Beast System: Laying The Foundation Of The Beast

[oneofmany]

CIA Officers Won’t Be Charged in Destroying Tapes

CIA Officers Won’t Be Charged in Destroying Tapes​

Nov. 9 (Bloomberg) -- The Justice Department isn’t bringing criminal charges against Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in destroying videotapes of harsh interrogation techniques used on terrorism suspects.

John Durham, the prosecutor appointed to handle the case, aided by a team of attorneys and FBI agents, conducted an “exhaustive investigation” and decided not to pursue a criminal case, according to a statement issued today by Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman.

The videotapes recorded the 2002 interrogations of two detainees, al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al- Nashiri, a suspected al-Qaeda leader behind the USS Cole bombing in 2000. The tapes were destroyed in 2005 and the CIA disclosed what happened in 2007. Interrogation methods included simulated drowning, or waterboarding, which became a contentious political issue.

A Justice Department criminal investigation into the treatment of detainees by CIA officers remains open, Miller said in an e-mail. Attorney General Eric Holder said last year that Durham was investigating interrogations of specific detainees.

The CIA withheld disclosure of the tapes’ destruction from Congress, the courts and a commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks, lawmakers said. Then-CIA Director Michael Hayden said the tapes were destroyed to protect interrogators’ safety.

Jose Rodriguez, head of the CIA’s clandestine service at the time, approved the tapes’ destruction.

‘An American Hero’

His lawyer, Robert S. Bennett of Hogan Lovells in Washington, said in a statement: “This is the right decision because of the facts and the law. Jose Rodriguez is an American hero, a true patriot who only wanted to protect his people and his country.”

The Justice Department’s decision is “a huge disappointment,” said Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel in Washington for the American Civil Liberties Union. He said the tapes should have been preserved and provided to the ACLU in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the organization.

“There’s a lot of evidence that top government officials during the Bush administration ignored orders from federal courts to not destroy evidence related to torture,” Anders said in an interview.

Former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey appointed Durham, a prosecutor in Connecticut, in 2008 after a preliminary inquiry by the CIA’s inspector general and the Justice Department’s national security division found a basis for starting a criminal probe.

 

[oneofmany]

China may be bigger economy than US within two years

China may be bigger economy than US within two years​

Here’s a finding that will have any red-blooded American spluttering into his cornflakes. According to the Conference Board, a highly respected economic research association, China will overtake the US as the world’s biggest economy by 2012, or within two years.

OK, so in dollar terms, that’s obviously not going to be the case. It will be a lot longer than two years before China overtakes the US on that measure. But in terms of purchasing power parity, according to the Conference Board’s latest world economic outlook, China is already nearly there, and by 2020 will have reached a size of output which is nearly half as big again as the US.

Here’s the Wkipedia link explaining what PPP is, but broadly speaking the idea is to measure output according to the volume, not the price of goods and services produced. The assumption made is that identical goods will have the same price in different markets. In practice, this is obviously not the case. A taxi ride in Beijing, for instance, will cost you approximately a tenth of what it costs in London. But it is essentially the same service.

In any case, in PPP terms, the Conference Board’s projections show China as 24.1 per cent of world output by 2020, and the US at just 14.8 per cent.

We all knew that the weight of economic growth had skewed dramatically since the crisis from advanced to emerging market economies, but many in the West don’t yet seem fully to appreciate the speed with which economic and geo-political power is shifting. This is a truly seismic change. How these once irrelevant economies choose to use their new found power is the overarching question of our times.

 

[oneofmany]

G-20 refuses to back US push on China's currency

G-20 refuses to back US push on China's currency​

SEOUL, South Korea – Leaders of 20 major economies on Friday refused to back a U.S. push to make China boost its currency's value, keeping alive a dispute that raises fears of a global trade war amid criticism that cheap Chinese exports are costing American jobs.

A joint statement issued by the leaders including President Barack Obama and China's Hu Jintao tried to recreate the unity that was evident when the Group of 20 rich and developing nations held its first summit two years ago during the global financial meltdown.

But deep divisions, especially over the U.S.-China currency dispute, left G-20 officials negotiating all night to draft a watered-down statement for the leaders to endorse.

"Instead of hitting home runs sometimes we're gonna hit singles. But they're really important singles," Obama told a news conference after the summit.
Other leaders also tried to portray the summit as a success, pointing to their pledges to fight protectionism and develop guidelines next year that will measure the imbalances between trade surplus and trade deficit countries.

The G-20's failure to adopt the U.S. stand has underlined Washington's reduced influence on the international stage, especially on economic matters. In another setback, Obama also failed to conclude a free trade agreement this week with South Korea.

The biggest disappointment for the United States was the pledge by the leaders to refrain from "competitive devaluation" of currencies. Such a statement is of little consequence since countries usually only devalue their currencies — making it less worth against the dollar — in extreme situations like a severe financial crisis.

The statement decided against using a slightly different wording favored by the U.S. — "competitive undervaluation," which would have shown the G-20 taking a stronger stance on China's currency policy.

The crux of the dispute is Washington's allegations that Beijing is artificially keeping its currency, the yuan, weak to gain a trade advantage.

U.S. business lobbies say that a cheaper yuan costs American jobs because production moves to China to take advantage of low labor costs and undervalued currency.

A stronger yuan would shrink the U.S. trade deficit with China, which is on track this year to match its 2008 record of $268 billion, and encourage Chinese companies to sell more to their own consumers rather than rely so much on the U.S. and others to buy low-priced Chinese goods.

But the U.S. position has been undermined by its own central bank's decision to print $600 billion to boost a sluggish economy, which is weakening the dollar.

Also, developing countries like Thailand and Indonesia fear that much of the "hot" money will flood their markets, where returns are higher. Such emerging markets could be left vulnerable to a crash if investors later decide to pull out and move their money elsewhere.

Obama said China's currency policy is an "irritant" not just for the United States but for many of its other trading partners. The G-20 countries — ranging from industrialized nations such as U.S. and Germany to developing ones like China, Brazil and India — account for 85 percent of the world's economic activity.

"China spends enormous amounts of money intervening in the market to keep it undervalued so what we have said is it is important for China in a gradual fashion to transition to a market based system," Obama said.

The dispute is threatening to resurrect destructive protectionist policies like those that worsened the Great Depression in the 1930s. The biggest fear is that trade barriers will send the global economy back into recession.

The possibility of a currency war "absolutely" remains, said Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega.

Friday's statement is also unlikely to resolve the most vexing problem facing the G-20 members: how to fix a global economy that's long been marked by huge U.S. trade deficits with exporters like China, Germany and Japan.

Americans consume far more in foreign goods and services from these countries than they sell abroad.

The G-20 leaders said they will try to reduce the gaps between nations running large trade surpluses and those running deficits.

The "persistently large imbalances" in current accounts — a broad measure of a nation's trade and investment with the rest of the world — would be measured by what they called "indicative guidelines" to be determined later.

The leaders called for the guidelines to be developed by the G-20, along with help from the International Monetary Fund and other global organizations, and for finance ministers and central bank governors to meet in the first half of next year to discuss progress.
Analysts were not convinced.

"Leaders are putting the best face on matters by suggesting that it is the process that matters rather than results," said Stephen Lewis, chief economist for London-based Monument Securities.

"The only concrete agreement seems to be that they should go on measuring the size of the problem rather than doing something about it."

 

[oneofmany]

Nazis Who Hid Still Get U.S. Government Cover

Nazis Who Hid Still Get U.S. Government Cover​

To whatever degree the U.S. knowingly or carelessly sheltered Nazi murderers after World War II, it’s a national shame.

“America, which prided itself on being a safe haven for the persecuted, became -- in some small measure -- a safe haven for persecutors as well,” according to a 607-page Justice Department report made public this week by the New York Times and National Security Archive, a private research group.

Astonishingly thorough and readable, the 2006 draft report tells the story of how hundreds of Nazis came to be admitted into the U.S. following the war and what the government did about it.

It lays out how Otto von Bolschwing, a former deputy to Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, went to work for the Central Intelligence Agency abroad and then entered the U.S. with the CIA’s help.

The report offers details on the case of Arthur Rudolph, who brought forced labor into the munitions factory he ran in Germany. He later worked as a U.S. rocket scientist, helping to make the first moon landing possible.

In both cases, Justice investigators finally uncovered the extent of their wartime past and acted to have both men stripped of their citizenship and deported.

The Justice Department’s failures and successes in some two dozen individual cases are described, along with efforts to track Nazi gold in Switzerland and seek help from other countries, some recalcitrant. The report provides the historical context and legal framework in which these cases were at first ignored and then pursued, thanks in large part to the persistence of New York Democrat Elizabeth Holtzman, then a freshman in Congress.

It is a story of historic significance, well worth telling.

Known Secrets

But what is most astonishing about the report is how hard the U.S. government tried to keep it hidden. The central facts of these cases have already been reported. And it’s not as if the Justice Department had anything to fear from its release.

The department’s failures are there, to be sure. But we already knew about those. The fact that Nazis who committed atrocities wound up in the U.S. is hardly news. Newspapers and television networks have said so for decades, and the CIA has released information on it, too.

If anything, the thoroughness, the extensive footnotes and the historical and legal contexts given show the department’s Office of Special Investigations on the whole did a remarkable job under difficult circumstances to find Nazi persecutors and throw them out of America’s sheltering arms.

And yet, the department refused to turn the report over last year when the National Security Archive asked for it, saying it was merely a draft and therefore exempt from disclosure. So the group went to court in May.

Perhaps sensing they would lose that battle, Justice Department lawyers whited-out whole passages and turned the draft over to the National Security Archive in October.

Thousand Redactions

The group figures there are more than 1,000 redactions in all, according to Tom Blanton, director of the Washington-based organization.

If the edited draft were all we had, then the report wouldn’t be of much value. But the unexpurgated report was leaked to that group and to the New York Times. Both organizations posted it online.

Now, you can see what the Justice Department lawyers whited-out. And a lot of it is material that was already publicly known.

Information from newspaper stories, court decisions and congressional testimony were all kept out, as were footnotes citing those sources.

‘It’s Outrageous’

“We know precisely what was being withheld,” says David Sobel, a Washington lawyer representing the National Security Archive. “It’s outrageous seeing the types of material they are prepared to tell a court must be withheld.”

Sobel said he can discern no pattern that would point to an overarching motive for the edits.

“I can’t figure out what the rationale is,” he said yesterday in a telephone interview.

Blanton said some of the redactions may be aimed at keeping internal conflicts secret.

Whatever the reason, the attempted censorship was self- defeating and, in Sobel’s opinion, illegal under the Freedom of Information Act.

Had the Justice Department simply handed over the full document, it’s unlikely the New York Times would have run the story on the front page of its Sunday edition, Blanton speculates.

‘Privacy’ Concerns

The Freedom of Information Act, which the group used to seek the report, allows the government to withhold certain material. But the two reasons the Justice Department cited, privacy and “opinion,” simply don’t hold water when you see what its lawyers deleted from the version that was finally turned over.

Nor does the Justice Department offer much explanation. “Attorneys with FOIA expertise make determinations about certain redactions based on privacy and other considerations under the law,” spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said in an e-mailed statement.

She also said the department considers the report merely an unfinished draft which contains errors.

But in its unedited version, this is a heavily footnoted account is based on extensive interviews with key officials, documents, published reports and court rulings. Whatever its imperfections, its value surely outweighs them.

It has sparked news coverage in Australia, for example, because of claims that officials there had been recalcitrant in going after war criminals.

The story of Nazis in America isn’t pretty. But nor is it as ugly as sensational conspiracy theorists have claimed.

This report is an important contribution to history. The shame of it is that an administration that claims to be devoted to transparency tried to hide it.

 

[oneofmany]

TSA pat-down leaves traveler covered in urine

TSA pat-down leaves traveler covered in urine​

A retired special education teacher on his way to a wedding in Orlando, Fla., said he was left humiliated, crying and covered with his own urine after an enhanced pat-down by TSA officers recently at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

“I was absolutely humiliated, I couldn’t even speak,” said Thomas D. “Tom” Sawyer, 61, of Lansing, Mich.

Sawyer is a bladder cancer survivor who now wears a urostomy bag, which collects his urine from a stoma, or opening in his stomach. “I have to wear special clothes and in order to mount the bag I have to seal a wafer to my stomach and then attach the bag. If the seal is broken, urine can leak all over my body and clothes.”

On Nov. 7, Sawyer said he went through the security scanner at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. “Evidently the scanner picked up on my urostomy bag, because I was chosen for a pat-down procedure.”

Due to his medical condition, Sawyer asked to be screened in private. “One officer looked at another, rolled his eyes and said that they really didn’t have any place to take me,” said Sawyer. “After I said again that I’d like privacy, they took me to an office.”

Sawyer wears pants two sizes too large in order to accommodate the medical equipment he wears. He’d taken off his belt to go through the scanner and once in the office with security personnel, his pants fell down around his ankles. “I had to ask twice if it was OK to pull up my shorts,” said Sawyer, “And every time I tried to tell them about my medical condition, they said they didn’t need to know about that.”

Before starting the enhanced pat-down procedure, a security officer did tell him what they were going to do and how they were going to it, but Sawyer said it wasn’t until they asked him to remove his sweatshirt and saw his urostomy bag that they asked any questions about his medical condition.

“One agent watched as the other used his flat hand to go slowly down my chest. I tried to warn him that he would hit the bag and break the seal on my bag, but he ignored me. Sure enough, the seal was broken and urine started dribbling down my shirt and my leg and into my pants.”

The security officer finished the pat-down, tested the gloves for any trace of explosives and then, Sawyer said, “He told me I could go. They never apologized. They never offered to help. They acted like they hadn’t seen what happened. But I know they saw it because I had a wet mark.”

Humiliated, upset and wet, Sawyer said he had to walk through the airport soaked in urine, board his plane and wait until after takeoff before he could clean up.

“I am totally appalled by the fact that agents that are performing these pat-downs have so little concern for people with medical conditions,” said Sawyer.

Sawyer completed his trip and had no problems with the security procedures at the Orlando International Airport on his journey back home. He said he plans to file a formal complaint with the TSA.

When he does, said TSA spokesperson Dwayne Baird, “We will review the matter and take appropriate action if necessary.” In the meantime, Baird encourages anyone with a medical condition to read the TSA’s website section on assistive devices and mobility aids.

The website says that travelers with disabilities and medical conditions have “the option of requesting a private screening” and that security officers “will not ask nor require you to remove your prosthetic device, cast, or support brace.”

Sawyer said he's written to his senators, state representatives and the president of the United States. He’s also shared details of the incident online with members of the nonprofit Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network, many of whom have offered support and shared their travel experiences.

“I am a good American and I want safety for all passengers as much as the next person," Sawyer said. "But if this country is going to sacrifice treating people like human beings in the name of safety, then we have already lost the war.”

Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network executive director Claire Saxton said that there are hundreds of thousands of people living with ostomies in the United States. “TSA agents need to be trained to listen when someone tells them have a health issue and trained in knowing what an ostomy is. No one living with an ostomy should be afraid of flying because they’re afraid of being humiliated at the checkpoint.”

Eric Lipp, executive director of Open Doors Association, which works with businesses and the disability community, called what happened to Sawyer “unfortunate.”

“But enhanced pat-downs are not a new issue for people with disabilities who travel," Lipp said. "They've always had trouble getting through the security checkpoint."

Still, Lipp said the TSA knows there’s a problem. “This came up during a recent meeting of the agency’s disability advisory board and I expect to see a procedure coming in place shortly that will directly address the pat-down procedures for people with disabilities.”

 

[oneofmany]

TSA pat-down leaves traveler covered in urine

TSA pat-down leaves traveler covered in urine​

A retired special education teacher on his way to a wedding in Orlando, Fla., said he was left humiliated, crying and covered with his own urine after an enhanced pat-down by TSA officers recently at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

“I was absolutely humiliated, I couldn’t even speak,” said Thomas D. “Tom” Sawyer, 61, of Lansing, Mich.

Sawyer is a bladder cancer survivor who now wears a urostomy bag, which collects his urine from a stoma, or opening in his stomach. “I have to wear special clothes and in order to mount the bag I have to seal a wafer to my stomach and then attach the bag. If the seal is broken, urine can leak all over my body and clothes.”

On Nov. 7, Sawyer said he went through the security scanner at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. “Evidently the scanner picked up on my urostomy bag, because I was chosen for a pat-down procedure.”

Due to his medical condition, Sawyer asked to be screened in private. “One officer looked at another, rolled his eyes and said that they really didn’t have any place to take me,” said Sawyer. “After I said again that I’d like privacy, they took me to an office.”

Sawyer wears pants two sizes too large in order to accommodate the medical equipment he wears. He’d taken off his belt to go through the scanner and once in the office with security personnel, his pants fell down around his ankles. “I had to ask twice if it was OK to pull up my shorts,” said Sawyer, “And every time I tried to tell them about my medical condition, they said they didn’t need to know about that.”

Before starting the enhanced pat-down procedure, a security officer did tell him what they were going to do and how they were going to it, but Sawyer said it wasn’t until they asked him to remove his sweatshirt and saw his urostomy bag that they asked any questions about his medical condition.

“One agent watched as the other used his flat hand to go slowly down my chest. I tried to warn him that he would hit the bag and break the seal on my bag, but he ignored me. Sure enough, the seal was broken and urine started dribbling down my shirt and my leg and into my pants.”

The security officer finished the pat-down, tested the gloves for any trace of explosives and then, Sawyer said, “He told me I could go. They never apologized. They never offered to help. They acted like they hadn’t seen what happened. But I know they saw it because I had a wet mark.”

Humiliated, upset and wet, Sawyer said he had to walk through the airport soaked in urine, board his plane and wait until after takeoff before he could clean up.

“I am totally appalled by the fact that agents that are performing these pat-downs have so little concern for people with medical conditions,” said Sawyer.

Sawyer completed his trip and had no problems with the security procedures at the Orlando International Airport on his journey back home. He said he plans to file a formal complaint with the TSA.

When he does, said TSA spokesperson Dwayne Baird, “We will review the matter and take appropriate action if necessary.” In the meantime, Baird encourages anyone with a medical condition to read the TSA’s website section on assistive devices and mobility aids.

The website says that travelers with disabilities and medical conditions have “the option of requesting a private screening” and that security officers “will not ask nor require you to remove your prosthetic device, cast, or support brace.”

Sawyer said he's written to his senators, state representatives and the president of the United States. He’s also shared details of the incident online with members of the nonprofit Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network, many of whom have offered support and shared their travel experiences.

“I am a good American and I want safety for all passengers as much as the next person," Sawyer said. "But if this country is going to sacrifice treating people like human beings in the name of safety, then we have already lost the war.”

Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network executive director Claire Saxton said that there are hundreds of thousands of people living with ostomies in the United States. “TSA agents need to be trained to listen when someone tells them have a health issue and trained in knowing what an ostomy is. No one living with an ostomy should be afraid of flying because they’re afraid of being humiliated at the checkpoint.”

Eric Lipp, executive director of Open Doors Association, which works with businesses and the disability community, called what happened to Sawyer “unfortunate.”

“But enhanced pat-downs are not a new issue for people with disabilities who travel," Lipp said. "They've always had trouble getting through the security checkpoint."

Still, Lipp said the TSA knows there’s a problem. “This came up during a recent meeting of the agency’s disability advisory board and I expect to see a procedure coming in place shortly that will directly address the pat-down procedures for people with disabilities.”

 

[oneofmany]

China, Russia quit dollar

China, Russia quit dollar​

St. Petersburg, Russia - China and Russia have decided to renounce the US dollar and resort to using their own currencies for bilateral trade, Premier Wen Jiabao and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin announced late on Tuesday.

Chinese experts said the move reflected closer relations between Beijing and Moscow and is not aimed at challenging the dollar, but to protect their domestic economies.
"About trade settlement, we have decided to use our own currencies," Putin said at a joint news conference with Wen in St. Petersburg.

The two countries were accustomed to using other currencies, especially the dollar, for bilateral trade. Since the financial crisis, however, high-ranking officials on both sides began to explore other possibilities.

The yuan has now started trading against the Russian rouble in the Chinese interbank market, while the renminbi will soon be allowed to trade against the rouble in Russia, Putin said.

"That has forged an important step in bilateral trade and it is a result of the consolidated financial systems of world countries," he said.

Putin made his remarks after a meeting with Wen. They also officiated at a signing ceremony for 12 documents, including energy cooperation.

The documents covered cooperation on aviation, railroad construction, customs, protecting intellectual property, culture and a joint communiqu. Details of the documents have yet to be released.

Putin said one of the pacts between the two countries is about the purchase of two nuclear reactors from Russia by China's Tianwan nuclear power plant, the most advanced nuclear power complex in China.

Putin has called for boosting sales of natural resources - Russia's main export - to China, but price has proven to be a sticking point.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who holds sway over Russia's energy sector, said following a meeting with Chinese representatives that Moscow and Beijing are unlikely to agree on the price of Russian gas supplies to China before the middle of next year.

Russia is looking for China to pay prices similar to those Russian gas giant Gazprom charges its European customers, but Beijing wants a discount. The two sides were about $100 per 1,000 cubic meters apart, according to Chinese officials last week.

Wen's trip follows Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's three-day visit to China in September, during which he and President Hu Jintao launched a cross-border pipeline linking the world's biggest energy producer with the largest energy consumer.

Wen said at the press conference that the partnership between Beijing and Moscow has "reached an unprecedented level" and pledged the two countries will "never become each other's enemy".

Over the past year, "our strategic cooperative partnership endured strenuous tests and reached an unprecedented level," Wen said, adding the two nations are now more confident and determined to defend their mutual interests.

"China will firmly follow the path of peaceful development and support the renaissance of Russia as a great power," he said.

"The modernization of China will not affect other countries' interests, while a solid and strong Sino-Russian relationship is in line with the fundamental interests of both countries."

Wen said Beijing is willing to boost cooperation with Moscow in Northeast Asia, Central Asia and the Asia-Pacific region, as well as in major international organizations and on mechanisms in pursuit of a "fair and reasonable new order" in international politics and the economy.

Sun Zhuangzhi, a senior researcher in Central Asian studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the new mode of trade settlement between China and Russia follows a global trend after the financial crisis exposed the faults of a dollar-dominated world financial system.

Pang Zhongying, who specializes in international politics at Renmin University of China, said the proposal is not challenging the dollar, but aimed at avoiding the risks the dollar represents.

Wen arrived in the northern Russian city on Monday evening for a regular meeting between Chinese and Russian heads of government.

He left St. Petersburg for Moscow late on Tuesday and is set to meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday.

 

[LennyNero1972]

Re: China, Russia quit dollar

The story I have been waiting to hear, kiss the game goodbye.

 

[oneofmany]

Obama Administration Weighs Indefinite Detention

Obama Administration Weighs Indefinite Detention​

It is starting to look like the president who campaigned on closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay may end up doing something wholly different: signing a law that would pave the way for terrorism suspects to be held indefinitely.

Administration officials are looking at the possibility at codifying detention without trial and are awaiting legislation that is supposed to come out of Congress early next year.

Analysts say two key events have conspired to force President Obama's hand on indefinite detention legislation. Last week, a New York jury nearly acquitted Ahmed Ghailani, a young Tanzanian who was charged with more than 280 counts of murder and conspiracy for his alleged role in the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa; and Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives in midterm elections.

Case Highlights Administration's Dilemma

Obama administration officials had thought the Ghailani case would be a slam-dunk. Four other men were convicted of the same crime in the same New York federal court back in 2002.

But in this case, after five days of deliberation the jury convicted Ghailani of a single charge of conspiracy.

"The jury came within one count of acquitting him entirely," says Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "And had that happened that would have put the government in an enormously difficult position because if you hold a trial and somebody is acquitted, it kind of violates our sense of what a trial is to say, well, we're going to hold him anyway."

Ghailani was never going to walk out of the courtroom a free man because the Obama Justice Department, from Attorney General Eric Holder on down, has made clear that if any high-profile terrorism suspects are acquitted, they will never go free. They would be held as enemy combatants instead.

Juan Zarate, a former deputy national security adviser in the Bush administration and now a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says that's a huge problem. When prosecutors can hold someone behind bars even without proving their case the criminal trial becomes a show trial.

"When the attorney general is asked if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed [the alleged Sept. 11 mastermind] or, in this case, Ghailani is acquitted, and the answer for all intents and purposes is he'll remain in custody regardless of the verdict, that is a problematic answer in the context of the use of the criminal legal system," Zarate says.

"Heads I win, tails you lose, is not the way our justice system is supposed to work," he adds.

Possible Alternatives

If holding someone indefinitely as a fallback position is a bad idea, there are only a couple of alternatives. One is to try suspects in a military commission — which operates under different rules of evidence, although analysts are quick to say that the evidence that was barred from the federal trial in the Ghailani case probably wouldn't have been admissible in a military commission either.

Another option is to imprison terrorism suspects without ever going to trial — to just hold them.

And that's what lawmakers are looking at now. In August, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina quietly introduced a bill that would codify indefinite detention. He wanted to answer questions such as what kind of enemy combatant could be locked up without trial? How much evidence would government need to do that?

While the idea of holding suspects indefinitely without charge is against everything the American legal system stands for, it is happening already: Mohammed was captured in March 2003 and has been in Guantanamo Bay since September 2006.

What would be new are clear rules to govern the practice. Right now, the administration says that it can hold terrorism suspects under the laws of war, a principle that has been upheld by the courts. There is also some legal cover in the resolution Congress passed in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks that provides sweeping powers to the executive to keep America safe.

"We need a framework that is legal and defensible that balances the individuals' rights with the right of the government to defend itself," says Zarate. "The way the Obama administration has approached this has been less than clear. They have applied different legal frameworks for different problems and that has created confusion."

Even if the Obama administration wanted to try low-level detainees in U.S. courts, it faces so much opposition from Congress it would be hard to do. And now, with the new Republican majority in the House, what was once very hard could become impossible.

That's why analysts say that Obama, rather than close Guantanamo, will end up having to support a law that holds suspects indefinitely. As one administration official who is privy to the deliberations told NPR, "I can’t see a way around that outcome right now."

Zarate says the mixed verdict in the Ghailani case shows that the administration needs to define detention better than it has. "The decision on signing legislation on indefinite detention may be crystallizing in certain ways, especially in the post-election environment," he says. "They are going to begin to speak about it more publicly and more directly. I think in many ways they have already made this decision."

Civil Liberties Groups Cry Foul

"It is un-American to hold people without charge or trial," says Laura Murphy of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington office. "Codifying indefinite detention will end up legitimizing it."

What, she asks, if the detainees suspected of terrorism are actually innocent? What kind of system would there be to determine that? Would there be any kind of judicial review? If this applies to terrorism now, she asks, how long before it applies to drug lords or human traffickers or organized crime?

Wittes of the Brookings Institution sees it differently. He says indefinite detention without rules, which essentially is what is happening now, should concern people more. Individual judges, U.S. attorneys and civil liberties lawyers are handling this on a case-by-case basis. And that is making the process murky.

"If your concern is not legitimizing it, lying about it is a very strange way to do that," says Wittes. "And what we are doing is lying to ourselves about the detention which we engage in."

Incoming House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith of Texas is working on a companion bill to Graham's effort. His aides declined to provide any detail about legislation that is in the works.

And administration officials told NPR that they didn't want to discuss the legislation before they actually see what's in it.

What seems clear at this point, however, is that one of the things to come out of the new Congress is going to be something that deals squarely with detainee detention.

 

[oneofmany]

WikiLeaks ClassiFiles: 'Cable talk exposes double talk'

WikiLeaks ClassiFiles: 'Cable talk exposes double talk'

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/3GDY-5t3G9I?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/3GDY-5t3G9I?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

 

[oneofmany]

Exposed us iraqi concentration camps

EXPOSED US IRAQI CONCENTRATION CAMPS

<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zahkl1q7oT4?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zahkl1q7oT4?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>

 

[oneofmany]

Olbermann Calls Obama A Sellout & Republicans Treasonous

Olbermann Calls Obama A Sellout & Republicans Treasonous

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/HW3a704cZlc?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/HW3a704cZlc?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

 

[oneofmany]

India diplomat gets 'humiliating' pat-down at Mississippi airport

India diplomat gets 'humiliating' pat-down at Mississippi airport​

JACKSON, Miss. — The recent Transportation Security Administration pat-down of a foreign diplomat at Jackson-Evers International Airport has upset state hosts and elected officials.

Meera Shankar, Indian ambassador to the United States, was in Jackson last weekend as a guest of the Janos Radvanyi Chair in International Security Studies at Mississippi State University.

While in town, Shankar met with Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant, representatives from the Mississippi Development Authority and members of the Indian community in Jackson, and she spoke to more than 100 people at the Executive Lecture Forum of Jackson.

But her departure is what has many concerned.

New TSA regulations went into effect Nov. 1 allowing federal security officers at airports to switch to more thorough — but often controversial — "pat-downs" for passengers who require hand searches.

Shankar presented her diplomatic papers to officers and was escorted by an MDA representative and an airport security officer, but witnesses said she was subjected to the hands-on search.

"The way they pat them down — it was so humiliating," said Tan Tsai, a research associate at MSU's International Security Studies center who witnessed the screening. "Anybody who passed by could see it."

Calls and e-mails to the Indian Embassy in Washington were not returned Tuesday.

Gov. Haley Barbour's spokesman Dan Turner said the governor's office is looking into the incident.

"At this time, we're trying to find out exactly what happened — all of the details," Turner said.

Until the office has done a complete review, Turner said it would be inappropriate to comment on what action may be taken.

The new guidelines do not expressly exempt foreign dignitaries but allow for discretion on the part of TSA officers.

Radvanyi also witnessed Shankar's search.

"I know authorities have established stricter rules for the holiday season, but I don't understand why she was singled out," he said.

Tsai said the ambassador was the only person in a group of at least 30 passengers to be pulled aside.

Nationally, less than 3% of passengers receive a pat-down, according to the TSA.

Those who witnessed the ambassador's screening said officers told her that she was singled out because of the way she was dressed. Shankar was wearing a sari — a traditional Indian robe that is draped across the body.

The TSA has guidelines that allow additional screenings when passengers are wearing "bulky" clothing.

"This passenger was screened in accordance with TSA security procedures," TSA spokesman Jon Allen said in an e-mail Tuesday.

According to the policy, individuals can be screened further if the federal officer cannot "reasonably determine" that clothing is free of a "threat item."

"Officers must use their professional discretion to determine if a particular item of clothing could hide a threat object," the policy states.

Under the new guidelines, most who receive the full pat-downs are those who set off metal detectors or decline to use body scanners. Jackson Evers does not have body scanners yet because additional infrastructure is needed.

Shankar did not set off the metal detector, according to witnesses.

The guidelines also allow searches to be conducted in private if a passenger requests. Witnesses said Shankar asked for a private screening, but she was led to a clear box where two officers searched her in clear view.

"She is a very strong woman, but you could see in her face that she was humiliated," Tsai said. "The Indian culture is very modest."

Radvanyi said he worked for three months to get the ambassador to make her first trek to Mississippi.

"We have to make it very clear that Mississippi had nothing to do with it," he said. "It was a federal affair."

Mississippi exported $122 million in products to India in 2009, significantly less than the $232 million in 2008.

Bryant said he discussed increased trade and investment between Mississippi and India during his visit with Shankar.

"Although I understand we need proper security measurers to protect the passengers in U.S. airports, I regret the outrageous way Indian Ambassador Shankar was treated by the TSA while visiting Jackson," he said in an e-mail.

Bryant said he hopes the screening does not deter the ambassador from coming back to Mississippi.

Radvanyi plans to send a formal apology letter to the ambassador, and he expects other state and university leaders will, as well.

"Mississippi had nothing to do with it, but she was very upset," he said. "It's terrible."

Randvanyi said he also will reach out to Mississippi's congressional delegation, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security.

"This is very bad for Mississippi," he said. "She said she's not going to come back."

Reached by phone Tuesday afternoon, Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat who represents the 2nd District, said he had not heard about the incident.

Thompson, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, has raised concerns about the enhanced "pat-down" screenings.

"We've had a number of briefings with our committee," he said. "It raises some concerns with committee members — especially the female members."

Thompson said he would "look forward to hearing a formal complaint" about the ambassador's experience if one were to be filed.

"I know there are people who can be exempt (from the screenings)," he said. "I think obvious considerations can be made."

 

[oneofmany]

Revealed: How the CIA protected Nazi murderers

Revealed: How the CIA protected Nazi murderers​

Declassified CIA files have revealed that US intelligence officials went to great lengths to protect a Ukrainian fascist leader and suspected Nazi collaborator from prosecution after the Second World War and used him to stir up trouble inside the Soviet Union from an office in New York.

Mykola Lebed led an underground movement to undermine the Kremlin and wage guerrilla operations for the CIA during the Cold War, said a report prepared by two scholars under the supervision of the US National Archives. During the Second World War, Lebed helped to lead a Ukrainian nationalist organization that collaborated with the Nazis in the murder of the Jews of the western Ukraine and also killed thousands of Poles. The report details post-war efforts by US intelligence officials to throw the federal government's Nazi hunters off his trail and to ignore or obscure his past.

The report, titled Hitler's Shadow: Nazi War Criminals, US Intelligence, and the Cold War, draws from an unprecedented trove of records that the CIA was persuaded to declassify, and from more than a million digitised army intelligence files that had long been inaccessible. Among other things, the authors say, the files also show that US intelligence officials used and protected ex-Nazis during the Cold War to a greater extent than previously known.

Elizabeth Holtzman, a former Democratic congresswoman from New York who fought for the disclosure of Nazi files, welcomed the release. "This is a difficult, and in some respects shameful, chapter in American history," she said. "It was not known to the public, and I think it's a mark of governmental courage and of national courage to take this era and these documents and say, 'We want to learn the truth about what our government did', and to do it in a way that was professional and serious."

In 1949 the US government brought Lebed to New York, where he was safe from assassination. Through his CIA-funded organisation, Prolog, he gathered intelligence on the Soviets into at least the late 1960s. In 1991, he was still considered a valuable asset to the agency, the report said. Lebed was eventually identified by federal investigators as a possible war criminal but was never prosecuted. He died in 1998.

One of the report's chapters deals with how the Americans used Gestapo officers, including Rudolf Mildner, after the war. Mildner oversaw security in Denmark in 1943 when most of the country's 8,000 Jews were ordered to be arrested and deported to Auschwitz – though they were rescued after Danish resistance leaders were tipped off. The US army detained Mildner and saved him from war crimes investigators because his knowledge of Communist subversion was considered useful.

Nazi hunters and lawmakers have long raised questions about the US government's involvement with war criminals during the Cold War. Between 1945 and 1955 alone, more than 500 scientists and other specialists with Nazi ties were brought to the US, and went on to play major roles in such fields as missile development and the space programme.

 

[oneofmany]

Indian diplomat detained in U.S. for refusing to remove turban

Indian diplomat detained in U.S. for refusing to remove turban in new airport security gaffe​

A diplomatic row between the U.S. and India has deepened after it emerged that a second dignitary was subjected to an invasive security search at a U.S. airport.

India's UN envoy Hardeep Puri was detained for more than 30 minutes in a holding room at Houston Airport, Texas, after refusing to remove his turban.

The Indian Foreign Minister SM Krishna today said: 'We have taken it up with the U.S. authorities and the matter is at that stage.'

Sikh men are expected to keep their heads covered in public at all times and turbans are only to be removed in the most intimate of circumstances, or when washing.

It is even forbidden to touch the head dress in public as it symbolises self-respect, honour, and piety.

India has reportedly lodged an official protest through its Consulate General in Huston with the U.S. authorities.

However, former diplomats in India have reacted aggressively to the Puri incident, saying that if Washington does not change its policy on searches, diplomats from the U.S. should also be ready to face such security in India.

They also called on the governments of the two counties to meet and resolve the issue at the earliest.

The offence caused to Mr Pui follows on from an incident last week which the Indian ambassador to America was subjected the controversial new 'patdown' technique employed by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), because she was wearing a sari.

Meera Shankar, who dined at the White House just last month, was given one of the controversial searches after she was pulled from an airport security line in Mississippi.

The incident, which one state official called ‘unfortunate,’ occurred after the 60-year-old had visited Mississippi State University for an International studies programme.

The university has said it will apologise to the ambassador after the incident ‘ruined the whole day’.

Former diplomat and now chairman of the university’s international studies department Janos Radvanyi told Associated Press that they will be sending her a letter of apology.

He said: ‘It was a wonderful programme, maybe the best we’ve had, (but) this stupid incident ruined the whole thing. She said, ‘I will never come back here.’

Despite the embarrassment, a TSA spokesman said diplomats were not exempt from the searches and that Ms Shankar ‘was screened in accordance with TSA’s security policies and procedures’.

Last month Ms Shankar attended a glitzy state dinner for the Indian Prime Minister at the White House and the 338-person guest list included a mix of Washington insiders, Hollywood A-listers, the Obamas and prominent figures from the Indian community in the US.

Yet despite being pictured alongside US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, Ms Shankar’s connections did not help when faced with TSA security.
The TSA has come under fire for its screening programme and ex-Playboy model Donna D’Errico claims officers were ‘leering’ at her nude body scan after being singled out.

Miss D’Errico, 42, was flying from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh with her partner and her 17-year-old son Rhyan.

She said she was pulled aside and told she would have to go through one of the full body scans, which have caused much controversy since being introduced at US airports because every contour of the body is revealed during the scan.

The screening officer can see an image of the unclothed body, while the passenger’s face is blurred. Once the passenger has been screened the ‘naked’ imagery is deleted.

Miss D’Errico said she felt ‘overexposed’ at being chosen to go through the scanner.

The Jackson airport where Ms Shankar was patted down does not yet have the controversial scanners.

TSA spokesman Nicholas Kimball said a number of factors could prompt a pat-down search, including bulky clothing, but he said the agency did not generally discuss specific cases.

India's relations with the US have been cool at times, partly because of US ties to India's traditional rival, Pakistan. However, relations between India and the US have grown closer in recent years.

Mr Radvanyi said at least one official from the Mississippi Development Authority (MDA), the state's economic agency, witnessed the search, reportedly conducted in a booth or room with transparent walls.

Mr Kimball said less than three per cent of passengers received a pat-down search and anyone who asked for a private screening would be taken to a room out of public view.

It is not clear if Ms Shankar asked for the search to be done in private.

Melissa Medley, spokesperson for the MDA said: 'Mississippi has always had a good relationship with the Indian government and we hope that this unfortunate incident does not damage the perceptions Indian officials have of Mississippi.'

 

[ashimac]

Divided FCC Adopts New Internet Rules

A divided Federal Communications Commission has approved new rules meant to prohibit broadband companies from interfering with Internet traffic flowing to their customers.

The 3-2 vote Tuesday marks a major victory for FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, who has spent more than a year trying to craft a compromise.

The FCC's three Democrats voted to pass the rules, while the two Republicans opposed them, calling them unnecessary regulation. The new rules are likely to face intense scrutiny on Capitol Hill once Republicans take over the House. Meanwhile, public interest groups decried the regulations as too weak, particularly for wireless systems.

Known as "net neutrality," the rules prohibit phone and cable companies from favoring or discriminating against Internet content and services, such as those from rivals.

The rules require broadband providers to let subscribers access all legal online content, applications and services over their wired networks - including online calling services, Internet video and other Web applications that compete with their core businesses. But the rules give broadband providers flexibility to manage data on their systems to deal with problems such as network congestion and unwanted traffic including spam as long as they publicly disclose their network management practices.

The regulations prohibit unreasonable network discrimination - a category that FCC officials say would most likely include services that favor traffic from the broadband providers themselves or traffic from business partners that can pay for priority. The rules do, however, leave the door open for broadband providers to experiment with routing traffic from specialized services such as smart grids and home security systems over dedicated networks as long as these services are separate from the public Internet.

In addition, the regulations prohibit wireless carriers from blocking access to any websites or competing applications such as Internet calling services on mobile devices, and require them to disclose their network management practices, too. But the rules give wireless companies would get more leeway to manage data traffic because wireless systems have more bandwidth constraints than wired networks.

Genachowski said the regulations will prohibit broadband providers from abusing their control over the on-ramps that consumers use to get onto the Internet. He said the companies won't be able to determine where their customers can go and what they can do online.

"Today, for the first time, we are adopting rules to preserve basic Internet values," Genachowski said. "For the first time, we'll have enforceable rules of the road to preserve Internet freedom and openness."

Still, the final rules came as a disappointment to public interest groups. Even Genachowski's two Democratic colleagues on the five-member FCC were disappointed, though they still voted to adopt the rules after concluding some safeguards are better than none.

They warn that the new regulations may not be strong enough to prevent broadband companies from picking winners and losers on the Internet, particularly on wireless systems, which will have more limited protections. They also worry that the rules don't do enough to ensure that broadband providers cannot favor their own traffic or the traffic of business partners that can pay for priority - resulting in a two-tiered Internet.

"Today's action could - and should - have gone further," said Michael Copps, one of the other two Democrats on the commission. But, he added, the regulations do represent some progress "to put consumers - not Big Phone or Big Cable - in control of their online experiences."

At the same time, the two Republicans on the FCC worried that the rules will discourage phone and cable companies from continuing to upgrade their networks by making it difficult for them to earn a healthy return on their investments. They also insist that the regulations are intended to fix a problem that does not exist, as all the major broadband providers have already pledged not to discriminate against Internet traffic on their networks.

"The Internet will be no more open tomorrow than it is today," said Meredith Attwell Baker, a Republican.

Republicans on Capitol Hill vowed to try to block the new regulations. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, plans to introduce a "resolution of disapproval" to try to overturn what she called "troubling regulatory overreach by the FCC."

Robert McDowell, the FCC's other Republican, predicted that the FCC will face court challenges to its regulatory authority, too. In April, a federal appeals court ruled that the agency had exceeded its existing authority in sanctioning Comcast Corp. for discriminating against online file-sharing traffic on its network - violating broad net neutrality principles first established by the FCC in 2005.

Those principles serve as a foundation for the formal regulations adopted Tuesday.

See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/fjBdWA

http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/fcc-internet-rules-net-neutrality/19772380/

 

[oneofmany]

African Farmers Displaced as Investors Move In

African Farmers Displaced as Investors Move In​

SOUMOUNI, Mali — The half-dozen strangers who descended on this remote West African village brought its hand-to-mouth farmers alarming news: their humble fields, tilled from one generation to the next, were now controlled by Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, and the farmers would all have to leave.

“They told us this would be the last rainy season for us to cultivate our fields; after that, they will level all the houses and take the land,” said Mama Keita, 73, the leader of this village veiled behind dense, thorny scrubland. “We were told that Qaddafi owns this land.”

Across Africa and the developing world, a new global land rush is gobbling up large expanses of arable land. Despite their ageless traditions, stunned villagers are discovering that African governments typically own their land and have been leasing it, often at bargain prices, to private investors and foreign governments for decades to come.

Organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank say the practice, if done equitably, could help feed the growing global population by introducing large-scale commercial farming to places without it.

But others condemn the deals as neocolonial land grabs that destroy villages, uproot tens of thousands of farmers and create a volatile mass of landless poor. Making matters worse, they contend, much of the food is bound for wealthier nations.

“The food security of the country concerned must be first and foremost in everybody’s mind,” said Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, now working on the issue of African agriculture. “Otherwise it is straightforward exploitation and it won’t work. We have seen a scramble for Africa before. I don’t think we want to see a second scramble of that kind.”

A World Bank study released in September tallied farmland deals covering at least 110 million acres — the size of California and West Virginia combined — announced during the first 11 months of 2009 alone. More than 70 percent of those deals were for land in Africa, with Sudan, Mozambique and Ethiopia among those nations transferring millions of acres to investors.

Before 2008, the global average for such deals was less than 10 million acres per year, the report said. But the food crisis that spring, which set off riots in at least a dozen countries, prompted the spree. The prospect of future scarcity attracted both wealthy governments lacking the arable land needed to feed their own people and hedge funds drawn to a dwindling commodity.

“You see interest in land acquisition continuing at a very high level,” said Klaus Deininger, the World Bank economist who wrote the report, taking many figures from a Web site run by Grain, an advocacy organization, because governments would not reveal the agreements. “Clearly, this is not over.”

The report, while generally supportive of the investments, detailed mixed results. Foreign aid for agriculture has dwindled from about 20 percent of all aid in 1980 to about 5 percent now, creating a need for other investment to bolster production.

But many investments appear to be pure speculation that leaves land fallow, the report found. Farmers have been displaced without compensation, land has been leased well below value, those evicted end up encroaching on parkland and the new ventures have created far fewer jobs than promised, it said.

The breathtaking scope of some deals galvanizes opponents. In Madagascar, a deal that would have handed over almost half the country’s arable land to a South Korean conglomerate helped crystallize opposition to an already unpopular president and contributed to his overthrow in 2009.

People have been pushed off land in countries like Ethiopia, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Zambia. It is not even uncommon for investors to arrive on land that was supposedly empty. In Mozambique, one investment company discovered an entire village with its own post office on what had been described as vacant land, said Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations food rapporteur.

In Mali, about three million acres along the Niger River and its inland delta are controlled by a state-run trust called the Office du Niger. In nearly 80 years, only 200,000 acres of the land have been irrigated, so the government considers new investors a boon.

“Even if you gave the population there the land, they do not have the means to develop it, nor does the state,” said Abou Sow, the executive director of Office du Niger.

He listed countries whose governments or private sectors have already made investments or expressed interest: China and South Africa in sugar cane; Libya and Saudi Arabia in rice; and Canada, Belgium, France, South Korea, India, the Netherlands and multinational organizations like the West African Development Bank.

In all, Mr. Sow said about 60 deals covered at least 600,000 acres in Mali, although some organizations said more than 1.5 million acres had been committed. He argued that the bulk of the investors were Malians growing food for the domestic market. But he acknowledged that outside investors like the Libyans, who are leasing 250,000 acres here, are expected to ship their rice, beef and other agricultural products home.

“What advantage would they gain by investing in Mali if they could not even take their own production?” Mr. Sow said.

As with many of the deals, the money Mali might earn from the leases remains murky. The agreement signed with the Libyans grants them the land for at least 50 years simply in exchange for developing it.

“The Libyans want to produce rice for Libyans, not for Malians,” said Mamadou Goita, the director of a nonprofit research organization in Mali. He and other opponents contend that the government is privatizing a scarce national resource without improving the domestic food supply, and that politics, not economics, are driving events because Mali wants to improve ties with Libya and others.

The huge tracts granted to private investors are many years from production. But officials noted that Libya already spent more than $50 million building a 24-mile canal and road, constructed by a Chinese company, benefiting local villages.

Every farmer affected, Mr. Sow added, including as many as 20,000 affected by the Libyan project, will receive compensation. “If they lose a single tree, we will pay them the value of that tree,” he said.

But anger and distrust run high. In a rally last month, hundreds of farmers demanded that the government halt such deals until they get a voice. Several said that they had been beaten and jailed by soldiers, but that they were ready to die to keep their land.

“The famine will start very soon,” shouted Ibrahima Coulibaly, the head of the coordinating committee for farmer organizations in Mali. “If people do not stand up for their rights, they will lose everything!”

“Ante!” members of the crowd shouted in Bamanankan, the local language. “We refuse!”

Kassoum Denon, the regional head for the Office du Niger, accused the Malian opponents of being paid by Western groups that are ideologically opposed to large-scale farming.

“We are responsible for developing Mali,” he said. “If the civil society does not agree with the way we are doing it, they can go jump in a lake.”

The looming problem, experts noted, is that Mali remains an agrarian society. Kicking farmers off the land with no alternative livelihood risks flooding the capital, Bamako, with unemployed, rootless people who could become a political problem.

“The land is a natural resource that 70 percent of the population uses to survive,” said Kalfa Sanogo, an economist at the United Nations Development Program in Mali. “You cannot just push 70 percent of the population off the land, nor can you say they can just become agriculture workers.” In a different approach, a $224 million American project will help about 800 Malian farmers each acquire title to 12 acres of newly cleared land, protecting them against being kicked off.

Jon C. Anderson, the project director, argued that no country has developed economically with a large percentage of its population on farms. Small farmers with titles will either succeed or have to sell the land to finance another life, he said, though critics have said villagers will still be displaced.

“We want a revolutionized relationship between the farmer and the state, one where the farmer is more in charge,” Mr. Anderson said.

Soumouni sits about 20 miles from the nearest road, with wandering cattle herders in their distinctive pointed straw hats offering directions like, “Bear right at the termite mound with the hole in it.”

Sekou Traoré, 69, a village elder, was dumbfounded when government officials said last year that Libya now controlled his land and began measuring the fields. He had always considered it his own, passed down from grandfather to father to son.

“All we want before they break our houses and take our fields is for them to show us the new houses where we will live, and the new fields where we will work,” he said at the rally last month.

“We are all so afraid,” he said of the village’s 2,229 residents. “We will be the victims of this situation, we are sure of that.”

 

[oneofmany]

Fresh humiliation for eurozone as China says it will bail out debt-ridden nations

Fresh humiliation for eurozone as China says it will bail out debt-ridden nations​

China has said it is willing to bail out debt-ridden countries in the euro zone using its $2.7trillion overseas investment fund.

In a fresh humiliation for Europe, Foreign Ministry spokesman Jiang Yu said it was one of the most important areas for China's foreign exchange investments.

The country has already approached struggling European countries with financial aid, including offering to buy Greece's debt in October and promising to buy $4billion of Portuguese government debt.

Today Portugal had its credit rating downgraded by the Fitch Ratings agency amid mounting concerns over the country's ability to raise money in the markets to finance its hefty borrowings.

Fitch said it was reducing its rating on the country's debt by one notch to A+ from AA- and warned that further downgrades may be in the offing by maintaining its negative outlook.

'To have any discernible effect China will have to buy a lot more than 5billion euros if they expect to have any impact on the negative sentiment surrounding Europe,' said Michael Hewson, currency analyst at CMC Markets.
China's astonishing economic growth has put it on track to overtake America as the world's economic powerhouse within two years, a recent report claimed.

But experts believed still be some years before America's leadership role is really challenged - largely because Beijing has given no indication it is ready to take on the responsibility of shepherding the world' economy.

This foray into the future of the euro could be a signal from Beijing that it is ready to change that perception.

The euro rose temporarily on the news of China's support - but was sinking again this morning to a three-week low against the dollar.

The single currency earlier fell to around $1.3050, below its 200-day moving average currently located at $1.3092 on trading platform EBS.

Investors have pushed the euro beneath this key support level for the past three sessions, only to see the currency bounce back later in the day.

Analysts said the euro will likely hold above $1.30 in the coming days, with traders reluctant to place big bets before year-end.

The outlook for the single currency remains shaky, with fresh losses expected into 2011, they added.

The Financial Times reported yesterday that China had offered to take more 'concerted action' to support European financial stabilisation.

It cited unnamed senior European officials after talks with Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan.

Portuguese officials have said the government is trying to diversify its debt investor base, with China as a priority.

Finance Minister Fernando Teixeira dos Santos met Chinese Finance Minister Xie Curen and the head of the People's Bank of China during a visit to the country last week.

But it is unclear whether Beijing would be prepared to take on so much fresh exposure to Portugal, after domestic political pressure to invest the country's foreign reserves more carefully.

Chinese investment funds suffered from large, high-profile losses during the global financial crisis.

In October, during a visit to Greece, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao offered to buy Greek bonds when Athens resumed issuing.

A month later, President Hu Jintao visited Portugal and offered 'concrete measures' to help the weak economy, but stopped short of promising to buy Portuguese bonds.

It is still believed that it will be some years before China actually overtakes the U.S. to become the world's largest economy.

Politicians argue that technology is still behind and much of the country still lives in poverty.

And in another economic measure, output per person, China lags way behind the US.

Last year, the International Monetary Fund calculated gross domestic product per head in the US at $46,000. The GDP breakdown in China was just $4,000 per person.

 

[anonymous]

I had no idea you started this shit again. Lemme sub this muthafucka.
Props for what you do, homie.

 

[oneofmany]

Woman arrested at ABIA after refusing enhanced pat down

Woman arrested at ABIA after refusing enhanced pat down​

Early Wednesday morning, a computer glitch shut down a security checkpoint for a couple of hours at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. The line snaked out the door as many travelers waited for more than an hour and some missed their flights. One of the first people in line after that shutdown never made it through. She was arrested and banned from the airport.

Claire Hirschkind, 56, who says she is a rape victim and who has a pacemaker-type device implanted in her chest, says her constitutional rights were violated. She says she never broke any laws. But the Transportation Security Administration disagrees.

Hirschkind was hoping to spend Christmas with friends in California, but she never made it past the security checkpoint.

"I can't go through because I have the equivalent of a pacemaker in me," she said.

Hirschkind said because of the device in her body, she was led to a female TSA employee and three Austin police officers. She says she was told she was going to be patted down.

"I turned to the police officer and said, 'I have given no due cause to give up my constitutional rights. You can wand me,'" and they said, 'No, you have to do this,'" she said.

Hirschkind agreed to the pat down, but on one condition.

"I told them, 'No, I'm not going to have my breasts felt,' and she said, 'Yes, you are,'" said Hirschkind.

When Hirschkind refused, she says that "the police actually pushed me to the floor, (and) handcuffed me. I was crying by then. They drug me 25 yards across the floor in front of the whole security."

An ABIA spokesman says it is TSA policy that anyone activating a security alarm has two options. One is to opt out and not fly, and the other option is to subject themselves to an enhanced pat down. Hirschkind refused both and was arrested.

Other travelers KVUE talked to say they empathize with Hirschkind, but the law is the law.

"I understand her side of it, and their side as well, but it is for our protection so I have no problems with it," said Gwen Washington, who lives in Killeen.

"It's unfortunate that that happened and she didn't get to fly home, but it makes me feel a little safer," said Emily Protine.

The TSA did release a statement Wednesday that said in part, "Our officers are trained to treat all passengers with dignity and respect. Security is not optional."

The TSA says less than three percent of travelers get a pat-down.

 

[Cruise]

Re: Woman arrested at ABIA after refusing enhanced pat down

Other travelers KVUE talked to say they empathize with Hirschkind, but the law is the law.

"I understand her side of it, and their side as well, but it is for our protection so I have no problems with it," said Gwen Washington, who lives in Killeen.

"It's unfortunate that that happened and she didn't get to fly home, but it makes me feel a little safer," said Emily Protine.

The TSA did release a statement Wednesday that said in part, "Our officers are trained to treat all passengers with dignity and respect. Security is not optional."

This is a comical sequence of statements.

Why are women are always whining about feeling safe? Yet, at the same time, so many whine about getting equal treatment with men.

You can't have it both ways, ladies.

 

[oneofmany]

Cops' Use of Illegal Steroids a 'Big Problem'

Cops' Use of Illegal Steroids a 'Big Problem'​

The badge and a steroid-filled syringe -- it's not the typical image most have for the abuse of performance-enhancing drugs. But as more within law enforcement get nabbed in steroid investigations nationwide, observers say that usage levels among police officers could rival the seediest patches of the pro sports landscape.

"It's a big problem, and from the number of cases, it's something we shouldn't ignore," Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Lawrence Payne told AOL News. "It's not that we set out to target cops, but when we're in the middle of an active investigation into steroids, there have been quite a few cases that have led back to police officers."

The pace of investigations into steroid use in the police ranks has picked up in recent months:

• A former police officer in Canby, Ore., who allegedly took delivery of some steroids while on duty pleaded guilty in February to purchasing steroids.
• An officer in South Bend, Ind., pleaded no contest in March to selling steroids.
• A Cleveland police officer was sentenced to a year in prison and five years of supervised release in April after he was found guilty of illegally purchasing steroids.
• A dealer in Paw Paw, Mich., allegedly told authorities that he supplied "several police officers" with steroids, which led one Kalamazoo officer to resign in May.

Victor Conte, founder of the now-defunct lab known as Bay Area Lab Co-Operative that supplied numerous athletes with steroids and other banned substances, said it wouldn't surprise him if as many as a quarter of police officers were using some kind of performance-enhancing drug.

Seem high? While there are no empirical studies on the prevalence of steroids in law enforcement, the recent revelations that 248 police officers and firefighters from 53 agencies were tied to a Jersey City, N.J., physician gives some credence to Conte's estimate. The monthslong investigation by The Star-Ledger of Newark also found that taxpayers often footed the bill for the drugs since many were prescribed.

There's debate as to what dangers doped-up officers pose to the public. South Bend police Capt. Phil Trent, for one, would rather not take a chance. Tony Macik, once a well-respected member of the South Bend police force, was arrested for assault years before a steroids investigation led to a 300-day jail sentence earlier this year.

"First we have an officer who is a drug dealer," Trent said. "Second, you always hear about the bizarre side effects (of steroid use). If they are taking these drugs and it turns them into a raving lunatic, that's something we should be concerned about in law enforcement."

Conte said the psychological effects of steroids -- including mood swings and so-called "'roid rage" -- are often overblown and can depend on how much of the drug is used. The same is true for the other side effects such as liver damage, depression and high blood pressure.

"I think overall, it's kind of like alcohol," Conte said. "If you're a jerk when you're sober, you're going to be more of a jerk when you're using."

Joseph Santiago, a former police director in Trenton, N.J., told The Star-Ledger that Trenton had a "significant amount" of excessive force complaints.

"When you looked at these records, you start to see where there might be a correlation," Santiago told the newspaper. "Is it absolutely clear? No. Would a complaint have been there regardless of steroids? Those are issues that need to be addressed."

A lawyer for an 84-year-old Florida man who had his neck broken in September when he was thrown to the ground sought to get the Orlando police officer involved in the incident tested for steroids. The request was denied by the department, which claimed the test would violate the officer's rights.

Testing in law enforcement -- much the way it is in professional sports -- is a touchy subject. Like pro ballplayers, officers are usually protected by unions, and drug testing is often used as a bargaining chip. A majority of departments have random testing for street drugs like cocaine and heroin, but few also test regularly for steroids.

"Obviously, we have zero tolerance for any kind of drug use," said Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, an organization that has about 350,000 members spread across some 2,100 chapters. "But just like anybody else, we believe officers have a right to due process, and we want to safeguard them from any (unnecessary) investigations."

Law enforcement officials also cite the cost of testing for steroids as another reason such screenings aren't universal.

Larry Gaines, chairman of the Department of Criminal Justice at California State San Bernardino, authored the first major paper on steroid use in law enforcement two decades ago. He said the rise in usage in steroids among the ranks coincided with a change of culture as many departments began to stress physical fitness.

Some officers, however, appear to have taken that to an extreme.

"This has become a great competition among officers," Gaines said. "They want to be the biggest, strongest."

Conte said that carries over into regional and national police sports competitions that feature weightlifting, among other activities. "I've known people in those competitions who were using that stuff," Conte said.

Professional athletes get called to testify before Congress, and some like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are indicted after federal investigations. So where's the outcry over juiced officers on the street?

Gaines said that because there are no athletic records to protect, and kids usually don't idolize police officers with posters on their bedroom walls, there's little to keep the subject in the public consciousness.

"I don't know what would have to happen to make this a major issue," Gaines said. "Essentially, this has become commonplace."

 

[oneofmany]

"No refusal" DUI checkpoints could be coming to Tampa

"No refusal" DUI checkpoints could be coming to Tampa​

Tampa, Florida -- With New Year's Eve only days away, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration expects this to be one of the deadliest weeks of the year on the roads.

But now a new weapon is being used in the fight against drunk driving.

It's a change that could make you more likely to be convicted.

"I think it's a great deterrent for people," said Linda Unfried, from Mother's Against Drunk Driving in Hillsborough County.

Florida is among several states now holding what are called "no refusal" checkpoints.

It means if you refuse a breath test during a traffic stop, a judge is on site, and issues a warrant that allows police to perform a mandatory blood test.

It's already being done in several counties, and now Unfried is working to bring it to the Tampa Bay area.

"I think you'll see the difference because people will not drink and drive. I truly believe that," she said.

Not everyone is on board, though.

DUI defense attorney Kevin Hayslett sees the mandatory blood test as a violation of constitutional rights.

"It's a slippery slope and it's got to stop somewhere," Hayslett explained, "what other misdemeanor offense do we have in the United States where the government can forcefully put a needle into your arm?"

The federal government says Florida has among the highest rates of breathalyzer refusal.

"Now you've got attorneys telling their clients, don't blow, don't blow! Because we know from the results from these machines that they're not operating as the state or the government says they're supposed to operate," said Stephen Daniels, a DUI consultant and expert witness.

Supporters, though, say you could see the "no refusal" checkpoints in the Bay area by October.

"We don't want to violate people's civil rights. That's the last thing we want to do, but we're here to save lives," Unfried said.

She adds that this type of checkpoint would be heavily advertised, with the goal of deterring any drunk driving.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has recently said he wants to see more states hold similar programs.

 

[oneofmany]

Europe to ban hundreds of herbal remedies

Europe to ban hundreds of herbal remedies​

Hundreds of herbal medicinal products will be banned from sale in Britain next year under what campaigners say is a "discriminatory and disproportionate" European law.

With four months to go before the EU-wide ban is implemented, thousands of patients face the loss of herbal remedies that have been used in the UK for decades.

From 1 May 2011, traditional herbal medicinal products must be licensed or prescribed by a registered herbal practitioner to comply with an EU directive passed in 2004. The directive was introduced in response to rising concern over adverse effects caused by herbal medicines.

The UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has issued more than a dozen safety alerts in the past two years, including one over aristolochia, a banned toxic plant derivative which caused kidney failure in two women.

Herbal practitioners say it is impossible for most herbal medicines to meet the licensing requirements for safety and quality, which are intended to be similar to those for pharmaceutical drugs, because of the cost of testing.

According to the Alliance for Natural Health (ANH), which represents herbal practitioners, not a single product used in traditional Chinese medicine or ayurvedic medicine has been licensed. In Europe, around 200 products from 27 plant species have been licensed but there are 300 plant species in use in the UK alone.

The ANH estimates the cost of obtaining a licence at between £80,000 and £120,000 per herb. They say this is affordable for single herbal products with big markets, such as echinacea, a remedy for colds and flu, but will drive small producers of medicines containing multiple herbs out of business.

Under EU law, statutorily regulated herbal practitioners will be permitted to continue prescribing unlicensed products. But the Coalition Government and the previous Labour administration have delayed plans to introduce a statutory herbal practitioner register.

This means thousands of patients who rely on herbal treatments face being denied access to them. Medical organisations, including the MHRA, have warned the measures may drive patients to obtain herbal medicines over the internet – where risks are much greater.

Michael McIntyre, the chairman of the European Herbal and Traditional Medicine Practitioners Association, said: "The problem is you can't get a licence for many herbal medicines because they are grown in people's back gardens and you can't patent them. The implications are very serious. Patients want to receive treatment from trained and qualified practitioners but unless we have regulation they can't have confidence in who is treating them. The worst outcome is that patients will end up going to the internet for their herbal medicines where there are no controls."

Dr Rob Verkerk, of the ANH, said: "Thousands of people across Europe rely on herbal medicines to improve their quality of life. They don't take them because they are sick – they take them to keep healthy. If these medicines are taken off the market, people will try and find them elsewhere, such as from the internet, where there is a genuine risk they will get low quality products, that either don't work or are adulterated."

The MHRA said it had received applications for licences for 166 herbal products, of which 78 had been granted. Sir Alasdair Breckenridge, chairman of the MHRA, said a register of herbalists was essential. "Just because something is natural doesn't mean it is safe," he said. "It is terribly important to have responsible people who have undergone training prescribing these products."

Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at the University of Exeter, said proposals for regulation would be worthless unless they required practitioners to follow best evidence for the effects of their remedies. "It is in danger of regulating nonsense – and that must result in nonsense," he said.

A review of the codes of conduct by which alternative practitioners were bound found the "vast majority" did not include an obligation to report adverse effects, he said. The only exception was the Chinese Herbal Medicine Code which advised members to report "cases of industrial poisoning or accident".

A spokesman for the Department of Health said no decision had been made on a statutory register of herbal practitioners. "The Government is aware of the strength of feeling on this issue and is actively exploring options."

Remedies under threat

Cascara bark (Cascara sagrada, Rhamnus purshiana)

Helps stimulate a sluggish bowel.

Pau D'Arco (Tabebuia impetiginosa)

Anti-inflammatory, used for infection control.

Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera, or winter cherry)

Anti-inflammatory, for arthritis and boosting the immune system.

Skullcap (Scutellaria baicalensis/Chinese skullcap)

For anxiety, headaches and pain relief.

Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria)

For stomach acidity, diarrhoea, headache.

Horny goat weed (Epimedium grandiflorum)

Used to enhance libido.

 

[anonymous]

Re: Europe to ban hundreds of herbal remedies

^^^First Europe, then the US.

 

[oneofmany]

2011: Year of the Big Default?

2011: Year of the Big Default?

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Pl4K4r7K6h0?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Pl4K4r7K6h0?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

 

[LennyNero1972]

Re: Woman arrested at ABIA after refusing enhanced pat down

This is a comical sequence of statements.

Why are women are always whining about feeling safe? Yet, at the same time, so many whine about getting equal treatment with men.

You can't have it both ways, ladies.

 

[anonymous]

Re: 2011: Year of the Big Default?

2011: Year of the Big Default?

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Pl4K4r7K6h0?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Pl4K4r7K6h0?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

Max Keiser knows his shit....actually that whole channel tells the truth about the U.S.

 

[oneofmany]

Google violates laws: police

Google violates laws: police​

Google’s high-flying Street View service is in violation of Internet privacy laws here, police said Thursday.

According to the Cyber Terror Response Center, the National Police Agency’s Internet crime unit, the conglomerate’s Street View mapping service had gathered sensitive private information from unencrypted wireless networks during the filming process.

“We succeeded in breaking the encryption behind the hard drives, and confirmed that it contained personal e-mails and text messages of people using the Wi-Fi networks,” said a police official.

This puts the Internet global conglomerate in violation of the country’s law on protection of telecommunications privacy.

Police raided its Korean branch office, Google Korea, last August and confiscated computer hard drives and paper documents.

Police have investigated about 10 company officials, all of whom have claimed that they were simply following orders from headquarters.

“We are looking to penalize whoever ordered and developed the program, but are unsure as of yet who that might be,” said a police official.

“Even after we confirm the identity of the suspect, we believe it will most likely be a U.S. citizen, and it is unclear whether the Korean Police Agency can prosecute those involved,” he said.

The images of cities in Korea were being collected since October until Google acknowledged months afterwards that it had “accidentally” picked up private information from unsecured Wi-Fi networks, in more than 30 different countries, while filming streets with its fleet of camera-equipped cars.

“As soon as we realized what had happened, we stopped collecting all Wi-Fi data from our Street View cars and immediately informed the authorities,” said a Google Korea spokesperson.

“We have been cooperating with the Korean Communications Commission and the police, and will continue to do so.”

“Our ultimate objective remains to delete the data consistent with our legal obligations and in consultation with the appropriate authorities,” he said.

Google has drawn fire all over the world, with 40 U.S. states also demanding information gathered from the mapping service, to determine whether a breach of private information has taken place. In the U.S., Google headquarters refused to hand over the information gathered through the program.

Last November, Google started deleting the data obtained in the U.K.

As of press time, the headquarters located in Mountain View, California, could not be immediately reached for comment.

Korea’s Internet portals, Daum and Naver, also have similar tools that allow users to see panoramic streetlevel views.

According to a spokesman at Daum, their Road View vehicles do not contain the same Wi-Fi device as Google’s vehicles.

This is not the first time Google’s mapping program has come under scrutiny for breaching private data.

Critics claim that the tool invites unwanted attention from thieves, firms and other possible abuses.

Google has allowed residents in Germany to opt in preventing their homes from appearing online.

Daum also allows the same features.

“We have been cooperating with the Korean Communications Commission and the police, and will continue to do so,” said the spokesperson.

구글, 한국서 개인정보 무단 수집 ‘충격’

경찰 이메일등 내용저장 확인

영리 목적·국외 유출 조사

다국적 IT기업인 구글(Google)의 개인정보 무단 수집 혐의를 수사 중인 경찰이 처음으로 구글의 혐의를 입증하는 데 성공했다. 경찰은 이들이 수집한 정보를 영리목적 등에 활용했는지, 국외 유출 가능성은 있는지 집중조사할 방침이다.

경찰청 사이버테러대응센터는 구글이 ‘스트리트뷰(Street View)’를 제작하는 과정에서 개인정보를 무단으로 수집한 정황을 포착했다고 6일 밝혔다.

구글 ‘스트리트뷰’는 인터넷 지도를 통해 특정 위치의 영상정보를 제공하는 서비스로, 미국과 독일ㆍ호주ㆍ캐나다 등 일부 국가에서 이미 서비스되고 있다.

경찰은 지난 8월 강남구 역삼동 구글코리아 사무실을 압수수색해 하드디스크 79개와 촬영장비 및 수집시스템 3대를 입수했고, 이후 미국 본사로 이미 넘어간 145대의 하드디스크를 추가로 확보해 분석작업을 벌여왔다.

경찰 관계자는 “하드디스크에 걸려 있는 암호를 풀자 구글코리아가 스트리트뷰 제작을 위해 거리를 촬영한 당시 무선랜(Wi-Fi)망을 사용했던 개인의 전자우편과 메신저 송수신 내용이 나왔다”고 말했다.

경찰은 하드디스크 분석 결과 디스크 내에 개인의 위치정보뿐 아니라 ▷e-메일 송수신 내용 ▷메신저 송수신 내용 ▷인적사항 등 개인정보 ▷ID와 PW 등이 포함돼 있었다.

경찰은 이와 관련, 구글 본사에서 동아시아 스트리트뷰 책임자인 A(29) 씨를 비롯해 이원진(39) 지사장 등 구글코리아 관계자 3명 등 10여명을 소환 조사했다.

A 씨는 경찰 조사에서 “스트리트뷰 제작 과정에서 개인정보가 수집될지 몰랐다”고 혐의를 전면 부인했다고 경찰은 전했다.

경찰 관계자는 “개인정보를 수집만 해도 통신비밀보호법이나 정보통신망 이용촉진 및 정보보호 등에 관한 법률, 위치정보법 위반 등에 해당할 수 있다”며 “아직 하드디스크 분석이 끝나지 않았지만 피해 규모는 수십만명에 이를 것”이라고 말했다.

경찰은 다음주 중 하드디스크 분석작업을 완료한 후 이 사건을 검찰에 송치하고 방송통신위원회에 조사 결과를 통보할 예정이다.

방송통신위원회는 경찰의 조사 결과를 바탕으로 위치정보보호법에 근거해 행정처분 여부를 결정한다는 방침이다. 현재까지 이 법에 근거해 행정처분 조치를 내린 사례가 없어 이번 사안에 대한 방통위의 조치가 주목된다.

현행 위치정보보호법에 따르면 개인의 위치정보 무단 수집은 시정명령, 과태료, 과징금 부과 사유가 된다. 위치정보사업자인 구글코리아에 대한 영업정지도 가능하다. 영업정지를 가름해 과징금 부과로 대체할 수도 있다고 방통위는 설명했다.

방통위 관계자는 “경찰에서 세부 조사 결과가 넘어오는대로 구체적인 행정처분 수위를 결정하겠다”고 말했다.

 

[oneofmany]

41% of NYC pregnancies end in abortion

41% of NYC pregnancies end in abortion​

NEW YORK (WABC) -- New and eye-opening statistics about the rate of abortions in New York City have been released by the Health Department.

It raises questions about the effectiveness of current birth control education.

41% of all New York City pregnancies end in abortion.

The rate for minorities is even higher.

Both sides say the high abortion percentage is a crisis.

"If 41% of New York babies are aborted, with the percentage even higher in the Bronx and among our African-American babies in the world, it is downright chilling," New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan said.

Broken down by race for 2009:

Specifically non-Hispanic Black's have a 59.8% abortion rate.

Hispanics have a 41.3% abortion rate.

Asians have a 22.7% abortion rate.

And non-Hispanic Whites have a 20.4% abortion rate.

The fact that 41% of all pregnancies in New York City end in abortion is not a secret and it's not anything new.

In fact, things have been getting better over the past decade.

Back in 1998, 12 years ago, the number was actually 46%.

Planned Parenthood is also not happy about the numbers, but pushes education.

"We believe in comprehensive sex education, which by the way does include abstinence, but abstinence by itself has been proven to be ineffective,"

Archbishop Dolan reiterated the pro-abstinence, pro-life, anti-contraceptive position of the church.

"My word, what have we done the last 30 years. There's candy bowls on people's desks with condoms, they're dropping them from airplanes, yet nothing seems to improve, so they've been on the wrong track here," Archbishop Dolan said.

 

[oneofmany]

Too much fluoride is bad for your teeth, says U.S. study

Too much fluoride is bad for your teeth, says U.S. study​

ATLANTA — U.S. government officials lowered recommended limits for fluoride in water Friday, saying some children may be getting tooth damage from too much.

Fluoride is added to the water supply in most U.S. communities because it can prevent and repair tooth decay. But health and environment officials said Americans get fluoride in so many sources now, such as toothpaste and mouth rinses, that it makes sense to lower levels.

The Environmental Protection Agency and Health and Human Services Department lowered their recommended levels to 0.7 milligrams of fluoride per liter of water – the lower limit of the current recommended range of 0.7 to 1.2 milligrams.

Communities add fluoride to water on a voluntary basis. Doctors and dentists recommend it because it can help protect children's teeth that have not yet broken through the gums.

However, about two out of five adolescents have tooth streaking or spottiness because of too much fluoride, a surprising government study found recently. In some extreme cases, teeth can even be pitted by the mineral — though many cases are so mild only dentists notice it.

Health officials note that most communities have fluoride in their water supplies, and toothpaste has it too. Some kids are even given fluoride supplements.

“There are several reasons for this change, including that Americans have access to more sources of fluoride than they did when water fluoridation was first introduced in the United States,” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement.

It said the EPA did a risk assessment study on whether some children may now get too much fluoride. The study concluded that some children under the age of eight may be overexposed to fluoride at least occasionally because of their high fluid intake compared to their body weight or because of high natural levels of fluoride in their local drinking water.

Too much fluoride can cause a change in the enamel on teeth called dental fluorosis. More than 90 per cent of U.S. cases appear as white spots on the tooth but in very severe cases it can pit the enamel.

“Excessive consumption of fluoride over a lifetime may increase the likelihood of bone fractures and may result in effects on bone leading to pain and tenderness, a condition called skeletal fluorosis,” the CDC said. “Severe skeletal fluorosis is a rare condition in the United States.”

Water in the United States has been fluoridated since 1945 and the CDC says 196 million Americans get “optimally fluoridated community water.” Experts estimate it cuts the rate of cavities by 40 per cent to 60 per cent.

The CDC estimates every US$1 invested in fluoridating public water supplies saves $38 in dental treatment costs.

 

[oneofmany]

Pentagon said lax on child porn probe

Pentagon said lax on child porn probe​

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 (UPI) -- A U.S. senator says the Pentagon should have paid more attention to employees downloading child pornography on their work and home computers.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, told The Boston Globe he was informed that Pentagon investigators failed to check all the names on a list of 5,200 employees suspected of viewing child pornography.

He said 1,700 names on the list were not reviewed, the Globe reported Wednesday.

"These cases were not considered a priority by the Defense Department in the first place, and they should have been," Grassley said.

They stem from an expansive investigation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement known as Project Flicker.

Downloading child pornography is a federal crime punishable by prison sentences of five to 20 years.

Members of Congress and other officials say employees with high-level security classifications are vulnerable to blackmail if they access such materials.

The Defense Department's inspector general has told Grassley the department is working to correct problems with the investigation.

 

[oneofmany]

Obama Eyeing Internet ID for Americans

Obama Eyeing Internet ID for Americans​

STANFORD, Calif. - President Obama is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans, a White House official said here today.

It's "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt said.

That news, first reported by CNET, effectively pushes the department to the forefront of the issue, beating out other potential candidates including the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. The move also is likely to please privacy and civil liberties groups that have raised concerns in the past over the dual roles of police and intelligence agencies.

The announcement came at an event today at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, where U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Schmidt spoke.

The Obama administration is currently drafting what it's calling the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, which Locke said will be released by the president in the next few months. (An early version was publicly released last summer.)

"We are not talking about a national ID card," Locke said at the Stanford event. "We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities."

The Commerce Department will be setting up a national program office to work on this project, Locke said.

Details about the "trusted identity" project are unusually scarce. Last year's announcement referenced a possible forthcoming smart card or digital certificate that would prove that online users are who they say they are. These digital IDs would be offered to consumers by online vendors for financial transactions.

Schmidt stressed today that anonymity and pseudonymity will remain possible on the Internet. "I don't have to get a credential if I don't want to," he said. There's no chance that "a centralized database will emerge," and "we need the private sector to lead the implementation of this," he said.

Inter-agency rivalries to claim authority over cybersecurity have exited ever since many responsibilities were centralized in the Department of Homeland Security as part of its creation nine years ago. Three years ago, proposals were were circulating in Washington to transfer authority to the secretive NSA, which is part of the U.S. Defense Department.

In March 2009, Rod Beckstrom, director of Homeland Security's National Cybersecurity Center, resigned through a letter that gave a rare public glimpse into the competition for budgetary dollars and cybersecurity authority. Beckstrom said at the time that the NSA "effectively controls DHS cyber efforts through detailees, technology insertions," and has proposed moving some functions to the agency's Fort Meade, Md., headquarters.

 

[oneofmany]

Illinois Lawmakers Approve 66% Tax Hike

Illinois Lawmakers Approve 66% Tax Hike​

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (CBS) – By a single vote, Illinois lawmakers approved a 66 percent increase to the personal income tax, and soon, your paycheck will be shrinking.

But as CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports, state lawmakers say the tax hike is necessary to get the state’s outstanding bills paid. Lawmakers also say cuts and spending limits will be part of the plan.

Around 1 a.m. Wednesday, the Illinois State Senate approved the tax hike by a vote of 30 to 29. The state House of Representatives approved the tax hike on Tuesday evening, by a vote of 60 to 57.

Gov. Pat Quinn still must sign the bill into law, but he has supported the tax hike all along. In fact, he was on the Senate floor when the vote was taken.

The hike increases the state’s personal income tax rate from 3 percent to 5 percent.

In real numbers, if your gross income is $50,000 a year, your state income taxes will rise from $1,500 to $2,500 a year.

The hike will also boost business taxes by nearly 50 percent.

Lawmakers say the tax hike will help plug a $15 billion budget hole.

“We’re going to pay bills on time, and that’s a huge change,” said state Senate President John Cullerton (D-Ill.)

Cullerton emphasized that the tax hike is only one portion of a solution to the state’s budget crisis.

“The taxes are going to not borrow anymore; to make our pension payments without borrowing our pension payments; to make up for the loss in federal revenues. They’re not going for any new programs or any new spending,” Cullerton said. “There’s going to have to be further cuts, even with this tax.”

The tax hike will be coupled with strict 2 percent limits on spending growth. If officials spend above those limits, the tax increase will automatically be canceled. The plan’s supporters warned that rising pension and health care costs probably will eat up all the spending allowed by the caps, forcing cuts in other areas of government.

But Republican critics say the hike will harm middle class families.

“This means hundreds of dollars for Illinois families that they’ll be paying more to the State of Illinois, and the irony is the money they have been sending to the state has been so grossly mismanaged for the last decade,” said state Senate Republican Leader Christine Radogno (R-Lemont.)

The tax hike is not set up to be permanent. After four years, it drops to 4 percent.

“This is always tough to raise taxes,” Cullerton said. “We’ve done it before under Republican governors, and when there’s been big recessions, and that’s what we responded to.”

The higher taxes will generate about $6.8 billion a year.

The tax hike followed fiery rhetoric on both sides of the Senate aisle.

“We don’t have a better choice today!” state Sen. David Miller (D-Dolton) said in a raised voice. “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die!”

Miller, an unsuccessful candidate for state comptroller last year, later collapsed while watching the Senate debate, although he seemed awake and alert when paramedics responded and took him for further treatment.

Critics have expressed doubt about whether the tax hike will really solve the state’s budget problem. Earlier this week, the Better Government Association called the move to pass a tax hike plan “closed-door backroom dealing,” and bemoaned the lack of public hearings or answers to questions.

Radogno also said she believes lawmakers have failed to address the factors that are contributing to the ballooning deficit.

“That’s the big lack in this whole bill. No one’s addressed the spending yet,” Radogno said. “I don’t just mean spending at the state level, but there’s so much work that this body could do to make Illinois more efficient.”

Republicans also fundamentally reject the idea of raising taxes after years of spending growth.

“We’re saying to the people of Illinois, ‘For eight years we’ve overspent, now we’re going to make it your problem,”‘ said Rep. Roger Eddy (R-Hutsonville.) “We’re making up for our mistakes on your back.”

Other pieces of the budget plan failed.

Lawmakers rejected a $1-a-pack increase in cigarette taxes, which would have provided money for schools. They also blocked a plan to borrow $8.7 billion to pay off overdue bills, which means long-suffering businesses and social-service agencies won’t get their money anytime soon.

Quinn has been ducking reporters for the past week, but he is expected to have more to say on the tax hike on Wednesday.

 

[oneofmany]

Suicides in Japan top 30,000 for 13th straight year

Suicides in Japan top 30,000 for 13th straight year​

TOKYO — The number of people who committed suicide in Japan totaled 31,560 in 2010, topping 30,000 for the 13th straight year, the National Police Agency said in a preliminary report on Friday.

But the number declined 3.9% from the previous year, or a decrease of 1,285 cases, hitting the second-lowest level over the past 10 years, according to the report.

Since assuming power in September 2009, the Democratic Party of Japan-led government has taken steps to help those at risk of suicide.

The government’s anti-suicide campaigns last year appear to have had some effect as the number of people who committed suicide declined in the months immediately following the campaigns, falling 15.9% in April and 13.5% in October from a year earlier.

In November, however, the number of cases rose 10%, partially because of the prolonged economic downturn.

The number of people committing suicide declined for six months in a row in the first half of last year but rose and fell in successive months.

While 2008 and 2009 saw some months in which over 3,000 people committed suicide, the number of cases remained below 3,000 each month last year.

Of those who committed suicide last year, 22,178 were men and 9,382 women, continuing the trend for a higher number of cases among men.

The government set up an emergency strategy team at the Cabinet Office in autumn 2009 in concert with civic groups and doctors working on suicide prevention.

The team worked on measures to be implemented by related ministries and agencies, including expanding public counters where people can get advice about mental health and debt problems, and compiling region-by-region suicide prevention steps based on relevant police statistics.

The government set up a task force involving cabinet ministers last September to carry out the measures.