Seabhcan's Rants

Operation Gull

2008-01-30T11:55:00.000Z

A very disturbing article about the Gardai-PSNI operation to deport people from Belfast who they suspect intend to visit the Republic.

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'They were chaining people up like animals'

Susan McKay

The immigration body in Northern Ireland has had to compensate black visitors wrongly accused of asylum fraud, writes Susan McKay .

Last week the British Home Office abandoned its intention to deport an African family from Northern Ireland. It did so because the family has every right to be in Belfast, and had visas, passports and other papers to prove this when they arrived at Belfast harbour last month, on the boat from Scotland.

This did not stop officials from the British Border and Immigration Agency (BIA) detaining the family, parents Bola and Paul, who, for reasons of privacy, do not wish their real names to be used, and their three children, one of whom is an Irish citizen. Paul was in fact taken to Antrim police station and held overnight, then moved to Dungavel detention centre in Scotland for 10 days.

"They took our papers and they took my husband. I was left alone with the children and the baby and five bags," says Bola, a Nigerian businesswoman. "They said they were going to deport us. I told them we had done nothing wrong. They said we were lying. Before they took him away, I spoke to my husband in my own language. They said I was not allowed to do that. I had to speak English."

When Paul arrived in Scotland, he was handcuffed. "We are not common criminals," says Bola. "We had no intention to deceive anyone. They were very aggressive. I was shocked." Because they have an Irish child and they have independent means, Bola and Paul are entitled under EU legislation to live in the UK. They will not be a "burden on the state". They had already had their documents checked when they entered the UK through London. However, their case is, according to lawyers in the North, an example of what Belfast solicitor Barbara Muldoon calls "a heavy-handed, racist approach" to black people coming into the North.

LAST MONTH, FRANK Kakopa was given compensation and an unreserved apology from the BIA. The structural engineer from Warrington had what he describes as "the worst experience of my life" when he brought his wife, 15-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter for a weekend break to see the Giants Causeway in 2005. The family had booked a B & B on the Antrim coast and a hire car to be picked up at Belfast City Airport. Instead, Kakopa, who is originally from Zimbabwe, was arrested and thrown in jail.

"We'd planned this trip for some time and everyone was quite excited," he says. "When we arrived, officials asked to see my ID. I'd phoned immigration the night before to check what documents I needed, and I'd also been in touch with the car hire firm. So I had our drivers' licenses, the children's passports, a pay slip with my national insurance number and a bank statement. They asked me if we were asylum seekers. I said, 'You have our papers, why do you ask that?' I was smiling, but I didn't feel very welcome. Then they took us aside and started interrogating me in front of the other passengers. They kept saying, 'Prove who you are.'"

Kakopa was brought to see Irish officials at the airport. He had worked in Dublin before he got his current job in England. They also questioned him. He complained to the BIA about the way he was being treated but this was not recorded. By this stage he had been separated from his wife and children.

Several hours of questioning later, a BIA official told him he was an illegal immigrant, took mugshots and called the security guards. "It was so humiliating. They were chaining people up like animals. I refused to be handcuffed. I said I was not going to walk past my children in chains," says Kakopa. "My daughter was screaming. I couldn't look at her . . . I was struggling to control myself."

All the others in the prison van were, like Kakopa, black. They were taken to Maghaberry Prison where Kakopa's possessions were taken, and he was made to strip and given a full body search. "They made comments about my skin colour. Then I was thrown in a cell with another criminal and the door was locked. My window to the other world was closed. It was horrible." He became ill and had to be taken to the prison hospital. He was not allowed to contact his family that day or the next.

Meanwhile, the immigration authorities had confiscated his children's passports so they were unable to fly home with their mother. "My wife was stranded so she had to call friends in Dublin to come and look after the children, and she flew home to get my passport."

She brought the passport to Liverpool airport to show officials and contacted her husband's employer. He, too, contacted immigration. Kakopa was eventually released on the Monday afternoon and given a prisoner's pass to get the bus into Belfast. He had no record of his detention except the envelope in which some of his belongings were returned to him.

"This was a nightmare," he says. "I rang my mother and sister in Zimbabwe and they couldn't believe it. You expect these things in lawless countries. It has really damaged my faith in the authorities." He said he had taken his case through the North's Equality Commission to clear his name. He settled the case out of court for a relatively small amount. "I don't think I could have managed to stand up in court and go through it all. We are private people. We are all very damaged by this."

Eileen Lavery, head of enforcement with the Equality Commission, said the way the Kakopa family was treated was "horrendous" and that it highlighted the need for the full implementation of the Race Relations Order. The BIA agreed to meet the commission to review its policies and discuss race awareness training.

The BIA's chief inspector, Elwyn Soutter, says Operation Gull has been extremely successful. "We are detecting 800 to 900 illegal immigrants a year," he says. "We could catch far more if we had more resources. We occasionally get our facts wrong, but that is an inevitable by-product. We apologise when we do. The figures speak for themselves. It is a tiny percentage of the huge volume of people who are travelling illegally. We detain people if we think they'll abscond. We have saved Irish taxpayers millions in fraud by catching people who are trying to flaunt immigration controls by using the land border into the Republic."

He denied that there was any racism in the way his officials operate. "They question everyone, but inevitably EU citizens can quickly satisfy us. It is not terribly surprising to find it is people who are black or of other ethnicities who are detained."

However, Muldoon, who deals with many cases of Africans who are detained under Operation Gull, says this attitude is outrageous. "You wouldn't say in relation to any other crime that it was acceptable to lock innocent people up just because others were committing crimes. These people are either living in the UK or they have been through immigration on entry to the UK. They are making domestic journeys. Their rights are being trampled on. They are being left traumatised, angry and upset. This is meant to be the new Northern Ireland. There seems to be a deathly silence from our politicians."

Muldoon is currently seeking compensation for a client who came to Belfast to get medical treatment, for which she paid and had receipts. She was accused of attempting to defraud the National Health Service and her passport was confiscated. Another client from Cameroon was on a professional training course in England and came to the North to visit friends. He was detained at Maghaberry, where, he said, he was "paraded naked like an animal" in front of prison guards. His detention was declared illegal. The Home Office is appealing this decision.

THE REFUGEE ACTION Group, which operates under the auspices of the Belfast Law Centre, is also concerned about illegal detentions which are being carried out under conditions of secrecy. "It is appalling that there is no independent, transparent oversight of Operation Gull," says its chairwoman, immigration advisor Anna Morvern.

"People are being arrested and taken away to detention centres before they can get independent legal advice." The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission is currently investigating Operation Gull and is to report on its findings early in 2008.

Asked whether the Irish Government had any concerns about the way Operation Gull was being implemented, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice said that "due to the ongoing success of Gull operations [ in confronting failed asylum seekers], it has been proposed that more operations be conducted at Belfast and Dublin airports."
© 2007 The Irish Times

Putin hasn't heard of the Rep of Ireland

2008-01-21T10:52:00.000Z

It seems Putin doesn't know there is a Republic of Ireland!

From a question & answers session (Russian original is below):
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B.KENDALL: Here is the following question from Joseph O'Donnel from Ireland. He asks: if you do consider that Abkhaziya, South Osetia and Pridnestrov'e have the right to decide their fate, as you explained, then why there is no such right for Chechnya?

V.PUTIN: Certainly, all have the right. ... And one additional point, since the question arrived from Great Britain, yes?

B.KENDALL: From Ireland, this is another country.

V.PUTIN: From Ireland, good. But nevertheless we know the problems of Northern Ireland, we know how some people there relate their identity to Scotland and to Wales. But Great Britain has never, for at least 400 years - in any case that I know from history - conducted negotiations with anyone - on the possibility of the disintegration of its state. And we will not.

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Б.КЕНДАЛЛ: Вот как раз следующий вопрос от Джозефа Одонэла из Ирландии именно к этому вопросу. Он спрашивает: если Вы считаете, что Абхазия, Южная Осетия и Приднестровье имеют право сами решать свою судьбу в таких условиях, как Вы объяснили, то почему такого же права нет у Чечни?

В.ПУТИН: Конечно, все имеют право. Если нашему абоненту известно, то он должен знать, если нет, то я напомню. Мы провели в свое время референдум в Чеченской Республике по Конституции Чечни, и там черным по белому написано, что Чечня является неотъемлемой составляющей частью Российской Федерации. Народ в Чечне проголосовал за это, 80 процентов с лишним людей не только пришли на избирательные участки, но и поддержали это решение. Мы обратились прямо к народу.

И я вам могу сказать, что в тот период времени, это было несколько лет назад, наверное, в российском руководстве я был чуть ли не единственным, кто предложил пойти на этот шаг. Потому что я исходил из того, что мы в конечном итоге, как бы там драматически не складывались события, мы должны обратиться к мнению народа. Я говорю это абсолютно ответственно, что я был почти единственным, кто настоял на этом
решении, и я не жалею об этом, потому что, повторяю, народ Чеченской Республики поддержал ту Конституцию, которая была предложена и выработана внутри самой Чечни, надо сказать. Правда, мы пошли на достаточно смелый шаг, мы предоставили в рамках этих документов большую самостоятельность, по сути автономные права, Чеченской
Республике. И это мы тоже сделали сознательно. Полагаю, что это было правильное решение.

То же самое можно сделать в Абхазии и в других местах.

И еще одно обстоятельство, поскольку вопрос пришел из Великобритании. Ведь так?

Б.КЕНДАЛЛ: Из Ирландии, это другая страна.

В.ПУТИН: Из Ирландии, хорошо. Но тем не менее мы знаем проблемы Северной Ирландии, мы знаем, как некоторые люди относятся к своей идентичности в Шотландии, в Уэльсе. Никогда Великобритания на протяжении 400 лет – во всяком случае то, что я знаю из истории, – не вела ни с кем переговоры на основе возможной дезинтеграции своего государства. И мы не будем.

British and Irish border controls might 'integrate'

2007-10-26T10:40:00.001+01:00

British and Irish border controls might 'integrate'

Frank Millar, London Editor

The successful development of "electronic" borders and the necessary protection of the Common Travel Area between the UK and the Republic will require the virtual integration of British and Irish immigration controls.

That is the verdict of some senior Northern politicians tracking current British legislation to effect tighter "UK" border controls and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern's initial comments on the development of "an Irish border system" likely to be "similar in some ways to the British system".

At the same time Ulster Unionist peer Lord Kilclooney (former MP John Taylor) has warned against a possibly anomalous situation which could see British citizens in Northern Ireland required to provide proof of identity when travelling to other parts of the United Kingdom.

"That would be political dynamite, unionists would be outraged," he said yesterday when asked about the possibility that the new border controls might apply as between "Britain" and "Ireland" while apparently having no significance for "the land border" between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

Lord Kilclooney was reacting to Wednesday's Irish Times report signalling the possible end of the Common Travel Area (CTA) and a future requirement that Irish citizens entering Britain produce a passport. In the Dáil on Wednesday Mr Ahern said "further border controls" would be required between North and South by authorities targeting illegal immigration.

However, he also said: "There are no plans to introduce any controls on the land border between North and South."

Lord Kilclooney and other peers are not advocating the land border become the "first line of defence" for the British state against terrorists and other threats - but rather for a uniformity of approach on an islands-wide basis that would require a comprehensive agreement between the British and Irish governments.

Lord Kilclooney said: "The Common Travel Area between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland requires common controls, whether entry is in Dover or Cork."

In the House of Lords earlier this month he also warned that failure to enforce common controls throughout what he calls "the British isles" would render the Labour government's current UK Borders Bill "null and void".

Lord Kilclooney asked: "Will there be immigration officers on the land boundary between the UK and the Republic? If not, will the Republic of Ireland apply the same entry requirements as immigration officers will require when people enter Great Britain?"

He then argued: "If not - people will enter the Republic of Ireland - as they do now - and move freely across the land border into the UK. Therefore the impact of this bill will be null and void."

Recently ennobled Lord Paul Bew also joined the debate yesterday, suggesting that ID cards - British and Irish, with security, customs, immigration and other authorities accessing the relevant national databases and sharing information - might be the best way to resolve political sensitivities surrounding the position of nationalists in Northern Ireland and the large Irish community in Britain. Under the terms of the Belfast Agreement people in Northern Ireland can define themselves as British or Irish or both.

Meanwhile, Northern Ireland security minister Paul Goggins has confirmed that illegal immigrants do cross the land border from the Republic into Northern Ireland. In a letter to Lord Kilclooney, Mr Goggins said the Borders and Immigration Agency (BIA) assessment is that only a small number of these people remain in Northern Ireland, with most travelling on to Britain. Mr Goggins quotes the British government's Border & Visa Strategy: Securing the UK Border, published in March, identifying that the Common Travel Area "poses an immigration risk".

The agency estimates that the number of illegal immigrants travelling in the opposite direction (from the UK to Ireland) is about the same.

The immigration agency, he says, has committed to the monitoring of all air and sea movements across CTA borders via e-Borders by 2011; to share more data with its Irish counterparts and increase the number of joint operations; deepen coverage of CTA borders by closer collaboration between UK border agencies; explore the potential for additional checks on passengers travelling within the CTA; and review the rules governing CTA border activity, based on the principle that CTA nationals are not subject to immigration control on the internal borders.
© 2007 The Irish Times

ireland.com - The Irish Times - Wed, Oct 17, 2007 - Spur to a rethink on healthcare

2007-10-17T11:23:00.000+01:00

ireland.com - The Irish Times - Wed, Oct 17, 2007 - Spur to a rethink on healthcare

Consultant oncologist John Crown advocates universal health insurance - a reform that should be supported by both left and right

The debate about the Irish health system has been a generally ill-informed discourse, laced with bureaucratic wishful thinking on the one hand, and medical self-interest on the other.

Truly informed students of health economics (poorly represented among our ad-hoc health commentariat and even less well in government) will have found the results of the recent Euro Consumer Health Index striking, if predictable.

Ireland ranked 16th out of 29 nations surveyed across a set of consumer parameters, but in the area of waiting lists, the index that matters most to patients, we ranked dead last.

In this regard, there is currently no cancer type for which the timing of radiotherapy in Dublin is currently meeting international guidelines.

Again, unsurprisingly to those who study these things, our neighbour on the bottom of this index was Britain's National Health Service, which has a funding model very similar to that which applies in Ireland - ie hospitals get an amount of money determined by central budgeters, regardless of how many patients use their services.

Strikingly, every one of the top five countries - Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands - finance their hospitals through a single-tier, social insurance-based "money follows the patient", or Bismarckian model.

How do we fix it? We must first overcome the prevailing orthodoxy in health economics, a fundamentalist theology with a trinity of assumptions, namely: that the demand for healthcare is infinite; that only government can run healthcare fairly; and that spending on health, unlike spending on clothes, holidays or Volkswagens, is bad for an economy.

All of these assumptions are false.

First, infinity. The demand for healthcare is high, but it can be contained at the level that society decides is reasonable, a decision which is helped by citizens perceiving the connection between healthcare and spending.

While only the most heartless would advocate care by individual ability to pay, there is a cast-iron argument in favour of linking it to collective ability to pay, ie social insurance.

One area where there does appear to be infinite demand is administration (see the 10,000 per cent increase in the number of top-grade Health Service Executive bureaucratic jobs under the Minister, Mary Harney).

What of the truly hilarious belief that only government can deliver healthcare in a disinterested fashion? The common good becomes a mantra to justify rationing, of which waiting lists are the most obvious manifestation.

Life-saving cancer drugs are routinely denied to British cancer sufferers, drugs which are routinely available here. Britain in fact ranked close to bottom for drug availability in the Euro consumer survey, yet in one of those Kafkaesque Irish civil service moments, Sir Humphrey's Irish acolytes have now decided to emulate that system.

In considering the third article of bureaucratic faith, the allegedly negative consequences of spending money on healthcare, there is much to learn from a study of the failures and successes of the American system.

The failures are obvious. The US, shamefully and alone among western countries, does not guarantee healthcare universally.

The great majority of Americans do, however, have access - via generally affordable insurance - to an incomparable level of care. There are no waiting lists, the system is expensive and Americans pay the highest percentage of GDP of any western country on healthcare.

So what is happening here? If the current Harney reforms are implemented, the system will be replaced by a rigidly apartheid two-tier system. The poor, whom the right regard as uninsured parasites, will rely on fixed-budget and highly rationed care. Those who can afford it (including virtually all politicians, health bureaucrats and commentators) will use an insurance-based parallel private system.

Not since the Ribbentrop- Molotov pact of 1939, which carved Poland between the Nazis and Soviets, have the right and left found such common ground as has occurred in the current health reform process. Nostalgic misty-eyed 1970s socialists see an opportunity for one last stand for state control. They love the concentration of power over the public system in the hands of the bureaucrats, reducing the reactionary doctors to technical status.

Small-government conservatives, who see public healthcare as a huge wasteful behemoth that drains their tax money for the benefit of others, will also be delighted that it will now be contained by the fixed budgets of the HSE.

A true reform, and not the patch job currently in offer, based on universal insurance and single-tier care (similar to Germany, Austria or Canada) deserves support from right and left.

The left should love the total equity of access, with the poorest person in the land seeing the same doctors in the same offices and hospitals as does the Taoiseach. They should worship a system where care is delivered on need and not on ability to pay.

The right should love a system which at the stroke of a pen cuts taxes (replacing them with something much more efficient - a non-progressive health insurance contribution), fires thousands of bureaucrats and links hospital funding to activity and efficiency, a system where the patient on the waiting list represents lost revenue, not an inactivity bonus.

We can reasonably, if somewhat quixotically, strive for a zero social welfare society, one where safety nets, while provided, are not actually needed, due to full employment and private pension investment.

We cannot strive for a zero healthcare economy. People, including those who lead careful responsible lives, will usually through no fault of their own develop illnesses, the cost of which is beyond any reasonable self-pay provision.

John Crown is consultant medical oncologist and professor in Dublin City University and University College Dublin. He holds an MBA in health management.
© 2007 The Irish Times

Staging Nukes for Iran? : NO QUARTER

2007-09-06T14:23:00.000+01:00

Staging Nukes for Iran? : NO QUARTER: "Staging Nukes for Iran? By Larry Johnson on Sep 5, 2007 in Current Affairs Why the hubbub over a B-52 taking off from a B-52 base in Minot, North Dakota and subsequently landing at a B-52 base in Barksdale, Louisiana? That’s like getting excited if you see a postal worker in uniform walking out of a post office. And how does someone watching a B-52 land identify the cruise missiles as nukes? It just does not make sense.

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

Then he told me something I had not heard before.

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

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

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

The Great Iraq Swindle By Rolling Stone Magazine

2007-09-05T14:45:00.000+01:00

The Great Iraq Swindle By Rolling Stone Magazine:
"The Great Iraq Swindle By Rolling Stone Magazine

28 August, 2007 Rolling Stone

How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins -- he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq.

You start off as a well-connected bureaucrat: in this case, as an Air Force civil engineer, a post from which Robbins was responsible for overseeing 70,000 servicemen and contractors, with an annual budget of $8 billion. You serve with distinction for thirty-four years, becoming such a military all-star that the Air Force frequently sends you to the Hill to testify before Congress -- until one day in the summer of 2003, when you retire to take a job as an executive for Parsons, a private construction company looking to do work in Iraq.

Now you can finally move out of your dull government housing on Bolling Air Force Base and get your wife that dream home you've been promising her all these years. The place on Park Street in Dunn Loring, Virginia, looks pretty good -- four bedrooms, fireplace, garage, 2,900 square feet, a nice starter home in a high-end neighborhood full of spooks, think-tankers and ex-apparatchiks moved on to the nest-egg phase..."

Read More...

Press TV

2007-08-30T12:29:00.000+01:00

Press TV: "An Iranian lawmaker says the US has founded the al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorist groups to achieve its objectives through their terrorist acts. Rapporteur of Majlis (parliament) National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Kazem Jalali described the US political hardliners as the 'founders and supporters' of al-Qaeda and Taliban and insisted that terrorist actions conducted by these two groups are all in line with the US interests. Jalali said the US president George Bush and American neoconservatives reap the greatest benefits from such terrorist attacks. The MP said the US is trying to point the finger of blame at Iran for the terrorist attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan although it is crystal-clear that these attacks are carried out by al-Qaeda and Taliban forces trained and supported by the US."

RTÉ News: Deportation threat over non-EU spouses

2007-08-30T11:38:00.000+01:00

RTÉ News: Deportation threat over non-EU spouses: "Deportation threat over non-EU spouses
Thursday, 30 August 2007 10:57 The Department of Justice has confirmed that several hundred married couples have been issued with notices of intention to deport husbands or wives born outside of the European Union. It follows a ruling made by the High Court two months ago. In June the High Court ruled that the Department of Justice had the right to insist that wives or husbands of non-Irish EU citizens, who were not from the EU themselves, must live legally in another member state before moving to Ireland.

That judgment is being appealed in the Supreme Court but in the meantime the Department has issued deportation notices informing the non-EU spouses living in Ireland of the implementation. The section 3 letters give those under threat of deportation three options: to leave voluntarily; to agree to be deported; or to make representations to stay in Ireland temporarily within the next 15 days. The Immigrant Council of Ireland has said 2,000 people could be affected by the State's plan. Speaking on RTÉ Radio's Morning Ireland, solicitor Derek Stewart said if the purpose of the move was to crackdown on convenience marriages, it would be to the detriment of the majority who were genuine couples."

Indian tech outfit outsources to US

2007-08-29T14:08:00.000+01:00

Indian tech outfit outsources to US

Needed to find cheap third world labour

By Nick Farrell: Tuesday 28 August 2007, 07:39
AN INDIAN outsourcing company has outsourced 500 jobs to Atlanta in the US.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Bangalore-based Wipro plans to locate 500 to 1,000 jobs in Atlanta within the next three years.

The outfit wants to hire software developers and engineers.

Apparently Wipro is being hit by the rising cost of engineers in Bangalore and no longer benefits from a cheap rupee.

Instead it is cheaper to buy US firms and establish manufacturing and research centres across the country. It seems Wipro is prepared to risk alienating its Indian customers by forcing them to deal with quaint American dialects.

Tehran gets ready for potential US strikes » Kuwait Times Website

2007-08-23T14:06:00.000+01:00

Tehran gets ready for potential US strikes » Kuwait Times Website

KUWAIT: Despite US foreign policy's focus on the situation in Iraq and in anticipation of September's Congress hearing, high-ranking sources stated that the Iranian leadership is taking US threats to strike its nuclear sites very seriously.

Furthermore, the sources highlighted that the Iranian leadership had recently increased its military formations including the Revolutionary Guards and the regular army forces. The sources also noted that Iran was currently weighing three options to respond to any potential US military strikes and that the three options included targets within the Gulf region.

Elaborately, the sources explained that the first option( known as the violent response) would involve destroying all US military and logistic bases around the Gulf region, which is the most favored option by the Iranian president.

The second option, favored by Imam Ali Khame'ni, involves intensive strikes on a Gulf state that hosts US Marine Forces and that had suspended its 1973 constitution, which would eventually help create a mess that might develop into changing the whole situation. This option would also ensure maintaining good relationships with other GCC states, as believed by its supporters.

The sources added that the third option, favored by Hashimi Rafsenjani calls for avoiding the risk of any attacks on any GCC states and that the conflict should be restricted with the US alone. Moreover, the sources highlighted that the Iranian leadership had fully discussed the three options this week in anticipation of a potential US strike after finishing the Iraqi issue within a few months.

Meanwhile, diplomatic sources noted that Kuwait and GCC states were currently looking forward to the report on the Iranian nuclear powers. The sources stressed that GCC states fully backed Iran's right to possess its own nuclear power.

Continuity of Government

2007-08-22T11:17:00.000+01:00

The only good Arab is a dead Arab

2007-08-21T09:47:00.000+01:00

The only good Lebanese is a dead Lebanese. The only good Arab is a dead Arab. Long live the IDF. Death to Lebanon and death to the Arabs

U.S. diplomat accused of anti-Arab comments retires - Yahoo! News: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. diplomat accused of having said 'the only good Arab is a dead Arab' in a voice mail left with an Arab-American group has retired from the government, the State Department said on Thursday. ADVERTISEMENT click here The diplomat, Patrick Syring, was accused of having made abusive, intimidating and racist comments in e-mails and voice mails to employees of the Arab American Institute, a Washington group that promotes Arab-American interests. The State Department declined comment on the legal case against Syring, which was outlined in an indictment filed at a U.S. federal court on Wednesday, but said the diplomat had decided to retire. Syring is alleged to have made the comments in a series of e-mails and voice mails to officials the Arab American Institute, including its president James Zogby, when Israel was at war with Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas in July 2006. 'The only good Lebanese is a dead Lebanese. The only good Arab is a dead Arab. Long live the IDF. Death to Lebanon and death to the Arabs,' Syring said in a voice mail recorded at the institute on July 17, 2006. IDF stands for Israel Defense Forces -- the Israeli military. 'Fuck the Arabs and Fuck James Zogby and his wicked Hizbollah brothers. They will burn in hellfire on this earth and in the hereaf"

US citizen in terror case tortured

2007-08-17T13:33:00.000+01:00

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/16/1416242

Also he had developed, actually, a third thing. He had developed really a tremendous identification with the goals and interests of the government. I really considered a diagnosis of Stockholm syndrome. For example, at one point in the proceedings, his attorneys had, you know, done well at cross-examining an FBI agent, and instead of feeling happy about it like all the other defendants I’ve seen over the years, he was actually very angry with them. He was very angry that the civil proceedings were “unfair to the commander-in-chief,” quote/unquote. And in fact, one of the things that happened that disturbed me particularly was when he saw his mother. He wanted her to contact President Bush to help him, help him out of his dilemma. He expected that the government might help him, if he was “good,” quote/unquote.

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, I think one of the things you have to realize is he was adamant that he would not reveal any quote/unquote “classified information.” He in fact refused to provide a narrative of his account. He essentially -- on the second day, after spending four hours on the Monday and we developed some rapport, on the second day I brought him in a list of materials and interrogation tactics that had been already -- you know, they were in the public record. And I asked him just merely to say yes or no to some of these things. And this included slapping, exposure to heat or cold for long periods of time, forcible showering. He was terrified, actually, about being taken to a thing called the “cage.” This was supposedly “recreation” -- I’d like to put that in quotes. He spoke about the lack of sleep, the relentless clicking and then banging of the doors of other cells that would wake him up.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain that. Wasn't he alone in the Naval brig?

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Yes, he was. In this very small cell, he was monitored twenty-four hours a day, and the doors were managed electronically. And between what Mr. Padilla told us and other sources, essentially it’s possible to open and close these doors electronically. And he would hear the click of the door opening, which is a loud click that sort of echoed, and then a very loud bang over and over and over again for hours at a time, possibly days. He had no way of knowing the time. The light was always artificial. The windows were blackened. He had no calendar or time, as you mentioned earlier. He really didn't see people, especially in the beginning. He only had contact with his interrogators.

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Well, during my time with him, some of his reasoning seemed somewhat impaired, some of his thinking seemed impaired, his memory certainly, his ability to pay attention seemed very impaired. I developed a differential diagnosis from this: severe anxiety. Post-traumatic stress disorder can do that. But also, we know from really basic neuroscience studies that extreme isolation for prolonged periods of time -- and I’m talking, you know, the studies are on maybe days or weeks, and he had extreme isolation for years -- really do, in fact, impair higher brain function. And I recommended that we get some neuropsychological testing. And, unfortunately, he wasn't able to fully cooperate with that. However, the testing we did do was consistent with brain damage, yes.

And so, his perceptions of what was happening to him and himself, which is one of the most terrifying aspects, was really difficult to assess. For example, he reported very clearly that he had been given mind-altering drugs.

DR. ANGELA HEGARTY: Drugged, yes. And clearly he had some terrible frightening experience to which he attributed these drugs. However, again, his -- given what sensory deprivation and isolation of this scale does, it’s also entirely possible that he wasn't given drugs, and it’s just the psychiatric effects of the isolation and the sensory deprivation, because the hallucinations can be incredibly vivid. People feel like they’re losing their minds, that they’re coming apart. It’s absolutely terrifying.

The best phishing e-mail yet...

2007-08-17T09:39:00.000+01:00

From: Deaconess Rosilyn Dyer[SMTP:DEACONESSROSILYNDYER@ADELPHIA.NET]
Sent: 17 August 2007 00:52:15
Subject: IN GOOD FAITH..

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Nation's Soul Is at Stake in NSA Surveillance Case

2007-08-16T17:50:00.000+01:00

08.15.07 | 2:00 AM

Today the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco is hearing arguments on two of the most important cases in decades dealing with the rule of law and personal privacy.

The cases are Hepting v. AT&T and Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation v. Bush. At stake is whether the government can immunize itself from public oversight and prosecution for illegal activities by claiming that whatever actions it took were done in the name of national security. These cases will also influence whether the government is entitled to warehouse citizen phone calls and e-mails for subsequent unsupervised searching and data mining.

(Disclosures: During the trial court proceedings, law professor Susan Freiwald and our Stanford Center for Internet and Society filed a law professors' amicus brief on behalf of the plaintiffs in Hepting. Wired News has also filed motions to intervene in the case and asked the court to make public evidence filed under seal of AT&T's alleged wiretapping activities. In September of this year, I will join Hepting plaintiffs' counsel the Electronic Frontier Foundation as Civil Liberties Director.)

The plaintiffs in the Al-Haramain case include a charity that claims the government illegally wiretapped calls between itself and its lawyers. During the litigation, the government turned over a document that proved, the plaintiffs say, that the charity was indeed surveilled without a warrant. The government claimed the document was classified top secret and asked the plaintiffs to return it. However, the lawyers still remember what the document said. Now the government wants to prevent the lawyers from using their own memories to prove that the charity was indeed monitored and therefore has the right to sue.

The trial court in Oregon ruled in favor of the plaintiff (.pdf), leading the government to appeal. On appeal, Al-Haramain's attorney Jon B. Eisenberg was required to write his appellate brief at government offices and was not permitted to retain a copy of his own document, nor will he be allowed to see the government's reply to his arguments.

Hepting is a class action against AT&T claiming that the telecommunications provider diverted the entire stream of customer communications to the government. The case makes no claims about, nor depends on what the government did with that information. The Department of Justice has argued that merely confirming or denying that AT&T's surveillance takes place could aid terrorists by letting them know what forms of communication are monitored. U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker rejected this argument (.pdf), pointing to voluntary statements by the government and AT&T that he says are adequate to let the case go forward. The Hepting and Al-Haramain rulings are consolidated in today's hearing.

The appeal takes place in a strange legal climate. The government recently convinced the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss an ACLU lawsuit (.pdf) on the grounds that the plaintiffs could not prove that they were spied upon. At the same time the government has attacked lawsuits and investigations by state government officials on the grounds that the states do not have the right to prove that the public communications carriers were monitoring on behalf of the government, because that information is a state secret.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration continues to disclose additional information about its surveillance activities when it thinks doing so helps its cause. In late July of this year, the White House voluntarily revealed that not only was the National Security Agency intercepting phone calls and e-mails into and out of the United States, under the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program, or TSP, but that the agency also was data mining troves of American's phone and e-mail records.

This revelation came as the White House was trying to defend embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales against accusations of misleading Congress. Gonzales had claimed that a 2004 dispute between the Justice Department and the White House over a top secret surveillance program wasn't about the TSP at all. The new information allows defenders of Gonzales to maintain that his sworn testimony was true, if legalistic. But it also should give the 9th Circuit pause about over-crediting administration assertions of secrecy.

Last week Congress altered the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in broad ways that purport to allow the government to collect the international communications of all Americans. Once this information is collected, the administration receives a great deal of discretion over which of those communications it actually listens to. Hopefully, but unlikely, Congress will allow the law to sunset in six months because it essentially removes future judicial oversight of surveillance activities conducted in the name of foreign intelligence. This is the same result the government is seeking before the 9th Circuit today, but effectuated by statute rather than by judicial opinion.

Supporters of the Bush administration's position on warrantless surveillance are often heard arguing that we must use any means necessary to fight terrorism. But "any means necessary" is not the guiding principle of a civilized, democratic nation, especially when the tools we are implementing are often more distracting than effective -- never mind "necessary." When the 9th Circuit rules in these two cases, we will find out if we are a nation at risk of losing its soul, or one that will be governed by the rule of law, and will seek to protect people from arbitrary and harmful government monitoring.

- - -

Jennifer Granick is executive director of the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society, and teaches the Cyberlaw Clinic.

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/commentary/circuitcourt/2007/08/circuitcourt_0815

Media manipulation on 9/11

2007-08-09T20:43:00.000+01:00

There were a lot of players competing for attention on 9/11. Within minutes of the first tower being hit, the media was reporting that 'a Palestinian group' had claimed responsibility.

Then, TV started playing footage of Palestinians celebrating.

Later it turned out that 'Palestinian Group' in question was the tiny Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the group's leader denied responsibility. The 'claim' had come in the form of an anonymous call to a Dubai newspaper.

Later still, it turned out that the Palestinians were not celebrating 9/11, but the 1993 peace treaty. The footage played on nearly every station around the world was 8 years old.

Who sent this footage to the media? Why did they use it without question? Who made the false claim of responsibility? And how was all this organised so quickly after 9/11? None of this has ever been investigated.

Your printer is tracked

2007-08-05T06:20:00.000+01:00

The Stasi used to register and track all the type writers in East Germany... But we live in the free world, right?

--

Find Out If Your Printer Is Spying on You

Wed Jul 18, 2007 4:20PM EDT

Did you know that many (in fact, most) color laser printers are spying on you whenever you print a document? Though you may not have heard the news, the discovery was announced in late 2005. Manufacturers embed a pattern of tiny yellow dots on printed pages. The dots are too small to be seen with the naked eye (especially since they're yellow, see the above photo to see what they actually look like), but under a microscope and blue light they're revealed. The dots are placed in a pattern unique to each printer, and since most color laser printers are purchased through well-documented service providers or direct from the manufacturer, it's simple to track any printed page back to the owner of the printer.

The original idea was obviously to help the government track down currency counterfeiters, since any phony money would be tagged with the yellow dots and would be easily trackable back to the source. But there are also signs of abuse, with the FBI reportedly using the technology to keep tabs on who's printing material for groups like the ACLU and Greenpeace. That's a little scary... and important to remember if you've considering printing a whistleblowing tip or any missive you'd prefer to leave anonymous on a color laser.

If the privacy ramifications of this news bother you, there's some good news. Not all printers have the tracking dots, and the EFF has compiled and updated its list of which ones do and which ones don't. Simply check out this page and look up your printer. (Remember, black and white lasers and inkjet printers don't include the dots.) As the document notes, remember that even if a printer doesn't include the dots, that doesn't mean it isn't using some other method to track your printed pages. If your printer isn't listed here, that means that no information is available about whether that printer includes the dots or not.

Yahoo News

List of Printers

ireland.com - The Irish Times - Fri, Aug 03, 2007 - Truth and history in the North

2007-08-03T09:55:00.000+01:00

ireland.com - The Irish Times - Fri, Aug 03, 2007 - Truth and history in the North: Truth and history in the North

In New York, in late 1994, I was chatting about the new post-ceasefire situation in Northern Ireland with a prominent Irish-American businessman. He assured me that while his own personal preference was for a united Ireland, he would happily give his support to any political arrangement that had the backing of a majority of people within each of the two Northern communities, writes David Adams

He was adamant that then president Bill Clinton held the same view and intended doing everything he could to help the British and Irish governments bring about such a settlement. He then went on to say something that seemed so odd at the time it has stayed with me ever since.

"While I have a deep affection for Ireland," he said, "I am an American first and foremost. My first loyalty is and always will be to America." "We [ the USA] simply cannot afford for the Troubles to continue any longer. We cannot afford to have our closest and most reliable ally's troops bogged down in a local dispute when all of this Islamic stuff in the Middle East is about to get very messy."

I nodded in agreement, pretending I had at least some notion of what he was talking about. It would be a few years before it became very clear just how messy the "Islamic stuff" was to get, and not just in the Middle East.

My friend's words have returned to me a few times since 1994, particularly in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York's Twin Towers, and when America and Britain invaded Iraq. With the official ending this week of Operation Banner, the British army's name for its 38-year role in support of the civil powers in Northern Ireland, I thought of them again.

It struck me that now, at last, the US's closest and most reliable ally was finally freed from its military-sapping commitment to a local dispute. And not for the first time I thought about how, where governments are concerned, the "bigger picture" invariably stretches beyond the apparent.

In Northern Ireland, however, interest seldom wanders outside the parameters of our own region. And so it proved again this week when radio phone-in programmes were swamped by local politicians and members of the public eager to give their assessment of the military's contribution to our recent past.

That, for many soldiers, service in Northern Ireland has been replaced by tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan didn't get a mention. The issue under discussion was more important than that of soldiers being removed from one set of dangers only to be confronted by others.

Where Catholic/nationalist/republican contributors were concerned, little good could be said about the British army. For the Protestant/unionist/loyalist community, there was little that any fair-minded person could find to criticise.

It all chimed so predictably with religious and political affiliation you could have written the scripts. Very depressing, but hardly surprising.

After all, a large chunk of recent history is up for grabs, with an opportunity to try to bend it in one direction or another. Yet history, as we know, has at best only a tenuous connection to the truth. And the truth is never so simplistically black or white.

The British army's record in Northern Ireland is indeed far from unblemished. It did make a number of terribly tragic "errors". Some were the result of plain arrogance and stupidity, some of negligence, and a few were undoubtedly criminal: none more so than Bloody Sunday.

But its sacrifice was also great (763 members were killed and thousands more physically and psychologically maimed) and there were numerous individual acts of heroism where soldiers knowingly sacrificed themselves to protect civilians. It is beyond dispute that the army did save innumerable lives.

Many of those politicians who were loudest this week in denouncing past misdeeds by the army had, themselves, previously put a lot of effort into trying to create situations where military overreaction would occur. It suited their purpose, at the time, for the army to wreak havoc within nationalist communities. Some of the same people have very little room to criticise anybody when it comes to civilian casualties or the violation of human rights.

On a wider front, those who bemoan the fact that British troops were ever deployed in the North are noticeably shy about suggesting any realistic alternative. In 1969 there was simply no other option if the RUC was not to be completely overrun and a full-blown civil war was not to break out.

In the end, though, it is pointless cogitating on the British army's role in the North. Every bit as pointless as speculating on how many Border Protestants might still be alive today or how much sooner the conflict might have ended if the Irish Army and the Garda had been a little more active throughout the Troubles.

We all know the history and will form judgments that suit. Yet history is one thing; do we really know the truth? Perhaps the Troubles ended only when the American government decided, for its own selfish reasons, to put pressure on all concerned.
© 2007 The Irish Times

seabhcan - Google Search

2007-08-01T13:50:00.000+01:00

Palast is broke - I send €50

----
Busted & Crimes of The Times
Published August 1st, 2007 in Articles

By Greg Palast

Cutely buried in the 18th paragraph in a story about Alberto Gonzales on Sunday was a slyly-worded updated confession by the New York Times that, in 2004, the Bush Administration leaned on its editors to spike a story about illegal invasions of citizens’ private records (”data mining”). The Times editors smothered the story. They finally ran it - a year later - after Bush was safely re-elected.

As a journalist, this makes me want to throw up.

For two reasons: First, while The Times was covering up Bush’s KGB-style data-mining operation, the Palast team was revealing its secrets. We published confidential FBI memos detailing horrific schemes for illegal spying using Bush’s favored contractor, a company called ChoicePoint Inc.

The second reason The Times ‘confession’ makes me ill: While the publishers at the Paper of Record were counting their millions, the Palast Investigative Fund was slowly going broke.

Well, we’ve made it: Last Friday, the main-stream US media, through the venerable PBS program ‘NOW’, finally broadcast our reportage on the “caging” of voters, a story we first broke 3 years ago. BEFORE the 2004 election.

We’ve made it in another way: Friday was also the day I was informed that the Palast Investigative Fund was dead broke, technically bankrupt, with way less than zero in the account.

It's not torture, it's sex - Los Angeles Times

2007-07-31T11:07:00.000+01:00

It's not torture, it's sex - Los Angeles Times: "It's not torture, it's sex
Why is it the more the White House refines the rules, the pervier things get?
By By A.S. Hamrah
July 30, 2007

When a group of 50 high school students visiting the White House in June handed President Bush a letter urging him to stop the torture of suspected terrorists, the president took their letter, read it, then told the students that 'the United States does not torture.'

By the time a president has alienated even high school overachievers, the cat is out of the bag; it is now general knowledge that the United States of America tortures people. We know that torture rarely if ever works. So what are government officials getting out of it?

Right before his recent colonoscopy, Bush announced that he had issued an executive order banning cruel and inhumane treatment in interrogations of suspected terrorists. This clarified interrogation guidelines he had issued last fall banning techniques that 'shock the conscience.' While the guidelines appear to be a step toward more concrete protection of human rights, the administration's constant rejiggering of the border between interrogation and torture reveals something else: a Sadean interest in the refinement of torture, a desire to define what is and is not 'beyond the bounds of human decency,"

ireland.com - The Irish Times - Tue, Jul 31, 2007 - An island of calm that didn't exist

2007-07-31T10:09:00.000+01:00

ireland.com - The Irish Times - Tue, Jul 31, 2007 - An island of calm that didn't exist: "An island of calm that didn't exist
An island of calm that didn't exist

IRAQ: Baghdad is an increasingly restrictive place, as Molly Hennessy-Fiske found when she went for a women and children-only swim

When one of my Iraqi co-workers invited me to go swimming the other day, I wasn't sure what she meant. Sure, we have an outdoor swimming pool at our hotel, but it's pretty much off limits to us - we're women.

It hasn't always been this way. I've heard stories from other female reporters about how they would lounge by the hotel pool in 2003, drinking beers and taking afternoon dips as helicopters buzzed overhead. And Baghdad once had at least a dozen public pools where men and women swam together.

But Muslim religious leaders have clamped down on women's attire. Just last week, the Iraqi parliament debated the morality of co-ed swimming.

Given that political environment, in the interest of modesty, most women don't use the hotel pool during the day.

Instead, we walk past, draped in scarves and ankle-length tunics, and stare longingly at the rectangle of water or, if men are splashing around, avert our eyes. After dark sometimes we creep down with friends, strip to one-piece swimsuits under long pants in order to swim a few laps.

But my co-worker wasn't talking about our pool. She explained that Tuesdays are "family day" at the pool in the Babylon Hotel.

Women and children only. No men.

"Do the women wear head scarves?" I asked. No, she said, of course not.

What about abayas, the ankle-length tunics I wear here? No. Maybe they wore the abaya-style swimsuits I had seen in the US, spandex body suits with matching head covers? No again.

"I know," she said, "I couldn't believe it myself." And then she really shocked me: "Some of them even wear bikinis."

I imagined a pool deck full of Iraqi women reclining in two-piece suits, slipping on enormous sunglasses and sipping Diet Pepsis. I could just picture the eager men craning their necks from hotel windows above to get a look. An island of female liberation in the increasingly restrictive capital. I had to see it.

So on Tuesday, we drove over wearing our head scarves and tunics, carrying a bag full of swimsuits, caps, earplugs and an inflatable pool toy.

At the hotel, we followed some stairs up to a long carpeted corridor leading to the pool. After paying an entrance fee of 10,000 Iraqi dinars each, about €5, we were in.

Inside, a woman wearing a black T-shirt over a black one-piece swimsuit was helping her two sons change on the cracked tile floor. The place had the same dingy water and chlorine smell of public pools in the US.

My mood lifted as we shed our head scarves and I watched my co-worker emerge in a tankini-style flowered two-piece, shaking out her short hair.

"I feel free," she said, smiling.

But as soon as we emerged from the locker room, my fantasy ended.

First of all, it was an indoor pool - no terrace, no deck chairs, no reclining beauties. The pool water was greyish, nearly opaque, probably because of all the chlorine.

Not nearly as inviting as the pool I'd imagined, or even the hotel pool.

But as I stepped over to the edge, a young woman immediately surfaced next to me in a neon green two-piece suit. I noticed she also wore a gold necklace and rings, long black hair pulled back into a ponytail and heavy eye make-up miraculously intact.

Come this way, she said, and took my hand, leading me to a set of stairs in the shallow end. My co-worker followed.

The water was cool, the crowd of about 20 people welcoming. Soon we were surrounded by young women clamouring for attention from the tall, pale American and her friend. Some wore T-shirts over modest swimsuits, others low-cut, strappy two-piece suits - revealing, but nothing like the bikinis I'd pictured.

They all had questions: Where were we from? Did we speak Arabic? Could we go underwater? Could we swim to the deep end?

I showed them I could, doing the strong crawl I learned back in summer camp. One woman, awed, confided to my friend that she had thought I was lying.

Most of them said they didn't really know how to swim. So they stuck to the shallow end or inched their way along the pool walls.

Boys in swim goggles cannonballed beside them. Little girls in Barbie swimsuits abandoned their water wings, then scampered out of the water to reclaim them.

Several women introduced themselves in English, including a young woman in a T-shirt-swimsuit combo from Baghdad who said she used to work for the US army. This was her first trip to the pool, she said. "You don't have pools like this in the US, right?" the young woman asked. I had to agree.

Suddenly, my co-worker whispered in my ear. She had overheard one of the women talking about me in the shallow end. It was the woman we had seen in the locker room, the woman in black.

"She thinks we are with the army," my co-worker said. "She said: 'There are the American invaders and the bitches that help them'."

I looked toward the shallow end. The woman had her back to me, but I caught a glimpse of her profile. She looked like a middle-age mother. Maybe US troops had searched her house, or detained her husband, I said. My co-worker promised to complain to the pool manager. I told her not to.

All at once I became very aware that I was the only American in the room, the only American I had seen on the way into the hotel. Most of the women I had talked to said they had never seen an American at the pool before. "Probably because they don't think it's safe," they said.

We kept swimming, but I was uneasy. A few minutes later, my co-worker reported that the woman in the shallow end was getting angrier.

"She is saying: 'If I have my way, they will not leave the hotel today'."

So we got out, gathered our bags and retreated to the locker room. I showered and changed quickly, throwing on my coverings, tying my pale blue head scarf tight around my head.

As we emerged into the dry heat of afternoon, my co-worker was frowning. I knew she was worried that if I wrote about the pool, conservative Shia politicians allied with anti-US cleric Muqtada al-Sadr might try to close it down. But other co-workers had dismissed the possibility, and that wasn't really what upset her.

"I feel you are not really with me, that you didn't enjoy yourself," she said.

She was right. I felt refreshed, my skin cool and clean. But the female-only island of calm I came looking for didn't exist. In Baghdad today, conflict reaches into even the most private of spaces. There is no escape. - ( LA Times-Washington Post service)
© 2007 Los Angeles Times

Guardian's view of Islam

2007-07-27T09:40:00.000+01:00

Read this Guardian Article:

Widow of July 7 ringleader tells of miscarriage on day of bombings | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited:

"She said her husband was dedicated to his faith but she could never imagine 'in her wildest dreams' that he was involved in anything more extreme."

Doesn't that line seem to suggest that Islam and bombings are on some natural spectrum?

BBC News | AMERICAS | How the World Trade Center fell

2007-07-25T18:54:00.000+01:00

BBC - Quality journalism

This is interesting... exactly 50 hours after the WTC fell in 2001 the BBC posted an article explaining the collapse. Interviewing 'experts' the conclusion is:

"It was the fire that killed the buildings - nothing on Earth could survive those temperatures with that amount of fuel burning" - Chris Wise, Structural Engineer

Its an odd statement from an engineer. The 'amount' of fuel that burns does not indicate the temperature. If it did, then a bonfire would be hotter than a blow-torch. The temperature of fire is more to do with the speed of combustion, which has to do with oxygen supply.

Chris Wise is well respected and often crops up on the BBC website. He is also not always so uncritical. In 2004 when a steel and concrete terminal of Charles De Gaulle airport collapsed, he noted "Buildings like that do not just collapse, something very unusual has happened. The structure stood for a year and then spontaneously fell down without anything apparently changing. It's very odd. It's not an unusual structure. There are thousand of structures of similar size across the world."1. Hmmm...

There are a lot of other mistakes in the BBC article. The WTC was not built using Steel reinforced concrete. The Steel was bare, except for light fire-proofing, to save on weight.

BBC News | AMERICAS | How the World Trade Center fell

Another interesting article, Twin Tower' Steel under Scrutiny, says that John Knapton of Newcastle University was being sought by the WTC insurance companies to figure out how the steel failed. At the time (october 2001) he said that his investigations might take a decade, if the insurance companies agreed. It seems he didn't get the job, and in fact, there's little evidence anyone did.

The Epoch Times | Chinese Secret Services Work As Soviets Did

2007-07-25T17:18:00.000+01:00

The Epoch Times | Chinese Secret Services Work As Soviets Did

NTDTV: During his recent visit to Canada, Chen Yonglin – the Chinese diplomat who defected in Australia – pointed out that the Chinese embassies in North-America control and use the Chinese Student and Scholar Associations (CSSA) for ulterior motives such as spying. More and more evidence for this Chinese embassy's control has surfaced lately. What's your viewpoint on this and how would you relate this to the Chinese Student Association Leuven (CSAL) case in Belgium where similar accusations were made in 2005?

Moniquet: I think that the first thing to mention is that in fact all countries are using espionage, but China is doing it in a very aggressive and extensive way. The Chinese secret services work exactly as the Soviets did. They have the Ministry of Public Security and a special intelligence branch in the army. Both are controlling a lot of organizations abroad, and especially they are controlling journalists and students....

ireland.com - The Irish Times - Tue, Jul 24, 2007 - New register to only list future 'pay-as-you-go' mobile phones

2007-07-24T10:14:00.000+01:00

ireland.com - The Irish Times - Tue, Jul 24, 2007 - New register to only list future 'pay-as-you-go' mobile phones: New register to only list future 'pay-as-you-go' mobile phones

John Downes

Government plans to introduce a register of all mobile phones are likely to only relate to new "pay-as-you-go" handsets, meaning thousands of these phones already in circulation will not be affected.

The Minister of State responsible for drugs strategy, Pat Carey TD, revealed yesterday that he did not think it would be feasible to "backdate" the measure to include older phones.

The proposals, which are contained in the Programme for Government, could mean individuals buying "pay-as-you-go" phones will in future have to produce identification and proof of address, as is currently the case with "bill pay" phones.

The aim would be to prevent their use by criminals involved in the drugs trade, as well as their use from within prisons.

This year a Garda inquiry was launched after a prisoner made a phone call from prison to an RTÉ radio talk show.

Mr Carey told The Irish Times the recent use of mobile phone technology to track the movements of murderer Joe O'Reilly was one example of how useful this technology could be.

He said any new deterrent which could make it "that bit more difficult" for criminal elements to undertake their activities was welcome.

In this context, even if it proved to be of limited use and may inconvenience "bona fide" users, he believed the move would be worthwhile.

He said in introducing any such measure the Government would also take into account all of the relevant data protection legislation and human rights legislation.

Mr Carey added that he would like to examine the possibility of registering "pay-as-you-go" phones in the near future.

Last May convicted armed robber John Daly telephoned RTÉ's Liveline show from his cell in Portlaoise maximum security prison on a smuggled mobile phone.

He was still on air contributing to the programme when a prison officer went into his cell to bring the phone call to an end.

"I can't stay long, I can't stay long, I'm ringing from my cell," he said.

At the time this prompted criticism from Opposition parties that prison had become a "soft option".

The Irish Prison Service subsequently revealed that its search of the prison had uncovered 17 smuggled mobile phones, five Sim cards and 11 phone chargers.
© 2007 The Irish Times

Kissinger’s Secret Meeting With Putin

2007-07-20T11:27:00.000+01:00

Kissinger’s Secret Meeting With Putin

Kissinger’s Secret Meeting With Putin

Mike Whitney
Thursday, July 19, 2007

"RAF fighter jets were scrambled to intercept two Russian strategic bombers heading for British airspace yesterday, as the spirit of the Cold War returned to the North Atlantic once again. The incident, described as rare by the RAF, served as a telling metaphor for the stand-off between London and Moscow over the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.” (Times Online, Richard Beeston; “RAF scrambles to intercept Russian bombers, 7-18-07)

"Men are always wicked at bottom unless they are made good by some compulsion.” Niccoló Macchiavelli

When a political heavyweight, like Henry Kissinger, jets-off on a secret mission to Moscow; it usually shows up in the news.

Not this time.

This time the media completely ignored---or should we say censored—Kissinger’s trip to Russia and his meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In fact, apart from a few short blurps in the Moscow Times and one measly article in the UK Guardian, no major news organization even covered the story. There hasn’t been as much as a peep out of anyone in the American media.

Nothing. That means the meetings were probably arranged by Dick Cheney. The secretive Veep doesn’t like anyone knowing what he’s up to.

Kissinger was accompanied on his junket by a delegation of high-powered political and corporate big-wigs including former Secretary of State George Schultz, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, former Special Representative for Arms Control, Nonproliferation and Disarmament Ambassador Thomas Graham Jr., former Senator Sam Nunn and Chevron Chairman and Chief Executive Officer David O'Reilly.

Wow. Now, there’s an impressive line up.

The group was (presumably) sent to carry out official government business as discreetly as possible. The media obviously complied with White House requests and kept their mouths shut.

Isn’t the First amendment great?

The array of talent in Kissinger’s delegation suggests that the US and Russia are engaged in sensitive, high-level talks on issues ranging from nonproliferation and Missile Defense, to energy exploration and development, to the Iranian “enrichment” program and partitioning of Serbia (Kosovo), to the falling dollar and the massive US current account deficit. The US and Russia are at loggerheads on many of these issues and relations between the two countries has steadily deteriorated.

No one really knows what took place at the meetings, but judging by Kissinger’s parting remarks; things did not go smoothly. He said to one reporter, ``We appreciate the time that President Putin gave us and the frank manner in which he explained his point of view.”

In diplomatic phraseology, “frank” usually means that there were many areas of strong disagreement. Presumably, the main “bone of contention” is Putin’s insistence on a “multi-polar” world in which the sovereign rights of other nations is safeguarded under international law. Putin is ferociously nationalistic and he will not compromise Russia’s independence to be integrated into Kissinger and Co.’s wacky the new world order.

The Empire Strikes Back

Less than 48 hours after the “Russia-USA: A View on the Future” conference had ended, British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband announced that the British government “would expel four diplomats from the Russian Embassy in London in response to Russia’s refusal to extradite Andrei K. Lugovoi, whom the British prosecutors accused of using radioactive Polonium 210 to poison a Kremlin critic and former K.G.B. agent, Alexander Litvinenko, last fall.” (New York Times)

The expulsion of the diplomats is a clear indication that Bush ordered his “new poodle” Gordon Brown to begin a campaign of harassment against Russia.

The British action is unprecedented and outlandish. The Russian Foreign Ministry was evidently thunderstruck by the move. After all, Britain has refused to honor 21 requests from Russia to extradite gangster-oligarch Boris Berezovsky and the Chechen rebel leader Akhmed Zakayev, who currently live in London. As Deputy foreign minister Alexander V. Grushko said, “If Russia used the same formula, the British embassy would be short about 80 diplomats now.” The hypocrisy is shocking to say the least.

Besides, who is going to believe that the British government has taken a sudden interest in the death of a former-KGB agent? Heck, the Brits kill more Iraqis in a day around Basra then anyone in the Kremlin kills in a year. The whole thing stinks of political opportunism much like the investigation of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Russia is presently exploring its options for retaliation, but the implications of unexpected clash are obvious; the US and Britain have placed Russia on their “enemies list” and are planning to execute a guerilla war of harassment, slander, and covert operations intended to deepen the divisions between Europe and Russia. Naturally, Putin will continue to be demonized in the western media as a looming threat to democratic values.

Ultimately, the goal is to pit Europe against Russia while the Pentagon, the CIA, and M-15 settle on a long-term strategy for gaining access to vital petroleum and natural gas supplies in Central Asia and the Caspian Basin. That is still the main objective and both Putin and Kissinger know it.

So far, Putin appears to have the upper-hand in this regard because he has skillfully strengthened alliances with his regional allies--under the rubric of the Commonwealth of Independent States---and because most of the natural gas from Eurasia is pumped through Russian pipelines. An article in “Today’s Zaman” gives a good snapshot of Russia’s position vis a vis natural resources in the region:

“As far as natural resources are concerned Russia's hand is very strong: It holds 6.6 percent of the worlds proven oil reserves and 26 percent of the world's gas reserves. In addition, it currently accounts for 12 percent of world oil and 21 of recent world gas production. In May 2007, Russia was the world's largest oil and gas producer.

As for national champions, Putin has strengthened and prepared Gazprom (the state-controlled gas company), Transneft (oil pipeline monopoly) and Rosneft (the state-owned oil giant). That is why in 2006 Gazprom retained full ownership in the giant Shtokman gas field (7) and took a controlling stake in the Sakhalin-2 natural gas project. In June 2007, it took back BP's Kovytka gas field and now is behind Total's Kharyaga oil and gas field.” (“Vladimir Putin’s Energystan and the Caspian” Today’s Zaman)

Putin--the black belt Judo-master--has proved to be as adept at geopolitics as he is at “deal-making”. He has collaborated with the Austrian government on a huge natural gas depot in Austria which will facilitate the transport of gas to southern Europe. He has joined forces with German industry to build an underwater pipeline through the Baltic to Germany (which could provide 80% of Germany’s gas requirements) He has selected France’s Total to assist Gazprom in the development of the massive Shtokman gas field. And he is setting up pipeline corridors to provide gas to Turkey and the Balkans. Putin has very deliberately spread Russia’s influence evenly throughout Europe with the intention of severing the Transatlantic Alliance and, eventually, loosening America’s vice-like grip on the continent.

Putin’s overtures to Germany’s Merkel and France’s Sarkozy are calculated to weaken the resolve of Bush’s neocon-“Trojan Horses” in the EU and put them in Russia’s corner. Putin is also attracting considerable foreign investment to Russian markets and has adopted “a ‘new model of cooperation’ in the energy sector that would ‘allow foreign partners to share in the economic benefits of the project, share the management, and take on a share of the industrial, commercial and financial risks’". (M K Bhadrakumar “Russia plays the Shtokman card”, Asia Times) All of these are intended to strengthen ties between Europe and Russia and make it harder for the Bush administration to isolate Moscow.

The CFE and the impending Missile Defense Crisis

Last week Russia announced the suspension the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE) in retaliation for Bush’s plans to put missile defense system into Poland and Czechoslovakia. The United States had never really complied with the provisions of the treaty anyway, but that hasn’t stopped Europeans from reacting with genuine concern. Russia is now free to redeploy its troops and heavy weaponry to its western-most borders. This is bound to cause a stir among the former-Soviet states in Eastern Europe. The move does nothing to enhance Russian security, but it does raise awareness of how Bush’s provocative Missile Defense is putting Europe on the firing-line. Missile Defense is a “lose-lose” situation for everyone involved; it greatly increases the likelihood of a slip up which could end in a nuclear exchange. Still, the expansion of NATO is a crucial part of the neocon plan for controlling the world’s dwindling resources; so we can expect that the present stand-off will only intensify as the warring parties jockey for position. The sudden appearance of Kissinger, Schultz, Rubin and Nunn suggests that the situation has gotten so worrisome that the Masters of the Empire are actually emerging from the shadows and getting directly involved. They have dropped the silly pretense that our celluloid-figurehead president is actually directing foreign policy at all. He isn’t.

But what can they do?

It is true that NATO has pushed itself into Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. But to what advantage? Putin will never allow NATO in Ukraine or Georgia---even if it means turning off the gas spigot and letting Europe freeze to death in the dark.

Cheney calls this blackmail.

Maybe. But to others it looks like a straightforward way of telling people that there's a price to pay for bad behavior. If that’s blackmail---let them hire an attorney.

Kosovo: “The chances of independence are nothing”

Russia and the US are bitterly divided on the issue of Kosovo independence. “Kosovo independence” is a nothing more than a catchy moniker that was cooked up in a far-right think tank to express the geopolitical objectives of its advocates. It’s also a way of minimizing the US-generated ethnic cleansing which has made “partition” seem palatable. Its supporters are the usual assortment of western busybodies, neocons and globalists. Their dream is to weaken Serbia by splitting it up and making it more accessible to foreign interests.

Pro-American Secretary General Ban Ki Moon tried to quickly push through a resolution on independence at the UN Security Council this week, but Russian diplomats stopped him in his tracks.

No dice, Ban.

“I am deeply concerned about the lack of progress,” Ban muttered apologetically. “Any further delay is not desirable for the Balkan States or the European countries.”

Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin was uncharacteristically outspoken in his rejection of the proposed resolution. When he was asked by a reporter about the likelihood of the Kosovo independence”, Churkin growled, “The chances of that are nothing.”

Well said, Vitaly.

Kosovo is an interesting case that sheds a bit of light on the maneuverings of the globalist-claque and their plans for world domination. Chaos and death follow their every move. Their modus operandi is “divide and rule” through the indiscriminate violence and massive clandestine operations.

Russia deserves credit for not buckling under US pressure. Putin is opposed to rewarding “separatist” movements or of letting the United Nations dissect sovereign nations according to the whims of its main contributors. This angers the scheming globalists, but it is a sensible position. The UN’s mandate is to prevent wars of aggression---not redraw national borders. Just ask the Palestinians how well it worked out last time the UN got involved in the “nation-inventing” business.

Irina Lebedeva reveals the real motives behind Kosovo independence in her article “USA-Russia: Hitting the same Gate, or playing the same game?”

“The North Atlantic alliance documents indicate that the bloc aims at the “Balkanization” of the post-Soviet space by way of overtaking influence in the territories of the currently frozen conflicts and their follow-up internalization along the Yugoslavian lines are set down in black and white. For example, a special report titled “The New North Atlantic Strategy for the Black Sea Region”, prepared by the German Marshall Fund of the United States on the occasion of the NATO summit, already refers to Black Sea and South Caucasus (Transcaucasia) as a “new Euro-Atlantic borderland plagued by Soviet-legacy conflicts.” And the “region of frozen conflicts is evolving into a functional aggregate on the new border of an enlarging West.” Azerbaijan and Georgia in tandem, the report notes, provide a unique transit corridor for Caspian energy to Europe, as well as an irreplaceable corridor for American-led and NATO to bases and operation theatres in Central Asia and the Greater Middle East.”

Okay. So, NATO’s real goal is to break-up existing countries into smaller parts, undermine nationalism, incite ethnic conflicts and create a “new Euro-Atlantic borderland” that provides a “transit corridor for Caspian energy to Europe” as well as a jumping off spot for other military bases.

Sounds a lot like Iraq, doesn’t it?

This should dispel the notion that the US cares about the Muslims of Kosovo or that America bombed Belgrade into rubble to “get rid of the dictator, Milosevic”. That’s all half-truths, misinformation or outright lies. America’s only interests are bases and oil. Period.

Escalation and the prospect of a Wider War

An article was posted last night (7-18-07) by the Times Online:

"RAF fighter jets were scrambled to intercept two Russian strategic bombers heading for British airspace yesterday, as the spirit of the Cold War returned to the North Atlantic once again. The incident, described as rare by the RAF, served as a telling metaphor for the stand-off between London and Moscow over the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. While the Kremlin hesitated before responding to Britain’s expulsion of four diplomats, the Russian military engaged in some old-fashioned sabre-rattling. (Times Online, Richard Beeston; “RAF Scrambles to intercept Russian bombers) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2093759.ece

This is a good example of how quickly hostilities can escalate when leaders feel overly confident in their poor judgment. Russia is not to be trifled with. Putin will not be hounded or humiliated into submission. He won’t be starved like the Palestinians, bombarded like the Iraqis, or abducted and tortured like the Empire’s other so-called enemies. If Brown and Bush decide that its “good sport” to poke the Bear with a stick—so be it. But, they should be aware of the consequences. Russia only spends 5% of what the US allocates yearly for military expenditures, but it can still flatten Washington and London in a matter of minutes. That’s always worth considering.

Putin: "Glavny protivnik", the main enemy?

Putin is not America’s enemy. He is a fierce nationalist who has led his country out of depression and anarchy into prosperity and resurgent patriotism. He has stabilized the ruble, consolidated his regional power, and elevated the standard of living for every class of Russians. The Russian Federation now has the third largest FOREX reserves, the largest natural gas deposits, and—on many days—provides more oil to foreign markets than Saudi Arabia. The country has regained its international prestige and it has become a force for peace and stability in the region.

The West---and particularly the United States---needs to come to grips with Russia’s ascendant place on the world scene. Russia is not going away. Petroleum and natural gas are becoming scarcer and more costly by the day. Russia’s power will naturally grow in proportion to the diminishing of crucial supplies. This cannot be avoided without initiating a third and, perhaps, final world war.

America’s preeminence in the world depends to great extend on its ability to control the global economic system. That system requires that the dollar continue to be linked to oil reserves. But everywhere the petrodollar is under attack. The only solution is to control two-thirds of the world’s remaining petroleum –which is in the Caspian Basin—and demand payment in dollars.

But that plan has failed. The war in Iraq is lost and the longer America stays, the harder the fall will be. Oil will not continue to be traded in petrodollars, the USD will lose its place as the world’s “reserve currency”, and America will slide into a long and agonizing economic downturn.

The machinations and secret “shuttle diplomacy” of Kissinger and his cohorts will amount to nothing. The situation is irreversible. Geography is fate.

We need to extend the olive branch to Russia and prepare for the inevitable shifting of world power. In the meantime we need to withdrawal from Iraq and let the inescapable struggle for political power begin. Our presence only increases the violence.

American leadership can still be salvaged if we eradicate the cancer that has infected the body-politic and restore the principles of republican government. But that won’t be easy. The small cadres of ruling elites who control policy are driven by a force more powerful than the procreative urge or even the will to survive. They are overwhelmed by a sense of “entitlement”---the fanatical belief that they were born to run the world. This is the rich man’s fundamentalism.

The only way the US can play a productive role in the world’s future, and participate in the species-threatening decisions which face us all (global warming, peak oil, nuclear proliferation, famine, disease) is by removing this poisonous element from our political life and holding them accountable for their long list of crimes. Otherwise our confrontations with Russia, Venezuela, Iran and others will become increasingly uncontrollable and violent causing suffering and death on an unimaginable scale.

It’s up to us.

Perpetual motion goes into reverse | Science | Guardian Unlimited

2007-07-17T17:29:00.000+01:00

Perpetual motion goes into reverse | Science | Guardian Unlimited: "Perpetual motion goes into reverse

Ben Goldacre
Saturday July 7, 2007
The Guardian

You might remember an Irish company called Steorn: in August 2006 it took out a full page advert in the Economist to announce that it had discovered a source of free energy, a perpetual motion machine no less, in triumphant defiance of that stuffy first law of thermodynamics.

Almost every newspaper gave it lavish coverage in return for this modest expenditure. Steorn has claimed that its machine is validated by eight independent scientists and engineers 'with multiple PhDs from world-class universities' (although sadly it declined to name them, citing mutually binding non-disclosure agreements). It now also has a panel of 22 scientists on a 'jury' recruited from the ad.

I should therefore like to posit the first law of bullshit dynamics: 'There is no imaginable proposition so absurd that you cannot find at least one person, somewhere in the world, with a PhD or professional post, who is happy to endorse it.'

As we've already seen with the long history of perpetual motion claims you only need one or two experts, and as far as the media are concerned, there's a story. And when the negative evidence comes in - like this week with Steorn, say - there is a deathly silence. Shh.
"

Canadians can now mention bombs, guns at airports | Oddly Enough | Reuters

2007-07-13T14:09:00.000+01:00

Canadians can now mention bombs, guns at airports | Oddly Enough | Reuters

Canadians can now mention bombs, guns at airports
Thu Jul 12, 2007 10:36AM EDT

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Air travelers in Canada who make comments about bombs and guns will from now on only be arrested if it is clear they are making a serious threat, officials said on Wednesday.

The Canadian Air Transport Safety Authority, trying to clamp down on screeners who alert police every time they hear alarming words, has issued a bulletin urging staff to show more discretion.

A person who announces "You better look through my suitcase carefully, because there's a bomb in there", "I am going to set fire to this airplane with this blowtorch" or "The man in seat 32F has a machine gun" will still be arrested.

But someone who remarks "Your hockey team is going to get bombed (badly beaten) tonight", "Hi Jack!" or "You don't need to frisk me, I'm not carrying a weapon" will first be warned about their behavior.

Brigitte Caron, a spokeswoman for the authority, compared the new system to handing out yellow warning cards in soccer. A player can receive one yellow card and still stay in the game.

"Sometimes it's just a joke and the person will say 'I'm sorry, I was upset'," she said. In recent years more than 100 passengers have been arrested for making threatening remarks in Canadian airports, she added.

© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.

China blames growing social unrest on anger over pollution | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

2007-07-06T11:25:00.000+01:00

(Switzerland, it isn't)

China blames growing social unrest on anger over pollution | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

The tendency towards secrecy has increased concerns. According to the FT, officials have tried to remove figures from a World Bank report that suggest up to 400,000 people in China die each year from outdoor air pollution, 30,000 from indoor air pollution, and 60,000 from water pollution. The government denies it has tried to interfere.

In a recent inspection of 529 firms along the Yellow, Yangtze and other major rivers and lakes, 44% had violated environmental laws, while almost half of the 75 waste water treatment facilities underperformed or did not work. Mr Zhou said some waterways resembled "sticky glue".

But factory owners who violate state guidelines are often protected by local officials. According to Mr Zhou, the state environmental protection administration chief, many plants build secret pipes to discharge polluting chemicals. Others release toxins when locals are asleep.

Press TV

2007-07-05T11:23:00.000+01:00

Press TV

Iranian diplomats abducted in July 1982 in Lebanon are alive, the Iranian Embassy in Beirut has said in a recent statement.

The Iranian diplomats are alive and held in Israeli regime prisons, the Iranian Embassy said in a statement quoting informed local and international sources as saying.

Iranian diplomats are deprived of basic rights of prisoners in a grave breach of international conventions, said the statement which was issued on the 25th anniversary of their abduction.

Iranian charge d'affaire Seyyed Mohsen Mousavi and his three companions including Ahmad Motevasselian, Kazem Akhavan and Taghi Rastegar Moghaddam were abducted by the then Lebanese Phalangist militia and handed over to the Israeli military forces.

ireland.com - The Irish Times - Wed, Jul 04, 2007 - Reasons Muslims are angry

2007-07-04T09:45:00.000+01:00

ireland.com - The Irish Times - Wed, Jul 04, 2007 - Reasons Muslims are angry: "Reasons Muslims are angry
Reasons Muslims are angry

Vincent Browne

The clamour over the three "terrorist" incidents in Britain over the last few days speaks of manipulated hysteria, Islamophobia and a collective myopia over real dangers and disasters. Nobody has been killed. Minimal damage to property has been caused. A clear inference from these acts is that those responsible are amateurs, unlikely to pose a substantial threat.

They are quite unlike the IRA of 15 years ago who devastated the centre of Manchester and the financial district of London, while killing a few innocents along the way (and with, incidentally, nothing of the hysteria that now abounds). Far more people were killed on the roads of Britain this last week than have ever been killed in "terrorist" actions in the last decade (about 3,500 people are killed on the roads of the UK each year, far more than were killed in the US on 9/11, where around 60,000 are killed on the roads every year).

And in Iraq 156 British soldiers have been killed there, having been sent on false pretences. More than 3,500 American military have been killed (George Bush is responsible for the killing of more Americans than is Osama Bin Laden) and, who knows, a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand civilians. The spectacle of alarm over minor fire damage to a terminal at Glasgow airport in the context of the havoc Britain is causing to the lives of millions in the Middle East is unedifying.

The revelation that a group of medical doctors based in the UK have been fomenting plans of destruction and death is unsettling, however amateurish they may be. But how could otherwise decent, compassionate people (I know this may be a brittle generality to devise about the medical profession, but isn't that our perception?) be intent on causing such destruction in a society to which some of them must have formed some attachment? Why generally is there such anger in the Islamic world about the Americans and the West?

They are not all crazy, not all devoured by irrational hatred, not all mindlessly angry. They are incensed by what we - the West - are doing to counties where Muslims are in a majority, by our unconditional support for a state (Israel) founded and maintained by the brutal denial of the rights of Palestinians; by the invasion and despoliation of Iraq on a pretext to do with weapons of mass destruction but, in reality, to do with oil; the support of despotic regimes in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan; the continued threat to two other Islamic states, Iran and Syria.

Aside from that, the support of the invasion of yet another country by a neighbouring country (the recent invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia), the continuing slaughter of civilians in Afghanistan and now the threat to boycott Turkey's application to join the EU essentially because Turkey is primarily Muslim. Does it not make sense to defuse that anger? All the more so when doing so also accords with the demands of justice? A familiar response is anticipated: that an amelioration of such anger "plays into the hands" of "terrorists", encourages them and others to threaten our "way of life" and our "freedoms" (all these parentheses do imply a scepticism of the underlying ideas - "terrorists", do they include those who drop bombs from the sky and order others to do so; "way of life" what way of life, one heedless of the rights and sufferings of others; "playing into the hands of terrorists" a linguistic cover for injustice; "freedoms", freedom to vote every five years, freedom of be poor and remain poor; "democracy" fine except when we don't like the outcome as in Palestine).

There is an example for dealing with "terrorists" which we know a little about here, which Britain should know about and which has worked rather well. Talking to them. Co-opting them. Meeting their demands for justice. It worked with the IRA, why not with the Islamic terrorists? All the tired arguments were deployed about not talking to the IRA. And those arguments seem a little silly now.

There is a way out of this awful mess the West has artfully devised: require Israel to disengage from all the lands it acquired in and since 1967; require Israel to disengage from Gaza and all the West Bank; establish and fund a new Palestinian state (the funding must be generous); disengage from Iraq forthwith; stop threatening Iran and Syria; withdraw support from the dictators in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and elsewhere; welcome Turkey into the EU; respect the Islamic religion and culture and stop the celebration of works that are seen to disparage Islam. But then that would be playing into the hands . . .

© 2007 The Irish Times

Press TV

2007-07-03T14:24:00.000+01:00

Press TV

Iran's Police Chief says drug production in Afghanistan has grown 30 times in the wake of the US invasion of the country.

Brigadier General Ismail Ahmadi-Moqaddam in a meeting with Iran's Majlis (Parliament) Speaker, Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel and members of Drug Control Headquarters, presented a report on the body's latest achievements in its anti-narcotics campaign, Fars News reported.

A new approach has been adopted to govern's Iran's anti-drug campaign after general policies were devised by the Expediency Council, he said.

The Secretary General of Iran's Drug Control headquarters added, "We did not manage to reduce Afghan drug supply and narcotics production has surged following the US-led invasion of Afghanistan."

Press TV

2007-07-02T13:37:00.000+01:00

Press TV

Reuters AlertNet - Vanunu gets 6-month jail term for foreign contacts

2007-07-02T13:27:00.000+01:00

Reuters AlertNet - Vanunu gets 6-month jail term for foreign contacts

One of Israel's many political prisoners is sent back to jail for talking to foreigners.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Piranha 'less deadly than feared'

2007-07-02T11:07:00.000+01:00

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Piranha 'less deadly than feared'

I once swam with piranha in Peru. All they did was eat some of the hairs off my legs. Harmless little things.

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Vanished US envoy 'found dead'

2007-07-02T10:56:00.000+01:00

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Vanished US envoy 'found dead'

Hamas acted on a very real fear of a US-sponsored coup

2007-06-27T10:29:00.000+01:00

: "Hamas acted on a very real fear of a US-sponsored coup
Fri, 22 Jun 2007 04:27:48
Washington's fingerprints are all over the chaos that has hit Palestinians and the last thing they now need is an envoy called Blair.

Did they jump or were they pushed? Was Hamas's seizure of Fatah security offices in Gaza unprovoked, or a pre-emptive strike to forestall a coup by Fatah? After last week's turmoil, it becomes increasingly important to uncover its origins."

More

Unprecedented rise in prisoners in US

2007-06-27T10:27:00.000+01:00

Unprecedented rise in prisoners in US
Wed, 27 Jun 2007 01:45:35
United States has experienced jump in the number of prisoners by the largest margin since 2000, the number reaching 2.2 million in 2006.
US Justice Department said the country's number of prisoners has risen 2.8 percent, reaching 2.2 million in 2006, unprecedented in six years.

DPA reports the heavy increases in prison populations since 2000, especially at state and federal levels, means many prisons are operating far over capacity, according to the department's annual report.

At the end of 2005, federal prisons were operating on average 34 percent above capacity, while state prisons were between 1 per cent below and 14 per cent above capacity, the report said.

Local, state and federal prisons together held just over 2.245 million people as of June 30, 2006, up 62,000 from the same period a year earlier.

In 2005 the International Centre for Prison Studies at King's College, London, said that the United States detains 714 prisoners per 100,000 people.

HN/RA

It's OK to kill millions in Iraq, Saddam did it too - Bush's spokesman | Press Esc

2007-06-22T09:21:00.000+01:00

It's OK to kill millions in Iraq, Saddam did it too - Bush's spokesman | Press Esc

US President George W. Bush's spokesman yesterday defended the killing of nearly a million civilians in Iraq on the basis that Saddam Hussein did the same.

"Many have died, and hundreds of thousands died under the previous regime," Tony Snow told reporters at a White House press briefing on the issue hundreds of thousands of civilians being killed by the occupation. "This is a place that has too long been wracked by violence."

A recent report compiled by 30 NGOs found that nearly a million Iraqis have died due to the effects of the occupation and a dozen cities have been destroyed by US attacks.

An estimate at 1.5 million people perished under Saddam Hussein's 25-year dictatorship, with half a million of them being killed during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

"Unfortunately, if we fought evil guys who simply would say, you caught us, we're evil, we give up, we'll be good -- that would be great, that would be wonderful," Snow replied when asked whether it is right for the United States to compare itself with a dictatorial regime.

But Snow said that he was not sure whether or not US forces were killing Iraqis who were opposing American presence in their country, saying "that requires the kind of canvas of those who have died that I'm not capable of doing."

New doubt over conviction for Lockerbie bombing | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

2007-06-18T09:49:00.000+01:00

New doubt over conviction for Lockerbie bombing | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent
Monday June 18, 2007
The Guardian

Lawyers are to make fresh moves to overturn the conviction of a Libyan jailed for the Lockerbie bombing after new evidence emerged. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission is widely expected to announce later this month that it has serious concerns about the conviction of Abdelbasset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, jailed for life in 2001 for the murder of 270 people when Pan Am Flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie.

Legal concerns about the conviction centre on the reliability of testimony from the Maltese shopkeeper who played a key role in identifying the Libyan as a suspect, and the quality of the forensic evidence about a fragment of circuit board allegedly found at the crash site. The commission, which has been reviewing the case for nearly four years, is ready to return the case to an appeal court in Edinburgh. Many legal observers believe Megrahi's conviction will be quashed, in effect clearing Libya of responsibility and increasing pressure for a fresh investigation into the identity of the terrorists behind the atrocity.

Relatives of the Lockerbie victims believe there is growing evidence which confirms links to Iran and Syria - the two states originally blamed for the bombing - including a series of previously unexplained incidents at Heathrow airport.

Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was on board the New York-bound flight, told the Guardian he was very suspicious about two events at Heathrow in the hours before Flight 103 took off which suggested strongly that the bomb was planted in the UK and not - as previously alleged - in Malta or in Frankfurt.

The prosecution claimed at the trial in 2000-01 that Megrahi, a Libyan government sanctions buster who frequently went to Malta but insists he is innocent, planted the bomb on a connecting flight from Malta. Many legal and intelligence experts believe the bomb was most likely put on the Pan Am jet at Frankfurt by Syrian and Iranian-backed Palestinian terror groups, in retaliation for the destruction of an Iranian airliner by the USS Vincennes in the Gulf in July 1988, killing 290 people.

----

(It's obviously obvious that if the bomb was planted in the UK, the only possible culprit could have been... Iran. Who could possibly have planted a bomb on a British plane in a British airport, getting past British security, except... Iran. It would be completely stupid to look any closer to home.)

2007-06-15T15:31:00.001+01:00

Hamas uncovers PA, CIA intel trove

Press TV
Friday June 15, 2007

Hamas has uncovered a trove of thousands of documents, including classified correspondence with Israeli forces.

After seizing the Palestinian Authority's Security headquarters in Gaza City on Thursday afternoon, Hamas fighters report they have seized tens of thousands of sensitive intelligence documents, including correspondence between the PA, the American CIA, and the Zionists regarding security issues.

Hamas officials said the newly found information would help them battle the Israeli regime's surveillance tactics.

A Hamas member said he and his men removed thousands of documents, video tapes and equipment from the compound. "I saw my name appeared at least four times in the intelligence documents - related to attempts to take me out. I saw details of surveillance against me and joint Fatah-Israeli plans to thwart our operations."

"If we release these documents, the entire world will be shocked, not just the Palestinians. The dozens of armored vehicles, RPG launchers and rockets, the hundreds of thousands of bullets we have - they are all nothing compared to the documents and data discs we uncovered."

"There are video tapes of surveillance against our fighters and their homes, wiretaps on our calls, the PA's entire method of operation has been exposed," he said.

The Hamas man said that the documents also implicate several Arab nations of involvement in the internal Palestinian power-struggle in an attempt to impair Hamas.

According to the Hamas source the papers also document the PA's cooperation with the CIA against Palestinian organizations, especially Hamas.

Releasing the documents would entail the approval of the Hamas leadership, said the Hamas source, noting that the documents would be used to prove the justness of Hamas' fight against the Palestinian security forces.

CO2 = Global Warming?

2007-03-12T20:05:00.000Z

Some interesting numbers from Wikipedia. The total CO2 content of the earth's atmosphere is 3 x 10e15 kg. Human activity produces 7 x 10e12 kg of CO2 per year (or 0.2% of the total). However, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increases by 0.4% per year. Human activity can only account for 50% of that increase, even if you assume that all human produced CO2 remains free in the air and none is re-absorbed by plants.

So where is the other 50% coming from?

Either, we have already passed a tipping point and are heading towards a run-away greenhouse... in which case reducing industrial emissions by a few % will make no difference.

Or CO2 levels are directly caused by warming and human activity is irrelevant.

(The real motivation behind the European push for renewable energy is to do with balance of trade and an unwillingness to continue to support the US dollar through oil imports. Global Warming is a convenient untruth.)

2007-02-26T14:21:00.000Z

Surveillance cameras' latest job: interpret the threats they see
AP
Monday, February 26, 2007

The next time you walk by a shop window, glance at your reflection. How much do you swing your arms? Is the weight of your bag causing you to hunch over? Do you still have a bit of that 1970s disco strut?

Look around -- you might not be the only one watching. Never-blinking surveillance cameras, rapidly becoming a part of daily life in public and even private places, may be sizing you up, as well. And they may soon get a lot smarter.

Researchers and security companies are developing cameras that not only watch, but interpret what they see. Soon, some cameras may be able to find unattended bags at airports, guess your height, or analyze the way you walk to see if you are hiding something.

Most of the cameras used today are used to identify crooks after-the-fact. (Think grainy video on local TV news of convenience store robberies gone wrong.) But so-called intelligent video could transform cameras from passive observers to eyes with brains, able to detect suspicious behavior and potentially prevent crime.

The innovations could mean fewer people would be needed to watch what cameras record, and make it easier to install more in public places and private homes.

"Law enforcement people in this country are realizing they can use video surveillance to be in a lot of places at one time," said Roy Bordes, who runs an Orlando, Fla., security consulting company.

Some advancements have already been put to work. Baltimore, for instance, installed cameras that can play a recorded message and snap pictures of graffiti sprayers or illegal dumpers. The gaming industry uses systems that can detect facial features, Bordes said. Casinos use their vast banks of security cameras to hunt cheating gamblers who have been flagged before.

In London, one of the largest users of surveillance, cameras provided key photos of the men who bombed the underground system in July 2005 and four more who failed in a second attempt just days later.

But the cameras were only able to help with the investigation, not prevent the attacks.

Companies that make the latest cameras say the systems, if used broadly, could make video surveillance much more powerful. Cameras could monitor airports and ports, help secure homes, and watch over vast borders.

Intelligent surveillance uses computer algorithms to interpret what a camera records. The system can be programmed to look for particular things.

"If you think of the camera as your eye, we are using computer programs as your brain," said Patty Gillespie, branch chief for image processing at the Army Research Laboratory in Adelphi, Md.

At the University of Maryland, engineering professor Rama Chellappa and graduate students have worked on systems that can analyze the way someone walks to determine if he is a threat.

With two cameras and a laptop computer, Chellappa recently demonstrated how intelligent surveillance works. A student walked into the room, dropped a laptop case, then walked away. On the laptop screen, a green box popped up around him as he moved into view, then a second focused on the case when it was dropped. After a few seconds, the box around the case went red, signaling an alert.

In another video, a car pulled into a parking lot and the driver got out, a box springing up around him. It moved with the driver as he went from car to car, looking in the windows instead of heading into the building.

In both cases, the camera knew what was normal: the layout of the room, and the location of the office door and parking spots in the parking lot. Alerts were triggered when the unknown bag was added and when the driver didn't go directly into the building.

Still, industry officials say the technology needs to improve before it can be widely used. There are liability issues, such as if someone is wrongly tagged as a threat.

And the cameras only see so much. They can't see what you are wearing under your jacket -- yet.

The latest Bush bullshit

2007-02-13T00:56:00.000Z

The Americans threw a big press conference yesterday in their bomb shelter in Baghdad. They unveiled a wad of 'evidence' that Iran was supplying weapons to baddies in Iraq (i.e. to the Shia, the 'bad' murdering thugs. The Saudis give weapons to the Sunni, the 'good' murdering thugs. The yanks sit back and watch the show.) The neo-con-men pulled out this photo as one of their best:

There are a few problems with the 'theory' that these bombs were made in Iran. First is the date. The yanks point out that they were made in 2006. Unfortunately, the Iranians don't use the western calender. To them, it just doesn't seem significant that its 2007 years since Christ was born. Funny that.

In Iran, the current year is 1428, and it is written ۱۴۲۸

Of course, the Iranians write in Farsi, so its also unlikely that they would write Latin numbers and letters on their bombs, or the English word "LOT".

Finally, the mortars the Yanks showed off had a funny size - 81mm. Interesting number, 81mm, I wonder why the Iranians would choose such an odd size? Well, it happens that 81mm is exactly 3 and 3/16 inches. NATO standard munitions are all original US measurements, but written in metric as a sop to the French. Low and behold, 81mm is a NATO standard size.

So, we have a NATO standard mortar, marked in western dates, letters, numerals and English words. Those crafty Iranians!

CIA complain Pentagon's Lies differ from CIA lies

2007-02-11T21:35:00.000Z

The CIA is bitching that their in-house lies on Iraq and WMD was 50% different from the Pentagon's lies.

CIA analysts 'disagreed with more than 50%' of Pentagon team's 'controversial' Iraq WMD findings

Raw Story
Sunday, February 11, 2007

CIA analysts "disagreed with more than 50%" of a Pentagon team's "controversial" Iraq WMD findings, the LA Times reports.

"As the Bush administration began assembling its case for war, analysts across the U.S. intelligence community were disturbed by the report of a secretive Pentagon team that concluded Iraq had significant ties to Al Qaeda," Greg Miller and Julian E. Barnes write for the LA Times.

The article continues, "Analysts from the CIA and other agencies 'disagreed with more than 50%' of 26 findings the Pentagon team laid out in a controversial paper, according to testimony Friday from Thomas F. Gimble, acting inspector general of the Pentagon."

Bush's Conspriacy Theories

2007-02-11T16:28:00.000Z

NIST on WTC

2007-02-11T05:18:00.000Z

This is very interesting. NIST's chief engineer says NIST didn't model the collapse because 'it was clear from the video evidence that the lower floors offered no resistance to collapse so we did no calculations to demonstrate that'. A wonderful example of NIST's circular logic.

Next stop: Memory hole

2007-02-11T02:23:00.000Z

Prosecuting IRA fugitives 'not in public interest'

Henry McDonald, Ireland editor
Sunday February 11, 2007
The Observer

Prosecutions of IRA fugitives and members of the security forces accused of collusion are to be dropped in the 'public interest', it was claimed last night.

The UK's Director of Public Prosecutions and the Attorney General are to be asked to shelve cases against on-the-run republicans as part of a final deal between Sinn Fein and Downing Street.

The government is also asking that no charges be brought against policemen and soldiers accused of colluding with loyalists. These include those named in files sent to the DPP by Sir John Stevens as part of his inquiry into the murder of lawyer Pat Finucane in 1989.

Cameron answers my question. Well, sort of...

2007-02-08T21:57:00.000Z

Cameron waffles for 3 minutes, calls the question 'complex' twice, and manages to say nothing. Almost impressively obtuse.

Here was the original question: MI5 terrorism

Global Warm____ing

2007-02-06T01:02:00.001Z

Welcome to America

2007-02-05T17:51:00.000Z

US immigration cavity search ends in agony

Official pulled 'very hard'

By Chris Williams Published Monday 5th February 2007 15:21 GMT

US immigration officials insisted the sufferer of an anal infection remove a small piece of medical thread which was being used by doctors to treat the condition. The man required treatment under general anaesthetic as a result.

The man had an anal fistula, which is a painful channel that can develop deep into the anus, caused by infection or digestive conditions such as Crohn's disease. More details, if absolutely necessary, from NHS Direct here.

Arriving on holiday in New York in August last year, the unnamed 48-year-old was interrogated and searched by immigration officers, according to a letter appearing in medical journal The Lancet. The rectal examination discovered a device called a seton, which doctors in the UK had inserted into the fistula to help control long-term infection.

The seton was made of a blue braided medical suture material knotted and passed into the hole where the fistula surfaced. After one baffled immigration officer pulled "very hard" on the seton, the patient was given the choice by the baffled immigration officers of either getting on the next plane home, or submitting himself to a procedure to have it removed.

Happily, as The Lancet's correspondent notes, the curious immigration officer yanking the seton did not damage "the anal sphincter muscles encircled by it".

The seton was duly removed by an airport doctor, who claimed to have no idea what it was. The man now requires treatment under general anaesthetic to have a replacement inserted.

The letter writer concludes by advising seton patients to carry a letter from their doctor when travelling "to the USA or any other country where they are likely to be searched in this manner".

Winning hearts and minds in Iraq

2007-02-05T13:54:00.000Z

2007-02-04T01:22:00.000Z

US deploys missile weapons in Gulf

Much of Iran's territory is now within range of air and missile weapons, writes Tom Clonan

Whatever its actual intentions, the US military has deployed significant air and naval assets to the Persian Gulf in recent days. The navy's USS Dwight D Eisenhower carrier strike group is already on station in the Arabian Sea - bringing much of Iran's airspace and territory within range of US air and missile weapons.

The US navy is now deploying a second carrier strike group - the USS John C Stennis - to the Persian Gulf. The combination will bring more than 170 additional US military aircraft within striking range of Iranian naval, air and missile installations in the coming days. In addition to this dramatic air and naval build-up, the US has deployed at least two additional Los Angeles class attack submarines to the area.

Significantly, this naval presence consists of at least 10 surface vessels, including aircraft carriers, guided missile cruisers and guided missile destroyers capable of delivering large numbers of Tomahawk cruise missiles and Trident fleet ballistic missiles to potential targets anywhere in Iran. The fleet's attack submarines would also be capable of delivering waves of Tomahawk missiles to potential targets throughout Iran.

There has been no parallel concentration of ground forces by the US in the region, suggesting that an invasion is unlikely. This is not surprising given the overstretch being experienced by US infantry and marine corps commanders in Iraq and elsewhere.

The deployment is also consistent with statements in recent days by President George Bush that the US does not intend to deploy its forces in Iran - irrespective of any actions by alleged Iranian agent provocateurs within Iraq or as a consequence of its nuclear programme.

However, and perhaps ominously, Mr Bush has said all other options remain on the table on curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions and a burgeoning Iranian/Shia regional influence that extends from the Persian Gulf, through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon and the Mediterranean.

Aside from diplomatic broadsides, the Iranians are not in a position to provide direct deterrence to the US naval presence. The Iranian airforce consists of a small number of outdated Soviet-style MiG-27s and MiG-29s along with approximately one dozen F-14 fighter jets and some recently acquired SU-25 Russian manufactured "Frogfoot" fighters. These would be no match for the hundreds of state-of-the-art US F/A 18s and F-16 fighter jets.

The US and Israel are increasingly uneasy about Iran's rapidly developing nuclear facilities at Natanz, Isfahan and Arak. Indeed, the precise make-up of the US deployment in recent days consists of a perfectly matched suite of weapons systems tailor-made to neutralise such deeply buried and reinforced subterranean targets.

Both carrier strike groups carry squadrons of F/A-18 fighter aircraft especially equipped with JDAM BLU-109 and BLU-119 "Bunker Buster" guided bombs along with the extra fuel cells necessary - in theory - to make the return flights from the carrier groups in the Gulf to any of the Iranian nuclear sites.

The Iranians would be practically defenceless in the event of such strikes. Iranian anti-missile air defences and technologies are based on outdated and unsophisticated Chinese, North Korean and older Soviet designs.

In retaliation, the Iranians would have the capability to close the Strait of Hormuz more or less indefinitely, disrupting oil production and oil tanker traffic, thus effectively closing off 20 per cent of the world's oil supplies. Many in the defence and intelligence community also believe such an attack would lead to a dramatic and unprecedented increase in international terrorism from Islamic resistance groups on a scale that would dwarf previous campaigns.

However, senior sources in the US military are beginning to voice concerns about a possible unilateral and pre-emptive tactical nuclear strike by Israel on Iran's nascent nuclear facilities.

One senior US military source said such an attack would plan to put Iran's nuclear facilities "verifiably beyond use" - by radioactively contaminating the Natanz, Arak and Isfahan sites, thus preventing any future redevelopment by Iran.

These same sources also speak of US air and missile strikes on Iran as being "inevitable, not just possible". As the sabres rattle, the stakes in the Persian Gulf appear to be getting higher and higher.

Dr Tom Clonan is the Irish Times security analyst.

The unbiased media

2007-02-01T14:38:00.000Z

Dan Rather said "The US media is completely fair and balanced. If the President says 2 + 2 = 5, the media will always present both sides of the issue."

2007-01-30T23:49:00.000Z

Beijing political advisors doubt legitimacy of surveillance cameras

Xinhua
Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Beijing's political advisors have called into question the legitimacy of the capital's 263,000 surveillance cameras.

"The surveillance cameras are based on digital techniques, and the pictures or videos can easily be doctored. Therefore, they should not be used as lawful evidence," said Lu Deshan, a member of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), China's political advisory body.

Beijing's cameras are mainly used to monitor the traffic flow on major expressways but are also in operation in back alleys, banks and markets, and even some campus and hospital corridors.

Only 15,000 cameras, 5.7 percent of the city's total, are installed by the government, according to the Beijing's legal affairs office.

Ekber Miji, another member of the advisory body, said China should draw up a law on the installment and usage of surveillance cameras.

According to the Beijing's legal affairs office, Beijing will implement a regulation on the management of surveillance cameras on April 1.

The regulation prescribes that the cameras can not infringe upon the people's privacy and pictures and videos captured by cameras should be stored in a secure place. It also said all cameras must be conspicuous in public places.

Only Chongqing Municipality in southwest China has similar regulations restricting the use of security camera images. There are no national laws governing the surveillance system.

A new dad in Baghdad

2007-01-30T16:39:00.000Z

BAGHDAD FATHER
35,000 civilians were killed last year in Iraq, according to the UN. Tens of thousands of Iraqis attempt to leave for neighbouring countries each month. Outlook hears from one couple who despite the troubles, are determined to stay, even though they now have a whole new set of responsibilities to take into account. One month ago, their first child was born. The run-up to such an event, and the birth itself, can be an anxious time for first-time parents everywhere, but for this couple, Baghdad's daily sectarian violence made things far, far more risky.

Download - Listen

Galloway says it best

2007-01-29T20:37:00.000Z

History repeats

2007-01-29T17:35:00.000Z

In the Middle East a western empire kills the leader of a religious cult. No, its not 32AD, its 2007. Who knows, in another 2000 years, America may be invading the middle east again, now with the intention of converting the locals to Mahdism.

Iraq cult leader among Najaf dead
The US military backed Iraqi security forces in the assault on the "Soldiers of Heaven" [AFP]
An Iraqi cult leader who claimed to be the Mahdi, a Muslim messiah, is among hundreds of militia fighters killed in a battle with US and Iraqi forces near Najaf, Iraqi government officials have said. Women and children who had joined the force of up to 700 fighters may be among the casualties, Shirwan al-Waeli, national security minister, said. Ali al-Dabbagh, a government spokesman, added: "The person who led this group ... is sure to have been killed. He was definitely killed by security forces."

Between 200 and 300 armed men died after US tanks, helicopters and jets backed Iraqi forces in a 24-hour fight. Shirwan al-Waeli, Iraq's security minister, said the group's leader "claimed to be the Mahdi". He said the man, who is thought to have been a 40-year-old Iraqi citizen from the nearby Shia city of Diwaniya, had used the name Mahdi bin Ali bin Ali bin Abi Taleb, claiming descent from the Prophet Mohammad.

The Imam Mahdi is a ninth-century Shia spiritual leader who believers say will return at the end of time. Al-Waeli said, "One of the signs of the coming of the Mahdi was to be the killing of the Ulema [hierarchy] in Najaf." The group had gathered in orchards near the city and had been planning to attack the main Shia cleric leadership on Monday, an official from Najaf province said.

2007-01-28T17:15:00.001Z

Israel planes dump suspicious green balloons on southern Lebanon

dpa
Sunday, January 28, 2007

Beirut - Israeli planes violated Lebanese airspace Saturday and dumped green balloons over the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanese security sources said.

Lebanese troops cordoned off the area around the coast of Tyre and prevented people from touching the 'suspicious balloons' after reports indicated that some people were poisoned when they did.

According to a hospital source in Nabatiyeh, similar green balloons were dropped over the market-town of Nabatiyeh, 54 kilometres south of Beirut.

Five people suffering from nausea and dizziness were brought into hospital after they touched the 'suspicious green balloons,' the source said.

Israel violates Lebanese airspace on a daily basis despite the fact that the attacks on Israel from southern Lebanon by the radical Hezbollah movement have stopped after a beefed-up UN force along with the Lebanese Army were deployed to the area in accordance with a UN resolution.

Iran you don't see

2007-01-28T16:54:00.000Z

2007-01-26T18:59:00.000Z

Girls charged with conspiring to kill classmates, Oprah

CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee (AP) -- Six girls at a rural high school were charged with homicide conspiracy after their principal found a list of 300 names and officials discovered online postings suggesting they kill people, authorities said Thursday.

School officials said the list, discovered in a classroom trash can, mostly named students and faculty members but also included Tom Cruise, Oprah Winfrey and the Energizer Bunny.

Sequatchie County High School Principal Tommy Layne said that he initially considered it a joke, but that authorities then found the ninth-graders' online MySpace pages and postings that included the word "kill."

"In general terms, it was like, 'Let's kill these people,' " Dunlap Police Chief Clint Huth said. He declined to provide the specific wording on the posting, which has been removed.

"I am not saying we thwarted a shooting incident or an act of violence," Huth said. "On the other hand, had this gone unchecked, down the road it could have grown into something a whole lot more serious than a list of names."

There was no evidence that the girls had weapons or that an attack had been imminent, Huth said.

The girls, ages 14 and 15, were charged with conspiracy to commit criminal homicide late Wednesday and taken to a juvenile facility. A juvenile court detention hearing was set Friday in Dunlap, about 40 miles northwest of Chattanooga.

Layne said he learned about the list Tuesday when a "young man came in with his grandmother and said his name was on the list."

No club or group was involved, said Layne, who described the girls as friends. The school has more than 600 students.

Sophomore Lakyn Ledford stayed home Thursday after learning that student-athletes were on the list.

"I was very scared. My friends were scared. That's a scary thing. It can really happen," she told WTVC-TV.

Train Surfing! Holy cow.

2007-01-25T22:27:00.000Z

Trainsurfer
Uploaded by -Toxic-

What Limerick could be.

2007-01-25T00:44:00.001Z

Surprising fact

2007-01-23T21:18:00.000Z

According to Wikipedia, you are 50% more likely to be murdered in the US than in Palestine, Switzerland has the highest murder rate in western Europe, there are more murders in Scotland than Northern Ireland. And the Republic, while being 250% safer than the north, is 15 places behind the safest place in the world, which is.... Pakistan!

You are 20 times more likely to be murdered in Ireland than Pakistan.

Weird.

Has the establishment turned against Bush?

2007-01-22T23:40:00.000Z

This was just on the BBC:

Al-Qaeda deputy 'mocks Bush plan'

Al-Qaeda's deputy leader has mocked US President George W Bush's plan to increase Iraq troop numbers in a video message, according to a US website.
In the tape, apparently intercepted by US-based terrorism think-tank Site, Ayman al-Zawahiri challenged Mr Bush to send "the entire army" to Iraq.
The Iraqi insurgents would "bury 10 armies like yours", he said.
Earlier this month, Mr Bush announced the deployment of over 20,000 more troops in a bid to end the violence.

The 'think tank' that the BBC refers to is a very interesting organisation called the "SITE Institute". SITE has been shown to be the ultimate source of virtually all of Al Qaeda's videos and it is through a SITE media subscription that the world's media learns of the release of these videos. Newspapers and TV stations almost never acknowledge SITE as a source. This is highly unusual as media companies usually want exposure. Reuters, for example, require all their reprinted stories be acknowledged as Reuters stories. Why doesn't SITE want this?

Well, I did a small bit of research on this a while ago. SITE's website is registered to an address in Washington, just across the river from the Pentagon. Others have shown that SITE get some of their videos from the Pentagon (such as the famous Bin Laden confession tape which was found on the kitchen table of an abandoned house in Kabul).

So, back to the BBC. Its very interesting that SITE, which may be a Pentagon front, has released an Al Qaeda tape criticising Bush's surge plan. Is this to attack the surge plan or, though angering the American people, to help Bush quieten critics?

2007-01-22T15:00:00.001Z

Wired to report US unwittingly evolved superpathogen in Iraqi combat hospitals

Cohn Byrne
Raw Story
Monday, January 22, 2007

A drug-resistant bacteria that is infecting wounded US soldiers in Iraq -- and has spread to civilian hospitals in parts of Europe -- accidentally evolved in US military hospitals in Iraq, Wired Magazine will report in a massive expose on Monday, RAW STORY has learned.

The several thousand word expose is set to bring uncomfortable new light to the bacteria Acinetobacter baumannii that Pentagon officials previously said was likely a product of Iraqi soil.

"By creating the most heroic and efficient means of saving lives in the history of warfare, the Pentagon had accidentally invented a machine for accelerating bacterial evolution and was airlifting the pathogens halfway around the world," the magazine reveals.

The story will go live online early Monday, newsroom sources say, and appear in February's print edition.

DEVELOPING...

Deterring Trident

2007-01-22T00:06:00.000Z

SNP unveils 'Trident toll' plans

The Trident submarine fleet is based at Faslane on the Clyde

A toll on the transportation of nuclear warheads in Scotland could raise up to £85m, according to the Nationalists.

The Scottish National Party's leaders say they will seek to impose a levy on Trident if the party leads the Scottish Executive after May's election.

But the plans were dismissed as a diversionary tactic by Labour.

Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram questioned the legality of such a move and said taxpayers would end up footing the bill.

The SNP wants to impose a £1m toll on every nuclear weapon which is brought into Scotland.

SNP leader Alex Salmond said the "Trident toll" would use devolved powers over local taxation.

'Think again'

The scheme would aim to raise £85m a year, which he said was Scotland's share of the cost of Britain's nuclear weapons.

"I believe that most Scots would rather see the government spend money making Scotland a safer, healthier and fairer country than wasting it on nuclear weapons," he said.

"This Trident toll will be a powerful new deterrent, and we hope will make the UK Government think again about bringing a new generation of nuclear bombs to Scotland's shores."

What they are effectively now saying is that it is going to be a cash crop

Adam Ingram
Armed Forces Minister

The Trident submarine fleet is based at the Faslane Naval Base on the Clyde.

However, Mr Ingram told the BBC's Politics Show that there were questions over the legality of the SNP's proposals.

"The other aspect is that I thought the SNP policy was one of total opposition to Trident, and to the nuclear civil programme as well," he said.

"What they are effectively now saying is that it is going to be a cash crop.

"Is it a principle or is it a way of making money? They have got to make their minds up."

He added that the cost would be borne by taxpayers as the money would come out of defence expenditure.

The unknown need to know

2007-01-21T17:48:00.000Z

Complaint to BBC

2007-01-19T21:30:00.000Z

Dear Sir/Madam,

I was deeply offended by Brian Walden's commentary on the US-Iran standoff ("A Point of View", Friday 19th January, 20.45h) This opinion piece, which equated Iran to Nazi Germany, was pure propaganda.

The program blandly stated that the Iranian government is "anti-American" without giving any background or history behind this stance. This is deeply biased. No mention of the US overthrow of Iranian democracy in 1953, nor the US funding for the brutal Shah-dictator or his dreaded SAVAK, responsible for more murders and disappearances than Saddam Hussein. The Iranians occupied the US Embassy, yes. But no mention that this embassy was hard at work trying to arrange the return of the Shah and SAVAK.

The program stated that Iran has called for Israel to "annihilated". This never happened. Even the lesser myth, often repeated, that Iran called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" is also untrue. What the Iranian president said is that "Zionism should be wiped from the page of history". This is an entirely different concept and suggests no use of force. No-one would suggest that Tony Blair intends violence when he calls for a "War on Want", yet this is the scale of mischaracterisation which this dishonest program perpetuates.

The equation of Iran to Nazi Germany, I believe, is misleading to the level of propaganda. While Germany was a strong nation busy in the act of invading its neighbours, Iran is poor, poorly armed, has invaded no-one, and is surrounded by strong, well armed, and dangerous neighbours. A more honest equation would place Iran in Poland's shoes. Germany invaded Poland following an extensive propaganda campaign to convince its own people that Poland represented a threat to Germany. Germany then faked a provocation. Mr Walden is in danger of echoing that media campaign, with innocent Iran taking the place of innocent Poland.

I wish to complain about this program. In its misrepresentation of Iranian history it is unbalanced. In its misquotation of Iran's government it is dishonest. In its equation of Iran to Germany it is propagandistic.

Yours,

Genoa riot evidence 'disappears'

2007-01-19T18:11:00.000Z

Genoa riot evidence 'disappears'

By Adam Blenford
BBC News

Police are accused of brutally mistreating Genoa protesters

Key evidence in the trial of 29 Italian police officers charged over violence during the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa has vanished, police say.

Two Molotov cocktails allegedly planted by police in a school used as a base by anti-globalisation protesters can no longer be found.

The bombs are seen as crucial physical evidence against many of the defendants in the high-profile trial.

The police are accused of brutality and perjury over a raid on the Diaz school.

The petrol bombs - expected to be a key piece of evidence in the case - were due to be presented in court this week.

Prosecutors now fear that the case could collapse, allowing many of the high-ranking defendants to walk free.

Case at risk

The apparent disappearance of important evidence sparked strong reactions within Italy.

I'm a bit shocked and numb at the state of the Italian judiciary

Mark Covell
British journalist injured in Genoa

'I still have nightmares'

The presiding judge called for an immediate explanation.

The Reform Communist party - part of Prime Minister Romano Prodi's centre-left coalition government - has asked for a parliamentary investigation.

Mark Covell, a British journalist who suffered serious injuries in the Diaz raid, told the BBC News website the disappearance could endanger the whole trial.

"They have spent 20 million euros (£13m) on this and if these Molotov cocktails aren't found it could all be for nothing," he said.

"I'm a bit shocked and numb at the state of the Italian judiciary.

"But we can't calculate the full impact of this yet. We will have to wait and see."

Police hopeful

One police officer, Francesco Borre, told Italy's La Repubblica newspaper that police routinely kept records of what they received and handed over.

There were riots by violent protesters before the Diaz raid

He said he believed the responsibility for keeping the Molotov cocktails rested with Genoa's police, known as the Digos - the same unit under investigation by the court.

The secretary general of the Italian police union, Claudio Giardullo, held out hope that the trial could continue.

"Because the Molotov cocktails were actually photographed before they disappeared, the material need to have the bottles has been lessened," he told the BBC.

"It is up to the magistrate to decide whether the evidence is fundamental to the trial.

"Police will hold an investigation about this - it is in their own interest," he added.

Political priority

The trial centres on a raid carried out on the night of 21 July 2001.

Nearly 300 officers, most dressed in full riot gear, forced their way into the Diaz school, which was being used as a base by anti-globalisation protesters.

Dozens of people were injured in the raid, as police also smashed windows and destroyed computers.

The two Molotov cocktails found inside the school were originally cited as evidence that the protesters were planning violence.

But reports soon emerged that the bombs were planted in the school by police themselves.

Prime Minister Prodi has made the swift conclusion of the trial a priority, and has promised to investigate the conduct of the police.

Webcameron

2007-01-18T22:24:00.000Z

WebCameron.org.uk

Dear Mr Cameron,

In February this year the Irish Senate is due to release its report into MI5/6 involvement in terrorism in Northern Ireland. This report will accuse the British security services of funding and training the Loyalist bombers who killed 33 people in Dublin and Monaghan on 17 May 1974.

Added to this, the noted researcher, Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed of the University of Sussex has discovered that MI5/6 was heavily involved in the training of Islamic terrorists during the Kosovo war, as well as the earlier Afghan war. During this time, British muslims were radicalised using public funds, trained in bomb construction and terrorist tactics, ans sent to fight abroad.

Many of these terrorists returned to Britain in recent years to fight the jihad at home, using their MI5/6 training against British citizens on 7/7. Among these include Abu Hamza who recruited jihadis from British streets throughout the 1990's on behalf of the security
services.

I perfectly agree with you that we should put outlandish conspiracy theories to one side, but that shouldn't mean we can't discuss reasonable and well researched evidence of unfortunate behaviour of the nation's security services.

What is your knowledge and opinion of these events? As Prime Minister, do you foresee a break with the policies of the past in regards to the funding of terrorism?

----

UPDATE: Cameron answers the question... sort of.

Interesting...

2007-01-18T20:41:00.000Z

US condemns China 'space weapon'

The United States, Australia and Canada have criticised China over a weapons test it is said to have carried out in space last week.

The Americans say the Chinese sent up a ballistic missile to destroy an ageing weather satellite.

They say the test went against the spirit of co-operation both countries aspire to in the area of civil space.

Reports say Britain, South Korea and Japan were expected to express their concerns to China soon.

Earlier, a report in the American Aviation Week magazine said that US spy agencies had concluded that China conducted a successful test of a satellite-killing weapon on January 11.

It said China knocked out the weather satellite with a "kinetic kill vehicle" launched on board a ballistic missile.

The impact occurred at more than 500 miles (800 km) above Earth.

Wired: Disable Your Passport's RFID Chip

2007-01-17T15:37:00.000Z

All passports issued by the US State Department after January 1 will have always-on radio frequency identification chips, making it easy for officials – and hackers – to grab your personal stats. Getting paranoid about strangers slurping up your identity? Here’s what you can do about it. But be careful – tampering with a passport is punishable by 25 years in prison. Not to mention the “special” customs search, with rubber gloves. Bon voyage!

1) RFID-tagged passports have a distinctive logo on the front cover; the chip is embedded in the back.

2) Sorry, “accidentally” leaving your passport in the jeans you just put in the washer won’t work. You’re more likely to ruin the passport itself than the chip.

3) Forget about nuking it in the microwave – the chip could burst into flames, leaving telltale scorch marks. Besides, have you ever smelled burnt passport?

4) The best approach? Hammer time. Hitting the chip with a blunt, hard object should disable it. A nonworking RFID doesn’t invalidate the passport, so you can still use it.

– Jenna Wortham

Standing up to evil

2007-01-17T15:13:00.000Z

Complain, Please...

2007-01-17T14:23:00.000Z

They say on the news that OfCom has received more complaints about the Big Brother racist comment than anything else in their history. I find this claim interesting, as when I went to the OfCom website to complain about something else, I found I couldn't. They'd turn off the facility to complain about anything except Big Brother. Try it yourself...

A metal plate in my pants

2007-01-17T00:04:00.000Z

CCTV?

2007-01-16T16:53:00.000Z

They've shown CCTV footage of the attempted 21 July bombs to the jury. Interesting how on the 7th July, the CCTV cameras failed at every location the bombers passed through, except for that suspicious single frame from a mainline station. Note the time is wrong and one 'bomber' is partly merged with an iron bar, as if he was photoshopped in. MI5 tells us that that day each one of the CCTV cameras in the trains, and train stations, and on the bus, all failed.

'Suicide bomb' CCTV shown to jury

Russia sells anti-aircraft missiles to Iran

2007-01-16T16:22:00.000Z

Russia confirms arms sales to Iran

Russia has delivered new anti-aircraft missile systems to Iran and would consider further requests by Tehran for defensive weapons, Moscow confirmed today.

Washington and Israel, who accuse Tehran of seeking to develop nuclear arms and undermining security in the region, have criticised the sale of TOR-M1 missiles. Tehran, they say, could use them against its neighbours.

"We have supplied the modern short-range anti-aircraft systems TOR-M1 in accordance with our contracts," Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov told reporters when asked about the sale.

"We're developing our military and technical cooperation with Iran in accordance with international law and will continue to develop it," he said. "And if Iran wants to buy defensive, I underline defensive, equipment for its armed forces then why not?"

Oh, Lordi!

2007-01-16T12:39:00.000Z

Can a whole nation have a nervous breakdown? This is a video of debate in the US Congress.

UPDATE!

Lord help us...

2007-01-15T23:58:00.001Z

US military strike on Iran seen by April '07; Sea-launched attack to hit oil, N-sites

Ahmed Al-Jarallah
Arab Times
Monday, January 15, 2007

KUWAIT CITY: Washington will launch a military strike on Iran before April 2007, say sources. The attack will be launched from the sea and Patriot missiles will guard all oil-producing countries in the region, they add. Recent statements emanating from the United States indicate the Bush administration's new strategy for Iraq doesn't include any proposal to make a compromise or negotiate with Syria or Iran. A reliable source said President Bush recently held a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Dr Condoleezza Rice and other assistants in the White House where they discussed the plan to attack Iran in minute detail.

According to the source, Vice President Dick Cheney highlighted the threat posed by Iran to not only Saudi Arabia but the whole region. "Tehran is not playing politics. Iranian leaders are using their country's religious influence to support the aggressive regime's ambition to expand," the source quoted Dick Cheney as saying. Indicating participants of the meeting agreed to impose restrictions on the ambitions of Iranian regime before April 2007 without exposing other countries in the region to any danger, the source said "they have chosen April as British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said it will be the last month in office for him. The United States has to take action against Iran and Syria before April 2007."

Claiming the attack will be launched from the sea and not from any country in the region, he said "the US and its allies will target the oil installations and nuclear facilities of Iran ensuring there is no environmental catastrophe or after effects." "Already the US has started sending its warships to the Gulf and the build-up will continue until Washington has the required number by the end of this month," the source said. "US forces in Iraq and other countries in the region will be protected against any Iranian missile attack by an advanced Patriot missile system."

He went on to say "although US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Dr Condoleezza Rice suggested postponing the attack, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney insisted on attacking Tehran without any negotiations based on the lesson they learnt in Iraq recently." The Bush administration believes attacking Iran will create a new power balance in the region, calm down the situation in Iraq and pave the way for their democratic project, which had to be suspended due to the interference of Tehran and Damascus in Iraq, he continued. The attack on Iran will weaken the Syrian regime, which will eventually fade away, the source said.

"but we're the good guys"

2007-01-15T15:34:00.001Z

July 21st 2005

2007-01-15T14:21:00.000Z

The trial of the weird 21 July 'bomb' plot starts today.

The prosecutor told how six bombs were made using a mix of liquid hydrogen peroxide, chapatti flour, acetone and acid.
Each bomb was placed in a large plastic container and screws, tacks, washers or nuts, were taped to the outside to "maximise the possibility of injury", Mr Sweeney said.
But the bombs had failed to detonate because the defendants had made a lower concentration of hydrogen peroxide than was needed, he added.
He added: "The failure of those bombs to explode owed nothing to the intention of these defendants, rather it was simply the good fortune of the travelling public that day that they were spared."

Thats a little difficult to believe.

Six accused of London bomb plot

The six are each accused of conspiracy to murder

Six men planned "murderous suicide bombings" on public transport in London on 21 July 2005, a court has heard.

The prosecution has told Woolwich Crown Court of their alleged "extremist Muslim plot" targeting the capital - 14 days after the 7 July bombings.

Muktar Ibrahim, Manfo Asiedu, Hussein Osman, Yassin Omar, Ramzi Mohammed and Adel Yahya - all originally from Africa - deny conspiracy to murder.

Measuring morons

2007-01-14T17:13:00.000Z

I just read that while the rest of the US military uses metric measurements for everything (remember "klicks" from Vietnam movies), the US Navy measures distance in "kiloyards". A "kiloyard" is exactly 914.4 m. I just have to say... ha haha ha hahah ahaha. Plonkers.

Other weird US measurements include the survey mile, used to measure land in the United States. Its the same as a usual mile, but 3mm longer.

I know from experience that circuit boards are usually measured in "mili-inches" or "mils" because of the influence of our American cousins. Mili-fucking-inches.

I tell you, thats whats wrong with the world right there. Mili-fucking-inches.

2007-01-14T11:44:00.001Z

BBC scraps de Menezes killing film

Vanessa Thorpe, arts and media correspondent
Sunday January 14, 2007
The Observer

The BBC has dropped a politically sensitive drama it was making about the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes by members of Scotland Yard's firearms squad.

The move has distressed members of the innocent Brazilian's family and enraged Katy Jones, the docu-drama's award-winning producer.

'I am extraordinarily disappointed, more than anything for the family. It was devastating for them. We had been told by the BBC it was the most important television commission of the year,' said Jones, who, with Jimmy McGovern, made Hillsborough and Sunday.

'The de Menezes family were right in the middle of a traumatic experience and it was a huge blow for them. I feel very angry and I have urged the BBC to send an apology to them.'

She says the BBC has failed in its duty to complete a sensitive project that unearthed a large amount of investigative material about the police shooting of 27-year-old de Menezes at Stockwell underground station in south London in July 2005.

A second expensive and highly topical docu-drama, dealing with the lives of the 7 July bombers, has also been unexpectedly shelved.

'It was a very well developed drama piece, but it was a question of timing and the mix of programmes,' said Roly Keating, controller of BBC2. He denied that the decision had anything to do with the difficult or dark content uncovered by researchers working with militant Islamic groups.

The decision to drop the two dramas may mark a move away from communicating complicated and important news stories through fictionalised accounts. 'There is a tendency to want to make a docu-drama when what is needed is some really tough frontline documentary reporting,' said George Entwistle, head of current affairs. 'Sometimes it is used as a less strenuous option, although this is not the case in the best docu-dramas.

'My sense is that there has been a lot of good BBC journalism in this area anyway. For instance, we had a Panorama on the de Menezes shooting. The 7 July development work was good background journalism.'

Keating agreed that researchers working on this project had unearthed important information about the bombers which, he said, may still be used at some time.

Jane Tranter, head of drama, said of the 7 July project: 'I would say it is on hold. We have never said we are not making it.' She added that in the case of the de Menezes film the fact that the story was heavily reported on the news at the time meant she had to ask what a docu-drama could bring to viewers.

Unrest in America

2007-01-13T00:26:00.001Z

Meanwhile, in Iran...

Iran's 750,000 strong regular army, and 11 million reserves, prepare to meet Bush's 17,000 extra troops.

Green Blair

2007-01-11T22:42:00.001Z

Poverty

2007-01-11T00:08:00.000Z

Gina Walter eats off paper plates. She would rather use her dishes, but she says she cannot afford the water bills that would come from having to wash up every night.

"I would like to eat off dishes but it's just not feasible with my income," she says.

Gina earns €4.80 an hour in the world's richest country. She pays €260 a month in rent plus €65 for heating and €28 for electricity. But water costs her €65 a month too - even though she doesn't wash dishes. She has no heath insurance and thus no right to go to hospital or see a doctor if she gets sick.

10% of US workers are in the same position.

You're better off unemployed in Europe, than working in America.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6246969.stm

Terror tottle

2007-01-09T22:54:00.000Z

For a laugh I just signed up for MI5's "Terror alert" e-mails. First e-mail I got thanked me for subscribing but finished with the note "© Crown Copyright 2007". Copyrighted terror alerts? Is this a quiet acknowledgment that they publish fiction?

PS

This page on the MI5 site is interesting. It mentions the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. No mention that MI5 themselves organised it. I'm going to e-mail them and ask them to correct the site... he he. If I get a reply I'll post it here.

Your web page on Loyalist terror mentions the 1974 bombings in Dublin and Monaghan which killed 34 people. However, it does not mention that the Irish Parliament has accused the British security services in general, and MI5 in particular, of involvement in and cover-up of, these attacks.

What is MI5's position on these accusations? Does MI5 deny involvement and if so, why doesn't this denial appear on the website?

This sums it up...

2007-01-09T13:47:00.000Z

If their's one thing I love about the English is their ludicrous claims to world prowess at various random skills. These claims are usually thrown in unchallenged to conversation and TV and radio programs. Stuff like "Britain is the richest/best educated/most democratic/cleanest/etc in the world" It doesn't really matter what the claim is so long as it begins with "Britain is", has an 'est' in it, and ends with "in the world". If the claimant is feeling a little unsure of himself or the claim is particularly ludicrous, it might be limited to a modest "in Europe".

But this one takes the biscuit (perhaps even the biggest and most British biscuit in the world):

I was just listening to a radio documentary about the British national anthem on the BBC. The program was good and interesting (It had Brian May in it), but of course began with the requisite claim;

"The British national anthem is the most popular in the world"

Excuse me? What is your evidence for this extraordinary claim, Mr. BBC?

"It is has been adopted by Liechtenstein."

Hmmmmm... Interesting thesis. But I think the 19,000 residents of Liechtenstein don't quite form a majority of the world's population, now does it?

(Listen for yourself - it should be online on the BBC Radio 4 website shortly)

I once heard a wonderful quote by a Belgian Prime Minister who was discussing Europe with the Chinese ambassador. He said "All European countries are small, but some know it and some don't."

Russian Golden Hits

2007-01-08T14:14:00.000Z

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2007-01-08T14:12:00.001Z

Concepts replaced by grinning faces? This is not dumbing down - it's dizzying madness

Charlie Brooker
Monday January 8, 2007
The Guardian

I read a magazine yesterday and suddenly truly understood in my bones that human civilisation will die screaming in our lifetime.

It happened on the toilet. I was reading a copy of the free magazine Sky send to all their subscribers. Visually inhaling crap at one end, rectally exhaling it at the other; my corporeal self a mere conduit for the elemental crapforce that binds the universe together. I have all the spirituality of a doorframe. This is as close as I get to a religious experience.

Anyway. The Sky magazine is one of those Heat-a-like graphical holocausts where every millimetre of the page is plastered with rowdy colours and exclamation marks that crane their necks to squeal at you. I say I was "reading" it, but in reality you don't "read" magazines like that. There is too much visual noise, so instead you simply "look at" them, having first disengaged your temporal lobe so you don't feel like you are being stabbed in the mind by an over-zealous Christmas lighting display. Even though that is precisely what is happening.

And I was dumbly gazing at the bit that tells you which films are coming up on the movie channels, when I noticed that at the bottom of each synopsis sat a group of tiny faces. Celebrity faces. Nestling at the end of the paragraph, like part of the typography, as though the editors had done some research and discovered their readers had devolved to the point where their brains can no longer parse text unless it is broken up with miniature photos of their famous imaginary friends grinning back at them. I slapped myself awake and tried to make sense of what I was seeing.

Slowly it dawned on me: this was a rating system. I flipped back a few pages, and sure enough, there was the key: a brightly-coloured box full of little celebrity faces, accompanied by a brief description of what they stood for. "It's fast, easy, and practical," lied the subhead. This is what each face meant:

· Brad Pitt - "Eye Candy"

· Peter Kay - "Laugh Out Loud"

· Michael Jackson - "Thriller"

· Sarah Jessica Parker - "Get the Girls Round"

· Christopher Lee - "Scary"

· Victoria Beckham - "Star Spotting"

· Chico - "Guilty Pleasure"

· Ant and Dec - "Family Fun"

· Vicky Pollard - "Real-Life Shocker"

Sure, it would insult the intelligence of a cod. Under this system, Schindler's List = Vicky Pollard.

But I knew it was worse than that. I just didn't know why, not yet. So I looked at it again. Somewhere in my head, a camel's back splintered beneath a straw. And I understood: this is madness. Genuinely: this is madness. Concepts replaced by faces. Grinning faces. It is not evidence of "dumbing down". It is the disjointed thought process of madness. That this is even vaguely acceptable is the most dizzying madness of all.

I wanted to run into the street, without even pausing to wipe, and hurl myself, boggle-eyed, at passers-by, flapping the magazine around, screaming: "HELP! WE'VE LOST OUR MINDS! I HAVE PROOF! I HAVE PROOF."

But I didn't. I stayed put; pooing and afraid.

And I thought: Our leaders lie, and we know they have lied, and there is war in our name, and the world kicks and boils itself to death and we do nothing but stare into the tiny grinning faces of people we don't even know; faces that are, apparently, more "fast, easy and practical" than language itself.

I give us six years, tops.

Ignopedia

Continuing our uniquely unreliable interactive knowledge resource

Celebrity
(Requested by reader Louise Allen)

A celebrity is a fellow human being who is better than you because lots of people know who they are. Everyone loves celebrities. Even people who claim to despise celebrities would, if they were honest, prefer to share a drizzly afternoon picnic with Kate Thornton than spend one more second in your revolting non-celebrity company.

If George Clooney called a globally televised press conference, then plucked out two of his eyelashes and announced he would donate them free of charge to the first viewer to turn round and murder their entire family, thousands would perish. Read that again. It is a fact.

Celebrities themselves are rarely evil. Several have talent worth celebrating. Curiously, this is rarely discussed in media coverage, which instead concentrates on how fat their thighs are in order to make regular people, driven to the brink of despair by their adulation of celebrities, feel momentarily better about themselves, and sufficiently robust to stave off suicide long enough to digest further celebrity coverage.

Any member of the public who voluntarily pays to read magazines stuffed with candid photographs of celebrities walking down the street clutching shopping bags is suffering from an acute form of mental illness that hasn't been diagnosed yet, but surely will if there is an atom of hope left in the world, because a civilian flipping through Heat in their lunch break is the human equivalent of a cow being stunned by a captive bolt pistol prior to slaughter - except the cow, at least, dies for a purpose.

· To look something up in the Ignopedia, submit a query to ignopedia@guardian.co.uk, assuming you haven't found this one so depressing it has put you off

Corporate nausea

Thanks for all your corporate nausea entries. I am compiling them into a special feature which will appear in these pages at some point before our inevitable collective demise in a frothing cauldron of our own boiling blood. Or March, whichever is earliest. In the meantime, you can email me heartfelt messages of support by punching the following co-ordinates into your email navigation system: charlie.brooker@guardian.co.uk.

One down...

2007-01-05T12:08:00.000Z

Israel show off its democracy again

2007-01-04T17:53:00.000Z

Israeli 'traitor' vilified in press freed after two years in jail
Conal Urquhart in Tel Aviv
Thursday January 4, 2007
The Guardian

An Israeli woman whose attempts to better understand Palestinians led to a campaign of vilification and charges of treason was released yesterday after serving more than two years in jail.

Tali Fahima, 30, said she had no regrets and insisted that she had done nothing to harm the state of Israel as she left prison to the cheers of a hundred supporters.

Ms Fahima, a legal secretary, was arrested in August 2004 after the last of a series of visits to Jenin, which were publicised in the media. She was detained without trial after the defence minister said she "took part in planning a terrorist attack in Israel".

She was attacked in the Israeli press as a "terrorist's whore" after journalists were briefed that she had an affair with a Palestinian militant, Zakaria Zubeidi, who is often described as Israel's most wanted man.

Ms Fahima said there was no truth in any of the allegations and said she was only arrested after she declined to work for Shin Bet, Israel's secret service.

When she was tried no evidence was presented of her involvement in a terrorist attack, although she admitted reading an Israeli army document that soldiers lost on patrol.

Ms Fahima pleaded guilty to meeting enemy agents and passing information to them as part of a plea bargain in December 2005.

The charges could have led to a life sentence but Ms Fahima was offered the opportunity to serve only a further 10 months in return for a guilty plea.

As part of the condition of her release she is "banned from leaving the country in the coming year, contacting a foreign agent or entering unauthorised territories", the Israeli prison service said in a statement.

She said she had no plans to visit Jenin and Zubeidi but said she wanted to continue to fight Israel's occupation of the territories.

Meanwhile, Mordechai Vanunu is still forbidden from leaving Israel.

2007-01-04T16:37:00.001Z

Libya to erect statue of Saddam

Libya announced today it would erect a statue of Saddam Hussein alongside that of a national hero hanged in 1931.

"The revolutionary committees have decided to erect a statue of Saddam Hussein standing beside Omar Mukhtar on the gallows," it said in a statement.

Mukhtar led the Libyan resistance against Italian occupation.

Libya declared three days of mourning after Saddam's death and cancelled public celebrations around the Eid religious holiday.

Flags on government buildings flew at half-mast. On the eve of Saddam's hanging, the Libyan leader, Col Muammar Gadafy, said the former Iraq leader was a prisoner of war who must be tried by Iraq's invaders, the United States and Britain.

Bock's wisdom

2007-01-04T16:18:00.000Z

Bock the Robber sums up the Saddam hanging 'controversy' nicely with this post, reproduced below:

The Americans are very annoyed at the way Saddam was executed. Most of all, they seem to be upset that some of his guards shouted abuse and threats at him as he stood on the gallows. Threats? What threats could you possibly shout at a man with a rope around his neck?

We'll fuckin kill you!

Anyway, isn't the hypocrisy simply astounding? They can claim with a straight face that it had nothing to do with them. The Iraqis did it. There's Bush in his toga gesturing to a slave. Bring me a bowl of water for my hands. I am innocent of this man's blood.

It's ridiculous. They don't like the screaming at the hanging. They didn't mind the fact that his trial was a set-up and they didn't mind keeping him prisoner until the Iraqis were ready to hang him, but they sure don't want no shoutin' at no hangin'.

Even Saddam himself would find this ludicrous. There you are standing on a a scaffold. The rope is already around your neck. Your hands and feet are bound. Any second now, that flap will open and you'll fall to your death. What are you thinking to yourself?

I hope they don't shout at me.

2007-01-04T16:14:00.000Z

Possible Meteorite Smashes Into New Jersey House

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Jan. 3: The mysterious metallic object, now in the custody of the police department of Freehold Township, N.J.

FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP, N.J. — A metal, rock-like object about the size of a golf ball and weighing nearly as much as a can of soup crashed through the roof of a Monmouth County home, and authorities on Wednesday were trying to figure out what it was.

Nobody was injured when the oblong object, weighing more than 13 ounces, crashed into the home and embedded itself in a wall Tuesday night. Federal officials sent to the scene said it was not from an aircraft.

The rough-feeling object, with a metallic glint, was displayed Wednesday by police. "There's some great interest in what we have here," said Lt. Robert Brightman. "It's rather unusual. I haven't seen anything like it in my career." He said he hoped to have the object identified within 72 hours, but declined to name the other agencies whose help he said he had enlisted. Police received a call Wednesday morning that the metal object had punched a hole in the roof of a single-family, two-story home, damaged tiles on a bathroom floor below and then bounced, sticking into a wall. The object was heavier than a usual metal object of that size, said Brightman, who added that no radioactivity was detected. Brightman would not disclose the address of the house or the names of the people who lived there, citing the family's desire to not talk to the media. He would only say that the couple and their adult son live in a township housing development. Brightman said one man who lives at the home found the object at about 9 p.m. Tuesday after returning from work and hearing from his mother that something had crashed through the roof a few hours before.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which sent investigators to the town, did not know where the object came from, said spokeswoman Arlene Murray. "It's definitely not an aircraft part," she said. "I can't speak beyond that as to what it might be." Approximately 20 to 50 rock-like objects fall every day over the entire planet, said Carlton Pryor, a professor of astronomy at Rutgers University.

"It's not all that uncommon to have rocks rain down from heaven," said Pryor, who had not seen the object that struck the Monmouth County home. "These are usually rocky or a mixture of rock and metal." Pryor said laboratory tests would have to be conducted to determine if the object was a meteorite. In the neighborhood later in the day, residents chatted with each other in the streets about the fallen object, but none said they knew which house had been hit. Robert Nalven, 55, said nothing this exciting had happened in the six years he's lived in the affluent development. "I'm happy it didn't hit my house," he said.

2007-01-04T14:18:00.001Z

Big Brother sugars the surveillance pill

Victor Keegan
London Guardian
Thursday, January 4, 2007

Something funny has been happening to the CCTV cameras in our neighbourhood. They have started growing ears. Not real ones - at least not yet - but audio functions enabling them to "hear" what is happening around them as well as see. At the moment the experiment is confined to six cameras operating in the Soho area of Westminster, London, which has a high concentration of clubs and bars. An advanced wireless network which the council is building relays the information to a monitoring centre. If it is successful, it will be expanded to other selected areas. Police in the UK are also thinking about installing new CCTV cameras sensitive enough to record conversations up to 100 yards away to thwart hooliganism but, wisely, are keen to have a national debate about it first.

Westminster council claims that the devices don't eavesdrop since they monitor ambient noise, not actual voices. For instance, if the decibels emanating from clubs rise above acceptable levels late at night then the authorities are automatically informed so, instead of sending out noise monitoring officers they can ring the club's owners to warn them or, if it is serious enough, take the appropriate action.
The council argues that this experiment arose from what it believes is its unique approach to the roll-out of wireless over eight square miles of the city. Unusual for a Conservative council, it is being driven by public services. The high bandwidth needed to support a CCTV wireless network offers spare capacity for delivering other services where only the imagination is the limit. Possible applications include monitoring old people's safety in their own homes and automatic detection of faulty street lights.

There is no reason to doubt Westminster's policy not to monitor voices, but other organisations, not subject to democratic scrutiny, need not feel so constrained. It is not difficult to find companies selling audio-visual surveillance equipment on the internet. It is even possible that actual voice surveillance operating in troublespots in UK town centres might prove as uncontroversial as the omnipresence of CCTV cameras, an activity at which Britain leads the world.

We have forestalled the onset of a governmental Big Brother by meekly accepting surveillance and even doing much of it ourselves. The video camera age has turned mutual surveillance into a hobby and even a job. Last month, BBC footage of sniffer dogs during the Ipswich murder inquiry came from a passerby taking a photo in a sealed-off area, while this week a clip on websites of Saddam Hussein's execution apparently came from a cameraphone.

We had better get used to all this: it is the way reporting is going. A US media start-up, NowPublic. com claims to have 52,000 mojos (untrained mobile journalists) around the world ready to send back photos and text from riots and troublespots that it would take trained journalists days to reach. It knows where each of its mojos is through cell-triangulation or satellite tracking. When Heathrow was closed to the media during a security alert last year, NowPublic claimed it had seven people inside the terminal taking snaps or videos.

Pretty soon we won't need to rely on external recording devices as we will be able to have tiny audio-visual cameras attached to ourselves chronicling our entire lives. Professor Nigel Shadbolt, president of the British Computer Society, told a Memories for Life conference at the British Library recently that "in the not too distant future a device the size of a sugar cube will exist able to record an entire lifetime of human memories". The question is whether governments should be allowed to build a sugar mountain out of these cubes, or whether they belong to us. Despite the fears of the government's own information commissioner, Richard Thomas, that the UK is in the throes of a "sleepwalk into a surveillance society", few people have got worked up about it.

Pick Up the GUN!

2007-01-03T23:17:00.000Z

Bill Hicks: Pick Up The Gun

Doing something right for once

2007-01-03T19:12:00.000Z

Private funds to back Luas extension

Frank McDonald, Environment Editor

Photograph: The Irish Times

Property developers and landowners will fund half the estimated cost of €300 million to extend the Luas Green Line from Sandyford to Cherrywood, via Leopardstown, according to Frank Allen, chief executive of the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA).

"No rail scheme anywhere in Europe has captured that level [of private-sector support]," he told The Irish Times . "We've done deals with most of the developers on transferring land along the 7.5km route at a deep discount, and they've made some financial contributions as well.

"This is for real - we have money in the bank," Mr Allen said, adding that a levy scheme by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council "takes care of the 'free rider' problem" - a reference to landowners along the extended line who would make windfall gains from enhanced property values.

However, he said the line - approved last August - was "in jeopardy" because of a High Court legal challenge by the owners of a listed Georgian house due to be demolished to make way for it. This case may be heard before the end of January, and the RPA was "confident" of winning it.

About half the estimated €80 million cost of the proposed 3.5km spur from Belgard on the Tallaght Red Line to Citywest is also being funded by developers - although in this case a consortium led by Brendan Hickey, of Davy Hickey Properties, will actually build the line, including its four stops.

"We don't even have to think about land costs [along the route] because they will transfer it in its entirety to us, on the basis that we will put in the electrics, telecoms and trams and provide a level of service. We will be submitting an application for the line to An Bord Pleanála in January," Mr Allen said.

He conceded that trams on the Sandyford line were already overcrowded during morning peak periods and that the extension to Cherrywood could make this worse."We increased capacity last September, running a four-minute service at peak periods, and that's made a big difference. But clearly there is a problem between 8.15am and 8.45am. We will increase the frequency even more and we're also looking at increasing the length of trams to 50 metres."

He also conceded that journey times on the Red Line between Tallaght and Connolly Station were often taking up to 48 minutes - five minutes longer than originally envisaged - mainly because of congestion on-street, hold-ups at traffic lights and motorists indulging in "red light running".

At certain junctions, particularly in the city centre, motorists were still "ignoring red lights" and there had been several accidents that put trams out of commission for months.

Asked whether Luas gets sufficient priority at junctions, Mr Allen said: "I'm not picking a fight with Dublin City Council, but its roads department still sees the movement of cars in the city as having priority, which I don't share, so we will continue encouraging them to to give trams more priority."

Blowing Up Russia

2006-12-26T01:12:00.000Z

A Hollywood film may be made of Litvinenko's book on the 1999 Moscow bombings. Daniel Craig may star as Litvinenko. I don't see this happening, as if Hollywood promotes the idea that the Russian government bombs people, blames it on Muslims, and uses it to start a war, then Americans might start seeing similar things closer to home. I haven't seen a Hollywood film about Gladio, even though its been 16 years since it came out and its a cracking yarn.

There's already a number of documentaries on 9/9/99 anyway - here's one made a few years back: