cafeteria and library software. The school chose something students couldn't lose or forget--biometric finger scanning from BIO-key.(...)

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Call for ID cards to get smart

By Jane Wakefield
BBC News technology reporter

The idea of a UK identity card has stirred up controversy but it looks increasingly likely to become part of most people's wallets from 2008.

The scheme faces a rocky ride through the Lords before it makes it onto the statute book, and critics are likely to continue arguing that the scheme is unnecessarily intrusive and offers few benefits.

But a new voice is being heard. It is not asking for the scheme to be scrapped but for the ID card to work for citizens in ways that make it useful beyond the government's remit for it.

The government's line that the card will be an effective means of combating terrorism and benefit fraud has failed to excite the majority of the public.

However, some in the technology industry argue that a smart card with a range of functions, including acting as an enabler for e-shopping, might win over sceptics.(...)

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Talking Cameras Baltimore-Bound

November 17, 2005

City Hopes To Deter Vandalism, Illegal Dumping

BALTIMORE -- Scofflaws beware, the next on-street surveillance camera could talk to you.
Baltimore City's Board of Estimates recently approved the purchase of five talking cameras at a cost of $5,000 apiece.
According to The Baltimore Sun, city officials will employ the talking cameras to catch vandals and litterbugs.
A motion detector activates the camera to capture still pictures, and the device calls out with a recorded message.
"We will use (the picture) to prosecute you. Leave the area now," the voice says.(...)

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Lie detectors may be next step in airline security

Reuters
Published on ZDNet News
November 17, 2005, 12:10 PM PT

new walk-through airport lie detector made in Israel may prove to be the toughest challenge yet for potential hijackers or drug smugglers.

Tested in Russia, the two-stage GK-1 voice analyzer requires that passengers don headphones at a console and answer "yes" or "no" into a microphone to questions about whether they are planning something illicit.
The software will almost always pick up uncontrollable tremors in the voice that give away liars or those with something to hide, say its designers at Israeli firm Nemesysco.
"In our trial, 500 passengers went through the test, and then each was subjected to full traditional searches," said Chief Executive Officer Amir Liberman. "The one person found to be planning something illegal was the one who failed our test."(...)

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Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Brutal suppression of the Equality March in Poznań

22 Nov 2005 12:42 GMT

On Saturday 19 November 2005 in Poznań the Equality March took place, or rather, should have taken place. It was hoped to display tolerance, equal rights, women's rights and against discrimination against people of other sexual orientations. Until now, all marches of this type in Poland have been confronted by enmity from politicians: conservatives talked about "immoral, upsetting promotion of homosexuality", neoliberals made the marches illegal for reasons of "lack of security". The Młodzież Wszechpolska youths call participants of the Equality Marches homo-terrorists. The Board Secretary of Młodzież Wszechpolska, Mariusz Tomczak, wrote that: "...Leftists and anarchists are the enemies of democracy, who question legal order and dream of turning society upside down." This time it was similar - the march was made illegal by the authorities [Mayor Grobel (with support from PO); the ban was also supported by regional leader Nowakowski from the SLD] and attacked by fighters and police.(...)

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Washington Post Explains How the Nazi-Created CIA Protects Us

Friday November 18th 2005, 9:31 am

Dana Priest of the Washington Post tells us the CIA has “joint operation centers in more than 2 dozen nations” and the agency’s job is “to track and capture suspected terrorists and to destroy or penetrate their networks.” Never mind that the CIA created the Islamic Terror Network (along with MI6, Mossad, and other intelligence “services”) and this is sort of like a cop selling drugs to a street corner pusher and then busting the dealer and his customers. Call it job security, or rather terror security. If not for the CIA’s billion dollar effort in Afghanistan, there would be no al-Qaeda. But I suppose we can’t expect Priest and the Washington Post to mention such bothersome details.

Priest writes: “The Americans and their counterparts at the centers, known as CTICs [Counterterrorist Intelligence Centers], make daily decisions on when and how to apprehend suspects, whether to whisk them off to other countries for interrogation and detention, and how to disrupt al Qaeda’s logistical and financial support.” In other words, the CIA and its freelancers are completely out of the accountability loop and are free to kidnap anybody they want, mostly Arab and Muslim cab drivers and dirt farmers, and torture, rape, and kill them. Of course, this does not put an end to terrorism but instead make sure more terrorism is created, as the victims of this abuse and sadism are certain to become “al-Qaeda” terrorists or sympathizers, that is to say they will support attacks against the United States (since “al-Qaeda” is more a state of mind than an actual organization).(...)

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Tuesday, November 22, 2005

The Global Elite: Who Are They?

Patrick Wood
November 21, 2005
NewsWithViews.com

There are two common misconceptions held by those who are critical of globalism.

The first error is that there is a very small group of people who secretly run the world with all-powerful and unrestrained dictatorial powers. The second error is that there is a large amorphous and secret organization that runs the world. In both cases, the use of the word "they" becomes the culprit for all our troubles, whoever "they" might be. If taxes go up, it is "they" that did it. If the stock market goes down, "they" are to blame. Of course, nobody really knows who "they" are so a few figureheads (people or organizations) are often made out to be the scapegoats.

Depending on a person's politics and philosophy, the scapegoats could be the U.S. President, the ACLU, the Ford Foundation, or Vladimir Putin. The point is, the real power structure is not correctely defined, and thus escapes exposure.(...)

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The End Of Habeas Corpus in Great Britain

by Jean-Claude Paye

The British Parliament adopted a new antiterrorist law, the Prevention of Terrorism Act, on March 11, 2005. By doing so, Parliament made it possible for the government to carry out the long-standing project of expanding the emergency provisions to which foreigners are subjected within the context of the war on terrorism to cover the whole population, including citizens. This change is important because it calls into question the notion of habeas corpus. The law attacks the formal separation of powers by giving to the secretary of state for home affairs judicial prerogatives. Further, it reduces the rights of the defense practically to nothing. It also establishes the primacy of suspicion over fact, since measures restricting liberties, potentially leading to house arrest, could be imposed on individuals not for what they have done, but according to what the home secretary thinks they could have done or could do. Thus, this law deliberately turns its back on the rule of law and establishes a new form of political regime.(...)

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Friday, November 18, 2005

Machines and objects to overtake humans on the Internet: ITU

Machines will take over from humans as the biggest users of the Internet in a brave new world of electronic sensors, smart homes, and tags that track users' movements and habits, the UN's telecommunications agency predicted.

In a report entitled "Internet of Things", the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) outlined the expected next stage in the technological revolution where humans, electronic devices, inanimate objects and databases are linked by a radically transformed Internet.

"It would seem that science fiction is slowly turning into science fact in an 'Internet of Things' based on ubiquitous network connectivity," the report said Thursday, saying objects would take on human characteristics thanks to technological innovation.

"Today, in the 2000s, we are heading into a new era of ubiquity, where the 'users' of the Internet will be counted in billions and where humans may become the minority as generators and receivers of traffic," it added.

Currently there are about 875 million Internet users worldwide, a number that may simply double if humans remain the primary users of the future.

But experts are counting on tens of billions of human and inanimate "users" in future decades.

They would be tied into an all pervasive network where there would be no need to power up a computer to connect -- "anytime, anywhere, by anyone and anything", the report said.

Remote computer-controlled household appliances are already appearing, as well as prototype cars with collision-avoidance sensors.

Mobile phones can be used as electronic train tickets while meat exports from Namibia or goods for US retail chain Wal-Mart are tagged with sensors to allow them to be tracked.

The ITU's vision goes further, highlighting refrigerators that independently communicate with grocery stores, washing machines that communicate with clothing, implanted tags with medical equipment and vehicles with stationary or moving objects.

Industrial products would also become increasingly "smart", gaining autonomy and the intelligence thanks to miniaturised but more powerful computing capacity.

"Even particles and 'dust' might be tagged and networked", the ITU said.

"In this way the virtual world would map the real world, given that everything in our physical environment would have its own identity (a passport of sorts) in virtual cyberpsace," the report forecast.

The trend is being fuelled by a small number of technological developments, including miniature radio frequency RFID electronic tags that allow immediate identification and tracking, and new sensor technology, as well as smart devices and nanotechnology.

While the report laid out economic opportunities, a huge expansion of the IT industry and innovation in a wide range of fields from health to entertainment, it also warned of a number of challenges, including privacy issues.

Some of the applications envisaged for emerging RFID tags are to replace human ID documents, track consumer habits, or banknotes.

The ITU said tighter linkages would be needed between those that create the technology and those that use it to cope with its forecast new world.

"In a world increasingly mediated by technology, we must ensure that the human core of our activities remains untouched," the report concluded.

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Canada - 'Massive empire of surveillance'

by David Carrigg
November 16, 2005

All cellphone, Blackberry, Net subscriber info available without warrant

Police would be able to demand all cellphone, Blackberry and Internet subscriber information without a warrant, under a sweeping surveillance bill introduced in Parliament yesterday.

"We believe this is only the tip of the iceberg," said Micheal Vonn, policy director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.

The Modernization of Investigative Techniques Act would also require telecommunications companies like Telus and Bell to build into their systems a way to monitor and record every wireless communication made by their customers -- at a huge cost.

Currently, a telecommunications company can readily tap a telephone land line if police have a warrant, but tapping new technologies likes Blackberries, Internet and cellphones is not so easy.

"We are obviously creating a massive empire of surveillance by embedding it in the infrastructure," Vonn said.

Telus spokesman Parke Davis said the company has "issues" with the bill, in particular the requirement for a substantial investment in surveillance technology that would be passed on to consumers.

"We have concerns because while we support the principle of providing lawful access, we're being asked to shoulder the costs of providing this access almost as an unpaid deputy for the government," Davis said.

Davis said a key change under the bill would be that police would not need a warrant to get a customer's unlisted phone number, cellphone number and records or Internet provider address.

Vonn said the bill was driven by police and was questioned by the telecommunications industry and civil liberties groups during consultations.

"There was no support for this bill in any other realm," Vonn said.

"The point here is, if the police can't be troubled with getting a warrant, it's because they haven't met the standard of reasonable and probable grounds to access the warrant. On some level, it is what we would call a fishing expedition."

Particularly troubling, she said, is that the originally proposed bill is "much more draconian" than what was presented to Parliament yesterday.

"We think they will end up parceling it out and yesterday was the first parcel."

Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan said Canada is "well behind other nations" when it comes to giving law-enforcement agencies such tools.

The government says release of Internet subscriber information to authorities without a warrant would be subject to stringent privacy safeguards.

For instance, only designated police or the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service could make such a request. They would have to record the reasons and make the files available for audit.

Critics said the protection regime is weak because it occurs after the disclosure has been made.

"Unfortunately, the bill does precisely what privacy advocates warned against by increasing surveillance and decreasing oversight," the University of Ottawa's Michael Geist said.

Other elements of the plan that would spell out how companies must go about preserving electronic message data and the manner in which authorities can gain access to it is expected in a follow-up bill from Justice Minister Irwin Cotler.

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Towards the Canadian Homeland Security State

by Connie Fogal
November 17, 2005

"Massive Empire of Surveillance"

The sweeping surveillance bill introduced in the Canadian Parliament November 15,2005 called

The Modernization of Investigative Techniques Act.

The sweeping surveillance bill introduced in Parliament November 15,2005 called The Modernization of Investigative Techniques Act is a gross violation of Canadian civil liberties, of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and of our Constitutional entitlements. It must not be tolerated . Every politician who supports it is an enemy of Canada, our people, and our freedom. Every Canadian who cares about his/ her liberty must take a stand now. It is truly a question of liberty vs a police state. This Act is an attack on not only freedom of speech, but freedom of thought. It is Orwell's 1984 coming to fruition.
The Canadian Action Party months ago requested a copy of this bill, but our government has failed to release it to us. The only details of the terms of the pending bill that we gleaned came from the media, both mainstream and internet. The philosophy and real reasons for it we have learned by examining the following documents which we obtained from the internet. (Will this Bill threaten or restrict our capability to conduct such research in the future? Am I to be defined as a "terrorist" for challenging it?)

1. The discussion paper of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives posted on their website November 2, 2005 called, "Building a 21st Century Canada- United States Partnership in North America, April 2004".

See: http://www.ceocouncil.ca/en/view/?document_id=365&area_id=7

2. "The Canada-US Smart Border Declaration" with a 30 point action Plan signed December 12,2001.

See: http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/newsroom/factsheets/2002/sep/smart-e.html

3. "The Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement" signed by President Bush, President Fox and Martin in March, 2005.

See: http://www.pm.gc.ca/eng/news.asp?id=443

4. "The Report of Ministers to the Leaders" (President Bush, President Fox, Prime Minister Martin) -SPP- (Security and Prosperity Partnership)- North America, June 2005

See: http://www.fac-aec.gc.ca/SPP-report.PDF

Anne McLellan, Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, David Emerson, Minister of Industry, and Pierre Pettigrew, Minister of Foreign Affairs are the reporting Ministers for Canada.

5. Report of the Independent Task Force on the Future of North America called "Building A North American Community."

See: Trilateral Task Force Recommendations,
http://www.usembassycanada.gov/content/can_usa/northamericancommunity_TF_final.pdf

These reports and agreements reveal a very disturbing fact. Prime Minister Martin and his Ministers are not setting policy for Canada. They are taking instructions from the USA's president Bush and doing his bidding. The background force driving all the Leaders of Canada, Mexico and USA are the Chief Executive officers of the most influential corporations of those three countries.

The most influential chief executive officers of the three nations want a unified North America by 2010. They need an enforcement system. This bill to spy on good citizens, especially those who will dissent and oppose this system, is one prong of that policing mechanism.

In the "Report of Ministers to the Leaders" -SPP- North America, June 2005, (number 4 above) the Ministers report that on March 23, 2005 the three Leaders of Canada, Mexico and USA instructed their respective Ministers to create an "architecture" which would further enhance the security of North America. The report of the Ministers refers to the commitment of the Three Leaders on March 23, 2005 to "Establish a common approach to security to protect North America from external threats, prevent and respond to threats within North America....".

The Ministers report that experts from the three countries met between March and June of 2005 developing specific plans and objectives to meet the common security goals in an "evolving and strengthening North American Relationship". The Ministers report that they have established plans to enhance partnerships on intelligence and information sharing including developing a comprehensive law enforcement strategy.

The United States just recently passed their internet spying law. My guess is the language of The Modernization of Investigative Techniques Act is modeled on the USA Internet spying act, just as our anti terrorism law, the Public Safety Act, mirrors the USA Patriot Act .

The Canada -US Smart Border Declaration was signed December 12, 2001 by John Manley when he was Deputy Prime Minister and Tom Ridge US Homeland Security Director. Point 24 of this 30 point action plan refers to Joint Enforcement Coordination- a comprehensive and permanent coordination of law enforcement , anti terrorism efforts and information sharing. Point 25 is about Integrated Intelligence- joint teams to analyze and disseminate information and intelligence, and to produce threat and intelligence assessments.

This internet, e mail, cell phone spying is not about pornography as Anne McLellan whitewashes to sell it. Her hypocrisy here is as guilty as the duplicity found out it the Gomery report on fiscal corruption in the system.

The 9/11 justification is wearing more than thin. What the ministers call "architecture", I call the trappings of a police state. I do not want it. No Canadians were asked if we wanted it. No Canadians were asked if we wanted a regime change into an unaccountable unelected North American Union ruled by Orwellian laws that imprison us. The Empire of Surveillance must be struck down! All Canadians are entitled to security and prosperity, not imprisonment and poverty.

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Thursday, November 17, 2005

New Support-Center Tool Detects Emotion In Voice Of Disgruntled Callers

Software automatically alerts supervisors when customers voice frustration about company's goods and services.

By Eric Chabrow
March 25, 2005

Not long ago, an elderly man distressed over high medical premiums phoned the call center at Wisconsin Physician Services Insurance Corp. The caller was highly emotional, making it tough for the call-center agent to calm him so his problem could be addressed. The frustrated policyholder hung up. But the call-center IT system was aware of the customer's exasperation, and automatically fired off an E-mail alert to the agent's supervisor, who immediately listened to a digital recording of the conversation.
Moments later, the supervisor called the customer, and suggested ways to lower the premium--by increasing the deductible, for instance. The customer agrees to the policy changes. "All in all, we ended up with a happy customer," says Sharon Whitwam, the insurer's VP of member services.

Keeping customers happy is crucial for most businesses, and knowing when they're disgruntled is important to the Madison, Wis., health insurer. Last year, WPS began using new software that provides this insight. The software is called Perform and was created by call-center software provider Nice Systems Ltd., an Israeli company, which began widely marketing the product this month.

How does emotion detection work? Using algorithms, which Nice Systems spent nearly $30 million to develop, the system determines a baseline of emotion during the first five to 10 seconds of a call, when most people usually aren't excited or frustrated. Any deviation from that baseline, based on 26 parameters, can trigger an alert.

The software conducts a flow analysis of each call, examining 200 elements to give a holistic picture of the customer experience. Besides emotion detection, Perform uses two other methods to analyze customer experiences with call centers. The software allows users to create lexicons of words and phrases a caller may say that could raise red flags: cancellation, frustration, or a competitor's name. Perform also tracks the history of a call: the length of time a customer had to wait to speak to an agent, the number of times placed on hold, and the number of times a caller is transferred. The user sets up parameters to determine who and how a supervisor should be contacted. The system also allows callers to rate their experience with the agent after the conversation ends. Nice integrates with Microsoft .Net client-server technology, as well as most enterprise-resource-planning and customer-relationship-management systems.

The voice-quality systems monitoring market reached about $800 million last year, says Eyal Danon, Nice Systems' senior VP of sales and marketing, and he expects it to increase by 15% to 20% this year. In following years, he predicts, triple-digit percentage growth should occur as more businesses learn about the technology. He says 65% of Fortune 500 companies use Nice Systems technology.

A major attraction of emotion-detection technology is its promised ability to help identify customer frustration, a bane to executives who fear customers might take their business elsewhere because of poor customer service. A recent study by the Customer Care Alliance and Arizona State University suggests that nearly three-quarters of Americans have experienced customer rage when talking to a call center, with half swearing they'll never do business with that company again.

Voice analytical systems also are being exploited to learn more about customers and employees. Wisconsin law annually requires insurers to notify by mail Medicare supplemental policyholders about their policies. These letters contain technical terms and legalese, prompting calls from some muddled customers about their meaning. WPS uses Perform's word-spotting feature that identifies common words callers use, such as "I'm confused," "I don't understand," and "Why am I getting this?" Reports generated by these calls are forwarded to marketing experts, who also listen to some of the chats. This helps them create better ways to communicate with the insurer's customers. "Instead of looking at a phone call as a single transaction, we look at the information from the phone calls as a broader, business-intelligence perspective," WPS's Whitwam says.

WPS also allows call-center-agent recruits to listen to recordings of calls to give them a better idea of what to expect from their new jobs.

FedEx's Custom Critical unit, which provides exclusive transportation services aimed at customers with special handling needs, uses the software to help boost employee morale. When a customer uses the word "wow," or the emotion detection software detects gratification from a caller, the conversation is immediately recorded and can be shared with call-center agents.

What's next for emotion detection software? Artificial intelligence. Instead of users defining keywords and emotions, the software itself will figure things out, such as by analyzing voice pitch levels, a key determinant in emotion detection. By analyzing pitch, as well as tone, tempo, and inflection, the software in the not-too-distant future could be used to detect fraud. It already can differentiate between real anger and someone mimicking anger.

"We're taking art of call center management," Danon says, "and turning it into a science."

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Advances In Wireless Biosensor Technology

Academy of Finland
2005-11-15

Led by Professor Jukka Lekkala, the Wireless research project is developing miniscule subcutaneous sensors, which can be used to monitor, for example, the function of the heart or prosthetic joints even over long periods of time. The Academy of Finland is funding the project, whose goal is to provide the more accurate prediction of changes in patient condition and, in turn, even save lives. "For example, a subcutaneous EKG monitor will be able to detect cardiac arrhythmia, and the data for this can then be transmitted wirelessly to the physician's mobile phone or PC," explains Lekkala.

At present patient health status is primarily monitored with supercutaneous sensors. However, wearable and, in particular, implantable, or subcutaneous, biosensors will provide significant advantages over more conventional methods. The biggest problem with conventional measuring systems is poor skin sensor contact. In subcutaneous measuring systems the sensor-to-body contact is more stable. Furthermore, external electrical interference of the measurement signal is reduced, which improves the measurement result. Health care costs are saved, when monitoring is not time and place-dependent: patients will no longer have to make an appointment with the physician for a consultation or tests. Patients under remote supervision can continue living their normal lives for a longer period of time.

This new technology also makes possible measurements and long-term monitoring, which would be practically impossible using existing technologies. For example, the condition of a prosthetic hip joint can now only be monitored using expensive x-ray imaging-based methods.

Subcutaneous biosensors must not cause problems for the patient

The Wireless research project is also producing new data on the design of subcutaneous biosensors. These should be as small as possible. The integration of electronics and development of packaging technologies make it possible to manufacture sensors and electronics on a silicon chip no bigger than a fingernail. Due to its light weight and small size several of these types of chips can be implanted in a sizable area. The sensors might also contain various microsensors, measurement electronics and wireless communication circuits.

In addition to the small size, the packaging is also challenged by the environment into which it is placed. The Wireless research project is developing sensors and technologies which pose no risk to the patient's health. "The work is extremely challenging, because the electronics have to work reliably for long periods of time under the skin, in a moist, corrosive environment, and they must not pose any health hazards, even if the protective coating were to be damaged for some reason," explains Lekkala.

Advances in biomaterial technologies allow the biocompatible coatings of sensors to be customised for each application. It is even possible to incorporate functional elements, such as by enhancing the implant coating with a layer that releases antibiotics. Sensors should also be flexible, so that they can follow the patient's movements. This requires that the sensor circuit boards are flexible and its components are thin enough to bend with the circuit board. A silicon chip reduced to a thickness of less than 0.1 millimetre will be flexible. When this flexible package is coated with a thin, protective and biocompatible material, the entire unit will effectively flex with and withstand the patient's movements while implanted.

Wireless combines electronics, biomaterials and health research

The Wireless research project exploits the know-how of experts from five different fields. In Finland this pioneering group unites experts in physiological modelling, biomaterial technologies, biosensors, wireless communications and electronics packaging technologies. The sensors, which are being developed in Tampere, are expected to be used in major medical, social and commercial application. The project is part of the Academy of Finland Future Electronics (TULE) Research Programme.

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Mind/Computer Interface Advances

By David Needle
November 16, 2005

Speech-recognition is often heralded as one of the next great ease-of-use breakthroughs in computing.

The technology seems to get better every year but never quite good enough for the masses. After all, if you could just tell your computer what to do, wouldn't that be easier than pull-down menus, cut-and-paste and good old typing?

If the speed and ease of speech commands appeals to you, how about the speed of thought?

Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems is doing advanced work on a neural interface and claims early success with quadriplegic patients. So far, its BrainGate Neural Interface System has been used successfully by two quadriplegic patients to control a computer.

The Foxborough, Mass.-based company reported its latest findings of its ongoing pilot study at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington, D.C., this week.

Before working with humans, Cyberkinetics tested the system successfully using monkeys trained to do repetitive tasks manually and then use BrainGate's system.

"We have developed a system that can detect the individual firings of neurons in the brain, the firing of one neuron against another," Tim Surgenor, president and CEO of Cyberkinetics, told internetnews.com. "Secondly, we have shown that even after the spinal cord has been severed, the brain continues to send signals to the rest of the body. And third, we've been able to convert those signals to useful computer control."

The BrainGate system requires participants to have a silicon chip implanted via craniotomy in their brains. The chip is not an integrated circuit but rather a set of electrodes to facilitate the interface between brain and computer.

The first participant, Matthew Nagel, gave up his implant after 15 months and is now involved with another implant study in another field, according to Surgenor. With the second, as yet unnamed male participant, Cyberkinetics is showing it can repeat its success with Nagel.

The current system requires that the brain implant be hooked to a medical cart with a PC and other devices designed to calibrate the brain waves; a technician must be present to perform the calibration. In the future, Surgenor said, they expect to be able to offer a wireless interface and a more automated system that participants can use unattended.

By combining point-and-click with the ability to perform a few keystrokes, disabled users would have greater access to computing resources.

"Think of the Treo smartphone," said Surgenor. "That would be an ideal system, because you only need to operate a small number of keystrokes to access the Internet."

The two study participants have been able to perform point-and-click operations on the computer screen and change channels on a television using the same part of the brain that would control those movements if they had use of their hands. Surgenor said this is different from game systems that hook participants up via electroencephalography.

"With those, you have to meditate and think an abstract thought to make it work," he said. "In the ultimate embodiment of our system, you would not be able to tell that the person moving their arms in a wheelchair and able to carry on a conversation wasn't doing it naturally." Nagel was able to move a robot arm using the BrainGate.

Last month, Cyberkinetics announced a collaboration with Case Western University in a project designed to help restore arm movements through an implantable system of electrodes. "What we provide is the input signal, a kind of control signal to make the arm move," explained Surgenor.

Ultimately Cyberkinetics expects to refine a kind of unobtrusive universal operating system that will enable those with motor impairments to quickly and reliably control a wide range of devices, including computers, assistive technologies and medical devices, simply by using their thoughts. Surgenor said the costs are in the $15,000 to $20,000 range, about comparable to other implantable systems used to help with hearing loss and Parkinson's disease.

As for a more mainstream adoption, Surgenor says his company is focused on medical applications but could look at other areas down the road. "Look at LASIK eye surgery," he said. "When it first came out, it wasn't clear that many people would use it."

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Wednesday, November 16, 2005

173 prisoners found beaten and starved in Iraq government bunker

Jamie Wilson in Washington
Wednesday November 16, 2005

The Iraqi government has begun an investigation into the alleged abuse of more than 170 prisoners who were found locked in an interior ministry bunker in Baghdad, many of them beaten and malnourished and some apparently brutally tortured.
US troops who were searching for a missing teenage boy discovered the detainees on Sunday night during a raid. They were found in an underground cell near an interior ministry bunker in Jadiriya, in middle of the city. "I was informed that there were 173 detainees held at an interior ministry prison and they appear to be malnourished," prime minister Ibrahim Jaafari said. "There is talk that they were subjected to torture," he said.

Earlier a deputy interior minister put the number of prisoners at 161 and said he was stunned by their treatment. "They were being treated in an inappropriate way ... they were being abused," Hussein Kamal told Reuters.

"I've never seen such a situation like this during the past two years in Baghdad. This is the worst," he told CNN. "I saw signs of physical abuse by brutal beating, one or two detainees were paralysed and some had their skin peeled off."

US military sources said troops were shocked when they came across the prisoners, some of whom showed the marks of beatings and looked like they had not been fed well for weeks. "It's not what we expected, we were looking for a 15-year-old boy," a soldier from the US 3rd Infantry Division, the Baghdad-based force which conducted the raid, told Reuters.

Reports received by the Guardian from sources in Baghdad said there were rumours that mutilated corpses and torture instruments had also been found at the underground bunker, including bodies with electric drill holes in their heads.

Mohsen Abdul-Hamid, the head of the country's largest Sunni political party, told the Associated Press he had personally spoken to Mr Jaafari and other government officials about torture at interior ministry detention centres, including the one where the detainees were found. But, he said, the government routinely dismissed his complaints, calling the prisoners "former regime elements."

"According to our knowledge, regrettably, all the detainees were Sunnis," said Mr Abdul-Hamid, head of the Iraqi Islamic Party. "In order to search for a terrorist, they used to detain hundreds of innocent people and torture them brutally."

Most insurgents are Sunni Arabs, who were dominant under Saddam Hussein's regime but lost power after he was ousted. The interior ministry is controlled by Shias, and Sunni leaders have accused Shia dominated security forces of detaining, torturing and killing hundreds of Sunnis simply because of their religious affiliation. Mr Jaafari, who is a Shia, said one of his deputies will be heading the investigating committee, which will include some ministers and is due to finish its work within two weeks. "They should investigate how this happened and how it reached this point," Mr Jaafari said.

Meanwhile in Washington two Iraqi businessmen detained by US forces in 2003 have claimed soldiers threw them into a cage of lions, pretended to be executing them, and carried out other acts of torture during months in captivity.

Sherzad Khalid, 35, and Thahe Sabbar, 37, are suing defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other US officials in a federal court in Washington. They said they had been abused because they could not tell their captors where Saddam Hussein was hiding, and knew nothing about weapons of mass destruction.

"That was a terrifying moment for me," Mr Khalid told the Washington Post on Monday, describing how three times he was shoved into a lions' cage at a presidential palace in Baghdad, and then soldiers lined him up for a mock execution. "I was wondering if it could be real that the American army would act this way."

Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Mr Rumsfeld said their accounts sounded "far fetched" and said it was common for detainees to make up allegations of torture. However, the army said it was looking into the claims.

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Hotel Bombings: Early Evidence Indicates State Terror

Paul Joseph Watson
November 15 2005

The triple blasts that killed 57 and wounded 90 people at the Radisson, Grand Hyatt and Day Inn hotels last week raise very suspicious questions as to who was really behind the attack.

The LA Times and Haaretz both reported that Israelis were evacuated from the Radisson hotel before the blasts occurred.

Amos N. Guiora, a former senior Israeli Defense Force official, told the Tehran Times that his sources also warned him of the imminent attack. He was quoted as saying, "It means there was excellent intelligence that this thing was going to happen."

"The question that needs to be answered is why weren't the Jordanians working at the hotel similarly removed?"

One of the apparent suicide bombers was known to have been in US custody in November 2004.

Safaa Mohammed Ali was released in Fallujah after it was determined he didn't pose a threat.

The images of the aftermath of the bombings at the Hyatt and the Radisson completely contradict the official version of events.

The photo above shows damage at the Radisson hotel. The bomb has clearly blown the ceiling down as if it was placed in the roof of the building. This image does not support the notion of a bomb strapped to a suicide bombers chest.

Similarly, this image taken from the Hyatt bombing again shows the roof blown and the debris hanging down. Furthermore, there is no blood at the scene. This would obviously be evident if this was the work of a suicide bomber.

Original Reuters reports state that the bombs were placed in false ceilings. The story then later changed after the Iraqi patsy women was paraded on worldwide television, bombs freshly re-strapped to her chest, and used as a link to justify a continued presence in Iraq.

Establishment media coverage of the bombings has taken on its usual blinkered and agenda driven tone. News anchors and politicians openly brag that this is 'an opportunity' and that it 'helps the US' in the PR war against the Iraqi resistance.

Why would Al-Zarqawi mastermind a plot that would severely damage his support base amongst Sunni Jordanians?

A quote I heard on Fox News yesterday, "bombs in hotels with names like those in major American cities," another blatant act of fearmongering and an attempt to bring the shock and terror home.

The demonstrations that received lavish media attention in Jordan are another strong indication that we are seeing a script unfold here.

Jordan is a total dictatorship and a police state. Any demonstrations have to be approved of by the government and organized by the government.

This is why footage of the protest showed Jordanians holding the same screen printed poster of King Abdullah as shown in the photos below.

This was nothing more than a pro-government protest. The Jordanian government is a client state of the US and its intelligence agency and security forces are completely controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Al-Zarqawi's website claim of responsibility came as no surprise. The tooth fairy could get on an Internet message board and claim responsibility, anyone could. Such claims are taken with a pinch of salt in light of previous examples of outright hoaxes.

Both professors and terrorism experts have now gone on record to assert that Al-Zarqawi is a US created myth. As the imaginary head of the Iraqi resistance, whenever something big blows up Al-Zarqawi takes responsibility and the resistance loses credibility.

In this instance we are not lending support to the resistance or the occupational government, just pointing out the fact that the counterfeit Al-Zarqawi is being used as a tool of black propaganda. However, it goes beyond a PR campaign when innocent people are being ripped limb from limb in their hotel rooms.

Just six days after the bombing the motive is clear and the evidence is plentiful. This was another false flag operation and a desperate attempt to re-invigorate support behind a deepening chasm in Iraq.

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Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Police brutally supress peaceful march in Durban

imc-durban
15 Nov 2005

Foreman Road march

At noon on the 14th of November 2005, at the Foreman Road settlement in Clare Estate, Durban, police attacked a peaceful demonstration of settlement dwellers from around the muncipality. Dozens have been arrested. As of 2:30pm, police had surrounded the Foreman Road settlement and blocked both exits. No one is being allowed in or out. Shots have been heard, and there are reports that anyone attempting to leave the settlement is being fired upon. Eyewitness reports suggest many injuries due to rubber bullets.

The elected committee of Abahlali base Mjondolo, a shack dwellers movement with 16 affiliated settlements, followed due procedure in attempting to gain permission for the march. The city council, however, illegally denied the application (see letter below from the Freedom of Expression Institute for details). At 11am, the majority of the 3000-strong crowd decided to march to the nearby Asherville sports field. This was a route recommended by the Mayor’s office at a meeting on Friday, 11 November, in the Mayor’s presence.

Background info here. And an update.

Initially, the march proceeded peacefully up Loon Road. At the top of the road, marchers were met by a police cordon at the intersection of Loon Road and Locksley Road. At least 2000 people were up against the police barrier. Witnesses did not observe the mandatory five-minute warning being given before police charged the crowd with riot shields, backed up by riot trucks, plucking individuals at random for arrest. The crowd fled back down Loon Road, towards Foreman Road settlement.

Police officers chased the marchers into the Foreman Road settlement, firing rubber bullets, charging with batons, and arresting protesters in the process. Witnesses saw cameras, phones and money taken from protestors by the police. Five people were arrested at the front line and approximately 10-15 minutes later at least one more van left the scene, filled with arrested protestors; as of 2pm, a total of 13 people were detained at Sydenham Police Station, though witnesses have seen more police vans filled with people from informal settlements. As of Monday night, all those arrested were released.

One of the first arrestees was System Cele, a 19 year-old elected committee member from nearby Kennedy Road settlement, attending the march with her young baby. She was seen in good health as she was arrested and marched to a police van. She reported that police pushed her around, demanding that she reveal S’bu Zikode as the person making people march. When she said that there were people marching all over the world, and that S’bu could not be inciting them all, they assaulted her, and in the process broke her teeth on the pavement, necessitating dental treatment. As Ms. Cele pointed out, S’bu and other leadership had told those gathered that the march would be illegal, and had advised that there would be consequences, but no one could have foreseen the ferocity of the police response.

The quarantine of the Foreman Road settlement continues. At one point, an effigy of Mayor Mlaba was burned in front of the police, giving off black, oily smoke.

The March on Mayor Mlaba was organised by the Foreman Road Development Committee to demand land and housing in the city and to protest against forced removals and the ongoing removal of basic services from shack settlements. It was decided to march under the slogan of No Land, No House, No Vote. On Wednesday, 9 November more than 5 000 people attended a mass rally in support of the march in the Foreman Road settlement.

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Monday, November 14, 2005

Y. professor thinks bombs, not planes, toppled WTC

By Elaine Jarvik
Deseret Morning News

The physics of 9/11 — including how fast and symmetrically one of the World Trade Center buildings fell — prove that official explanations of the collapses are wrong, says a Brigham Young University physics professor.
In fact, it's likely that there were "pre-positioned explosives" in all three buildings at ground zero, says Steven E. Jones.
In a paper posted online Tuesday and accepted for peer-reviewed publication next year, Jones adds his voice to those of previous skeptics, including the authors of the Web site www.wtc7.net, whose research Jones quotes. Jones' article can be found at www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html.
Jones, who conducts research in fusion and solar energy at BYU, is calling for an independent, international scientific investigation "guided not by politicized notions and constraints but rather by observations and calculations.
"It is quite plausible that explosives were pre-planted in all three buildings and set off after the two plane crashes — which were actually a diversion tactic," he writes. "Muslims are (probably) not to blame for bringing down the WTC buildings after all," Jones writes.
As for speculation about who might have planted the explosives, Jones said, "I don't usually go there. There's no point in doing that until we do the scientific investigation."
Previous investigations, including those of FEMA, the 9/11 Commission and NIST (the National Institutes of Standards and Technology), ignore the physics and chemistry of what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, to the Twin Towers and the 47-story building known as WTC 7, he says. The official explanation — that fires caused structural damage that caused the buildings to collapse — can't be backed up by either testing or history, he says.
Jones acknowledges that there have been "junk science" conspiracy theories about what happened on 9/11, but "the explosive demolition hypothesis better satisfies tests of repeatability and parsimony and therefore is not 'junk science.' "
In a 9,000-word article that Jones says will be published in the book "The Hidden History of 9/11," by Elsevier, Jones offers these arguments:

• The three buildings collapsed nearly symmetrically, falling down into their footprints, a phenomenon associated with "controlled demolition" — and even then it's very difficult, he says. "Why would terrorists undertake straight-down collapses of WTC-7 and the Towers when 'toppling over' falls would require much less work and would do much more damage in downtown Manhattan?" Jones asks. "And where would they obtain the necessary skills and access to the buildings for a symmetrical implosion anyway? The 'symmetry data' emphasized here, along with other data, provide strong evidence for an 'inside' job."

• No steel-frame building, before or after the WTC buildings, has ever collapsed due to fire. But explosives can effectively sever steel columns, he says.

• WTC 7, which was not hit by hijacked planes, collapsed in 6.6 seconds, just .6 of a second longer than it would take an object dropped from the roof to hit the ground. "Where is the delay that must be expected due to conservation of momentum, one of the foundational laws of physics?" he asks. "That is, as upper-falling floors strike lower floors — and intact steel support columns — the fall must be significantly impeded by the impacted mass. . . . How do the upper floors fall so quickly, then, and still conserve momentum in the collapsing buildings?" The paradox, he says, "is easily resolved by the explosive demolition hypothesis, whereby explosives quickly removed lower-floor material, including steel support columns, and allow near free-fall-speed collapses." These observations were not analyzed by FEMA, NIST nor the 9/11 Commission, he says.

• With non-explosive-caused collapse there would typically be a piling up of shattering concrete. But most of the material in the towers was converted to flour-like powder while the buildings were falling, he says. "How can we understand this strange behavior, without explosives? Remarkable, amazing — and demanding scrutiny since the U.S. government-funded reports failed to analyze this phenomenon."

• Horizontal puffs of smoke, known as squibs, were observed proceeding up the side the building, a phenomenon common when pre-positioned explosives are used to demolish buildings, he says.

• Steel supports were "partly evaporated," but it would require temperatures near 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit to evaporate steel — and neither office materials nor diesel fuel can generate temperatures that hot. Fires caused by jet fuel from the hijacked planes lasted at most a few minutes, and office material fires would burn out within about 20 minutes in any given location, he says.

• Molten metal found in the debris of the World Trade Center may have been the result of a high-temperature reaction of a commonly used explosive such as thermite, he says. Buildings not felled by explosives "have insufficient directed energy to result in melting of large quantities of metal," Jones says.

• Multiple loud explosions in rapid sequence were reported by numerous observers in and near the towers, and these explosions occurred far below the region where the planes struck, he says.

Jones says he became interested in the physics of the WTC collapse after attending a talk last spring given by a woman who had had a near-death experience. The woman mentioned in passing that "if you think the World Trade Center buildings came down just due to fire, you have a lot of surprises ahead of you," Jones remembers, at which point "everyone around me started applauding."
Following several months of study, he presented his findings at a talk at BYU in September.
Jones says he would like the government to release 6,899 photographs and 6,977 segments of video footage for "independent scrutiny." He would also like to analyze a small sample of the molten metal found at Ground Zero.

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Tanks Used Against Indigenous Communities in El Japio, Colombia

By Colombia Solidarity Campaign
Thursday, Nov. 10, 2005

More than 500 troops and tanks atack defenseless communities in El Japio, Cauca.

Using the argument of not initiating talks with the indigenous communities until they have left the 15 land holdings that they have liberated in El Japio, Cauca, National Government has given the order that the communities must be forcibly cleared off the land. The police have, since the 8 November, been firing tear gas and indiscriminately firing their guns at the indigenous people who are resisting peacefully in the midst of the state violence, and refusing to give up possession of the land holdings in El Japio. The community inform us that so far, four of their number have been wounded and many more arrested.

On the 12 October 2005, indigenous communities in Cauca began a project named “Freedom for Mother Earth” aimed at forcing the government to comply with various long standing yet so far unfulfilled commitments, especially problems of land ownership.

Those land holdings affected by the Freedom for Mother Earth project are all over 100 hectares in size. An example is El Japio, a farm of 4,000 hectares owned by an absentee landlord. The communities are shocked that the government is so keen to defend the interests of large landowners, using at least 500 troops and 10 tanks to remove the community, while at the same time national government has been completely indifferent to the forced displacement of over 3 million Colombians by the paramilitaries, who are now using this captured land for banana and African Palm plantations or handing it over for exploitation by mining and oil companies.

Indigenous communities are asking themselves how it is possible that the same government that is currently attacking peaceful processes of land reform in El Japio, have allowed the derecognition of land titles belonging to Afrocolombian communities in Jiguamiando and Curvarado. In this case, the communities were forcibly expelled by the paramilitaries, and the land occupied by Palm oil plantations. National government then immediately refused to recognise ownership of the land by the Afrocolombian communities. That is to say, the communities were expelled violently from there land by the paramilitaries, which was then expropriated “legally” by the government. The simple question is why the government does not react with tanks and troops when the paramilitaries occupy land, on the contrary, the government is currently holding talks with these groups, and refuse to recognise the claims for truth, justice and reparation for the millions of Colombians who have suffered the scourge of paramilitary violence.

The indigenous communities have also denounced the threats against other projects, such as the assassination attempt against Antonio Quilindo, governor of the indigenous reservation of Quintana, who was shot by unknown men in a white jeep, and the warnings that paramilitaries are preparing to invade the region of Naya.

The Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC) reject the state of war that the national government has unleashed against the indigenous communities of El Japio and others involved in the Freedom for Mother Earth project . We denounce the slander against these communities, which attempts to link them with guerrilla forces, and we request the immediate presence of National and International watch-dogs and human rights organisations, in order to avoid the further use of force by the government, and to achieve the necessary solutions in conformity with the needs and initiatives of indigenous people.

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The Senate agrees to Imprisonment without Charges

By Mike Whitney
11/14/05

How can the Senate vote to ban habeas corpus?!?

It makes no sense at all. It’s like voting for an end to freedom. And, yet, this is exactly what happened on Friday, November 11, when the Senate passed the (Lindsay) Graham amendment which overturns an earlier Supreme Court ruling (Rasul vs. Bush) allowing Guantanamo detainees to challenge their imprisonment in federal court. By a 49 to 42 margin the Senate approved the measure which effectively deprives them of the right to know why they are being held or of any legal means to defend themselves.

None of the Guantanamo inmates have ever been charged with a crime. The Senate vote ensures that they never will.

The action goes beyond a simple dispute with the high court’s decision to honor the rights of so called “enemy combatants”. The vote denies the prisoners any civil liberties provided under the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Conventions or any other of the human rights treaties to which the US is a signatory. It is a blatant attempt to rescind the principle that men are entitled to equal treatment under the law or that they are innocent until proven guilty. From this point on, everyone who has been caught up in Bush’s “war on terror” dragnet will be presumed guilty.

Habeas corpus is the cornerstone of American jurisprudence dating back 800 years in British Law. It allows a detained person to appear before a judge to determine the legitimacy of his imprisonment, and it forces the state to charge that person with a crime if it intends to continue holding him. It is the most fundamental of all human rights, and certainly the most important. Without the protection of habeas the state is free to disregard the rule of law and jail anyone it pleases. The denial of habeas is the beginning of tyranny.

Freedom does not exist in a vacuum; it can only thrive where there are restrictions on state power. Civil liberties are the fire-wall which protects the citizen from the threat of government abuse. Habeas corpus is the foundation upon which the entire scaffolding of civil liberties is erected. It is the primary shield against the violence of the state.

Senator Lindsay Graham knows all of this; after all he’s an attorney. And, yet, he has taken this extraordinary step to revoke The Great Writ of Liberty (habeas corpus) to confer absolute authority on the president.

Why?

Where is the evidence that eviscerating basic liberties improves our chances of winning the war on terror?

In case after case, the Bush administration has taken the position that the president is above the law and can imprison “terror suspects” according to his own discretion. On September 9, 2005 the administration won a crucial battle when the 3 judge panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals voted unanimously that Bush could continue to imprison an American citizen, Jose Padilla, without charging him with a crime. The court said that the “Joint Resolution” issued by Congress following 9-11 authorized the President to use “all necessary force” in fighting the war on terror. This, they concurred, allows the president to ignore the Bill of Rights and act on his own judgment.

Once again, the target of Bush’s assault in the Padilla case was habeas corpus, the ideological nerve-center of American jurisprudence.

Consider the words of Alexander Hamilton who said, the writ of habeas corpus protects against "the practice of arbitrary imprisonment . . . the favorite and most formidable instrument of tyranny."

Or, this from Justice Antonin Scalia:

"The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive."

The Bush administration, under cover of the war on terror, is marching inexorably towards a totalitarian state. Since Sept 11 they have taken steps to reconfigure the legal landscape and promote their vision of the supreme presidency. Their colleagues in the Congress and the judiciary have supported their efforts to bolster executive power while putting the president beyond the range of accountability. All the while, they have calculatingly zeroed in on the essential human right upon which liberty depends; habeas corpus, the epicenter of American freedom.

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Saturday, November 12, 2005

Surrender Your DNA to the State

Tuesday November 08th 2005

New York governor George Pataki is an enemy of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In particular, Amendment IV, which states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Pataki wants your DNA if you are convicted of jaywalking or speeding, commonly known as misdemeanors. Pataki believes your bodily fluid is owned by the state and if you are arrested and convicted for the crime of holding up a placard in opposition to Bush as his motorcade wings past your neighborhood you will surrender a bit of salvia on a swab. Of course, salvia and DNA are not specifically mentioned in the Bill of Rights, even though the amendment declares Americans shall be “secure in their persons,” that is to say our salvia and DNA is our business and not the property of the state. Pataki and the bureaucrats in New York want your salvia, so they say, just in case you happened to be on the scene of a more serious crime sometime in the past. In other words, you are a suspect to a multitude of crimes, even if there is no probable cause.

“In a state where 15,000 DNA profiles have been extracted from unsolved crimes and where cold cases are reopened daily on the basis of DNA evidence, proponents say a database including all offenders will give police the tool they need to track down thousands of attackers, rapists and murderers,” reports the Poughkeepsie Journal. In other words, even jaywalkers—and Bush protesters—are potential serial rapists and murderers. In fact, the entire country is suspect.

Of course, this is simply an excuse. It is the nature of the state to surveil, probe, tax, appropriate, and ultimately profile every citizen in sprawling databases—and not specifically for any crime committed in the past. It is all part of a “global registration and surveillance infrastructure,” as Richard Norton-Taylor pointed out in the Guardian last April, heeding the warnings of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, including the American Civil Liberties Union, and Statewatch, a UK-based bulletin which tracks developments in the EU. “The US and EU governments are expanding legal powers to eavesdrop and to store the product of intercepted personal communications,” and obviously salvia as well. “To achieve their ends, they say, governments have suspended judicial oversight over law enforcement agents and public officials, concentrated unprecedented power in the hands of the executive arm of government, and rolled back criminal law and due process protections that balance the rights of individuals against the power of the state.”

Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) and Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) would go even further than Pataki. In September, they attempted to add an amendment to the Violence Against Women Act that “would create a national registry of DNA taken from any person who has been detained by the police, even if the person is not arrested or convicted,” according to Declan McCullagh. Senator Patrick Leahy “said that he is worried that whole classes of people, such as Latinos or Muslims, will be rounded up and their DNA will be recorded in the registry.”

Of course, if the state has its way, rounding folks up and forcing them to surrender bodily fluid will not be limited to Muslims and Latinos—all of us will have our computerized profiles with biometric data and, eventually, our own little subdermal VeriChip, easily inserted in our increasingly Amendment IV unprotected bodies in conjunction with a routine vaccination. “About the size of a grain of rice, each VeriChip product contains a unique verification number that is captured by briefly passing a proprietary scanner over the VeriChip,” notes Applied Digital Solutions, the manufacturer of the VeriChip. “The standard location of the microchip is in the triceps area between the elbow and the shoulder of the right arm. The brief outpatient ‘chipping’ procedure lasts just a few minutes and involves only local anesthetic followed by quick, painless insertion of the VeriChip. Once inserted just under the skin, the VeriChip is inconspicuous to the naked eye. A small amount of radio frequency energy passes from the scanner energizing the dormant VeriChip, which then emits a radio frequency signal transmitting the verification number.”

In other words, in the not too distant future (after taking our DNA samples in lieu of fingerprints at the local grocery store check-out lane), cops may be armed with VeriChip injectors along with their 9mms, Tasers, and Mace and will microchip “any person who has been detained … even if the person is not arrested or convicted.” If you’d like a preview of our Brave New Future, rent Minority Report on DVD.

I exaggerate, of course, but not a whole lot. Pataki has the people of New York on a slippery slope—and the neocon senators Cornyn and Kyl have the rest of us here in America on one as well. Note that the Senate Judiciary Committee approved taking genetic material from “detainees in the ‘war on terror’ and a number of others never charged or convicted of a crime” on a voice vote. Of course, any number of us may eventually become “detainees” in the so-called “war on terror,” especially if we refuse to believe our town is quarantined due to the spread of bird flu confined to poultry in China.

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IBM calls for global identity management solution

ZDNet Asia
November 10, 2005, 09:45 GMT

International standards backed up by a UN body are needed to clear up the international identity-verification mess, according to a senior IBM Global Services executive

The growing need for fast, accurate verification of personal identities has prompted a call from an industry observer for a global agency to set international standards.

The realm of identity and access management (IAM) is heating up as nations like the UK and the US increase their use of biometrics and other identifying technology in ID cards, border controls and other areas.

Beyond different governments "trying to create a mosaic for what they want as good identity management", wider international cooperation is needed to establish a common language and standards, said Cal Slemp, vice-president and global leader for security and privacy services at IBM Global Services. The common language for exchanging user access information is also known as federated IAM.

"Governments have a huge part to play in this, because they have ultimate responsibility for their citizens, and depending on the country, they may have ultimate responsibility for the businesses and e-commerce as well," Slemp said.

But, current efforts are piecemeal and much more can be done to exploit the potential of the federated environment, added Slemp. During a medical emergency, for instance, the identities of a foreign doctor and a visiting patient need to be established quickly and accurately, in order for the right healthcare to be administered.

What's missing right now, he noted, is a trusted third party to authenticate trustworthiness. "So we've got inconsistent and incomplete implementation [in individual countries], and also no standard approach to the future nor a target to shoot at."

Slemp believes that now is the right time to establish a global body that will consider the interests of all countries and build up a foundation, which the individual countries can expand upon to fulfil their unique requirements.

"There are organisations that work together on this issue and issues like that across borders all the time, and it can be as grandiose as to say the UN has a process in place to share information like that and create working groups to try and to create standards or expectations and across multiple jurisdictions," said Slemp. "I just don't know what the name would be."

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Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Bush meltdown: Belated justice or coup d'état?

By Carolyn Baker
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Nov 7, 2005, 00:29

Bush’s approval rating at under 40 percent, nearly two-thirds of Americans no longer in favor of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the vice president’s chief of staff indicted, the House Majority Leader indicted, the Senate Majority Leader under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Harriett Miers fiasco, and now the Democrats shutting down the Senate? It all feels so deliciously appropriate and so painfully overdue. Are the Democrats finding their spines? Will Cheney be indicted? Will Bush be impeached?

Before succumbing to ecstasy over these dramatic events, which sometimes seem too good to be true, it behooves progressives to look deeper into the wormhole that the criminal empire, the United States government, has become. Indeed, the next few months will be messy, and Bush & Co. are irreversibly in demise, but the hope these events might instill in us must be tempered by historical and political perspective.

Make no mistake, this is Bush’s “Watergate Burglary,” and it is so seductively enticing to believe that the American people are growing weary of the neocons and that somehow, the pendulum of history is swinging in the direction of democracy. What we must remember, however, is that the American people do not run the country—nor do presidents.

What we are witnessing is the evisceration of the Bush administration by none other than individuals employed by and working closely with the Central Intelligence Agency. Libby was indicted, as Karl Rove may well be in the coming weeks, for participating in the leaking of the identity of a covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame—a crime which George Bush, Sr., once called treason.

Knowing exactly who/what the CIA is and has been since its creation in 1947 might shed some light on current events. The agency was created at the beginning of the Cold War under President Truman by Clark Clifford, a Wall Street banker and lawyer. His closest confidante and assistant was Allen Dulles, an attorney with Sullivan & Cromwell, which was then and still is, a prominent Wall St. law firm. It was about this same time that Dulles pulled the necessary strings to bring hundreds of former Nazis into the United States to work for the CIA in the agency’s intelligence operations against the Soviet Union. (CIA Admits Long Relationship With WWII German Gen. Reinhard Gehlen, Maria Alvarez, The New York Post, September 24, 2000 and Operation Paperclip Casefile)

During the Vietnam War in the 1970s, the agency conducted a secret war in Laos financed by extensive and sophisticated heroin trafficking. The details of this operation are now extremely well-documented and explain how it was that Congress was both unaware of the war and unwilling to appropriate any funds for it, even if it had been aware. Alfred McCoy, professor of Southeast Asian History, University of Wisconsin, has written extensively of these events in his book The Politics Of Heroin. Additional verification the CIA’s drug trafficking operations in Laos may also be read at Dark Alliance.

During the illegal Contra War of the 1980s, the CIA, with the assistance of Oliver North, helped finance that war by selling arms to Iran and trafficking crack-cocaine throughout South Central Los Angeles. Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, Gary Webb, a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, wrote an exhaustive series on the CIA and South Central drug dealing, which was later incorporated into a riveting book, Dark Alliance. Following an investigation, the agency's inspector general, in a 1998 report, found that the CIA was engaged in drug trafficking activities during the Contra War. The next logical question would then be: Is the agency still involved in drug trafficking in the twenty-first century? I believe that it is.

While some Americans are aware of the CIA’s history of drug dealing, few are aware of how the agency appropriates its drug profits. Many people believe it uses its resources to finance wars, assassinations, and endless covert operations. While this is true, the CIA has an even more urgent “budgetary line item.” That is to simply launder its drug profits through the American stock market, killing two birds with one stone: Washing the money and at the same time, pouring massive amounts of liquid cash (translation: cheap money) into the economy. The foremost authorities on this issue are Catherine Austin Fitts, former Undersecretary of Housing and Urban Development under Bush I, and Mike Ruppert, former L.A.P.D. narcotics investigator whom the CIA attempted to recruit to assist in its drug-trafficking operations in the 1970s and 80s. Extensive information and documentation on this issue can be found at both Fitts’ and Ruppert’s websites.

When one analyzes the issue of CIA and drug trafficking in depth, it becomes painfully obvious that a revolving door exists between the agency and Wall Street. A disproportionate number of inspectors general and directors have come on board the agency from Wall Street or have returned to high-level positions in the stock market upon leaving the CIA. Together, the CIA and the highest levels of corporate capitalism call the shots in American domestic and foreign policy.

Many individuals, including myself, have researched the CIA’s history and covert activities since its creation. Some of its illegal, inhumane, and egregious activities include:

-Collaboration with former Nazi war criminals
-Large scale drug trafficking operations on several continents and within the U.S.
-Criminal experiments with LSD and human mind control during the 1960s and 70s.
-Covert operations resulting in orchestrated revolutions and overthrow of governments around the world to serve the
interests of the United States
-Extensive involvement in assassinations internationally and within the United States, including the assassination of John F.
Kennedy
-The creation of a black budget during the Reagan Administration which absolved the CIA of accountability for its assets or
expenditures (George [H.W.] Bush, The Unauthorized Biography.)
-Human rights violations and torture, including the recent disclosure of the maintenance of a covert prison system around
the world where terrorist suspects are incarcerated and probably tortured.

It should be emphasized that not all individuals employed by the CIA are evil executioners. However, the policies and covert activities of the agency for over five decades have frequently been abhorrent in their implementation and outcome. As the principal intelligence agency of the most powerful nation on earth, the agency’s activities are more often than not, reprehensible, yet at the same time, its persona and modus operandi are highly professional. It seeks world domination, but not with fangs dripping with blood as do the neconservative thugs of the current Bush administration. Personally, I like to think of the CIA’s approach as a “kinder, gentler fascism.”

Few Americans understand the scope or financial underpinnings of the CIA or the fact that it owns hundreds of proprietary companies and could very well have an annual budget that dwarfs the budget of the United States government itself by comparison. It is, as many CIA researchers have theorized, a government within a government. That said, we must ask: What happens to any individual or group of individuals who might attempt to challenge or supercede “the company,” as its employees fondly refer to it? Indeed, many high-ranking CIA officials backed the current Bush administration at its inception. Others did not.

Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA officer working “officially” for Brewster, Jennings & Associates, a well-established CIA proprietary company linked for many years with ARAMCO. The British Guardian reported in April, 2002 that ARAMCO constitutes 12 percent of the world’s total oil production. It’s the largest oil group in the world, a state-owned Saudi company in partnership with four major U.S. oil companies. ARAMCO operates, manages, and maintains virtually all Saudi oil fields or 25 percent of all the oil on the planet. Almost the entire Bush administration has an interest in ARAMCO. Given that the Saudis have been less than truthful in recent years regarding the actual amount of oil they are producing, and given America’s heavy reliance on Saudi petroleum, from the point of view of the CIA, the Plame operation was invaluable, and having it shattered by means of personal vengeance by someone inside the White House was the final straw for the agency. Remember that the CIA director’s job is to advise the president on scientific data on foreign resources. The outing of Plame made this impossible, hence threatening national security.

Journalists Wayne Madsen and Mike Ruppert conclude in the analysis of the Plame leak that: “The Bush administration has proved itself to be an insular group of inept, dishonest, and dangerous CEOs of the corporation known as America. They have become very bad for business and the board of directors is now taking action.”

Bush & Co. have gotten in the way and essentially shot themselves in the foot and crossed swords with the agency which wanted a “kinder, gentler,” less belligerent, less dramatic fascism. Someone else did that 35 years ago. His name was Richard Nixon, and the agency brought him down.

The real question is: Who runs America? Who runs the world? Certainly presidents don’t, nor do the American people. A critical analysis of U.S. history since the end of the Civil War strongly suggests that while we may not know the identities of all of the players, we do know that they are essentially the top 1 percent of the socio-economic milieu of the country. Names like “Bush” come to mind, but other names like “Rockefeller” seem quaint and less relevant—except when we consider that 1) the Rockefellers brought the Bush family to power even before both were financing Hitler, and 2) one of the first officials in 2003 to request an FBI investigation of the forged documents used to justify the invasion of Iraq was none other than a distinguished Senator from West Virginia named Rockefeller. Jay Rockefeller renewed his rumblings immediately after the Libby indictment, and one can only imagine that this is sending shivers up the spines of some White House occupants.

Why does this matter? Because what we may well be seeing is not “democracy in action” but a coup d'état by the ruling elite to reclaim their preferred world domination scenario—one that frequently masquerades as “liberal,” “progressive,” or “humanitarian.” At I write this article, we are seeing new documents released by the New York Times confirming that critical intelligence was falsified as a pretext for the Vietnam War. Remember that in that war, it was not a group of rabid, conservative militarists who led the nation into “the fog of war” but an Eastern liberal establishment of lifelong Democrats. (See Beyond Bush II)

I watch the meltdown of the current regime with as much glee as any other progressive, but I also fear that in our eagerness to witness Watergate II, we will naively embrace the next globalist Pied Piper (Piper-ess?) who wants to convince us that two political parties and legitimate elections actually exist in America, that we can continue to consume energy as if there were no tomorrow, and who will kindly, gently preserve a policy of endless war for the last remaining drops of oil on earth. Will we settle for this because “it’s the only system we have,” or will be demand the total meltdown, not only of Bush & Co., but the one-party criminal empire that is obliterating the ecosystems and the future of the human race?

Copyright © 1998-2005 Online Journal

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U.S. used chemical weapons in Fallujah

11/8/2005 12:55:00 PM GMT

Italian state TV, Rai, broadcast a documentary which showed evidence that U.S. forces used phosphorus bombs against Iraqi civilians during the bloody offensive on the city of Fallujah in November 2004, BBC reported.

The film was broadcast between 0730 and 0800 in the morning on Rai's rolling news channel with a warning that the some of the images would be disturbing.

It showed eyewitnesses and former U.S. soldiers who took part in the Fallujah assault saying that white phosphorus bombs were widely deployed in the city as a weapon.

Rai said this amounts to the illegal use of chemical weapons, though such bombs are considered incendiary devices.

The use of chemical weapons is banned by a treaty which Washington signed in 1997.

The transmission comes a day after Iraqi President Jalal Talabani arrived in Italy for a five-day official visit.

It also comes on the first anniversary of the U.S.-led offensive on Fallujah, which displaced most of the city’s 300,000 residents and left its buildings destroyed.

Hidden Massacre

The documentary, entitled Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre, started with formerly classified footage of U.S. forces using Napalm bombs during the Vietnam war.

It then showed high-quality, close-up images of several bodies of Fallujah residents, some still in their bed, with their skin dissolved but clothes still intact.

A biologist in Fallujah, Mohammad Tareq, interviewed by the film, said: "A rain of fire fell on the city, the people struck by this multi-coloured substance started to burn, we found people dead with strange wounds, the bodies burned but the clothes intact."

A former U.S. soldier who took part in the offensive said: "I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it's known as Willy Pete,”

"Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone ... I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 metres is done for.” the soldier added.

The film repeated accusations that the U.S. has systematically attempted to destroy filmed evidence of the use of chemical arms in the Fallujah assault.

It provided clinching evidence that incendiary bombs known as Mark 77, a new, improved form of napalm, was used in Fallujah attack, in violation of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.

The United Nations banned the use of the napalm gas against civilians in 1980 after pictures of a naked wounded girl in Vietnam shocked the world.

The United States, which didn't endorse the convention, is the only nation in the world still using the deadly weapon.

Banned weapons

Following the 2004 offensive, media reports and Fallujah residents said that U.S. forces used chemical arms on the city.

The U.S. army admitted using phosphorus arms in Iraq to illuminate battlefields, but denied using other banned weapons.

"Phosphorus shells are not outlawed. U.S. forces have used them very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes,” the USinfo website said in December last year. "They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters."

But the Rai film proves that the U.S. army didn’t use phosphorus to illuminate enemy positions (which would have been legitimate) but instead dropped white phosphorus indiscriminately and in massive quantities on the city's neighborhoods.

The revelation makes the U.S. responsible for a massacre using banned weapons, the same charge for which the toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is accused of.

Troop withdrawal

The Italian public has been consistently against the Iraq war, and the Rai documentary can only strengthen calls for an immediate troop withdrawal, correspondents say.

But the Italian government and opposition leaders are considering a gradual withdrawal in 2006.

President Talabani urged Italy on Monday to keep its troops in Iraq, saying that a premature withdrawal will hurt his country.

Italy has about 3,000 soldiers in Iraq, the fourth largest contingent in the war-torn country after the U.S., Britain and South Korea.

source

Monday, November 07, 2005

9/11, Iraq & PNAC - The Connection is Clear & Undeniable

"THE COMMON SENSE CONNECTION: THESE MEN LIED IN ORDER TO START A WAR AND IN THE PROCESS THEY SACRIFICED THE LIVES OF OVER 2000 AMERICAN SOLDIERS. WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THAT THEY DID NOT SACRIFICE 3000 TOTAL STRANGERS ON 9/11/2001 FOR THE SAME PURPOSE?"

With all the recent questions being asked about the lies that led us to war one question is still being ignored: what does 9/11 have to do with the US invasion of Iraq. The answer is not what you have been told; the illogical claim that 9/11 changed everything and it caused the US to change the way they dealt with potential threats. The real connection here is that 9/11 gave the men who wanted to invade Iraq so badly that they lied to the world in order to do it, the political and popular support to go ahead with their radical agenda.

The one question that becomes more relevant, less controversial and more important as the lies that led us to war are brought to light is this: who benefited from the events of 9/11 and how did they benefit?

Just as the members of the Project for a New American Century stated in their manifesto they needed a new Pearl Harbor in order to get the popular support for their radical agenda and they got that new Pearl Harbor on 9/11/2001. Imagine that; the very men who were in positions to prevent, permit or conduct the attacks of 9/11/2001 were the very people who had their wish granted at the moment the first plane hit the WTC.

Another obvious benefit of 9/11 is the open ended financial jackpot delivered to the military industrial complex and to the energy industry; both of which are interwoven with the members of the Bush/PNAC administration. These people have received untold and virtually unlimited financial profits as a result of the events of 9/11. The independent researchers have uncovered mountains of evidence indicating inside (American) complicity in the events of 9/11 yet many people refuse to believe them based on one premise; they refuse to believe that Americans would hurt other Americans. If this were true we would not need prisons. We would not have a Mafia. Greed alone has been the driving force that has caused man to kill man on a massive scale. Greed has been the driving force behind the murders of spouses, children, parents and total strangers. What makes you think that greed alone is not a good enough reason for war profiteers, who as a livelihood deal in death, to sacrifice a few thousand strangers so that they can reap unlimited fortune? That alone could alone serve as motive for taking part in the horrific events of 9/11/2001.

Nothing corrupts the human soul more than greed, but greed was not the only potential motivating factor for conducting such an event. The Project for a New American Century’s entire reason for being hinged on such an event. A huge part of that agenda was the invasion of Iraq. The invasion of Iraq was made possible only by the events of 9/11. To date we have not even heard a theory put forth on how Muslim extremists have, or would have benefited from those events. They had nothing to gain and from what we have witnessed as the world turned against the Muslim people, they had everything to lose. We have seen a great deal of “EVIDENCE” indicating, at the very least that many actions were taken by operatives within the Bush/PNAC administration to paralyze procedures that were in place to prevent and/or address an attack of that nature. Even more “EVIDENCE” has been uncovered that indicates a far greater level of involvement by insiders.

What we have here is a group of men (PNAC) who had a plan. The plan included invading Iraq. They openly admitted that this would not be possible without an event like 9/11. (They used the term “new Pearl Harbor” but you can obviously see the connection.) They were in key positions to ensure that events of 9/11 take place, either by conducting them or by permitting them to play out. Now they are being exposed for the lies they told about Iraq that permitted them to invade a nation and kill 10s if not 100s of thousands of people including 2000 Americans.

THE COMMON SENSE CONNECTION: THESE MEN LIED IN ORDER TO START A WAR AND IN THE PROCESS THEY SACRIFICED THE LIVES OF OVER 2000 AMERICAN SOLDIERS. WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THAT THEY DID NOT SACRIFICE 3000 TOTAL STRANGERS ON 9/11/2001 FOR THE SAME PURPOSE?

I ask all people to examine the motive/benefit/evidence links between the events of 9/11 and the members of the Bush administration who were involved with the Project for a New American Century. These links become more defined and understandable as each lie related to the invasion of Iraq is exposed. Think about it.

Reference:

9/11-PNAC, 9/11-PNAC - SHOULD BE THE #1 TOPIC OF DISCUSSION

PNAC

PNAC members in the Bush administration:

9/11 Facts:

Iraq Lies:

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Cops say hard drives justify 90 day jail without trial

01 November 2005

THE BBC has had two items on its Today programme this morning worthy of note.
An hour ago we had an academic telling us that the British police were ill-educated.

Right now we have a senior cop, Andy Hayman from the Metropolitan Police, telling us on the same radio programme that the 90 days detention without trial it wants is because the amount of information on a hard drive is more than huge piles of paper.

Because of that, the cops need to bang people away for 90 days as they need to sift through the bits and bytes on a hard drive.

As everyone moves to 400GB hard drives soon, shouldn't we instead give the cops the benefit of the doubt and let them bang up people without trial for 180 days.

And in the case of network attached storage, 12 years. If people have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear.

source

Police are given shoot-to-kill powers in domestic violence and stalking cases

By Jason Bennetto
25 October 2005

Scotland Yard's "shoot to kill" strategy has been widened to include other offences such as kidnapping, stalking and domestic violence, The Independent has learned.

However, the decision to shoot a suspect in the head without the marksman giving a warning would only be used under exceptional circumstances, one of the country's most senior police chiefs said yesterday.

The Operation Kratos shoot-to-kill policy was adopted to deal with suicide bombers but a review has identified other types of crimes in which a firearms officer could shoot to kill without issuing any challenge. These include when an offender holding a weapon to a victim was thought to be on the brink of murder.

The use of a "shoot to kill" strategy against terrorists came under attack after police shot the innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes seven times in the head on 22 July, after mistaking him for a suicide bomber.

There has been growing criticism of the lack of accountability surrounding the police's use of the tactic. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is investigating the shooting, which came the day after failed bombing attempts.

Operation Kratos guidelines for dealing with suicide bombers stipulate officers under certain circumstances should aim for the head to prevent detonation of a bomb. Since the tragic error the Metropolitan Police have been reviewing and updated the tactics of Operation Kratos.

Steve House, Assistant Commissioner at the Metropolitan Police, who is carrying out the review, said: "[Kratos] was designed to deal with suicide terrorists but there are certain other circumstances where it could be applicable. For example, if there was a kidnap at gunpoint where the kidnapper was holding the victim around the body, pointing the weapon at their head and shouting they were about to shoot. Alternatively it might be a stalking case where the victim had a gun pointed at their head and there was no clear shot to the stalker's body."

He added: "You could also have a Dunblane-like situation [the Scottish town where Thomas Hamilton killed 16 children and a teacher in 1996] with a man walking around killing at will.It could be under some of these exceptional circumstances that an officer would shoot to the head without giving a warning."
He stressed that under the existing law officers are already protected if they are found to have used "reasonable force".

Mr House's review states: "It should be noted there is no legal requirement for an officer to give a verbal challenge before firing and the ACPO Police Use of Firearms manual acknowledges that there are occasions when it is not appropriate or practical."

Mr House said: "The Met have adopted this review - to wait for the completion of the IPCC inquiry is folly. We must continually refine our approach and deal with the ongoing threat."

Figures in the review strategy indicate the Metropolitan Police has had more than 1,000 reports from the public about suspected suicide bombers since 21 July, 2005. In response to these calls the police have sent out armed teams on six occasions and alerted the Kratos response teams at least 11 times. These figures do not include pre-planned police operations. The force has 12 specialist firearms units trained to deal with suspected bombers and other gunmen.

The review, part of which will be published at the Metropolitan Police Authority on Thursday, also gives details of the outline tactics used in Operation Kratos. It says there are three separate plans to deal with suicide bombers.

Operation Andromeda is designed to deal with the spontaneous sighting by a member of the public of a suspected suicide bomber.

Operation Beach is used when there is an intelligence-led covert operation to locate and arrest a suspected terrorist, while Operation Clydesdale is where intelligence has been received about a suicide attack on a pre-planned event.

The review says: "The options for all three operations range from an unarmed stop of the suspect by uniformed officers, through to the deployment of armed police officers."

source

MI5 'acts on facts gained under torture'

By Duncan Gardham
21/10/2005

The head of MI5 has submitted evidence to the House of Lords indicating that her agents are prepared to act on intelligence obtained under torture in the fight against terrorism.

In a seven-page statement to the law lords, Eliza Manningham-Buller said experience showed that material received from foreign authorities as a result of what she called "detainee reporting" had "proved to be very valuable in disrupting terrorist activity".

Eliza Manningham-Buller
Ms Manningham-Buller said that MI5 and the secret intelligence service MI6 did not, as a rule, inquire closely into the origin of information received from foreign security agencies, especially when an urgent response was needed. "Where circumstances permit", the agencies would seek to acquire "as much context as possible" about how the information was obtained, she wrote. But she added: "Where the reporting is threat-related, the desire for context will usually be subservient to the need to take action to establish the facts, in order to protect life." The Law Lords are considering an earlier Appeal Court ruling that evidence obtained by abuse of detainees overseas may be admissible in a British court, so long as UK agents do not participate in or solicit it.

Ms Manningham-Buller's comments, seen by Channel 4 News, are contained in a statement to law lords hearing an appeal by 10 terror suspects who argue that evidence from torture overseas should not be used in the Home Office's attempt to deport them.

A Home Office spokesman said it would not comment on the case.

Anti-war Protesters May Face 7 Years In Jail Under Australian Patriot Act

31oct05

ANTI-war demonstrators could be jailed for seven years under the Federal Government's proposed anti-terror laws, a doctors' body said today.

As the Commonwealth and states negotiate on a final draft of the laws, the Australian Medical Association for the Prevention of War has urged them not to be pressured into supporting the Bill in its present form.
Association vice-president Gillian Deakin said everyone supported strong counter-terrorism laws.

"But we must make sure we are not panicked or bullied into hasty or extreme laws that surrender the basic human rights of all Australians," Dr Deakin said.

"A section of the proposed laws would make it an offence for any Australian to 'urge support' for any organisation that the Australian Defence Force happens to be fighting.

"This means that ... the anti-Iraq war protests could be illegal and all Australians liable for seven-year jail (terms) for expressing opposition to actions of the Australian Defence Force."

Dr Deakin said Australians did not want the country to turn into a police state.

"We call on all state premiers to resist any pressure to support these extreme laws until there has been thorough public and legal scrutiny of them to make sure Australian civil liberties are protected," she said.

Under pressure from the premiers, Mr Howard has already agreed to amend the controversial shoot-to-kill provisions of the Bill.

But other proposals include control orders and preventative detention for up to 14 days without charge.

In an open letter to Mr Howard, Whistleblowers Australia president Jean Lennane said she was concerned the laws would be misused to limit disclosure of information that may be in the public interest.

Ms Lennane called on the Federal Government to ensure there was adequate protection in the legislation for whistleblowers and safeguards against abuse.

source

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

The Predators who rule the world

By Siv O'Neall
Oct 28, 2005, 09:08

Who are the neoliberals?

The robber barons of old ruled their world. Today’s robber barons are much more powerful than those earlier titans, and they appear to be all but unbeatable.

The planet is owned and ruled by the same people; not the heads of State, but the owners of the capital. State governments, if unyielding to the superior power of the capitals, run the risk of becoming figureheads in the claws of the neoliberals. Do what we tell you to do or we will unmask the vacuum behind your façade. Some leaders try courageously to prove their freedom of action, up to a point, but even socialists have turned towards what is to be seen as the new socialism – Gerhard Schröder, or the New Labour – Tony Blair. There is no real ‘left’ any more --anywhere.

Europe is regressing towards the feudal era when individuals had no rights. They were work horses for the lords who owned the land and later, in the industrial era, for those who owned the factories. Once again, individual rights are seen as having no raison d’être, since invincible market forces dictate the state of the planet. According to the neoliberal predators, considering individuals and their needs, except as pawns in their planetary game of creating obscene wealth for the very few, is unscientific and unreasonable.

The men and women seated at the top of the world are ruthless gamblers who don’t hesitate to destroy each other and all the people dependent on them for their livelihood, if it’s in the interest of profit. The gambling instinct rules the planet though the dice are heavily loaded.

Reasonable and innocent people scream about rights to food, to water, to a decent living. The gamblers couldn’t care less; they are totally deaf to cries of despair. These latter day robber barons buy and sell, promote and demote with a perfectly cold hand. They laugh at the losses of their adversaries as they continue building their own edifices of global power, insensitive to the needs of the pawns who get crushed in the predators’ paths to glory.

These men and women have no souls. They are a different species who could be rooted out from the earth with no lasting damage and several huge gains for humanity.

Their claim is that market forces are unbeatable because they are rigorously scientific. Neoliberalism is not an ideology, it’s a force of nature and the ‘laws of the market’ are unbeatable, because of their inevitability. These people claim to be rigorously rational. The world is closed and immune to changes since market forces are ruled by strict reason, not by human laws or haphazard ideology. The ‘natural laws’ that the neoliberals claim are guiding the capital of the world can not be contained. Economic forces must be let loose without constraint or control.

Pierre Bourdieu defines it in this way: “Neo-liberalism is a weapon of conquest. It announces an economic fatality against which all resistance is vain. Neo-liberalism is similar to AIDS: it destroys the immunity system of its victims. (1) … “Of all forces of clandestine persuasion, the most implacable is the one that is exercised simply because of ‘the order of things’.”(2)

Bourdieu continues to prove that neo-liberalism is not the ‘order of things’: “Everything that falls under the descriptive and normative name of ‘globalization’ is not the effect of an economic fatality, but of a conscious and deliberate policy, the one that has made liberal or even social-democratic governments of a group of economically advanced countries dispossess themselves of the power to control the economic forces.”(3)

How can this cruel scam continue?

This system is seemingly unbeatable because the power players, the gamblers, own the politicians. Even more important, they own the mainstream media. When you add to that the powerful mind-bending of advertising, television, political sloganeering and propaganda, you get a citizenry that is ignorant, subdued and numbed into a form of semi-consciousness where they try to keep up a façade of normality while trying to survive in a hostile world.

It certainly doesn’t help the people’s cause in their fight against these imperial masters that administrations like Bush & Co ‘starve the beast’ by cutting off more and more money for education, healthcare and social programs across his nation. The finance lords have the administration, and seemingly the majority of both parties in Congress, so well in hand that there is no real opposition to all this cutting of essential funds. The individual citizens have been rendered helplessly unarmed for such a vitally important fight. And this is, sadly, a trend spreading throughout Europe as well. Even the most basic funds have to be cut to make it possible for the predators to amass their obscene fortunes.

Who are the victims?

Ordinary people from all strata of society are feeling the heat of the battle for survival. But it’s primarily poor people in the rich countries and all but a few callous opportunists in developing countries who bear the heavy burden of suffering from hunger and deprivation. Heartless and mindless dictators who enrich themselves at the expense of their poverty-stricken countrymen will always be a fact of life. But the incredible arrogance and seeming invincibility of the corporate lords seems to be a twist that was born with neo-liberalism. And here we are back at the beginning. As Pierre Bourdieu says, it’s the “economic fatality against which all resistance is vain”, the implacable force of this system comes from the fact that it’s set up to appear simply as ‘the order of things’. It can’t be any different because that’s the way finance works in order to optimize profit, the only thing that counts in the world of the neoliberals.

The most dangerous propaganda is perhaps the theory these predators put forth that neoliberalism is going to get rid of the immense poverty that is destroying Africa and which renders life almost unlivable in many other parts of the world. It is going to raise the standard of living all over the world, according to the lords of global finance. Well, we have already seen how that theory is working.

In fact, in the multiple cases where the most essential public services having been transferred to the private sector in countries in both the North and South, we are seeing the quality of services consistently going down as prices consistently rise. A country submitting its public services to the maximization of profit leads to what Eric Hobsbawm(4) designates ‘a failed state’.

As for the quality of life which is in grave danger when job security is lost, Jean Ziegler says: “A citizen delivered without any protection to major social risks loses his quality as a citizen. A man who is constantly afraid of losing his job, his salary and his benefits is not a free man.”(5)

Is there a way we can beat this system?

Since neoliberalism works only for immediate gain and has no long-term view, no vision of a sustainable future, no goals of survival for the people or the environment, it cannot last. But so long as they continue ruining the planet, there will not be a future to count on. That makes their downfall or their overthrow terribly urgent.

Fortunately there have been movements afoot ever since the great debacle in Seattle at the WTO meetings in 1999. The are forces furiously set upon destroying this insidious system of plunder. Since Seattle, the WTO meetings have been seriously interrupted in Montréal in 2003, in Cancun in September 2003, as well as multiple G7 & G8 meetings, the World Economic Forum and EU summits (Genoa, Barcelona, Gothenburg, Geneva(6)). The meetings have mostly ended with a total fiasco. The protests were always met with violent police force and numerous demonstrators were imprisoned and treated by the mainstream media as violent criminals. There is hope, however, that there will also be serious protests in the streets during the upcoming WTO meetings in Hong Kong in December 2005.

The World Social Forum held its second gathering in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2002 (in protest against the World Economic Forum in New York City taking place at the same time) when more than 60,000 men and women from more than 2000 social movements on five continents came together in opposition to the inhuman forces of the neoliberal monster. Civil society is up in arms against the predators and is demanding the abolition of the WTO and the IMF, the elimination of tax havens, the canceling of the Third World debts, introduction of a tax on transactions of capital movement (the Tobin tax). These are just a few of the demands that civil society is putting forth. The next World Social Forum will take place in Caracas, Venezuela, in January 2006. Prominent civil rights leaders give high-profile talks at each of these forums and corrupt world leaders will soon learn civil society is a powerful force.

The heads of state are helpless tools in the claws of the predators since their countries would suffer loss of investment and capital flight in the face of their non-cooperation. The world thus depends on civil society and the strength of the masses of lucid and humane people, the power of the streets, to defeat the colossus that is eagerly devouring the world. Corruption and greed can ultimately be defeated if we the people see the truth and act in accordance with our common sense and human instincts.

source

Germans get biometric passports

The new German passport contains a microchip in the cover.

By Abby Darcy
BBC News, Berlin

Germany has become the first European Union country to introduce biometric passports.

The new passport looks much like the old one, but airport control devices can detect a minute electronic tag concealed inside the cover.

German Interior Minister Otto Schily described the new e-passport as "a real security bonus".

He said the new technology would make forgery "impossible - or at least more difficult". Critics say that is not good enough.

The new biometric passport contains a paper-thin computer chip. Stored on this chip is a scan of the holder's face.

After 2007 the chip will also include fingerprint scans and iris scans could follow later.

When passengers have their passports checked at the airport, a device will scan their face whilst the immigration officer swipes the passport past another control device to check whether the information matches.

Safety concerns

But security tests carried out on the new e-passport have left many questions unanswered, says the data protection commissioner, Peter Schaar. He wanted more transparent testing before the passports were introduced.

"The authorities gave us virtually no information about the results of the security testing that was done," he says. "We haven't been able to properly assess how secure the new passport will be."

Mr Schaar's main concern is unauthorised access to the confidential biometric data. He wants to see more safeguards.

The German government has ruled out a centralised database of the confidential information. "But who says this won't happen abroad?" he says. "We need an EU-wide ruling to prevent storage of this data. This has all happened too fast."

"The future lies in combining the biometric data with CCTV. We saw how vital cameras were in identifying the terrorists responsible for the attacks in London"

Clemens Binninger
Christian Democrat MP

International pressure

And Mr Schaar insists there is no need to rush.

Germany is introducing the new biometric passport well ahead of the rest of Europe. The European Union requires its member states to begin issuing biometric passports by August 2006.

The UK passport service aims to start from February next year.

The pressure came from the US after the terror attacks on 11 September 2001.

Hamburg was the meeting place for the key hijackers involved in the attacks on New York and Washington, including their leader Mohammed Atta, investigators say.

Only travellers with a biometric passport can continue to enter the US without a visa - after October 2006.

But the German government is not shy about why Germans should be the first to have an e-passport in their pocket.

If successful, the new technology will boost Germany's image abroad and benefit the semiconductor industry.

The biometrics market is still in its infancy. So German companies like Infineon, who produce microchips for the new e-passport, could have a profound impact on this market.

Scepticism

Applying for a new passport will now cost double what it used to.

One Berliner, Werner Kirchgaesser, said it was not worth the extra money. "This is the wrong solution," he said. "I don't believe this can help fight terrorism. Although I know we need to be tougher."

His scepticism was echoed by Alexander Katzenberger.

"The politicians aren't sure what to do. But they want to do something," he said. "I don't like the idea. It's just a meaningless gesture."

It is only the beginning, according to a Christian Democrat MP, Clemens Binninger. "We're on the right path," he said.

"But the future lies in combining the biometric data with CCTV. We saw how vital cameras were in identifying the terrorists responsible for the attacks in London."

Another Berliner was philosophical about the new passport. "I lived through the communist GDR," she says. "Privacy wasn't much of a priority then either."

source

Australia plans law to gag parents in child terror cases

Australian police.

Sat Oct 22, 2:31 AM ET

SYDNEY (AFP) - Proposed legislation in Australia would make it a crime for one parent to tell the other that their child had been detained under anti-terror laws, a report says.

If a youth aged between 16 and 18 was detained, one parent would be informed and allowed to visit for two hours daily during the detention, which could last for two weeks without charge, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

But if the chosen parent was the father, for example, and he told the mother where the child was, he could be jailed for up to five years.

The opposition Labor Party's spokesman for homeland security, Arch Bevis, scorned the proposal.

"The idea that one parent could see their child and then somehow be fined or imprisoned for telling the other parent is absurd."

Using Prime Minister John Howard and his wife Janette as an example, Bevis said: "I suspect Janette would be pretty demanding of John to find out where the kids were. And I'd hazard a guess that John might even buckle under the pressure."

Howard's government proposed the tough new legislation in the wake of the London transport bombings of July 7 which killed more than 50 people.

The laws, which include giving police the right to "shoot to kill" and allow for terror suspects to have their movements and contacts restricted, are due to be introduced to parliament on October 31.

A spokesman for Attorney-General Philip Ruddock confirmed that parents would not be exempt from a general ban on disclosing information about anyone detained under the new legislation.

"There would only be one parent allowed to see the minor," the spokesman told the newspaper.

"While the subject of a preventive detention could tell the other parent they were safe, they couldn't tell them they were in preventive detention."

Police would have the discretion to tell the other parent if it was assessed that there was no risk, he said.

Avian Flu Hoax

Is Avian Flu another Pentagon Hoax?

by F. William Engdahl
October 30, 2005

No sooner are indictments being handed down to Scooter Libby, the Chief of Staff of the Vice President of the United States for lies and coverup of information used deliberately to suppress the fact the Bush Administration had no ‘smoking gun’ to prove Saddam Hussein was building a nuclear arsenal, but a new scandal is surfacing every bit as outrageous and ultimately, likely also criminal.

Against all scientific prudence and normal public health procedure, the world population is being whipped up into a fear frenzy by irresponsible public health officials from the US Administration to WHO to the United States Centers for Disease Control. They all warn about the imminent danger that a malicious viral strain might spread from infected birds, primarily in Vietnam and other Asian centers, to contaminate the entire human species in pandemic proportions. Often the flu pandemic of 1918 which is said to have killed 18 million worldwide, is cited as an example of what ‘might’ lie in store for us.

On November 1, appropriately enough the day after Halloween, President Bush is scheduled to visit the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda Maryland to announce his Administration’s strategy of how it will prepare for the next flu epidemic, whether from Bird Flu or some other strain. The plan has been a year in the making. On October 28 the Senate passed an $8 billion emergency funding bill to address the growing Avian Flu panic. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, in a moment of candor during the debate on the Senate bill told the press, ‘If it isn’t the current H5N1 virus that leads to an influenza pandemic, at some point in our nation’s future, another virus will.’ In the meantime taxpayer billions will have gone to a handful of pharmaceutical giants positioned to profit. None stands to reap more lucre than the Swiss-US pharmaceutical giant Roche Holdings of Basle.

The only medicine we are told which reduce the symptoms of general or seasonal influenza and ‘possibly’ might reduce symptoms also of Avian Flu, is a drug called Tamiflu. Today the giant Swiss pharmaceutical firm, Roche, holds the sole license to manufacture Tamiflu. Due to the media panic, the order books at Roche today are filled to overflowing. Roche recently refused a request from the US Congress to lift its exclusive patent rights to allow other drug manug´facturers to produce Tamiflu with the improbable excuse that it was in effect, too complex for others to rapidly produce.

However, the real point of interest is the company in California who developed Tamiflu and gave the marketing rights to its patented discovery to Roche.

‘Rummy Flu’

Tamiflu was developed and patented in 1996 by a California biotech firm, Gilead Sciences Inc. Gilead is a NASDAQ (GILD) listed stock company which prefers to maintain a low profile in the current rush to Tamiflu. That might be because of who is tied to Gilead. In 1997, before he became US Secretary of Defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld was named Chairman of the Board of Gilead Sciences, where he remained until early 2001 when he became Defense Secretary. Rumsfeld had been on the board of Gilead since 1988 according to a January 3 1997 company press release.

An as-yet-unconfirmed report is that Rumsfeld while Secretary of Defense also purchased an additional stock in his former company, Gilead Sciences Inc., worth $18 million, making him one of its largest if not the largest stock owners today.

The Secretary of Defense, the man who allegedly supported the use of contrived intelligence to justify the war on Iraq, is now poised to reap huge gains for a flu panic his Administration has done everything it can to promote. It would be useful to know whether the Pentagon’s successor to Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans developed the strategy of biowarfare behind the current Avian Flu panic. Perhaps some enterprising Congressional committee might look into the entire subject of plausible conflicts of interest regarding Secretary Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld stands to make a fortune on royalties as a panicked world population scrambles to buy a drug worthless in curing effects of alleged Avian Flu. The model suggests the parallel to the brazen corruption of Halliburton Corporation whose former CEO is Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney’s company has so far gotten billions worth of US construction contracts in Iraq and elsewhere. Coincidence that Cheney’s closest political friend is Defense Secretary and Avian Flu beneficiary Don Rumsfeld? It is another example of what someone has called the principle of modern US corrupt special interest politics: ‘Concentrate the benefits; diffuse the costs’ President Bush has ordered the US Government to buy $2 billion worth of Gilead Science’s Tamilflu.

GMO Chickens come home to roost

But Tamiflu conflicts are perhaps just the tip of the iceberg of the Avian Flu story. There is high-level biological research underway in Britain and presumably also the United States to develop a genetic engineering method to make chickens and other birds ‘resistant’ to Avian Flu viruses.

British scientists are reportedly genetically engineering chickens to produce birds resistant to the lethal strains of the H5N1 virus devastating poultry in the Far East. Laurence Tiley, Professor of Microular Virology at Cambridge University and Helen Sang of the Roslin Institute in Scotland are involved in developing ‘transgenic chickens’ which would have small pieces of genetic material inserted into chicken eggs to allegedly make the chickens H5N1 resistant.

Tiley told the Times of London on October 29, ‘Once we have regulatory approval, we believe it will only take between four and five years to breed enough chickens to replace the entire world (chicken) population.’ The real question in this dubious undertaking is which GMO giants are underwriting the research and development of GMO chickens and who will control their products. It is increasingly clear that the entire saga of Avian Flu is one whose dimensions are only slowly coming to light. What we can see so far is not at all pretty.

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Non-Lethal Laser Weapon Halts Aggressors

By Eva D. Blaylock - Nov. 1, 2005

Air Force Research Laboratory
Directed Energy Directorate Public Affairs

U.S. Air Force Capt. Drew F. Goettler, of the Air Force Research Laboratory' Directed Energy Directorate, demonstrates the Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response, or PHaSR, a non-lethal illumination technology developed by the laboratory's ScorpWorks team.

A laser technology being developed by Air Force Research Laboratory employees at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., will be the first man-portable, non-lethal deterrrent weapon intended for protecting troops and controlling hostile crowds.

The weapon, developed by the laboratory's Directed Energy Directorate, employs a two-wavelength laser system and is the first of its kind as a hand-held, single-operator system for troop and perimeter defense.

The laser light used in the weapon temporarily impairs aggressors by illuminating or "dazzling" individuals, removing their ability to see the laser source.

The first two prototypes of the Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response, or PHaSR, were built at Kirtland last month and delivered to the laboratory's Human Effectiveness Directorate at Brooks City Base, Texas, and the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate at Quantico, Va. for testing.

"The future is here with PHaSR," said program manager Capt. Thomas Wegner. He is also the ScorpWorks flight commander within the Laser Division of the directorate.

ScorpWorks is a unit of military scientists and engineers that develops laser system prototypes for Air Force Research Laboratory, from beginning concept to product field testing.

The National Institute of Justice recently awarded ScorpWorks $250,000 to make an advanced prototype that will add an eye-safe laser range finder into PHaSR.

Systems such as PHaSR have historically been too powerful at close ranges and ineffective but eye-safe at long ranges. The next prototype is planned to include the addition of the eye-safe range finder and is planned for completion in March 2006.

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