Arrests during Gitmo protest inside courthouse

They had federal judge's permission — until they waved signs

The Associated Press
Updated: 3:24 p.m. ET Jan 11, 2007

WASHINGTON - Cindy Sheehan and other peace activists marched to the Cuban military zone wrapping around the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay on Thursday, demanding the United States close its prison for terror suspects five years after the first detainees arrived.

A dozen protesters walked along a lonely highway connecting the Cuban city of Guantanamo to the military zone. The women in the group tied pink and yellow flowers to the barbed-wire fence marking the start of the zone, a Cuban minefield with 4½-mile road leading to the entrance of the U.S. base. The protesters were not allowed past the fence.

“What I’ve read happens in this prison makes me sick to my stomach,” said Sheehan, who became an anti-war activist after her 24-year-old son Casey died in Iraq. “I’m calling for the cycle of violence to stop now, to close this prison.”

Also among the marchers was Asif Iqbal, a British Muslim who spent 2½ years at the prison. He expressed support for those still inside.

“Every day, every minute, they are in our thoughts,” the 25-year-old said. “These are human beings, they have some right to justice, too.”

Abuse allegations fuel outrage
The U.S. military is holding about 395 men on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban, including about 85 who have been cleared to be released or transferred to other countries. The military says it wants to charge 60 to 80 detainees and bring them to trial.

Critics say the camp, where most of the prisoners face indefinite incarceration, is an affront to democratic values. Allegations of abuse have fueled worldwide outrage.

The military says the detention center is vital to the fight against terrorism and that instances of abuse have been investigated and the perpetrators disciplined. The detention camp commander, Adm. Harry B. Harris, says aggressive interrogation tactics are no longer used.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on the United States to close the prison, echoing an appeal made last year by his predecessor, Kofi Annan.

“I understand that today is the fifth anniversary of Guantanamo’s prison,” Ban said a news conference. “Like my predecessor, I believe that prison at Guantanamo should be closed.”

Demonstrations in several cities around the world marked the fifth anniversary of the arrival of the first detainees at Guantanamo.

In Washington, about 100 protesters were arrested inside a federal courthouse. The group — which had a permit for a demonstration outside the courthouse — sang and chanted as they were led away.

About 100 people protested outside the U.S. Embassy in London, wearing orange inmate outfits. Three “guards” wearing green camouflage shouted orders for them to stand up or kneel down. Similar demonstrations took place in Greece, Hungary and Italy.

Woman travels from Mideast for protest
U.S. Army Col. Lora Tucker, a spokeswoman for the detention center, said the military had no plans to acknowledge the Cuban protest Thursday or increase security at the gate, which is located at a distance from the prison camp on the other side of a hill.

“Nothing changes for us based on a demonstration being held somewhere in Cuba,” she said, adding that Thursday was “a normal work day” at the naval base.

Zohra Zewawi, the mother of British detainee Omar Deghayes, traveled from the United Arab Emirates with another son, Taher Deghayes, to join the protest. She says her son had been tortured and blinded in one eye since he was imprisoned in September 2002 and still has not been charged.

Taher Deghayes carried a large color photograph of Omar that said “justice for my brother.” One American protester wore an orange jumpsuit and a black hood.

Adele Welty, whose firefighter son, Timothy, was killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said she empathized with the prisoners’ mothers. She called on Americans to urge Congress to demand “an end to the unjust incarceration of your fellow human beings.”
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16580352/

Technology giving police more power to spy on us

azstarnet

Tucson police have a new law-enforcement tool: a car-mounted license-plate scanner. Similar to a radar gun, it reads the license plates of moving or parked cars — 250 or more per hour — and links with remote police databases, immediately providing information about the car and owner.

On the face of it, this is nothing new. Police have always been able to run a license plate. The difference is they would do it manually, and that limited its use. It simply wasn't feasible for police to run the plates of every car in a parking garage or every car that passed through an intersection. What's different isn't the police tactic, but the efficiency of the process.

Technology is fundamentally changing the nature of surveillance. Years ago, surveillance meant trench-coated detectives following people down streets. It was laborious and expensive and was used only when there was reasonable suspicion of a crime. Modern surveillance is the policeman with a license-plate scanner, or even a remote license-plate scanner mounted on a traffic light and a policeman sitting at a computer in the station.

It's the same, but it's completely different. It's wholesale surveillance. And it disrupts the balance between the powers of the police and the rights of the people.
Wholesale surveillance is fast becoming the norm. Automatic toll-collection systems record when individual cars pass through toll booths. We can all be tracked by our cell phones. Our purchases are tracked by banks and credit-card companies, our telephone calls by phone companies, our Internet surfing habits by Web site operators.

The effects of wholesale surveillance on privacy and civil liberties are profound; but, unfortunately, the debate often gets mischaracterized as a question about how much privacy we need to give up in order to be secure. This is wrong. It's obvious that we are all safer when the police can use all techniques at their disposal. What we need are corresponding mechanisms to prevent abuse and that don't place an unreasonable burden on the innocent.

Throughout our nation's history, we have maintained a balance between the necessary interests of the police and the civil rights of the people.

The search-warrant process, as prescribed in the Fourth Amendment, is such a balancing method. So is the minimization requirement for telephone eavesdropping: The police must stop listening to a phone line if the suspect under investigation is not talking.

For license-plate scanners, one obvious protection is to require the police to erase data collected on innocent car owners immediately and not save it. The police have no legitimate need to collect data on everyone's driving habits. Another is to allow car owners access to the information about them used in these automated searches and to allow them to challenge inaccuracies.

We need to go further. Criminal penalties are severe in order to create a deterrent, because it is hard to catch wrongdoers. As they become easier to catch, a realignment is necessary. When the police can automate the detection of a wrongdoing, perhaps there should no longer be any criminal penalty attached. For example, both red-light cameras and speed-trap cameras should issue citations without any "points" assessed against the driver.

Wholesale surveillance is not simply a more efficient way for the police to do what they've always done. It's a new police power, one made possible with today's technology and one that will be made easier with tomorrow's.

And with any new police power, we as a society need to take an active role in establishing rules governing its use. To do otherwise is to cede ever more authority to the police.

The Real Agenda Of The Global Elite In Somalia

steve watson infowars.net

Neocons are backing the same warlords that slaughtered US troops in 1993



This week has seen the latest example of the US power elite bombing a broken-backed country in the name of the global 'war on terror'. The phantom menace of 'Al Qaeda' has again provided a pretext for the further destruction and destabilization of struggling state, this time Somalia, in order that the Western elite power-mongers can move in and control its valuable resources.

The Bush Administration is essentially asking us to expect to believe that it is bombing a country in an attempt to kill three terrorists– Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that killed 225 people, and accomplices Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Abu Talha al-Sudani.

The Somali government has today claimed that four more airstrikes have been carried out, killing more innocent people. The US has denied this. Also today, a senior Somali politician said US troops were needed on the ground to fight a Muslim extremist threat.

Monday's strike reportedly killed around 200 people, including Canadian and British citizens.

Critics of the action have said it could misfire by creating strong Somali resentment and feeding Islamist militancy. Analysts fear that US interfering and backing of one Somali faction against another could ignite an Iraqi-style insurgency across a swath of East Africa.

There is no doubt that this is a part of the escalation of the wider war of aggression planned and executed by the neoconservatives who published their Project For the New American Century before they came to power.

"Before this, it was just tacit support for Ethiopia. Now the U.S. has fingerprints on the intervention and is going to be held more accountable," said Horn of Africa expert Ken Menkhaus. "This has the potential for a backlash both in Somalia and the region."



The truth is that, once again, the terror myth is being promulgated as an excuse to unleash violence against a largely innocent Muslim population, and one that has struggled for a peaceful existence for decades.

As prominent blogger Kurt Nimmo has stated:

"In other words, it was a turkey shoot, and the targets were not necessarily “al-Qaeda” but rather members of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), Muslims who not long ago ruled Somalia under the Shariah, or Islamic law. CBS does not bother to mention the fact ICU was popular in Somalia, a Muslim nation."

Last December, the popular ICU lost control of the country after a short lived form of peace. The UIC had controlled Mogadishu and other areas of the country after defeating several local warlords who held Somalia in the grip of terror since the collapse of central rule in 1991. The Islamists had succeeded in defeating the warlords primarily through rallying people to their side by creating law and order through the application of Shariah law, which Somalis universally practice.

15,000 Ethiopian troops, with U.S. backing, invaded in an illegal war of aggression and ousted the IUC leaders who fled to the southern-most tip of the country.

Many Somalis in areas controlled by the UIC welcomed the security and order that the Islamists brought to the country. The Bush Administration is playing on reports that the Islamists are 'Taliban like' and is lumping them in with 'Al Qaeda' terrorists.

But the UIC does not appear to be a monolithic organization and seems split between moderates who want peace and dialogue and more right wing Muslims who want to impose Muslim Sharia law. In any case neither have the means or the desire to commit an almighty Jihad against the West, they are simply concerned with creating some kind of law and order within Somalia.

The US response has been to provide major funding to the warlord groupings, via the Ethiopian army, that are opposed to the UIC. Before bombing the hell out of villages on Monday, the Bush Administration has long been providing backing to ruthless killers intent on keeping Somalia in civil strife because it benefits each warlord's plundering rule to keep the nation carved up.

These are the same marauding warlords who drove out American forces in 1993, killing and maiming 18 US troops in the streets then dragging their bodies around in celebration.



Many of these warlords were part of the puppet regime transitional "government" that had been organized in Kenya in 2004. But the "government" was so devoid of internal support that it had to turn to Somalia's arch enemy, Ethiopia, to maintain control.

So why are the US power elite funding sectarian warlords in Somalia and now bombing Islamist areas of the country?

Because the control of Somalia via puppet government, just like in Iraq, is a key factor in the Neocon plan to "shrink the non-integrating gap" of the new world order, as Thomas Barnett's 'New Map' of the world has it.

As with Iraq, the real agenda is to obtain a direct foothold in a highly strategic region. The Horn of Africa is newly oil-rich, and lies just miles from Saudi Arabia, overlooking the daily passage of large numbers of oil tankers and warships through the Red Sea.

link to full map

Not surprising then that multiple US warships and Ticonderoga-class cruisers are now stalking the coastline off Somalia and routinely sending intelligence-gathering flights over the country. The location is also prime in order to be able to instantly mobilize forces for any conflict with Iran at the drop of a hat.

The American oil giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips also hold concession rights in Somalia. According to the Los Angeles Times, “corporate and scientific documents disclosed that the American companies are well positioned to pursue Somalia’s most promising potential oil reserves the moment the nation is pacified,” - i.e. kill the "Islamofascists" and install a weak and pandering government that could never control its own resources well enough to compete with the Western global elite.

“Somalia is of geostrategic interest to the Bush administration, and the focus of operations and policy since 2001,” writes Larry Chin. “This focus is a continuation of long-term policies of both the Clinton administration and the George H.W. Bush administrations. Somalia’s resources have been eyed by Western powers since the days of the British Empire.”

“A new US cleansing of Somalian ‘tyranny’ would open the door for these US oil companies to map and develop the possibly huge oil potential in Somalia,” notes F. William Engdahl. “Yemen and Somalia are two flanks of the same geological configuration, which holds large potential petroleum deposits, as well as being the flanks of the oil chokepoint from the Red Sea.”

Of course the American public will simply be told that we're after 'Al Qaeda' because of 9/11, and they will buy it again. No matter that operatives involved in the African bombings at the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were admittedly working for the CIA. Nah, that's a side issue, LOOK AMERICA, Al Zawahiri said Somalia is Islamofascist, so we gotta bomb the hell out of it and control it's oil - just get used to it.

Defense Dept. warns about Canadian spy coins

Tiny transmitters found on contractors with classified security clearances

The Associated Press
Updated: 5:45 a.m. ET Jan 11, 2007

WASHINGTON - Money talks, but can it also follow your movements?

In a U.S. government warning high on the creepiness scale, the Defense Department cautioned its American contractors over what it described as a new espionage threat: Canadian coins with tiny radio frequency transmitters hidden inside.

The government said the mysterious coins were found planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances on at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors traveled through Canada.

Intelligence and technology experts said such transmitters, if they exist, could be used to surreptitiously track the movements of people carrying the spy coins.

The U.S. report doesn’t suggest who might be tracking American defense contractors or why. It also doesn’t describe how the Pentagon discovered the ruse, how the transmitters might function or even which Canadian currency contained them.

Further details were secret, according to the U.S. Defense Security Service, which issued the warning to the Pentagon’s classified contractors. The government insists the incidents happened, and the risk was genuine.

“What’s in the report is true,” said Martha Deutscher, a spokeswoman for the security service. “This is indeed a sanitized version, which leaves a lot of questions.”

'A lot of mysterious aspects'
Top suspects, according to outside experts: China, Russia or even France — all said to actively run espionage operations inside Canada with enough sophistication to produce such technology.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service said it knew nothing about the coins.

“This issue has just come to our attention,” CSIS spokeswoman Barbara Campion said. “At this point, we don’t know of any basis for these claims.” She said Canada’s intelligence service works closely with its U.S. counterparts and will seek more information if necessary.

Experts were astonished about the disclosure and the novel tracking technique, but they rejected suggestions Canada’s government might be spying on American contractors. The intelligence services of the two countries are extraordinarily close and routinely share sensitive secrets.

“It would seem unthinkable,” said David Harris, former chief of strategic planning for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. “I wouldn’t expect to see any offensive operation against the Americans.”

Harris said likely candidates include foreign spies who targeted Americans abroad or businesses engaged in corporate espionage. “There are certainly a lot of mysterious aspects to this,” Harris said.

'Pretty advanced technology'
Experts said such tiny transmitters would almost certainly have limited range to communicate with sensors no more than a few feet away, such as ones hidden inside a doorway. The metal in the coins also could interfere with any signals emitted.

“I’m not aware of any (transmitter) that would fit inside a coin and broadcast for kilometers,” said Katherine Albrecht, an activist who believes such technology carries serious privacy risks. “Whoever did this obviously has access to some pretty advanced technology.”

Experts said hiding tracking technology inside coins is fraught with risks because the spy’s target might inadvertently give away the coin or spend it buying coffee or a newspaper. They agreed, however, that a coin with a hidden tracking device might not arouse suspicion if it were discovered in a pocket or briefcase.

“It wouldn’t seem to be the best place to put something like that; you’d want to put it in something that wouldn’t be left behind or spent,” said Jeff Richelson, a researcher and author of books about the CIA and its gadgets. “It doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense.”

Canada’s largest coins include its $2 “Toonie,” which is more than 1-inch across and thick enough to hide a tiny transmitter. The CIA has acknowledged its own spies have used hollow, U.S. silver-dollar coins to hide messages and film.

The government’s 29-page report was filled with other espionage warnings. It described unrelated hacker attacks, eavesdropping with miniature pen recorders and the case of a female foreign spy who seduced her American boyfriend to steal his computer passwords.

In another case, a film processing company called the FBI after it developed pictures for a contractor that contained classified images of U.S. satellites and their blueprints. The photo was taken from an adjoining office window.
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16572783/

Interview with Bush Senior from 30 Sept 2001

War on terrorism

George Bush Snr, former President of the United States
George Bush discussed war on terrorism

BBC Breakfast With Frost Interview with George Bush Snr, former President of the United States, 30 September 2001

Excerpt:

FROST: And in terms of your phrase: "a new world order", now we have a situation where President Putin of Russia is being very helpful, they're even talking about joining Nato, could this be, in fact, the beginning of that new world order?

GEORGE BUSH SNR: Well I think - I think we ought to clarify what new world order is. I think there is a better world without potential superpower conflict and that new order has permitted a lot of countries to begin to make their democracies more effective, indeed you look around instead of one monolithic Soviet Union you have a lot of countries who have free elections and free markets. So I think we're seeing - saw the beginning, after Desert Storm of a new world order. But today that order is being challenged by this scourge of terrorism. And I think that we are saying a new world order, you made the key point on it because Russia is working with us, indeed in Desert Storm they, for the first time, we were together in the United Nations on resolutions but it's hard to say hey things are better, we've got a new world order when you've seen the horrible attack that took place in New York the other day, it affects every single country. And so it's going to take a while to perfect a new world order but I'm very hopeful that 20 years from now we're going to say - look there is a lot more peace, a lot more democracies, a lot more free trade, a lot more market, you know, open markets.

Bush To Try To “Bring The Public Back” To The War

KWTX CBS


(January 10, 2007)--President Bush's overriding goal in his speech to the nation Wednesday night is to "bring the public back" to the war in Iraq, The White House says.

The speech will be carried live at 8 p.m. Wednesday on CBS and News Ten.

The crux of the president’s plan is a fresh infusion of US troops at a time when most Americans want those troops to start coming home.

White House spokesman Tony Snow says the president knows he must overcome widespread doubt and restore public confidence and support for the mission.

The president is expected to call for up to 20,000 additional troops to be sent into Iraq to bolster forces in the still volatile Anbar Province and in Baghdad, where thousands of soldiers from Fort Hood’s 1st Cavalry Division are serving as part of Multinational Division Baghdad.

He'll also call for reconstruction aid, diplomacy and benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet.

Many Democrats oppose sending in more troops.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promises a vote on any proposed troop increase, while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he's hoping for a bipartisan measure that would declare, "We don't support this escalation of the war."

Mr. Bush is also expected to acknowledge mistakes in Iraq.

White House counselor Dan Bartlett says the president will say that it was a mistake not to have more US or Iraqi troops fighting the war at the beginning.

The president also will say that the terms under which US troops carried out earlier operations "were flawed."

Bartlett made the rounds of the morning talk shows ahead of Mr. Bush's prime-time address from the White House.

Bartlett says Mr. Bush agrees with the "vast majority" of Americans who are not satisfied with the progress being made in Iraq, so he will spell out what he intends to do about it.

The president's plans include pumping a billion dollars into Iraq's economy.

It's all Iran's fault afterall....

US forces storm Iranian consulate

US forces have stormed an Iranian consulate in the northern Iraqi town of Irbil and seized five members of staff.

The troops raided the building at about 0300 (0001GMT), taking away computers and papers, according to Kurdish media and senior local officials.

The US military had no immediate comment on the raid, which comes amid high tension between Iran and the US.

The Bush administration accuses Iran of helping fuel violence in Iraq, as well as trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Iran strenuously denies both charges, countering that US military involvement in the Middle East endangers the whole region.

A local TV station said Kurdish security forces had taken over the building after the Americans had left.

Irbil lies in Iraq's Kurdish-controlled north, about 350 kilometres (220 miles) from the capital Baghdad.

Reports say the Iranian consulate there was set up last year under an agreement with the Kurdish regional government to facilitate cross-border visits.

Pressure

Iranian media said the country's embassy in Baghdad had sent a letter of protest about the raid to the Iraqi foreign ministry.

One Iranian news agency with a correspondent in Irbil says five US helicopters were used to land troops on the roof of the Iranian consulate.

It reports that a number of vehicles cordoned off the streets around the building, while US soldiers warned the occupants in three different languages that they should surrender or be killed.

In December, US troops detained a number of Iranians in Iraq, including two with diplomatic immunity who were later released.

Thursday's raid came as US President George W Bush unveiled his new strategy in Iraq, which included increasing troop numbers and a commitment to stop Iranian support for "our enemies in Iraq".

BBC Diplomatic Correspondent Jonathan Marcus says the raid could signal a ratcheting-up of pressure on the Iranians, in line with the rhetorical thrust of his speech.

Meanwhile in the Iraqi capital, the five off-duty policemen were killed in an ambush in the western al-Khadra neighbourhood, hospital officials said

Security sources said another man was killed wounded in an attack on a money changer in downtown Baghdad.

In the restive Anbar province, the US military said that one of its troops was killed on Tuesday by a roadside bombing.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6251167.stm

Published: 2007/01/11 11:46:24 GMT