Beast System: Laying The Foundation Of The Beast

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Calls for Bush to Apologize to Torture Victim

Calls for Bush to Apologize to Torture Victim

In 2002, Canadian born Syrian Maher Arar was deported to Syria where he was tortured during a year imprisoned there. Democrat and Republican legislators apologized to him and said George Bush should follow theirs and Canada’s lead.

Arar is still barred from entering the US despite that the Canadian government determined he had no links to terrorists. Ottawa has compensated him with $10.8M. Republican Dana Rohrabacher said about the US, "has been unwilling to own up to it."

The US Government has tried to dismiss Arars case, stating that it violates state secrets. Describing what happened to him, Arar said he was beaten with electric cables, was deprived of sunlight for 6 months and kept in a cell measuring 1.8m by .9m.

 

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Why I know weapons expert Dr David Kelly was murdered

Why I know weapons expert Dr David Kelly was murdered, by the MP who spent a year investigating his death​

For Tony Blair it was a glorious day. He was in the United States being feted by the U.S. Congress and President Bush.

Their adulation was such that he was being offered the rare honour of a Congressional Gold Medal.

Naturally enough, Bush and his administration were hugely grateful for Blair's decision to join the United States in its invasion of Iraq.

That invasion was supposed to lead to the discovery and disposal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and make the world a safer place.

But as Blair was lapping up the grateful plaudits from the U.S. Congress on July 17, 2003, the man who had done more than almost any other individual on earth to contain the threat from WMD lay dead in the woods at Harrowdown Hill in Oxfordshire.

For Dr David Kelly, the UK's leading weapons inspector, there was to be no adulation, no medal, no standing ovation.

His life ended in the cold, lonely wood where he was found the next morning, his left wrist cut open, and three nearly-empty blister packs of painkillers in his jacket pocket.

His death was, of course, sensational front-page news. Dr Kelly, unknown to almost everybody at the beginning of that July, had in recent days barely been absent from media headlines.

Much to his chagrin he had been thrust into the harsh glare of publicity, accused of being the mole who expressed to the BBC deep concerns about the Government's "sexing up" of its dossier on weapons of mass destruction.

For Blair - accused of misusing, exaggerating or even inventing intelligence in order to justify the overthrow of Saddam Hussein - the stakes could not have been higher.

This was undoubtedly the greatest crisis of his premiership to date.

To add fuel to the flames, his director of communications, Alastair Campbell, had launched an unprecedented and vitriolic attack on the BBC, questioning its integrity and professionalism in the way it reported the story.

Suddenly finding himself under tremendous personal pressure, it seemed that Dr Kelly had buckled and decided to commit suicide.

That, at least, was the official version of events, as decided by the Hutton inquiry, set up by the Government with lightning speed within hours of Dr Kelly's body being found.

The media, the political establishment, indeed almost everybody accepted Lord Hutton's verdict. But the more I examined it, the more it became clear to me that Hutton's judgment was faulty and suspect in virtually all important respects.

I was not alone in these suspicions. Letters began to appear in the press from leading medical specialists, in which they queried the suicide verdict.

The letters were well argued, raising profound and disturbing questions that remain unanswered to this day.

Increasingly concerned, I decided to give up my post on the Liberal Democrat front bench to look into Dr Kelly's death.

My investigations have since convinced me that it is nigh- on clinically impossible for Dr Kelly to have died by his own hand and that both his personality and the other circumstantial evidence strongly militate against suicide.

Given that his death was clearly not an accident, that leaves only one alternative - that he must have been murdered.

This is not a conclusion I have come to lightly. I simply set out to examine the facts, to test the evidence, and to follow the trail wherever it took me.

The account I give in this series may not be correct in all respects, but I suggest that it is rather more credible than the verdict reached by Lord Hutton.

I certainly believe there are enough doubts, enough questions, enough of a smell of stinking fish to justify re-opening this episode officially.

My investigations have been a journey into the unknown, and one that has taken many peculiar turns. Perhaps the most sinister came soon after starting my inquiries last year.

After writing a newspaper article outlining my early concerns, I found myself on a train speeding towards Exeter to see a man who had agreed to meet me only on condition of anonymity and after some rather circuitous arrangements.

These involved much complicated use of public telephone boxes to minimise the chance that his contact with me could be traced.

Finally, we talked over a glass of wine in a rather nondescript club.

He told me that he had recently retired but had connections to both the police and the security services, a claim which I subsequently verified through careful checks.

Like me, he had many doubts about the true circumstances surrounding Dr Kelly's death and he had begun making his own surreptitious inquiries around Southmoor, the Oxfordshire village which was Dr Kelly's home.

Posing as a freelance journalist, he had attempted to contact the key policemen involved in investigating the case. In this he was unsuccessful but within an hour he received an unexpected return call.

The person on the other end of the line did not bother with formalities, but instead cut to the quick. How would my contact welcome a full tax inspection of his business, VAT, national insurance, the lot?

Life could be made very difficult, he was told. How did he fancy having no money?

Naturally, this prospect did not appeal, and there he left matters until, at a wedding, he chanced upon an old friend whom he described to me initially as a very senior civil servant, but later as a "spook" from MI6.

He told his friend of his interest in the Kelly affair and also of the threatening phone call he had received.

His friend's reply was a serious one: he should be careful, particularly when using his phone or his computer. Moreover, he should let the Kelly matter drop.

But my contact did not do so. Two weeks later he met his friend again, this time in a pub, and pressed him on the matter.

His friend took him outside, and as they stood in the cool air, told him Dr Kelly's death had been "a wet operation, a wet disposal".

He also warned him in very strong terms to leave the matter well alone. This time he decided to heed the warning.

I asked my contact to explain what he understood by the terms his friend had used. Essentially, it seems to refer to an assassination, perhaps carried out in a hurry.

A few months later, I called my contact to check one or two points of his story. He told me that three weeks after our meeting in Exeter, his house had been broken into and his laptop - containing all his material on Kelly - had been stolen. Other valuable goods, including a camera and an LCD television, had been left untouched.

It was sobering to be given such a clear indication that Dr Kelly had been murdered, but the scientist himself appears to have been fully aware that his work made him a target for assassins.

British diplomat David Broucher told the Hutton inquiry that, some months before Dr Kelly's death, he had asked him what would happen if Iraq were invaded.

Rather chillingly, Dr Kelly replied that he "would probably be found dead in the woods".

At the inquiry, this was construed as meaning that he had already had suicidal thoughts. That, of course, is patently absurd.

Nobody can seriously suggest that he was suicidal at the time the meeting took place - yet Lord Hutton seems to have made his mind up about the way in which DrKelly died before the inquiry even began.

The result is a series of gaping, unresolved anomalies.

Crucially, in his report, Hutton declared that the principal cause of death was bleeding from a selfinflicted knife wound on Dr Kelly's left wrist.

Yet Dr Nicholas Hunt, the pathologist who carried out the post-mortem examination on DrKelly, stated that he had cut only one blood vessel - the ulnar artery.

Since the arteries in the wrist are of matchstick thickness, severing just one of them does not lead to life-threatening blood loss, especially if it is cut crossways, the method apparently adopted by Dr Kelly, rather than along its length.

The artery simply retracts and stops bleeding.

As a scientist who would have known more about human anatomy than most, Dr Kelly was particularly unlikely to have targeted the ulnar artery. Buried deep in the wrist, it can only be accessed through the extremely painful process of cutting through nerves and tendons.

It is not common for those who commit suicide to wish to inflict significant pain on themselves as part of the process.

In Dr Kelly's case, the unlikelihood is compounded by the suggestion that his chosen instrument-was a blunt pruning knife.

This would only have increased the pain and would have failed to cut the artery cleanly, thereby hastening the clotting process.

Statistics bear out the extremely low incidence of individuals dying by cutting the ulnar artery, with only one recorded case in Britain during the entire year of Dr Kelly's death.

Given that the average human body contains ten pints of blood, and that about half of these must be lost before death ensues, we must also ask ourselves why there were clear signs at the postmortem-that Dr Kelly had retained much of his blood.

We cannot be sure exactly how much since, inexplicably, the pathologist's report does not provide an estimate of the residual volume, but what he did record was the appearance of "livor mortis" on Dr Kelly's body.

This purplish-red discolouration of the skin occurs when the heart is no longer pumping and blood begins to settle in the lower part of the body. But if Dr Kelly had bled to death, as we are led to believe, then significant livor mortis would not have occurred. Put simply, there would not have been enough blood in his body.

More significant still, while the effects of five pints of blood spurting from a body could not easily be hidden, the members of the search party who found his body did not even notice that Dr Kelly had apparently incised his wrist with a knife.

Their arrival was followed by that of paramedics who pointedly referred to the fact that there was remarkably little blood around the body.

If the idea that blood loss brought about Dr Kelly's death is flawed, still less plausible is the suggestion that he chose an overdose to quicken his end.

Mai Pederson, a close friend of DrKelly's, has confirmed that he hated all types of tablets and had an aversion even to swallowing a headache pill.

Yet we are told that he removed from his house three blister packs, each containing ten of the co-proxamol painkillers which his wife Janice took for her arthritis.

Each of these oval pills was about half an inch long. Since there was only one tablet left, the implication is that he had swallowed 29 of them. If this is right, we are being asked to believe that Dr Kelly indulged in a further masochistic act in an attempt to take his life.

A further objection is that police evidence states there was a halflitre bottle of Evian water by the body which had not been fully drunk.

Common sense tells us that quite a lot of water would be required to swallow 29 large tablets. It is frankly unlikely, with only a small bottle of water to hand, that any would have been left undrunk.

Stranger still, tests revealed the presence of only the equivalent of a fifth of one pill in Dr Kelly's stomach.

Even allowing for natural metabolising, this cannot easily be reconciled with the idea that he swallowed 29 of them.

Forensic toxicologist Alexander Allan told the Hutton inquiry that although the levels of co-proxamol in Dr Kelly's blood were higher than therapeutic levels, they were less than a third of what would normally be found in a fatal overdose.

Furthermore, it is generally accepted that concentrations of a drug in the blood can increase by as much as tenfold after death, leaving open the possibility that he consumed only a thirtieth of the dose necessary to kill him.

As for Dr Kelly's state of mind, in the eyes of those who knew him well he was the last person who might be expected to take his own life.

A recent convert to the Baha'i faith which expressly forbids suicide, he was a strong character who had survived many difficult situations in the past.

Just a day before his 20th birthday in May 1964, his own mother had killed herself with an overdose. Though this had naturally affected him deeply at the time, there was nothing to suggest that it was on his mind at this point in his life.

His friend Mai Pederson recalled a conversation they once had about his mother's death. Would he ever contemplate suicide himself, she asked. 'Good God no, I couldn't ever imagine doing that," he is said to have replied. "I would never do it."

Later many people would conclude that the seeds of his suicide lay in his uncomfortable appearance before MPs on the Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday, July 15, just three days before his death.

Grilled for more than an hour during this televised hearing, he was clearly under considerable pressure and yet one journalist recalled him smiling afterwards.

By the time he gave evidence before the Intelligence and Security Committee the following day, he was even managing to crack a joke or two.

His emotional state certainly did not appear to give any major cause for alarm on the morning of the Thursday he disappeared.

His wife Janice later described him as "tired, subdued but not depressed" and the e-mails he sent from his home during those hours suggested that his mood, if anything, was upbeat.

"Many thanks for your thoughts," he wrote to one colleague. "It has been difficult. Hopefully will all blow over by the end of the week and I can travel to Baghdad and get on with the real work."

Indeed, so keen was Dr Kelly to get back to Iraq that he spoke to Wing Commander John Clark at the Ministry of Defence about when he could return.

A trip was booked for him the following Friday and his diary, recovered by the police, shows that the trip had been entered for that day. People about to kill themselves do not generally first book an airline ticket for a flight they have no intention of taking.

Since none of this fits the profile of a man about to commit suicide, we are faced with an obvious question. If Dr Kelly did not kill himself, then who might have been responsible for his death?

There are, it must be admitted, a number of possible suspects. In the course of a long career in the shadowy world of arms control, Dr Kelly had made powerful enemies.

Back in 1991, for example, he was part of a team that exposed Russia's tests of biological weapons for offensive purposes - a field in which they had invested huge sums of money. This could easily have sparked a desire for revenge, if not from the state itself then from individual Russians.

Dr Kelly also had intimate knowledge of biological weapons research in apartheid-era South Africa that some might have preferred not to see the light of day.

It has also been suggested that he had dealings with Mossad, the Israeli secret service, about illegal bacterial weapon activity.

But it seems very unlikely that the anger of old foes would have simmered for years and then exploded just as Dr Kelly emerged in the political spotlight in 2003.

Quite simply, it would qualify as an astonishing coincidence if the cause of his death were not rooted in the furore over Iraq.

At this point, it has to be asked whether there were elements in the British intelligence services, or indeed within 10 Downing Street itself, who would have wanted Dr Kelly dead.

This is a possibility I have seriously considered. But it is difficult, frankly, to think that anyone in the Government could have thought DrKelly's death to be in their interest, even were they morally prepared to bring it about.

After all, the death of Dr Kelly presented Tony Blair with his greatest political challenge, and put the political focus firmly onto the whole Iraq debacle, which cannot be where the Government would have wanted it.

The more I investigated this affair, the more I realised that people who had worked with David Kelly suspected some kind of link with the Iraqis themselves.

Diplomat David Broucher told the Hutton inquiry that he interpreted Dr Kelly's remark about being found "dead in the woods" to mean that "he was at risk of being attacked by the Iraqis in some way".

Dr Kelly's friend Mai Pederson confirmed to the police that the scientist had received death threats from supporters of Saddam Hussein, who regarded him as an enemy on account of his past success at uncovering their weapons programmes.

This was something Dr Kelly privately acknowledged but refused to be cowed by, in a very British, stiff upper lip kind of way.

The theory that he may have been murdered by elements loyal to Saddam is supported by Dick Spertzel, America's most senior biological weapons inspector, who worked closely with Dr Kelly in Iraq.

"A number of us were on an Iraqi hit list," he told me matter-of-factly. "I was number three, and David was a couple behind that."

But Saddam loyalists are not the only Iraqis we need to consider. There are others, too, with rather closer links to the West.

Much of the information about Saddam's supposed weapons of mass destruction, on which Britain and America based their case for war, was provided by Iraqi dissidents eager to see his overthrow.

This information was sensational and, as events turned out, wildly distorted and in most regards plain false.

One of the central figures here was Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the so-called Iraqi National Congress and the CIA's favourite Iraqi opposition politician.

A financier with a decidedly chequered past - he was found guilty of embezzlement and forgery after $158 million disappeared from a bank he founded in Jordan - Chalabi made no secret of his wish to drag the United States into war with Saddam and was apparently prepared to say anything to achieve that end.

A key Iraqi informer codenamed "Curveball" - who claimed to have led a team equipping mobile laboratories to produce biological weapons for Saddam, but was later entirely discredited - is believed to have been the brother of one of Chalabi's aides.

Chalabi's fingerprints can also be found on the now notorious claims by another defector that Saddam had 20 or more secret sites where weapons of mass destruction could be found. Subsequent searches showed this allegation to be utterly without foundation.

Naturally, those like Dr Kelly who, by sticking to the facts, weakened the case for invasion beforehand and discredited those who had exaggerated it afterwards, were unhelpful to Chalabi and his colleagues. The last thing they wanted was the sober truth to prevail.

Another important figure here is Iyad Allawi, leader of the Iraqi National Accord, another organisation created to oppose Saddam. Before they parted ways, he was Saddam's supporter and friend.

There are many who tell of Allawi's violent history. As a young man, he is alleged to have been present at the torture of Iraqi communists who were hung from the ceiling and beaten.

While living in London in the Seventies, he was allegedly the head of Iraq's intelligence operation in Europe, informing on opponents of Saddam who will have faced torture and death when they returned home.

Allawi went on to develop a fruitful relationship with MI6 and the CIA. After the Iraq invasion, he was appointed Prime Minister in the country's interim government - only to face allegations (which he strongly denied) that he had personally shot seven insurgents in the head with a pistol at Baghdad's Al-Amariyah security centre.

"This is how we must deal with terrorists," Allawi is alleged to have told a stunned audience of close to 30 onlookers. "We must destroy anyone who wants to destroy the Iraqi people."

The new Prime Minister's actions are said to have prompted one U.S. official to comment: "What a mess we're in - we got rid of one son of a bitch only to get another."

The Americans apparently referred to Allawi as "Saddam lite".

Before the Iraq invasion, Allawi's organisation - just like Ahmed Chalabi's - was responsible for eye- catching but groundless intelligence exploited by supporters of war. #

In the case of Allawi's group, it was reports passed to MI6 in the spring and summer of 2002, including the false claim that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction which he could deploy at 45 minutes' notice.

This now infamous "45-minute claim" fed through to the dossier of intelligence which was used as the justification for our involvement in the invasion of Iraq.

It was this dossier, and the 45-minute claim in particular, that David Kelly challenged in his crucial interview with the BBC.

By doing so, did he sign his own death warrant?

 

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Tracking your tots schooling through microchips in their uniforms

Tracking your tots schooling through microchips in their uniforms

London, October 21: Students at a secondary school in South Yorkshire are being tracked by microchips sewn in their uniforms as part of a trial.

The radio frequency identification system monitors pupils' movements, and automatically logs their attendance on the teacher's computer. It can also alert teachers if a student is likely to misbehave.

The trial involves 10 students in whose uniforms this chip was embedded about eight months ago.

Being used at Hungerhill School in Doncaster presently, the chip connects with teachers' computers to show a photograph of the students, data about their academic performance, and whether they are in the correct classroom. It can also restrict access to areas of the school.

However, the new approach of tracking students' movement has drawn criticism from human rights campaigners.

"Tagging is what we do to criminals we let out of prison early. It is appalling," Timesonline quoted David Cleater from Leave Them Kids Alone, which campaigns against the finger-printing of pupils, as saying.

On the other hand, the school's head teacher, Graham Wakeling, has denied that they were adapting a "Big Brother" mentality.

"The system is not intrusive to the pupil in the slightest. The benefit is that it provides the immediate registration of the pupil as they enter the classroom. This supports staff as they are getting to know pupils. All the information it provides is already stored on the school information management system," he said.

He claimed that the children in the trial were the volunteers who are participating in it as a science project.

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said it intended electronic registration to log attendance on a schools database, not "logging every detail of every pupil via covert means".

 

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Ewan McGregor angered by Britain's 'insane' nanny state

Ewan McGregor angered by Britain's 'insane' nanny state​

Ewan McGregor said he is sick of Britain's "ludicrous nanny state" rules, which he said might force him to quit the country, in an interview to be published Tuesday.
Health and safety regulations were becoming "insane", the 36-year-old film star told the weekly Radio Times magazine.

The Scottish actor, who played the young Obi-Wan Kenobi in the most recent Star Wars trilogy, blasted the rise of security cameras and London's congestion charge, which forces drivers to pay to enter the city centre.

McGregor recently completed a 15,000-mile (24,000-kilometre) motorcycle adventure, riding the length of Africa with best friend and fellow actor Charley Boorman.

"Our trip opened my eyes to how insane the rules are in Britain -- CCTV cameras everywhere, congestion charge -- a ludicrous nanny state.

"If anything drives me out of the country it will be that -- not tax, I don't earn enough."

When Daniel Craig was unveiled as the new James Bond actor in October 2005, he was forced to wear a life jacket as he sped through London on a boat up the River Thames.

It was somewhat out of keeping for the daredevil fictional British spy, in a press call stunt widely acknowledged as having backfired.

"It's not his fault. He's doing what he's told," McGregor groaned.

"Today, health and safety are out of control. In Africa, garage attendants smoked as they filled the bikes. I took great pleasure in that."

McGregor has starred in "Trainspotting" (1996), "A Life Less Ordinary" (1997), "Rogue Trader" (1999), "Moulin Rouge!", "Black Hawk Down" (2001), and "Miss Potter" (2006).

He made the first of three outings as Kenobi in 1999 in "Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace".

McGregor and Boorman rode from John O'Groats, Britain's most northerly settlement, to Cape Agulhas, the southern tip of South Africa, for a BBC television series.

The Scot said he was touched by the kindness offered to him in Africa.

"People are nice to us because we're travellers, and the most generous and happiest are often those who have the least, whereas in Britain we're devastatingly depressed, yet have so much," McGregor said.

Boorman added: "We never got fed up with each other, but sometimes I couldn't stand the smell after a few days without a shower."

 

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Giuliani Defends, Employs Priest Accused of Molesting Teens

Giuliani Defends, Employs Priest Accused of Molesting Teens​

Presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani hired a Catholic priest to work in his consulting firm months after the priest was accused of sexually molesting two former students and an altar boy and told by the church to stop performing his priestly duties. The priest, Monsignor Alan Placa, a longtime friend of Giuliani and the priest who officiated at his second wedding to Donna Hanover, continues to work at Giuliani Partners in New York, to the outrage of some of his accusers and victims' groups, which have begun to protest at Giuliani campaign events.

"This man did unjust things, and he's being protected and employed and taken care of. It's not a good thing," said one of the accusers, Richard Tollner, who says Placa molested him repeatedly when he was a student at a Long Island, N.Y. Catholic boys high school in 1975. At a campaign appearance in Milwaukee last week, Giuliani continued to defend Placa, who he described to reporters as a close friend for 39 years. "I know the man; I know who he is, so I support him," Giuliani said. "We give some of the worst people in our society the presumption of innocence and benefit of the doubt," he said. "And, of course, I'm going to give that to one of my closest friends." The accusations against Placa were made in testimony before a Suffolk County grand jury in 2002. Tollner, now a mortgage broker in Albany, N.Y., says he was one of three people to testify about Placa. "This man harmed children. He still could do it. He deserves to be shown for what he was, or is," says Tollner.

Appearing publicly for the first time today on ABC News' "Good Morning America," Tollner says the abuse started when he and Placa were in the high school making posters for a Right to Life march. "As he started to explain how these posters should be done, I realized that something was rubbing my body," Tollner said. "After a minute or two, I realized that he's feeling me, feeling me in my genital area." The grand jury report concluded that a Priest F, who Tollner says is Placa, abused the boys sexually "again and again and again." "Priest F was cautious, but relentless in his pursuit of victims. He fondled boys over their clothes, usually in his office," the report said. The report concluded that Priest F, and several other priests under investigation from the same Long Island, N.Y. diocese, could not be prosecuted because the statute of limitations had expired.

Several former students from the same high school say they were asked by the "Giuliani organization" to contact ABC News and vouch for Placa. "There was absolutely not a hint of rumor of a speculation or a whisper, in four years, or in decades after of any sexual predatoriness on the part of Rev. Placa," wrote Matthew Hogan in an e-mail to ABCNews.com. Hogan says he recalls that Placa did give "special attention" to his former classmate Richard Tollner and remembers seeing Tollner in Placa's office "laughing, on opposite sides of a desk with Mr. Tollner happily animated sitting up on the couch talking." But Hogan says the school area where Tollner says he was molested "was CONSTANTLY trafficked even on off days and hours." "I will gladly help take apart in public anything that seriously overlooks the above. I'll be watching The Blotter like a hawk," Hogan wrote. In addition to the allegations that Priest F was personally involved in the sexual abuse, the grand jury also said that Priest F became instrumental in a church policy that used "deception and intimidation" to keep the church scandal quiet.

Placa served as a lawyer for the diocese in dealing with allegations of abuse against other priests and, according to the grand jury report, claimed he had saved the church hundreds of thousands of dollars in his handling of possible litigation. Lawyers for alleged victims say Placa would often conduct interviews, in his priest garb, without making it clear he was the church lawyer. "He was a wolf in sheep's clothing," said Melanie Little, a lawyer for several alleged victims of sexual abuse by other priests in the diocese.

"He was more concerned with protecting the priests, protecting the reputation of the diocese and protecting the church coffers than he was protecting the children," said Little. Since going to work for Giuliani Partners, the former mayor and the priest have continued to be close. Placa accompanied Giuliani and his wife Judith on a trip to Rome earlier this year. Through a spokeswoman at Giuliani Partners, Sunny Mindel, Placa declined requests to comment on the allegations to ABCNews.com. Mindel also declined to specify what Placa does for the firm or how much he is paid. Mr. Giuliani can do what he wants with his money, but he has to pay the price for people like myself who disagree with employing known child molesters," Tollner said. While no longer allowed to perform priestly duties or appear in public as a priest, Placa continues to maintain a residence at a church rectory in Great Neck on New York's Long Island. According to New York property records, Placa also co-owns, with another priest, a waterfront apartment in lower Manhattan in Battery Park City, valued at more than $500,000.

 

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PJAK admits to having US relations

PJAK admits to having US relations​

A member of PJAK terrorist group has admitted to the organization's relations with the US government, New York Times reported.

Biryar Gabar, one of 11 members of the group's leadership, said Tuesday that there had been 'normal dialogue' with American officials, declining specifics. One of his bodyguards confirmed the group's officials had met with Americans in Kirkuk last year, the Times reported.

Gabar, who was shown lying on a slab of rock with 27 other guerillas on top of a 3,000m mountain near Iran borders where Iranian military vehicles were at range, also adds that there are diplomatic relations and movements between US government and the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, otherwise known as PJAK.

Iranian officials have accused the US of supplying the terrorists and using them in a proxy war against their country, a claim that Washington denies.

However Iran isn't the only country that accuses the US of aiding the PKK and other Kurdish separatists. The Turkish government has basically said the same thing. The suspicions grew even stronger when Turkish soldiers found American-made weapons lying next to killed PKK terrorists. The Iranians believe that the US is aiding Kurdish terrorists for several reasons one of them is because Kurdish leaders themselves admit they regularly have "direct or indirect discussions" with US officials.

The PJAK and the PKK appear to be mostly one and the same organization, both fighting to win autonomy for Kurds in Iran and Turkey and sharing leadership, logistics and allegiance to Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK leader in jail in Turkey.

Differentiating between the two, however, is politically smart for the US because the PKK "is fighting Turkey, an important American ally, while the PJAK is not labeled as such because it is fighting Iran."

The leader of the PJAK, Rahman Haj-Ahmad, an off-shoot of a terrorist group, was allowed to visit Washington last summer.

 

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Terror watch list swells to more than 755,000

Terror watch list swells to more than 755,000​

WASHINGTON — The government's terrorist watch list has swelled to more than 755,000 names, according to a new government report that has raised worries about the list's effectiveness.
The size of the list, typically used to check people entering the country through land border crossings, airports and sea ports, has been growing by 200,000 names a year since 2004. Some lawmakers, security experts and civil rights advocates warn that it will become useless if it includes too many people.

"It undermines the authority of the list," says Lisa Graves of the Center for National Security Studies. "There's just no rational, reasonable estimate that there's anywhere close to that many suspected terrorists."

The exact number of people on the list, compiled after 9/11 to help government agents keep terrorists out of the country, is unclear, according to the report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Some people may be on the list more than once because they are listed under multiple spellings.

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who plans a hearing on the report today, says "serious hurdles remain if (the list) is to be as effective as we need it to be. Some of the concerns stem from its rapid growth, which could call into question the quality of the list itself."

About 53,000 people on the list were questioned since 2004, according to the GAO, which says the Homeland Security Department doesn't keep records on how many were denied entry or allowed into the country after questioning. Most were apparently released and allowed to enter, the GAO says.

Leonard Boyle, director of the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center, which maintains the list, says in testimony to be given today that 269 foreigners were denied entry in fiscal 2006.

The GAO report also says:

•The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) could not specify how many people on its no-fly list, which is a small subset of the watch list, might have slipped through screening and been allowed on domestic flights.

•TSA data show "a number of individuals" on the no-fly list passed undetected through screening and boarded international flights bound for the United States. Several planes have been diverted once officials realized that people named on the watch lists were on board.

•Homeland Security has not done enough to use the list more broadly in the private sector, where workers applying for jobs in sensitive places such as chemical factories could do harm.

Boyle also urges that the list be used by for screening at businesses where workers could "carry out attacks on our critical infrastructure that could harm large numbers of persons or cause immense economic damage."

But the sheer size of the watch list raised the most alarms.

"They are quickly galloping towards the million mark — a mark of real distinction because the list is already cumbersome and is approaching absolutely useless," said Tim Sparapani of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, says "creating and maintaining a comprehensive terrorist watch list is an enormous endeavor fraught with technical and tactical challenges."

The report, she says, "underscores the need to make the watch lists more accurate, to improve screening procedures at airports and the ports of entry, and to provide individuals with the ability to seek redress if they believe they have been wrongfully targeted."

 

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Japan to fingerprint all foreign entrants

Japan to fingerprint all foreign entrants​

JAPAN is to fingerprint and photograph foreigners entering the country from next month in an anti-terrorism policy that is stirring anger among foreign residents and human rights activists.

Anyone considered to be a terrorist – or refusing to co-operate – will be denied entry and deported.

"This will greatly contribute to preventing international terrorist activities on our soil," Immigration Bureau official Naoto Nikai said in a briefing on the system, which starts on November 20.

The checks are similar to the "US Visit" system introduced in the US after the attacks on September 11, 2001.

But Japan, unlike the United States, will require resident foreigners as well as visitors to be fingerprinted and photographed every time they re-enter the country.

"It certainly doesn't make people who've been here for 30 or 40 years feel like they're even human beings basically," said businessman Terrie Lloyd, who has dual Australian and New Zealand citizenship and has been based in Japan for 24 years.

"There has not been a single incident of foreign terrorism in Japan, and there have been plenty of Japanese terrorists," he said.

There are more than two million foreigners registered as resident in Japan, of whom 40 per cent are classed as permanent residents.

The pictures and fingerprints obtained by immigration officials will be made available to police and may be shared with foreign immigration authorities and governments.

Diplomats and children under 16 are excluded from the new requirement, as are "special" permanent residents of Korean and Chinese origin, many of whom are descended from those brought to Japan as forced labour before and during World War Two.

Local government fingerprinting of foreign residents when issuing registration cards, long a source of friction, was abolished in 2000.

Amnesty International is calling for the immigration plan to be abandoned.

"Making only foreigners provide this data is discriminatory," said Sonoko Kawakami of Amnesty's Japan office.

"They are saying 'terrorist equals foreigner'. It's an exclusionary policy that could encourage xenophobia."

The new system is being introduced as Japan campaigns to attract more tourists.

More than 6.7m foreign visitors came to Japan in 2006, government statistics show. Immigration officials say they are unsure how long tourists can expect to wait in line for the checks to be made.

Britain is set to require non-European foreign nationals to register biometric details when applying for visas from next year.

 

[oneofmany]

US trains terrorists in Afghanistan

US trains terrorists in Afghanistan​

Iran's Interior Minister Mostafa Pour-mohammadi says Washington has established centers in Afghanistan for training terrorists.

Referring to Taliban-style recruiting camps used to spread insurgency, Mostafa Pour-mohammadi said the Americans, during the past years, have set up centers in Afghanistan to train and dispatch terrorists to other countries.

There are comprehensive evidences proving that the United States is sending terrorists to Iran, Afghanistan and many other countries, said Pour-mohammadi adding that the second US-supported center has been set up in Iraq.

According to the minister, the US presence has had a destructive impact on Afghanistan in a way that the annual production of narcotics in the war-shattered country has reached 8,000 tons from 1,000 tons since the US invasion of Afghanistan.

Asked about the possibility of a US attack against Iran, the minister said, "Each country or power which attacks Iran, will receive a crushing response. If we are attacked, we will naturally defend our territory and security.”

 

[oneofmany]

Guantanamo military lawyer breaks ranks to condemn 'unconscionable' detention

Guantanamo military lawyer breaks ranks to condemn 'unconscionable' detention​

An American military lawyer and veteran of dozens of secret Guantanamo tribunals has made a devastating attack on the legal process for determining whether Guantanamo prisoners are "enemy combatants".

The whistleblower, an army major inside the military court system which the United States has established at Guantanamo Bay, has described the detention of one prisoner, a hospital administrator from Sudan, as "unconscionable".

His critique will be the centrepiece of a hearing on 5 December before the US Supreme Court when another attempt is made to shut the prison down. So nervous is the Bush administration of the latest attack – and another Supreme Court ruling against it – that it is preparing a whole new system of military courts to deal with those still imprisoned.

The whistleblower's testimony is the most serious attack to date on the military panels, which were meant to give a fig- leaf of legitimacy to the interrogation and detention policies at Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. The major has taken part in 49 status review panels.

"It's a kangaroo court system and completely corrupt," said Michael Ratner, the president of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, which is co-ordinating investigations and appeals lawsuits against the government by some 1,000 lawyers. "Stalin had show trials, but at Guantanamo they are not even show trials because it all takes place in secret."

Combatant Status Review Tribunals were held for 558 detainees at the Guantanamo in 2004 and 2005. All but 38 detainees were determined to be "enemy combatants" who could be held indefinitely without charges. Detainees were not represented by a lawyer and had no access to evidence. The only witnesses they could call were other so-called "enemy combatants".

The army major has said that in the rare circumstances in which it was decided that the detainees were no longer enemy combatants, senior commanders ordered another panel to reverse the decision. The major also described "acrimony" during a "heated conference" call from Admiral McGarragh, who reports to the Secretary of the US Navy, when a the panel refused to describe several Uighur detainees as enemy combatants. Senior military commanders wanted to know why some panels considering the same evidence would come to different findings on the Uighurs, members of a Muslim minority in China.

When the whistleblower suggested over the phone that inconsistent results were "good for the system ... and would show that the system was working correctly", Admiral McGarragh, he said, had no response. The latest criticism emerged when lawyers investigating the case of a Sudanese hospital administrator, Adel Hamad, who has been held for five years, came across a "stunning" sworn statement from a member of the military panel. The officer they interviewed was so frightened of retaliation from the military that they would not allow their name to be used in the statement, nor to reveal whether the person was a man or woman.

Two other military lawyers have also gone public. In June, Army Lt-Col Stephen Abraham, a 26-year veteran in US military intelligence, became the first insider to publicly fault the proceedings. In May last year, Lt-Com Matthew Diaz was sentenced to six months in prison and dismissed from the military after he sent the names of all 551 men at the prison to a human rights group.

William Teesdale, a British-born lawyer investigating Mr Hadad's case, said he was certain of his client's innocence, having tracked down doctors who worked with him at an Afghan hospital. "Mr Hamad is an innocent man, and he is not the only one in Guantanamo."

 

[oneofmany]

Brain-injured soldiers 'denied cash'

Brain-injured soldiers 'denied cash'​

New compensation rules mean 'cynically neglected' British troops are losing out on MoD aid, claims campaigner

British soldiers with serious brain injuries are being deliberately denied tens of thousands of pounds in damages, according to the mother whose son's horrific wounds prompted the government's recent review of compensation for casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Diane Dernie, whose 23-year-old son Lance Bombadier Ben Parkinson, a paratrooper, sustained multiple injuries in an Afghan mine blast, accused the Ministry of Defence of 'cynically neglecting' seriously brain-damaged soldiers.

Although Parkinson's case forced ministers to announce changes to the much-criticised compensation rules this month, she claimed Whitehall officials had ignored pleas to address the rising number of serious brain injuries suffered by other British troops.

Dernie said: 'There are other soldiers who have suffered brain injuries from roadside bombs or mortars who get scandalously little compensation and are not covered by the changes.'

This was partly because the review had dealt just with 'multiple injuries', she said. Those who suffered only brain injuries were not covered by the review.

But it was also because the government was refusing to fix what she termed 'fundamentally unfair rules' for compensating brain-damaged soldiers. Compensation awards under the MoD's system are made on a sliding 15-level scale ranging from £1,000 to £285,000.

Soldiers who are left either in a vegetative state or 'with no meaningful response to the environment' receive the level-one maximum award. But the next level of mental injury is assessed as level-three, resulting in compensation of £115,000 rather than £201,250 at level two - even though the category can include soldiers left with 'limited response to the environment and substantial physical, sensory, personality, behavioural or cognitive problems and [requiring] skilled nursing care'.

'The difference in compensation makes a huge difference to how soldiers and their families can cope with a lifetime disability,' Dernie said. 'It is appalling that in order to save money, the government is cynically neglecting young people who have sacrificed all for their country. The worst thing is that in a way they need more care and more support than a person in a vegetative state, because they will eventually leave hospital and try to achieve some sort of life either at home or in care.'

Parkinson is being treated at Headley Court, the military rehabilitation centre in Surrey. He lost both legs and suffered multiple injuries including to his brain and spine. His case and the government's response means he now stands to receive nearly twice the £152,000 originally offered by the Ministry of Defence. Even so, friends are fundraising to buy his mother a suitable house where she can care for him. The maximum military payout is barely half the £500,000 top award for civilian victims of violence such as the 7/7 terror attacks.

Another victim, Lance Corporal Martin Edwards, 25, suffered brain damage when a roadside bomb in Iraq shattered his helmet visor late last year. His wife, Sarah, 23, revealed that the family had been offered only the level-three compensation of about £115,000 - despite Edwards's need for lifetime care and the additional resources required to raise a 20-month-old son, Phoenix.

A ministry spokesman told The Observer the changes would not cover casualties like Edwards because he had not suffered multiple injuries. The MoD said the 'tariff levels' for brain injuries were based on existing civilian injury schemes. In the light of recent changes in guidelines for those programmes, ministry officials were examining 'future' tariffs. An overall review of the compensation scheme would not come until 2010 - after it had been running for five years.

There are no reliable figures about British soldiers who have suffered brain injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan. The MoD provides fortnightly updates on the number of 'serious' and 'very serious' injuries, but without further details.

A military welfare campaigner last night said there were other brain-injured British soldiers likely to be left behind by the compensation changes. The source said he knew of at least two other cases: both men had suffered head injuries in Iraq last year, one from a mortar blast and the other a gunshot wound.

 

[oneofmany]

Homeland Security strikes deal with New York on driver's licenses

Homeland Security strikes deal with New York on driver's licenses​

The Bush administration and New York cut a deal Saturday to create a new generation of super-secure driver's licenses for U.S. citizens, but also allow illegal immigrants to get a version.

New York is the fourth state to reach such an agreement on federally approved secure licenses, after Arizona, Vermont and Washington. The issue is pressing for border states, where new and tighter rules are soon to go into effect for crossings.

The deal comes about one month after New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer announced a plan whereby illegal immigrants with a valid foreign passport could obtain a license.

Saturday's agreement with the Homeland Security Department will create a three-tier license system in New York. It is the largest state to sign on so far to the government's post-Sept. 11 effort to make identification cards more secure.

Spitzer, who has faced much criticism on the issue, said the deal means New York "will usher in the most secure licensing system in the nation."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said he was not happy that New York intended to issue IDs to illegal immigrants. But he said there was nothing he could do to stop it.

"I don't endorse giving licenses to people who are not here legally, but federal law does allow states to make that choice," Chertoff said.

"It's going to be a big deal up in Buffalo, it's going to be a big deal on the Canadian side of the border," Chertoff said.

The governor made clear he is going forward with his plan allowing licenses for illegal immigrants. But advocates on both sides of the debate said Spitzer had caved to pressure by adopting the administration's stance on tighter security standards for most driver's licenses.

GOP Rep. Thomas Reynolds, who represents the Buffalo suburbs, said he was glad Washington had heeded his concerns about border identification. But he said he feared that Spitzer "is taking this state down a risky path" by giving any kind of license to illegal immigrants.

Under the compromise, New York will produce an "enhanced driver's license" that will be as secure as a passport. It is intended for people who soon will need to meet such ID requirements, even for a short drive to Canada.

A second version of the license will meet new federal standards of the Real ID Act. That law is designed to make it much harder for illegal immigrants or would-be terrorists to obtain licenses.

A third type of license will be available to undocumented immigrants. Spitzer has said this ID will make the state more secure by bringing those people "out of the shadows" and into American society, and will lower auto insurance rates.

Those licenses will be clearly marked to show they are not valid federal ID. Officials, however, would not say whether that meant local law enforcement could use such a license as probable cause to detain someone they suspected of being in the U.S. illegally.

"Besides being a massive defeat for the governor, I can't imagine many, if any, illegal immigrants coming forward to get the driver's licenses, because they'd basically be labeled as illegal," said New York Rep. Peter King, the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee.

New York has between 500,000 and 1 million undocumented immigrants, many of whom are driving without a license and car insurance or with fake driver's licenses, Spitzer said in September when he announced his executive order.

The administration has not finalized standards for Real ID-compliant driver's licenses. Spitzer said he believed the new licenses would meet those standards or come very close.

Many states say it is too expensive to comply with the law; seven of them have passed legislation opposing Real ID. Neither the governor nor Chertoff would say how much it would cost to put the system in place or who would pay for it.

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties, said Spitzer's move effectively revives a faltering ID program. "The governor's stunning lack of courage is aiding the Bush administration in clamping down on civil liberties," Lieberman said.

 

[oneofmany]

Hersh: US, Israel support PKK

Hersh: US, Israel support PKK​

PKK Kurdish rebel group and its sister organization, PEJAK, have been receiving support from the US and Israel, an American journalist claims.

"In the past months, Israel and the United States have been working together in support of PKK and its Iranian offshoot PEJAK, I was told by a government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon," said Pulitzer Prize-winning, Seymour Hersh.

In an interview with Turkish gazette, Zaman, the leading American investigative journalist also revealed that the White House has lost control over PKK which has gone rogue.

Earlier, the renowned American journalist accused Washington and the Zionist regime of providing PKK and PEJAK with 'training and equipment' in a secret ploy to destabilize the region.

Commenting on PEJAK, Hersh asserted that Washington considers it as “part of an effort to explore alternative means of applying pressure on Iran.”

The Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PEJAK) has been behind a string of deadly attacks on security forces in northwestern Iran. PEJAK is considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States, and the European Union.

 

[GreedySmurf]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]War Protests: Why No Coverage?
By Jerry Lanson
The Christian Science Monitor[/FONT][/FONT] [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Tuesday 30 October 2007[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT][/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Newspapers have a duty to inform citizens about such democratic events.[/FONT][/FONT]​

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Boston - Coordinated antiwar protests in at least 11 American cities this weekend raised anew an interesting question about the nature of news coverage: Are the media ignoring rallies against the Iraq war because of their low turnout or is the turnout dampened by the lack of news coverage?[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] I find it unsettling that I even have to consider the question.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] That most Americans oppose the war in Iraq is well established. The latest CBS News poll, in mid-October, found 26 percent of those polled approved of the way the president is handling the war and 67 percent disapproved. It found that 45 percent said they'd only be willing to keep large numbers of US troops in Iraq "for less than a year." And an ABC News-Washington Post poll in late September found that 55 percent felt Democrats in Congress had not gone far enough in opposing the war.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Granted, neither poll asked specifically about what this weekend's marchers wanted: An end to congressional funding for the war. Still, poll after poll has found substantial discontent with a war that ranks as the preeminent issue in the presidential campaign.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Given that context, it seems remarkable to me that in some of the 11 cities in which protests were held - Boston and New York, for example - major news outlets treated this "National Day of Action" as though it did not exist. As far as I can tell, neither The New York Times nor The Boston Globe had so much as a news brief about the march in the days leading up to it. The day after, The Times, at least in its national edition, totally ignored the thousands who marched in New York and the tens of thousands who marched nationwide. The Globe relegated the news of 10,000 spirited citizens (including me) marching through Boston's rain-dampened streets to a short piece deep inside its metro section. A single sentence noted the event's national context.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] As a former newspaper editor, I was most taken aback by the silence beforehand. Surely any march of widespread interest warrants a brief news item to let people know that the event is taking place and that they can participate. It's called "advancing the news," and it has a time-honored place in American newsrooms.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] With prescient irony, Frank Rich wrote in his Oct. 14 Times column, "We can continue to blame the Bush administration for the horrors of Iraq.... But we must also examine our own responsibility." And, he goes on to suggest, we must examine our own silence.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] So why would Mr. Rich's news colleagues deprive people of information needed to take exactly that responsibility?[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] I'm not suggesting here that the Times or any news organization should be in collusion with a movement - pro-war or antiwar, pro-choice or pro-life, pro-government or pro-privatization.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] I am suggesting that news organizations cover the news - that they inform the public about any widespread effort to give voice to those who share a widely held view about any major national issue.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] If it had been a pro-war group that had organized a series of support marches this weekend, I'd have felt the same way. Like the National Day of Action, their efforts would have been news - news of how people can participate in a democracy overrun with campaign platitudes and big-plate fundraisers, news that keeps democracy vibrant, news that keeps it healthy.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Joseph Pulitzer, the editor and publisher for whom the highest honor in journalism is named, understood this well. In May 1904, he wrote: "Our Republic and its press rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press ... can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery.... The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations."[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] It's time for the current generation of journalists - at times seemingly obsessed with Martha Stewart, O.J. Simpson, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and the like - to use that power more vigilantly, and more firmly, with the public interest in mind.[/FONT][/FONT]


[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1030/p09s02-coop.html
[/FONT][/FONT]

 

[oneofmany]

DoD Defends Decision to Yank YouTube

DoD Defends Decision to Yank YouTube​

Pentagon officials are standing behind their decision to yank access to YouTube, MySpace and other social websites, saying the websites hog bandwidth and sometimes pose security risks.

The Defense Department made headlines earlier this year when it blocked access to the sites from military computers. In May, YouTube officials said they were pushing the Pentagon to reconsider. But this month, Army officials said they have no plans to back down and may block even more sites.

"We'll continue to do that, wisely and prudently and where we have operational reasons," said Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles Croom, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency, an organization that manages Defense Department communications and computing resources. Croom said about a dozen high-use social sites were targeted in a recent round of across-the-board restrictions, echoing limited bans already established by U.S. Central Command.

Deployed troops can still get to these websites from kiosks that access the commercial Internet, Croom said. "We never prevented anybody from talking to their families," he said. He also praised an internal military network called Army Knowledge Online that allows soldiers to send video clips to a small group of friends and family. Army officials say this helps soldiers reach home while steering clear of Internet abuse.

"Quite frankly, we had some other issues with respect to YouTube," said Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson, the Army's chief information officer. He cited an instance where a soldier's video showed up on a "terrorist website" and was altered to suggest that the solider opposed the Iraq war and wanted the U.S. to bring all its troops home.

"Once it's on the Internet it's always going to be there," Sorenson said. "In many cases some of these videos, unfortunately, were being maliciously affected."

YouTube defended its relationship with military users. "The vast majority of videos on YouTube posted by soldiers, their families and friends are personal messages, original songs, tributes and video letters," a spokeswoman said via email. She said YouTube and its parent company, Google Inc., are in talks with the Defense Department about the access ban.

Even though the Army limits soldier access to YouTube, the service isn't shy about using the site for its own marketing efforts. A link to "Army Videos on YouTube" is at the top of Army A-Z, a web portal right off the Army home page. It sends viewers to a message from Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey, linked to snippets on the "events and achievements of today's Army."

Recruiters got an exemption from the blanket ban on YouTube and other similar web sites because they have a "legitimate reason" for access, Croom said. "Otherwise, we found they're basically recreational," he said.

 

[oneofmany]

Orlando Getting Surveillance Cameras In Fight Against Terrorism

Orlando Getting Surveillance Cameras In Fight Against Terrorism​

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Eyewitness News has learned a terrorist attack thousands of miles away has led to a broad new plan to install surveillance cameras throughout Orlando.

The subway and bus bombings in London more than two years ago have led to the idea of adding dozens of cameras in Orlando. They'll be located at various places, including tourist areas like International Drive.

Orlando is going to be one of several cities getting cameras. They're already in use in places like Washington DC, Dallas and Chicago. Soon they'll be a fixture on I-Drive.

With its tourist attractions and large hotels, Orlando could potentially be a target for terrorists, or at least that's what the Department of Homeland Security fears. The agency is spending almost $2 million to install 34 cameras around the area.

Police won't say exactly where they're going.

"We're not being vague. There is a proposal, but to protect infrastructure we can't discuss where the plan is for those cameras," said Sgt. Barb Jones, Orlando Police Department.

Cameras have already been used at special events with large crowds. Those are temporary, while these would be permanent. Channel 9 has learned I-Drive is one potential location.

"I think it's a great idea. It makes people feel safe, that somebody is watching, and I don't think it's an invasion of privacy at all," said tourist Paul Wilson.

Wilson is from the UK, where police use surveillance cameras all the time. In fact, Orlando's system will be based on one that is being used in Europe, but not everyone sees it as a good idea.

"I don't like people watching us, people knowing what you are doing all the time," said resident Preston Sunderwirth.

An ACLU spokesman told Eyewitness News, while the group doesn't always oppose cameras, it does wonder if in this case "terrorism dollars are being diverted to fight street crime."

But tourists said that may not be a bad thing.

"I think it's a good idea for the city and the tourists," said tourist Carla Gudin.

The ACLU said one big question it has with the system is who is monitoring it and how long the tapes are kept. Sources at Homeland Security said that hasn't exactly been worked out yet and there's no timetable on when Orlando could get the system.

 

[oneofmany]

TRUE number of foreign nationals working in UK is 1.6 million, claims former official

TRUE number of foreign nationals working in UK is 1.6 million, claims former official​

The row over the number of foreign workers in Britain intensified today amid new claims that the true total could be 1.5million - nearly double the original official figure.

In an embarrassing retraction, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was forced to issue a public apology after admitting that 1.1 million overseas workers have come to the country since 1997 - not 800,000 as ministers originally claimed.

The confusion deepened today, however, as the Tories released a letter from National Statistician Karen Dunnell stating that the real figure could be 1.5 million - 400,000 more than the revised total given by the Government.

The Conservatives seized on the apparent discrepancy as further evidence of government mismanagement of immigration policy.

Shadow work and pensions secretary Chris Grayling said: "It's clear that the whole system of counting migrant workers in the UK is in a state of chaos.

"It's difficult to know quite which set of figures to believe, but one thing is certain: ministers have clearly lost control of what is going on."

Ms Dunnell's letter, written in July as part of a parliamentary answer supplied by minister Maria Eagle, says that looking back from March this year "there were 1.5 million overseas-born people in employment who had entered the UK in the last 10 years".

Both the Tor ies and Liberal Democrats expressed anger at the blunderwhich apparently occurred because officials failed to add in several columns of figures during a calculation.

The Department for Work and Pensions said that the discrepancy between its figure of 1.1 million and Ms Dunnell's 1.5 million was because the lower number related specifically to new jobs created since 1997.

By contrast, Ms Dunnell's figure covered the total of foreign workers who had come to Britain in the past 10 years, including 400,000 who had filled vacancies that had existed before Labour came to power,

Ms Smith told the BBC that she was "sorry" about the botched figures, but insisted that the influx of foreign workers - who have taken more than 40 per cent of the 2.7 million jobs created since 1997 - had not harmed British job prospects.

"Of course it is bad that these figures are wrong and ministers have apologised for that. I am sorry about that," the Home Secretary said.

"But the important point is that actually there are 2.7 million more jobs in this country than there were in 1997.

"That is more jobs, yes, that have been filled by those who have come from abroad, but many more jobs that have been filled by UK nationals."

Ms Smith's apology came shortly before the Government confirmed that it is extending curbs on the right of Romanians and Bulgarians to work in the UK for another 12 months.

Under the plans immigrants from the two countries will continue to be largely restricted to jobs in a limited number of low-skilled occupations.

The new error follows earlier, wildly inaccurate official predictions that only 13,000 migrants a year would come from Poland and other new EU members from 2004, instead of the 683,000 who have so far arrived.

The latest blunder emerged in a letter sent by Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain to Mr Grayling in which the minister apologised that incorrect figures had been given in response to questions in the House of Commons.

Mr Hain wrote: "It was stated that the increase in the number of foreign nationals in employment since 1997 was 0.8 million.

"Following further careful analysis of the information in the Labour Force Survey, this figure has been revised upwards by 0.3 million.

"This revised analysis shows that there are, in total, an extra 1.1 million foreign nationals in employment in the UK since 1997."

In an attempt to deflect criticism, ministers began emphasising their plans to introduce a new "points based" system for immigration which will give priority to workers with higher skills but does not include EU nationals.

 

[oneofmany]

Dollar likely to drop no matter what Fed does

Dollar likely to drop no matter what Fed does​

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- As analysts ponder the U.S. Federal Reserve's next move on interest rates, currency investors ponder the likely market reaction, and the consensus for both is that it's a matter of degree, not direction.

Just as no one is expecting an interest rate hike Wednesday, no one is betting on a sustained dollar rally this quarter, either. And just as bad economic or corporate headlines -- or even record-high crude oil prices -- rarely seem to derail stock market rallies these days, nothing the Fed delivers is likely to halt the greenback's slide.

Whether the Fed cuts its benchmark a quarter percentage point, as expected, or a half-point --or even not at all -- the dollar is likely to bear the near-term brunt of the market's kneejerk reaction either way, and then move in one direction: down.

Regardless of whether or not the Fed cuts rates, "the dollar is in for a beating," said Marilyn McDonald, marketing director at Interbank FX.

"The U.S. dollar is finally in trouble. For quite some time now, it has been one of the top five yielding currencies among the [Group of 10 industrialized] nations, which is why it has been used in the carry trade for so long," she said.

Carry trades involve borrowing lower-yielding currencies, such as the yen, and investing it in higher-yielding assets. The dollar has long benefited from such trades, but the benefits are dropping in line with U.S. interest rates.

"While this doesn't mean it has a bright future as a funding currency -- that will only happen if it drops into the 3% range -- it does mean that the carry trade is in trouble," said McDonald.

No cut?

Many economists and investors are betting that the Federal Open Market Committee will lower the target on the federal funds rate to 4.5%, down from 4.75% currently, and a few are betting on a larger cut to 4.25%. Read story on Fed meeting outlook.

But Wall Street Journal Fed watcher Greg Ip suggested that central bankers may not cut interest rates at all on Wednesday, contrary to market expectations. See story in WSJ.com (subscription only)

Ip said inflation concerns persisted, especially with the dollar's recent weakness.

"The behavior of financial markets implies near certainty by investors of a quarter-point cut in the Fed's key short-term interest rate," wrote Ip. "But for policy makers, the decision is between the quarter-point reduction and no cut at all."

Since lower rates erode the returns on dollar-denominated assets, all things being equal, the dollar should theoretically benefit if rates stayed steady. But all things are not equal, and the dollar would probably drop if the Fed stands pat.

"No cut would be a shock and be viewed as a negative for the dollar," said Meg Browne, senior currency strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman.

"The Fed would be seen as not proactive especially given warnings that [the fourth quarter] was likely to slow. Expectations for a 50 basis-point cut would shift to the next meeting in December. The dollar would likely sell off and stay sold off," she said.

"We don't expect the dollar's downtrend to come to an end until sometime in [the first quarter] when the U.S. economy shows signs of stabilizing," she added.

Shortcovering possible

Tuesday afternoon, the euro touched a fresh record high of $1.4440 against the dollar since the European unit began trading in January 1999. See Currencies.

The euro is now testing strong resistance between $1.4500 and $1.4545, the latter being its all-time high based on the Deutschemark's record high before the European nations united behind a single currency, according to BNP Paribas technical analyst Andrew Chaveriat.

The euro "has scope to reach $1.4500 or $1.4545 to $1.4600 with an 'as-expected' 25 basis point cut, and if they surprise with a 50 basis point cut, we could see $1.4700 to $1.4750," he said in emailed comments.

Other technical analysts, even those who believe the dollar's downtrend is intact, did not rule out a brief dollar rally after Wednesday's Fed announcement. If the dollar doesn't fall as much as some investors expected, those who bet on a plunge might be forced to buy back the dollar to cover their short positions.

"We expect to see the dollar remain under pressure until the Fed announces," predicted said Adam Hewison, president of INO.com, a technical analysis Web site.

"I think this could be a case of buy the rumor /sell the news. In this case it would be sell the dollar then cover when the Fed announces," he said.

"We are close to our $1.450 euro/dollar target zone and like any good player it pays to take some of your chips off the table," he said.

 

[oneofmany]

Bush Administration Blocked Waterboarding Critic

Bush Administration Blocked Waterboarding Critic​

A senior Justice Department official, charged with reworking the administration's legal position on torture in 2004 became so concerned about the controversial interrogation technique of waterboarding that he decided to experience it firsthand, sources told ABC News.

Daniel Levin, then acting assistant attorney general, went to a military base near Washington and underwent the procedure to inform his analysis of different interrogation techniques.

After the experience, Levin told White House officials that even though he knew he wouldn't die, he found the experience terrifying and thought that it clearly simulated drowning.

Levin, who refused to comment for this story, concluded waterboarding could be illegal torture unless performed in a highly limited way and with close supervision. And, sources told ABC News, he believed the Bush Administration had failed to offer clear guidelines for its use.

Bush Administration Blocked Critic

The administration at the time was reeling from an August 2002 memo by Jay Bybee, then the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, which laid out possible justifications for torture. In June 2004, Levin's predecessor at the office, Jack Goldsmith, officially withdrew the Bybee memo, finding it deeply flawed.

When Levin took over from Goldsmith, he went to work on a memo that would effectively replace the Bybee memo as the administration's legal position on torture. It was during this time that he underwent waterboarding.

In December 2004, Levin released the new memo. He said, "Torture is abhorrent" but he went on to say in a footnote that the memo was not declaring the administration's previous opinions illegal. The White House, with Alberto Gonzales as the White House counsel, insisted that this footnote be included in the memo.

But Levin never finished a second memo imposing tighter controls on the specific interrogation techniques. Sources said he was forced out of the Justice Department when Gonzales became attorney general.

Critics Decry Waterboarding as Torture

Critics say waterboarding should never be used.

According to retired Rear Adm. John Hutson, "There is no question this is torture -- this is a technique by which an individual is strapped to a board, elevated by his feet and either dunked into water or water poured over his face over a towel or a blanket."

The legal justification of waterboarding has come to the forefront in the debate swirling around Michael B. Mukasey's nomination for attorney general.

While Democrats are pressing him to declare waterboarding illegal, he has refused to do so. He calls it personally "repugnant," but he is unwilling to declare it illegal until he can see the classified information regarding the technique and its current use.

 

[oneofmany]

Police retain DNA of 'petty crime suspects'

Police retain DNA of 'petty crime suspects'​

Suspects accused of trivial "crimes" such as picking wild flowers or defacing coins can have their DNA stored for life on a national database, police guidelines reveal.

A report by police chiefs lists more than 5,000 offences that qualify for lifelong inclusion on the database. Anyone arrested for any of the crimes will have his or her DNA taken and stored, even if charges are later dropped or the suspect is acquitted in court.

The offences show up in employment-vetting checks for years after the event. Campaigners called the guidelines a step on the road to a "surveillance society" and said the inclusion of petty offences was accelerating the growth of the database, which already holds details on four million people.

The 210-page list of crimes, drawn up by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), includes such minor offences as "opening an incorrectly delivered packet", an offence under the 2000 Postal Services Act; "wantonly disturbing any inhabitant by any ringing doorbell", an offence under the 1847 Town Police Clauses Act, and picking wild flowers for sale, an offence under the 1968 Theft Act.

Police have categorised the crimes into three grades of severity. If an adult is convicted of a crime in the least-serious category, group C, it will show up in employment checks for the next 10 years. If the offender admits guilt and accepts a police caution, it will show up for five years. After that period, the only potential employers who will see it are those conducting "enhanced checks" on job-seekers applying to work with children.

It also remains visible to detectives during crime investigations until the individual's 100th birthday, when the record is finally deleted.

All the crimes on the list are classed as "recordable offences", in most cases because they can lead to prison.

A row broke out earlier this year after ministers proposed that the database – already the world's biggest – should be extended to include those accused of "non-recordable" offences, which include speeding and dropping litter.

Dr. Helen Wallace, of the pressure group Genewatch, said the ACPO list illustrated the "unnecessary" expansion of the database which, she said, "allows the Government to restrict rights on the basis of arrest, rather than of being convicted".

The records are kept for life so that they can be matched to DNA samples. Even suspects who turn out to have been wrongfully arrested normally stay on the database.

Nationwide, one in 15 people are included on it. Police say that keeping the details of those who have never been convicted of an offence has helped to solve serious crimes including rapes and murders.

 

[oneofmany]

Nearly 150,000 children on DNA database

Nearly 150,000 children on DNA database​

Figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats show 150,000 under-16s on the government's DNA database.

Some 150,000 young people under the age of 16 are on the national DNA database (NDNAD), according to statistics obtained by the Liberal Democrat party in a parliamentary question.

The number of children on the database varies by police force, the Liberal Democrats noted. Northamptonshire has 845 DNA profiles for those under the age of 16, while the West Midlands Police has over 10,000 such profiles and the Metropolitan Police in London has 16,000.

According to a Home Office spokeswoman, the DNA samples and finger prints are taken when anyone is arrested for a recordable offence and detained in a police station. She said that the retention of such evidence is "no different to recording other forms of information such as photographs and witness statements".

Last week, the Information Commissioner's Office called on four police forces to delete old conviction data from the separate Police National Computer, stirring debate on the issue.

Of the NDNAD, Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat shadow home secretary, said: "These figures underline the shocking extent to which this database has intruded, often without parental consent, into the lives of our children... Thousands of these children will have been found guilty of no crime, yet samples of their DNA will remain on file for life."

He called on the government to find a more balanced approach to adding DNA to the database. "The disturbing and illiberal policy of adding a child's most personal information to a massive government computer system, simply on the grounds of an accusation, must stop immediately," Clegg said. "The government has to come up with a proportionate and sensible way of using this technology, not the unfair scattergun approach that currently prevails."

The Home Office spokeswoman said people under the age of 18 make up a quarter of all arrests, so a comparable number on the NDNAD is expected. "Many offences including burglaries, robberies, criminal damage and drugs offences are committed by under 18s, causing great distress to their victims. Some young people commit very serious offences," the spokeswoman said in a statement. "It is crucially important that the police have access to DNA intelligence in order to ensure that young persons who commit such crimes are detected as soon as possible - for the sake of their victims and in order to prevent further such crimes."

In her answer to the question tabled in parliament, Meg Hillier, the Home Office's parliamentary under secretary for identity, noted that 13.7 per cent of profiles on the NDNAD are replicated - repetitions of the same information for the same person under a variation of their name. Because of this, the actual number of individuals with information on the database is generally 13.7 per cent lower than the number of profiles which exist.

 

[oneofmany]

Just 25% of Irish voters support EU Reform Treaty

Just 25% of Irish voters support EU Reform Treaty​

Irish support for the EU Reform Treaty is lower than that for the failed EU Constitution, according to a new opinion poll published this morning.

Twenty-five per cent of respondents to the Irish Times poll said they would vote yes to the proposed new treaty, with 13% saying they would vote no and 62% undecided.

The Reform Treaty contains most of the changes that were included in the EU Constitution, which had to be abandoned after it was rejected by French and Dutch voters.

In a poll last March, 46% of respondents said they would vote in favour of the constitution and 12% said they would vote against.

 

[oneofmany]

15,000 want off the U.S. terror watch list

John William Anderson, who was born on July 4, 2001, is on TSA's watch list. He was first stopped in 2004 when his mother and grandmother took him on his first plane ride to Disney World.​

15,000 want off the U.S. terror watch list​

WASHINGTON — More than 15,000 people have appealed to the government since February to have their names removed from the terrorist watch list that delayed their travel at U.S. airports and border crossings, the Homeland Security Department says.

The complaints have created such a backlog that members of Congress are calling for a speedier appeal system that would help innocent people clear their names so they won't fall under future suspicion. Among those who have been flagged at checkpoints: toddlers and senior citizens with the same names as suspected terrorists on the watch list.

"To leave individuals in this purgatory is un-American," says Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., who says she'll introduce legislation to try to streamline the process.

The Homeland Security Department says it gets about 2,000 requests a month from people who want to have their names cleared. That number is so high that the department has been unable to meet its goal of resolving cases in 30 days, says Christopher White, spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, which handles the appeals. He says the TSA takes about 44 days to process a complaint.

In February, the TSA launched the Traveler Redress Inquiry Program, a one-stop shop for people to appeal links to the watch list, which flags anyone with potential ties to terrorism. The list has more than 750,000 names.

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., says he will grill officials at a hearing on Thursday. "Given the widespread use of the terrorist watch list, the redress process is of paramount importance," he says.

John Anderson of Minneapolis, who turned 6 on July 4, is among those who have been inconvenienced.

He was first stopped at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in 2004, when his family took him for his first airplane ride to Disney World. "We checked in at the ticket counter, and the woman said in a stern voice, 'Who is John Anderson?' " says his mother, Christine Anderson. "I pointed to my stroller."

Her son is allowed to fly. But because his name is flagged, his family cannot print out a boarding pass for him online and he must check in at the ticket counter so an airline official can see that he's a child.

Christine Anderson says she has tried repeatedly to get her child's name cleared, but she can't find the right forms on the TSA website and none have come in the mail after officials promised to send them. "No one can give any answers to why my son is on the list or really how to get him off," she says.

White says many names will be cleared when the government begins requiring air travelers to provide their birth date. The government won't start collecting that information until next year, he says.

 

[African Herbsman]

Re: 15,000 want off the U.S. terror watch list

Excellent thread

 

[oneofmany]

Facebook staff spy on punters

Facebook staff spy on punters​

ALTHOUGH the social networking site, Facebook makes a great deal about protecting its punters' privacy, its own staff flout the rules as a perk of the job.

According to online gossip magazine, ValleyWag, Facebook employees check out people they fancy and look at which profiles they have viewed.

In other words Facebook knows if you are obsessed with a workmate or classmate. They could be leaking some juicy gossip to the tabloids about the stars who have an account.

ValleyWag says that it is considered a job perk.

Facebook's privacy policy doesn't say anything about its employees' right to check out your profile for any reason. However a couple of people have been contacted by Facebook staff who wondered why they were looking at their profile.

ValleyWag said it has no idea what else employees can see. They could be looking at your messages, private gifts or anything.

 

[oneofmany]

High court to look at ban on handguns

High court to look at ban on handguns​

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will discuss gun control today in a private conference that soon could explode publicly.

Behind closed doors, the nine justices will consider taking a case that challenges the District of Columbia's stringent handgun ban. Their ultimate decision will shape how far other cities and states can go with their own gun restrictions.

"If the court decides to take this up, it's very likely it will end up being the most important Second Amendment case in history," said Dennis Henigan, the legal director for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Henigan predicted "it's more likely than not" that the necessary four justices will vote to consider the case. The court will announce its decision Tuesday, and oral arguments could be heard next year.

Lawyers are swarming.

Texas, Florida and 11 other states weighed in on behalf of gun owners who are challenging D.C.'s strict gun laws. New York and three other states want the gun restrictions upheld. Pediatricians filed a brief supporting the ban. A Northern California gun dealer, Russell Nordyke, filed a brief opposing it.

From a victim's view

Tom Palmer considers the case a matter of life and death.
Palmer turns 51 this month. He's an openly gay scholar in international relations at the Cato Institute, a libertarian research center, and holds a Ph.D. from Oxford University. He thinks that a handgun saved him years ago in San Jose, Calif., when a gang threatened him.

"A group of young men started yelling at us, 'we're going to kill you' (and) 'they'll never find your bodies,' " Palmer said in a March 2003 declaration. "Fortunately, I was able to pull my handgun out of my backpack, and our assailants backed off."

He and five other plaintiffs named in the original lawsuit challenged Washington's ban on possessing handguns. The District of Columbia permits possession of other firearms, if they're disassembled or stored with trigger locks.

Their broader challenge is to the fundamental meaning of the Second Amendment. Here, commas, clauses and history all matter.

The Second Amendment says, "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Gun-control advocates say this means that the government can limit firearms ownership as part of its power to regulate the militia. Gun ownership is cast as a collective right, with the government organizing armed citizens to protect homeland security.

"The Second Amendment permits reasonable regulation of firearms to protect public safety and does not guarantee individuals the absolute right to own the weapons of their choice," New York and the three other states declared in an amicus brief.

Gun-control critics contend that the well-regulated militia is beside the point, and say the Constitution protects an individual's right to possess guns.

Clashing decisions

Last March, a divided appellate court panel sided with the individual-rights interpretation and threw out the D.C. ban.
The ruling clashed with other appellate courts, creating the kind of appellate-circuit split that the Supreme Court likes to resolve. The ruling obviously stung D.C. officials, but it perplexed gun-control advocates.

If D.C. officials tried to salvage their gun-control law by appealing to the Supreme Court — as they then did — they could give the court's conservative majority a chance to undermine gun-control laws nationwide.

 

[oneofmany]

'I feared I'd end up dead in the woods like Dr Kelly,' says biological warfare expert

'Mysterious': The hearse which Jill Dekker followed and photographed​

​

'I feared I'd end up dead in the woods like Dr Kelly,' says biological warfare expert who criticised Britain and U.S.​

An EU expert on biological warfare has told how she fears ending up 'dead in the woods' like scientist Dr David Kelly after an alleged campaign of intimidation by members of MI6 and the CIA.

Jill Dekker, a bio-defence expert based in Brussels, has reported a string of sinister incidents – including the parking of a hearse outside her house – after making a speech critical of British and American policy in the Middle East.

Her claims are included in a new book by Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker which argues that Dr Kelly was murdered to silence his criticism of the grounds for going to war in Iraq.

American-born Dr Dekker has been billed at security conferences as the director of the 'public health preparedness programme' at the European Homeland Security Association (EHSA), a security think tank.

She was placed under the protection of the Belgian government after reporting a series of sinister incidents earlier this year.

The Belgians confirm that they mounted a three-month protection operation earlier this year for Dr Dekker, who has advised the European Commission on bio-terrorism issues, but refuse to be drawn on the extent to which her fears were wellfounded or why the protection was eventually lifted.

The EHSA bears many of the hallmarks of a 'front' organisation for espionage activities, although Dr Dekker refuses to say anything about it except that it answers to the French government.

Established in 2004, it holds workshops and conferences, and claims partnerships with a number of security-based thinktanks around the world.

It appears to exist only in cyberspace, with its staff, including its president, French career diplomat Richard Narich, only contactable by email. Dr Dekker is not listed on the EHSA website and the organisation was yesterday not responding to any calls.

Dr Dekker says the 'intimidation' against her started in March, as she was flying to Florida to give a speech on Syria's weapons programme to an intelligence summit. She says she was subjected to a 'heavy-handed' interrogation by a man she suspects of being a British intelligence operative.

She believes the speech made her powerful enemies because she argued that billions of dollars spent by the US government to develop a smallpox vaccine has been wasted because scientists – including British experts – have used a different viral strain to the one she believes is being developed in Damascus.

If this is true, it means governments would have no way of protecting the public against the use of the virus by terrorists or rogue states.

She also believes that Iraq did have a biological weapons capacity which was all shipped to Syria before the outbreak of war.

She argues this was known, but was concealed from the public because the real purpose of the war was not to target weapons of mass destruction but to topple Saddam Hussein and gain a strategic foothold in the region.

When she returned to her home in Belgium after the speech she said she was subjected to an overt campaign of surveillance and harassment, including being continuously followed on foot and having cars parked outside her house with the headlights on.

On one occasion, she says she found a hearse parked outside her house with the drivers 'staring straight ahead.' When she approached, it sped off and she pursued it, taking photographs as evidence.

After being told that Mr Baker was writing a book about the circumstances surrounding Dr Kelly's death, she sent him an email on March 23 designed, she says, to highlight the risk she felt she was under.

'I've informed all my diplomatic friends that not only am I not suicidal, I am looking forward to my children growing up and . . . also my great career,' she wrote. 'Much like other people who suddenly were found dead in woods.'

A week later, she wrote: 'The US State Department and their surrogates... continue to intimidate me and my family – every day they are outside my home, they tail me 24/7 – I believe they could try to kill me so I don't reveal any more of my research on Syrian biological weapons.'

In a third email in April, she wrote: 'I refuse to be intimidated by anyone who uses the tactics they used – so unprofessional even people inside can't believe how they have acted here – it's like Johnny English [the 2003 spoof spy film starring Rowan Atkinson as an incompetent British agent], really so amateurish. Our services just aren't what they used to be.'

It is difficult to establish whether there is any truth to Dr Dekker's claims of harassment, as she refuses to disclose the precise location of her home 90 minutes drive from Brussels for 'security reasons'.

She says the Belgian government extended its protection to her three months ago by making her a Belgian citizen, and is investigating her claims through its public prosecutor's office. The Government confirms that she is now a Belgian national.

Dr Dekker has given a detailed account to The Mail on Sunday of the alleged campaign of intimidation, which she believes was led by American and British intelligence.

She tells how she was subjected to an 'amateurish' interrogation by the British man on the plane to Florida.

'The plane was absolutely packed, and there was just one seat next to me that was empty. The plane was held up to let the final passenger on board,' she said.

'He then started asking me questions regarding my occupation, quite sensitive things about Nato and the like, to the point that I turned and said to him, 'OK, go down the list'.

'He then backed off but continued throughout the flight to be intrusive. He had this whole cover story about why he lived in Holland, right down to financial documents he showed me.

He asked me right out of the blue about Isotopes – now there's a word you don't hear everyday on a transatlantic flight.'

When she returned to Belgium after the conference she says was followed relentlessly on foot and by car, and had vehicles parked outside her house – often with darkened windows and their headlights fullon in broad daylight.

Of her encounter with the mystery 'hearse', she said: 'No one in our neighbourhood had died and the agents sitting in the front wouldn't make any eye contact, just stared straight ahead.

'I was pretty ticked off so I decided to pull my car out and follow them. They took off so fast – they must have been driving at around 100 kph through the countryside. Then they followed me the next day with this hearse with Belgian plates all the way home.'

She says that after 'making a few calls', she was placed under the protection of the local police. The 'campaign' then stopped, having lasted just over a month.

'It was unbelievable to me that I had to ask another government for protection against my own,' she said. She kept a daily 'harassment' diary, which she has handed to the Belgian authorities.

Dr Dekker, who says she met David Kelly before the Iraq war at Wilton Park, a countryside conference centre used by the Foreign Office, agrees with Mr Baker's conclusion that he was murdered.

Dr Kelly, the UK's leading weapons inspector in Iraq, was found dead in woods close to his Oxfordshire home in 2003, after apparently committing suicide.

He had been highly critical of the intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq, and in particular the infamous assertion that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction which he could deploy at 45 minutes notice.

Speculation about potential culprits who might have had a motive to silence him has ranged from 'special ops' units of the intelligence services to expatriate Iraqi opponents of Saddam.

Mr Baker writes in his book The Strange Death of David Kelly, which is published tomorrow: 'I have met Dr Dekker on two occasions and had a number of long exchanges with her. She does not strike me as the sort either who would frighten easily, or who would ginger up her story for effect.

'Rather, she is a somewhat hardnosed, intelligent and knowledgeable woman who has succeeded well in a profession where men predominate. I therefore took it seriously when she emailed me.'

Dr Dekker emerged from the shadows of what she says has been a 20-year career as a scientist in 2005, when internet records show that she was a 'bio-defence consultant' for the Brussels-based thinktank New Defence Agenda.

The organisation, which bills itself as 'platform for discussing Nato and EU defence and security issues', names former Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten and former Nato secretary general Lord Robertson among its patrons.

But critics have called it the arms industry's 'weapon of mass disinformation' because of the partnerships it has established with companies such as BAe Systems, Lockheed Martin and Thales.

The International Intelligence Summit, which she addressed in Florida, described itself as 'a nonpartisan, non-profit, neutral forum that uses private charitable funds to bring together intelligence agencies of the free world and the emerging democracies ... the purpose of The Summit is to provide an opportunity for the international intelligence community to listen to and learn from each other, and to share ideas in the common war against terrorism.'

The publicity for the conference said: 'The list of presenters will include many of the top leaders of the intelligence, espionage, counterterrorism and counter-intelligence agencies from around the free world. The Summit is intended to be the most prestigious world conference on international studies, intelligence policy, terrorism, and homeland security.'

The Summit flagged up Dr Dekker by saying she 'regularly consults with Ministries of Public Health, Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Ministries of Defence on issues related to Mid-East state bio-warfare programmes'.

It added that she 'has advised the European Commission on bio-terterrorism and stockpiling for Category A bio-warfare agent countermeasures; resulting in (COM (2004) 701 Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament Preparedness and consequence management in the fight against terrorism'.

Asked if she knew anyone who could back up her claims of intimidation, she referred us to one of her friends, who spent 20 years as a CIA officer and now works as a consultant.

He said: "She told me what happened, and I believe it. What she described is known as heavy harassing surveillance, with the purpose of intimidating."

Dave Thomas, the local police inspector who was entrusted with Dr Dekker's protection, said he had done so on the orders of the Belgian ministry of the interior.

Speaking in accented English almost as good as his distinctly un- Belgian name would suggest, he said: "It is true that we were told to look after her. They said she was an important person who felt under threat."

But he did not go into details into what action his force had taken.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry said the order had come from the country's Crisis Centre, Belgium's emergency planning department.

He said: "Jill Dekker specialises in bioterrorism. She reported to us that she felt she was being threatened by foreign intelligence services, and we received an instruction from the Crisis Centre on March 21 that she should be protected. The protection was withdrawn on July 7."

Last night, Mr Baker said he believed Dr Dekker could have made enemies by exposing a fallacy at the heart of military action against Iraq.

"If the war was really about WMD, then to be consistent we should also invade Syria," he said.

"Otherwise, it suggests that it was more about giving Saddam a bloody nose."

 

[oneofmany]

Tony Blair could enter EU presidency race

Tony Blair could enter EU presidency race​

Tony Blair hinted on Friday that he might become president of the European Union.

Taking questions following a speech at the National University of Singapore, Mr Blair was asked whether, when he next visits the city state, he might do so as European president.

"In relation to [the] question about the presidency of the European Union we will move swiftly on," he joked. "It's a pity, but that's the way it is. A shortage of time you know!" He then spoke for another five minutes about the Middle East peace process and "the challenges of global leadership".

French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently suggested that the job of EU president - a key element of the planned constitution - would be a "smart move" for Mr Blair.

Diplomatic and political convention means that no one has formally declared themselves for the EU presidency, a plum, high-profile international job which looks set to be in place for June 2009.

But jockeying for position has begun. Other candidates include the former Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski, the Irish leader Bertie Ahern and the Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Mr Blair arrived in Singapore on Thursday from China, where he was accused of "gold digging" and "money sucking" by the local media after charging £200,000 for a single address. It is thought that he might have earned as much as £1 million from several speeches given during his Asia tour.

However, the Dean of the Singapore university faculty Prof Kishore Mahbubani said that Mr Blair was not paid for yesterday's speech.

In a country where protesting is illegal and the ruling party holds 97 per cent of the seats in parliament, several people said they were impressed by Mr Blair's open manner. "He actually answers questions," said one.

 

[oneofmany]

Seagate hard drives turn into spy machines

Seagate hard drives turn into spy machines​

SEAGATE hard-drives, made in Thailand, are having trojan horse software pre-loaded, possibly in a spy effort by the Chinese government.

The Taiwanese Investigation Bureau claims that the Maxtor Basics 500G discs, which are used by government agencies, have been found to contain Trojan horse viruses that automatically upload to Beijing websites.

So far more than 1,800 of the portable Maxtor hard discs, carried two Trojan horse viruses: autorun.inf and ghost.pif.

The sites that the hard-drives call up and upload their data to are www.nice8.org and www.we168.org.

The attack is unusual, which leads the TIB to think that the Chinese government is involved.

Recently, the Chinese government has run an aggressive interweb spying programme in Taiwan.

The bureau has ordered the product's Taiwanese distributor, Xander International, to take the hard-drives from the shelves.

Xander told the Chinese-language Liberty Times that the company had sold 1,800 tainted discs to stores last month.

Seagate's Asian Pacific branch said it was investigating.

 

[oneofmany]

Talk of Worst Recession Since the 1930s

Talk of Worst Recession Since the 1930s​

After what Los Angeles money manager Arnold Silver called "a brutal three days," the question is: What now for the market?

A Wall Street superstar this year who runs Balestra Capital Partners, Jim Melcher, says he's "worried about a recession. Not a normal one, but a very bad one. The worst since the 1930s. I expect we'll see clear signs of it in six months with a dramatic slowdown in the gross domestic product."

Balestra Capital, a $350 million New York hedge fund, was up 3% for the past three market sessions, when the Dow Jones Industrials, spearheaded by widespread declines in financial stocks and fears of more billion-dollar-plus asset write-downs, tumbled more than 677 points, or about 4.5%. The Nasdaq fared worse, skidding about 7%, triggered by across-the-board declines in those fast-stepping technology stocks.

Balestra has increased in value by 175% so far this year, Mr. Melcher tells me. A 9-year-old fund, it has posted compounded annual growth of about 30% since its inception.

Mr. Melcher, a market bear, had some pretty discouraging words. "What I think is not good for the country, but good for me." he says. His basic advice to the country's roughly 80 million stock players: Run for the hills — the worst is far from over. An investor's stock portfolio now, he believes, should be only about half of what it might normally be.

With the housing market in a state of collapse — and he says he believes it is far from over — Mr. Melcher argues that average homeowners will not be able to withstand the kind of recession he sees, given the added burdens of rising energy and food costs, and continued deterioration in the credit markets.

Noting that consumption is already slowing, Mr. Melcher figures sharply rising unemployment is inevitable. Another of his worries is that central banks around the globe, America's included, are debasing their currencies, which is setting the stage for a new round of higher inflation. Our bear figures the next six to 12 months will be awful for investors as the market goes down "pretty substantially." His frightening outlook calls for an additional 20% to 30% decline from current levels. A drop of that magnitude would put the Dow down in a range of roughly 9,100 to 10,400.

Asked how he could conceivably give credibility to such an ominous forecast, Mr. Melcher observes: "I've never seen a market with more risk and what's significant is that risk is not yet priced in."

Given his grim expectations, he says there is no equity market in the world he would play right now. "When the American market goes down, other equity markets around the world should follow," he says.

As of now, his portfolio is pretty much devoid of stocks, save for an exchange-traded fund focused on leading companies in oil services, which he regards as an ongoing growth industry. The ETF, the Oil Services Holders Trust, trades on the American Stock Exchange under the symbol OIH. Although enthusiastic about the industry's growth prospects, Mr. Melcher says he would be reluctant to recommend oil services stock because he believes the price of oil could easily drop 50% in the recession he envisions.

Another danger he sees for the market is the prospect of huge withdrawals of funds from America by foreign investors due to the falling dollar, the credit crisis, and a slowing economy.

At the moment, Mr. Melcher's chief investment strategy is shorting stocks and certain bonds, notably mortgage-backed and junk bonds, through the use of derivatives, put options, and credit default swaps. He is also short ABEX, an index of residential mortgage-backed securities.

His short strategy is largely responsible for his super performance this year, as are his holdings in gold. The fact he's sticking to this strategy is evidence that he firmly believes the chaos in the financial markets is far from over. Mr. Melcher is also gung-ho on several currencies, particularly the Swiss franc and the Japanese yen.

The average investor, he believes, should seek to protect his assets by raising cash, putting money to work in short-term treasuries, and buying some gold (notably through StreetTRACKS Gold Trust, an ETF that tracks the price of the precious metal and trades on the Big Board under the symbol GLD).

Is the world coming to an end? I asked our bear. "I don't think so," he replied, "but as I mentioned, the ingredients are in place for the worst kind of a recession, which means it's the wrong time to own stocks."

 

[GreedySmurf]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Intel Official: Expect Less Privacy
By Pamela Hess
The Associated Press[/FONT][/FONT] [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Sunday 11 November 2007[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Washington - As Congress debates new rules for government eavesdropping, a top intelligence official says it is time that people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Kerr's comments come as Congress is taking a second look at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Lawmakers hastily changed the 1978 law last summer to allow the government to eavesdrop inside the United States without court permission, so long as one end of the conversation was reasonably believed to be located outside the U.S.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] The original law required a court order for any surveillance conducted on U.S. soil, to protect Americans' privacy. The White House argued that the law was obstructing intelligence gathering because, as technology has changed, a growing amount of foreign communications passes through U.S.-based channels.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] The most contentious issue in the new legislation is whether to shield telecommunications companies from civil lawsuits for allegedly giving the government access to people's private e-mails and phone calls without a FISA court order between 2001 and 2007.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Some lawmakers, including members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, appear reluctant to grant immunity. Suits might be the only way to determine how far the government has burrowed into people's privacy without court permission.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] The committee is expected to decide this week whether its version of the bill will protect telecommunications companies. About 40 wiretapping suits are pending.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] The central witness in a California lawsuit against AT&T says the government is vacuuming up billions of e-mails and phone calls as they pass through an AT&T switching station in San Francisco.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Mark Klein, a retired AT&T technician, helped connect a device in 2003 that he says diverted and copied onto a government supercomputer every call, e-mail, and Internet site access on AT&T lines.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed the class-action suit, claims there are as many as 20 such sites in the U.S.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] The White House has promised to veto any bill that does not grant immunity from suits such as this one.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Congressional leaders hope to finish the bill by Thanksgiving. It would replace the FISA update enacted in August that privacy groups and civil libertarians say allows the government to read Americans' e-mails and listen to their phone calls without court oversight.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Kerr said at an October intelligence conference in San Antonio that he finds concerns that the government may be listening in odd when people are "perfectly willing for a green-card holder at an (Internet service provider) who may or may have not have been an illegal entrant to the United States to handle their data."[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] He noted that government employees face up to five years in prison and $100,000 in fines if convicted of misusing private information.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Millions of people in this country - particularly young people - already have surrendered anonymity to social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, and to Internet commerce. These sites reveal to the public, government and corporations what was once closely guarded information, like personal statistics and credit card numbers.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] "Those two generations younger than we are have a very different idea of what is essential privacy, what they would wish to protect about their lives and affairs. And so, it's not for us to inflict one size fits all," said Kerr, 68. "Protecting anonymity isn't a fight that can be won. Anyone that's typed in their name on Google understands that."[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] "Our job now is to engage in a productive debate, which focuses on privacy as a component of appropriate levels of security and public safety," Kerr said. "I think all of us have to really take stock of what we already are willing to give up, in terms of anonymity, but (also) what safeguards we want in place to be sure that giving that doesn't empty our bank account or do something equally bad elsewhere."[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group that defends online free speech, privacy and intellectual property rights, said Kerr's argument ignores both privacy laws and American history.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] "Anonymity has been important since the Federalist Papers were written under pseudonyms," Opsahl said. "The government has tremendous power: the police power, the ability to arrest, to detain, to take away rights. Tying together that someone has spoken out on an issue with their identity is a far more dangerous thing if it is the government that is trying to tie it together."[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Opsahl also said Kerr ignores the distinction between sacrificing protection from an intrusive government and voluntarily disclosing information in exchange for a service.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] "There is something fundamentally different from the government having information about you than private parties," he said. "We shouldn't have to give people the choice between taking advantage of modern communication tools and sacrificing their privacy."[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] "It's just another 'trust us, we're the government,'" he said.[/FONT][/FONT]

 

[oneofmany]

Local news station confirms barium in chemtrails

Local news station confirms barium in chemtrails​

 

[oneofmany]

Sign Of Times: NJ School Cameras Fed Live To Cops

Sign Of Times: NJ School Cameras Fed Live To Cops​

DEMAREST, N.J. (CBS) - Surveillance cameras rolling inside our local schools is nothing new, but what's taking place inside Demarest's public schools is truly cutting edge: a live feed from more than two dozen cameras with a direct connection to the police.

It's an expensive, but effective tool that could be a sign of the times with an increase in school shootings over the years.

The system, which cost about $28,000, can even track movement in a crowded room.

"When they arrive, they can pull up the school's live feed and do a sweep instantly," Demarest Police Chief James Powderley tells CBS 2.

Patrolling officers have access to the video feed from headquarters and several laptops. To address privacy concerns, all of the cameras are installed in public areas and are not equipped to pick up audio.

The video capabilities are extremely impressive. Each of the laptops can pick up 16 different angles at one time, turning a single operator into a mobile surveillance team.

In an emergency situation, Powderley says the cameras -- complete with zoom and pan functions -- also cut down search and response times. "One officer has 17 eyes in multiple locations. It's amazing," he says.

Schools Superintendent Larry Hughes says if nothing else, the ability to digitally timestamp and archive the video should discourage bad, even criminal behavior.

"It doesn't hurt that people know and that if something is going to take place at your facility, if it does deter people from doing that, it's an added benefit," says Hughes.

Students seem pleased with the high-tech devices.

"I would want the police to be there right away if something happened to our school. Especially with all these bomb scares happening now, I know the high school had a couple," says one student.

Plans are already underway to install a more advanced system in Northern Valley High school, which can alert a patrolling officer when someone is in distress or suddenly falls down.

 

[oneofmany]

Fastest rise in food prices for 14 years

After a decade of low prices in supermarkets, vegetables, milk, bread and meat are all expected to show substantial rises.​

Fastest rise in food prices for 14 years​

Food prices are increasing at their highest rate for more than a decade, official figures showed yesterday.

Increased wheat, dairy, meat and vegetable prices mean food factories are having to pay six per cent more for their raw ingredients than a year ago - the highest annual rate since 1993, said the Office of National Statistics (ONS).

The surging costs will be passed on to consumers, who are experiencing the highest food bills for years and could end up paying almost £1,000 extra on their annual food bill than a year ago.

Families are already struggling to cope with the effects of the credit crunch. Petrol prices exceed £1 for a litre of unleaded fuel, while mortgage payments and credit card fees are also rising.

Now the price of groceries is increasing as weekly staples shoot up in price in supermarkets. The cost of a pint of milk has reached an all-time high of 33½p and sliced bread costs a record £1.20 in big stores, a far cry from the 9p loaf that was available 15 years ago.

The company that makes Hovis said yesterday that it was raising prices by a further 4p a loaf, on top of the 12p by which they had risen in recent months, as it attempts to recover soaring wheat costs.

Last week it emerged that the first ever £100 Christmas turkey had gone on sale.

A survey by the website mysupermarket.com, which compares prices across online supermarket chains, found that the three biggest - Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury's - are charging their shoppers 12 per cent more on average for a basket of 25 staple goods compared with last year.

This is despite high-profile price cutting campaigns.

That equates to an annual increase for most families of about £750, but is expected to climb further as world fuel prices cause inflation up again. A barrel of oil came close to $100 on the markets last week

Andrew Saunders, a leading food analyst at the City firm Panmure Gordon, said: "I've never seen food inflation like it. What we're seeing is pretty much all the manufacturing cost increases being off-loaded straight to the retailers, who in turn are passing it immediately on to the consumer. Shoppers are picking up the tab right across the board."

Today, consumer inflation figures from the ONS are expected to show that grocery prices are rising, confirming economists' warnings that the era of cheap food is at an end.

After a decade of very low prices for most products in supermarkets, vegetables, milk, bread and meat are all expected to show substantial rises.

Prices on the global commodity markets have been in turmoil for 18 months as a series of poor harvests - especially in Australia - has led to lower supplies of wheat.

This has been combined with surging demand from India and China.

The combination of falling supply and rising demand has led to soaring grain prices, which in turn increases the cost of meat and dairy products as farmers seek to recoup the money they have had to pay for more expensive feed.

Butter prices in Britain rose by 18 per cent last month, while milk leapt by 12 per cent as dairy farmers were finally able to pass on some of their crippling costs to consumers.

Vicky Redwood, of Capital Economics, said: "Consumers have been surprisingly accepting of price increases, which suggests retailers will continue to push manufacturers' prices through."

In recent months food inflation has calmed a little, but the soaring cost of fuel is expected to stoke prices again.

Many basic foods are more influenced by the cost of oil than the actual ingredients. Wheat, for instance, makes up only about 7p of the cost of a loaf. This is completely outweighed by its baking, packaging and distribution costs, all of which are determined by the price of fuel.

Mr Saunders said: "There is only one way prices are going - and that's up. Higher food prices are here to stay for some time."

The surging costs have prompted Gordon Brown to launch a wide-ranging investigation into the security of the nation's food supply, asking the Cabinet Office's strategy unit to examine how weather patterns are affecting global crops.

The higher weekly food bill is affecting families at the same time as rising council taxes and mortgage rates that have moved to a nine-year high.

Various staples have been subjected to higher prices over the past 12 months.

A kilo of peas has gone up from £1.19 to £1.79 at Tesco, a dozen eggs at Sainsbury's has leapt from £1.62 to £2.35, while Asda has increased the price of its orange juice from 73p a litre to 88p.

 

[oneofmany]

Employees suing over bathroom surveillance

Employees suing over bathroom surveillance​

LOUISVILLE, Ky., Nov. 14 (UPI) -- Kroger Co. is being sued by its employees for allegedly putting the bathroom of one of its U.S. grocery distribution centers under hidden video surveillance.

A total of 138 current and former employees in Kentucky and Indiana allege in their lawsuit filed in Jefferson (Ky.) Circuit Court, that using hidden video equipment at the Kroger distribution center in Louisville violated their privacy and harmed them, The (Louisville) Courier-Journal said Wednesday.

The supermarket chain employees allege the surveillance equipment was placed in the men's restroom without their knowledge and that they didn't discover the camera until Nov. 11, 2006.

No reason was given for the camera's alleged presence in the men's bathroom.

They are seeking compensatory and punitive damages from the company and co-defendants, center manager Oscar Fussenegger and Zenith Logistics. They asked for an immediate jury trial.

Zenith Logistics is one of the companies that runs the Louisville center for Kroger Co.

Kroger spokesman Tim McGurk would only say that the employees' lawsuit was "without merit," the newspaper reported.