Chinese hackers crack Homeland Security computers

By Michael Hampton

homeland stupidity

Chinese hackers broke into Department of Homeland Security computers and made off with “many megabytes” of data, and the contractor charged with securing the department’s networks attempted to cover up the breaches, according to Congressional investigators who have asked the department’s inspector general to investigate the computer security breaches.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has launched a separate investigation into Unisys Corp., which for $1.75 billion was supposed to install and monitor network intrusion devices for the Transportation Security Administration and at DHS headquarters, but failed to install and monitor the devices properly, according to a letter (PDF) signed by House Homeland Security Committee chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, Science and Technology chairman James Langevin (D-R.I.) and sent to DHS inspector general Richard Skinner.

The FBI would not confirm whether it had launched an investigation.

The subcommittee has been investigating “hacking activity against Federal agencies” for several months, and the allegations against Unisys are the latest find. In April, the committee heard that Chinese hackers had infiltrated Department of Commerce computers and left “little evidence behind them” of who they were or what files they had copied, the letter said.

“The department is the victim not only of cyber attacks initiated by foreign entities, but of incompetent and possibly illegal activity by the contractor charged with maintaining security on its networks,” Thompson wrote in his letter, which included 27 pages of prior correspondence (PDF) with DHS chief information officer Scott Charbo.

A Unisys spokeswoman, Lisa Meyer, said that “no investigative body has notified us formally or informally of a criminal investigation” on the matter and added that she could not comment on specific security incidents.

She said that Unisys has provided DHS “with government-certified and accredited security programs and systems, which were in place throughout 2006 and remain so today.”

Among the security devices Unisys had been hired to install and monitor were seven “intrusion-detection systems,” which flag suspicious or unauthorized computer network activity that may indicate a break-in. The devices were purchased in 2004, but by June 2006 only three had been installed — and in such a way that they could not provide real-time alerts, according to the committee. The rest were gathering dust in DHS storage closets and under desks in their original packaging, the aide said. — Washington Post

I don’t know how your computer works, but mine doesn’t do anything while it’s still in the box it was shipped in.

Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke declined to comment on allegations Unisys covered up evidence of hacking.

“We take cyber security very seriously and there have been major improvements since the administration’s cyber security strategy announced in 2003,” he said.

Knocke said DHS has responded to “malicious cyber activity directed at the U.S. government over the past few years,” and such activity is “growing more sophisticated and frequent.” — CNN

Meanwhile, DHS grows more bloated and incompetent, unable to protect its own networks, let alone the country’s critical infrastructure.

Democrats call for ‘mortgage czar’ to tackle sub-prime crisis

By Jessica Holzer THE HILL

October 04, 2007

Standing alongside senior Democratic lawmakers, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) attacked the Bush administration on Wednesday for a sluggish and feeble response to the sub-prime mortgage crisis, likening it to a nationwide Hurricane Katrina that Republicans could have averted. But they unveiled no fresh ideas for forestalling the wave of foreclosures, other than urging President Bush to appoint a housing czar to oversee the federal response. And the remarks invited a sharp rebuke from the White House, which argued that it had acted promptly to address the mortgage turmoil and that it was Congress that had been slow to respond. “If we do not act, sub-prime lending could end up eliminating more homeowners than it created, and the number of Americans foreclosed out of their homes could exceed the number of Americans from the Gulf Coast forced out of their homes by Hurricane Katrina,” Reid said. “This is unacceptable, and Democrats are leading the way to do something about it.” Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) blamed the administration for what he argued was poor progress on prodding lenders to devise loan “work-outs” that help to keep troubled borrowers in their homes. “The fact that we’re watching this collapse occur around us raises some serious questions,” he said. “We need leadership from this administration.” Arguing that the current crisis was largely the administration’s doing, Dodd criticized the Federal Reserve for not cracking down on lending abuses years earlier. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the House Financial Services chairman, echoed Dodd’s sentiments, accusing former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) of blocking a bipartisan effort to tighten mortgage-lending standards when Republicans controlled Congress. “We would have had action well over a year ago and a lot of these bad loans wouldn’t have been made,” Frank said. A spokesman for the White House, Tony Fratto, disputed the notion that Congress had seized on the problems in the mortgage market before the president and criticized lawmakers for not moving faster. “We’re pleased that Democrats have finally decided to get involved in this issue. We know they were probably away on vacation back in August.” Fratto continued: “We should remind them that more than five weeks ago, President Bush unveiled a robust plan to deal with problems in the housing market and to assist troubled homeowners. The president didn’t wait for Congress to act.” Aside from urging Bush to appoint a mortgage czar, Democrats repeated calls for the administration to temporarily lift the portfolio caps on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage giants that provide liquidity to the mortgage market. And they demanded more federal funds for counseling programs that help people stay in their homes. Talking to reporters after the press event, Frank named Jack Kemp, the former GOP vice presidential candidate, as his top choice for the role of mortgage czar, citing his career as a star quarterback: “You need to be an energizer. Jack would be great.” Fratto flatly rejected the idea of a mortgage czar: “I understand that because the Democrats have come late to this issue that they’re fishing for flashy ideas to gain attention, but adding another layer isn’t the answer.” He also noted that legislation to modernize the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) still awaits further congressional action, as do the appropriations bills with funds for homeowner counseling. Fratto reiterated the administration’s view that temporary portfolio caps on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, collectively known as the government sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, should be raised only in the context of fundamental GSE reform. Several lawmakers have advocated cracking down on sub-prime mortgage abuses and acting to help people hold on to their homes. But only legislation to reform the FHA has gained much traction so far. Having been approved overwhelmingly by the House and by the Senate Banking Committee, it now awaits a vote by the full Senate. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Wednesday introduced legislation to allow homeowners to renegotiate the terms of their mortgage loans in bankruptcy. Frank is expected to introduce a broad bill to rein in lending abuses this month, but Dodd only announced his intention to tackle such legislation on Wednesday. The House Ways and Means Committee this week approved mortgage-tax relief so that homeowners who refinance their mortgages don’t get taxed on the loss of value in their home. The Bush administration supports the legislation, but it is unclear whether the Senate Finance Committee will tackle it. Meanwhile, the House passed legislation to beef up the regulator overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but the Senate has yet to act on GSE reform. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), a member of the Banking panel, has proposed legislation to lift the GSEs’ portfolio caps by 10 percent temporarily as long as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac use half the additional funds from the loosened caps to buy refinanced loans from borrowers who had adjustable-rate mortgages. The Senate has passed a Schumer-backed provision securing $100 million for nonprofits that counsel troubled borrowers on avoiding foreclosure.

George Bush smooths path for Hillary

Sarah Baxter
The Times Online
October 7, 2007

BUSH administration officials are paving the way for a smooth transition to a possible Democratic presidency as Hillary Clinton consolidates her position as the overwhelming favourite to win her party’s nomination for the 2008 election.

Clinton has powered her way to the top of the Democratic pack, establishing a 33-point lead in one poll last week over Barack Obama, her nearest rival.

She raised $7m more than Obama in the last quarter and attracted more individual contri-butors than the Illinois senator, proving her popularity with grassroots Democrats.

With Clinton looking the near-inevitable nominee, Bush officials intend to hold her to her promise to be tough on defence and national security. Robert Gates, the defence secretary, is hoping to establish a bipartisan consensus on defence that will last beyond next year’s election.

In the clearest sign of a shift in gear, Gates is to appoint John Hamre, a former official in President Bill Clinton’s administration, to chair the Defense Policy Board once led by Richard Perle, a leading neoconservative advocate of the invasion of Iraq. The board’s job will be to prepare for the transition to a new administration in 2008, according to a Pentagon spokesman.

Hamre, who was Bill Clinton’s deputy defence secretary in the 1990s, has been highly critical of the conduct of the war on terror. In The Washington Post last year he wrote: “The policies that led to Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, secret renditions and warrantless wiretaps have undermined America’s towering moral authority.”

In common with Gates, Hamre is sceptical about the value of the Iraq troop surge. He recently served on a bipartisan commission on Iraq chaired by James Jones, the former Nato commander. In evidence to Congress last month, Hamre said: “Absent political reconciliation, it’s hard to see how this [the war] ends well.”

However, Hamre, who heads the influential Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, also argued that America “will be hurt if we crawl out or run out of Iraq”. He believes the next president should maintain a vital but scaled-down presence in the country in order to oversee the training of Iraqi security forces and to “direct operations against known bad guys”.

Lawrence Korb, a defence expert at the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank, described Hamre’s imminent appointment as a “brilliant move” which would mark a dramatic break with Perle’s era. “Most people think the next president will be a Democrat and Gates, who has been around for a long time, believes it is his job to ensure that national security is not affected,” Korb said.

Clinton has been sidestepping calls to pull US troops out of Iraq if she wins, sticking to a broader promise to begin a phased withdrawal. In a recent television interview, the New York senator refused to state that all US combat troops would leave Iraq by the end of her first term in office. She voted in the Senate last month to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organisation.

Perle believes that Clinton might be prepared to order military strikes against Iran if President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad takes Tehran’s nuclear programme to the brink. “If President Clinton is informed in March 2009 that we’ve got ironclad intelligence that if we don’t act within the next 30 days it’s going to be too late, I wouldn’t begin to predict what she would do,” Perle said. “Nobody wants to act before it is absolutely essential . . . but things can change very quickly.”

Perle is generous about the appointment of Hamre, arguing that the Defense Policy Board has a tradition of bipartisanship. “He’s an experienced professional and a very good choice,” Perle said, noting that George W Bush had kept on George Tenet, a Clinton appointee, as CIA chief after winning the 2000 election.

Bush believes Clinton will win the Democratic nomination and has privately advised her not to voice antiwar rhetoric on Iraq that she may come to regret, according to a new book, The Evangelical President, by Bill Sammon. “It’s different being a candidate and being the president,” Bush said. “No matter who the president is, no matter what party, when they sit here in the Oval Office and seriously consider the effect of a vacuum being created in the Middle East . . . they will then begin to understand the need to continue to support the young democracy.”

The Treasury, under Henry “Hank” Paulson, has also been appointing Democrat supporters to senior positions. Robert Novak, the conservative columnist, reported that Paulson last week named Eric Mindich, a leading Democratic fundraiser, for a key role as an adviser on financial markets. One Republican in the Bush administration wrote disapprovingly in an e-mail: “This leads some to wonder whether this Treasury has become the preplaced Hillary Clinton team.”

Clinton’s domination of the Democratic field may prompt her leading opponents to sharpen their rhetoric against her. So far the contest with Obama and John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina, has been remarkably civil.

Edwards upped the ante against Clinton last week by attacking links between Mark Penn, her senior adviser and poll-ster, and Blackwater, the private security firm that was accused of recklessly killing 11 Iraqi civilians last month. “We don’t want to replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats,” he said.

Edwards and Obama have rarely criticised Clinton directly by name, but David Axelrod, Obama’s campaign manager, said his candidate would rather show a “common purpose to our politics rather than divisiveness and political point-scoring”.

It was too soon for Clinton’s coronation, Axelrod said: “How-ard Dean had plenty of momentum in the fall of 2003, when everyone was anointing him the Democratic nominee. I’m happy if the Clintons want to do victory laps in October; I’ll take ours in January and February” when the primary votes are counted.

Obama is still hoping to win the Iowa caucus, where Edwards is also performing well. Michelle Obama, his wife, who will be visiting Britain on a fundraising mission next week, let slip recently: “If Barack doesn’t win Iowa, it’s just a dream.”

Obama upset traditional voters last week by saying that he was against shows of patriotism, such as wearing a pin lapel of the American flag. “I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest,” he said. “Instead I’m going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great.”

Peggy Noonan, President Rea-gan’s former speechwriter, said the Clintons had the Democratic party in a trance. She wrote in The Wall Street Journal: “The Bushes are wired into the Republican money-line system; the Clintons are wired into the Democratic money-line system. For two generations now they have had the same dynamics in play . . . Is this good for our democracy, this air of inevitability?”

Gulf funds drift away from dollar

Babu Das Augustine
Gulf News
Monday October 08, 2007

Dubai: Asset diversification by the Gulf sovereign wealth funds and the possibility that the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) will change the pricing of oil from the dollar to another currency could mean more trouble for the dollar.

The dollar has been losing its charm as a reserve currency due to its persistent weakness against a host of other international currencies.

The September non-farm payrolls report on Friday showed 110,000 jobs were created in the US last month. Although the dollar reacted positively to the news and gained initially, the rally quickly fizzled.

Amid the dollar's free fall following the half per cent interest rate cut in September, Qatar last week said its $50 billion sovereign wealth fund has cut its exposure to the dollar by more than half to about 40 per cent of its portfolio.

"While the opportunities are growing, the risk levels of Asian assets have come down substantially in recent years," Ronnie Chan, chairman of Hang-Lung Properties Hong Kong, told Gulf News recently.

Analysts see the admission by Qatar as a signal that regional state-owned funds are moving away from the dollar.

Oil pricing

"Qatar has admitted that its investment fund has been diversifying their portfolios to compensate for the decline of the dollar. It would be naive to think that other Gulf funds are loyal to the dollar at the cost of heavy portfolio losses," said a Dubai-based investment banker.

During the past 12 months, companies, mainly state-owned investment arms and private equity firms from the GCC, have quietly acquired more than $50 billion in assets worldwide with Asia's and Europe's shares together accounting for more than 55 per cent.

The state-owned Kuwait Investment Authority, with assets of more than $150 billion, last year increased the Asian share of its portfolio to 20 per cent from 10 per cent.

Although gulf central banks have been discussing asset diversification in the past two years, there hasn't been any evidence of a major shift. The size of assets held by Gulf central banks are relatively small compared to the funds managed by the state-owned investment funds.

According to IMF estimates, global investment funds managed by governments control an estimated $2.5 trillion, outstripping hedge funds. Morgan Stanley estimates these assets could rise to $12 trillion by 2015, roughly the size of the US economy. Gulf countries account for a major share of these funds.

Currency market analysts believe that the gulf sovereign funds' gradual move away from the dollar is a precursor to Opec opting for a different currency in which to price oil.

"If the dollar were to lose its lustre as a reserve currency this could prove disruptive to the global financial system," Merrill Lynch said in a research note.

"Pricing oil in dollars might have made sense when there was a paucity of other relatively stable currencies and when the Middle East imported more from the US - but not any-more," said an analyst.

Congressman: Dollar Could Collapse To Absolute Zero

Presidential candidate Ron Paul warns of coming global economic depression

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Monday, October 8, 2007

Presidential candidate Ron Paul has made a dire prediction that the dollar could collapse to absolute zero - precipitating hyper inflation, soaring oil prices and a global economic depression if current policies are continued.

"Once they realize the American people have awakened to the con game that's been going on - I think those people running the banking and monetary system aren't going to be too happy," Paul told the Alex Jones Show on Friday.

The Texas Congressman forecasts that if current policies are prolonged, the dollar could crash all the way to nothing and be forced to start over.

"If Bush is foolish enough to start bombing Iran, that might precipitate such a crisis as oil going to $200 dollars a barrel and really dampening the enthusiasm of the whole dollar," said Paul.

"If they continue what they're doing, it's gonna go to zero, we're gonna have runaway inflation, all paper currencies eventually self-destruct and are ruined, and we're in uncharted waters right now - this is the first time in the history of man you've had no solid currencies around the world and this has been going on for 35 years."

Paul agreed that elitists would seize upon a global depression by posing as the saviors and offering more control, police state and big government as the solution.

"This was the whole thing that started in the last depression," said Paul, "Scare people to death instead of blaming the Federal Reserve for the depression and the financial bubble of the 20's, they said 'well capitalism failed, it was that stupid gold standard', therefore we have to have welfare and of course everything they did prolonged the depression."

Paul said his warnings about the impending collapse of the U.S. economy, which stretch back years, were helping his campaign gain credibility due to the unfolding crises in the market and the credit crunch.

"When the people understand how the Fed screws up the economy and causes all the bubbles and all the changes that have to come from that, I'm getting a lot more calls," said Paul.

The Congressman also discussed the continued success of his campaign and the establishment's attempts to stifle its importance.

The presidential candidate said the reason that the Democrats and Republicans are trying to speed up the primaries is because they don't like competition from third party and grass roots candidates and are trying to prevent them from gaining traction.

"The move right now is to try to close the primaries - do you think they're sincere when they say they want to have a big tent and invite new people in? They can invite a lot of new people in but they don't want constitutionalists evidently because they want to make it tough to vote in a Republican primary," said the Congressman.

"It confirms the fact that the control of this whole system has been one party so to speak, it's one group of people that control both parties and right now I think the people are getting disgusted with it and they're starting to wake up," he added.

The Congressman stated that the popularity of his campaign outstripped even his expectations and slammed the establishment networks for attempting to skew Paul as a fringe candidate.

"It doesn't discourage our supporters, it enrages them," said Paul, "They always claimed that there were just a few of us out there that cared and that they were bloggers manipulating the Internet - well you can't manipulate to the point where you get 35,000 new donors who average about $40 dollars a piece and raise $5 million dollars and outpace many of the other candidates."

Paul said the other candidates had initially tried to ignore his platform, before ridiculing it, to the point where they are now being forced to adopt constitutionalist rhetoric in order to compete with his burgeoning popularity.

FBI Puts Antiwar Protesters on Criminal Database; Canada Uses It To Ban Protesters From Entry

Rob Kall
Op Ed News
Monday October 08, 2007

Two well-respected US peace activists, CODEPINK and Global Exchange cofounder Medea Benjamin and retired Colonel and diplomat Ann Wright, were denied entry into Canada On October third. The two women were headed to Toronto to discuss peace and security issues at the invitation of the Toronto Stop the War Coalition. At the Buffalo-Niagara Falls Bridge they were detained, questioned and denied entry.

"In my case, the border guard pulled up a file showing that I had been arrested at the US Mission to the UN where, on International Women's Day, a group of us had tried to deliver a peace petition signed by 152,000 women around the world," says Benjamin. "For this, the Canadians labeled me a criminal and refused to allow me in the country."

"The FBI's placing of peace activists on an international criminal database is blatant political intimidation of US citizens opposed to Bush administration policies," says Colonel Wright, who was also Deputy US Ambassador in four countries. "The Canadian government should certainly not accept this FBI database as the criteria for entering the country." Both Wright and Benjamin plan to request their files from the FBI through the Freedom of Information Act and demand that arrests for peaceful, non-violent actions be expunged from international records. "It's outrageous that Canada is turning away peacemakers protesting a war that does not have the support of either US or Canadian citizens," says Benjamin.

"In the past, Canada has always welcomed peace activists with open arms. This new policy, obviously a creature of the Bush administration, is shocking and we in the US and Canada must insist that it be overturned. Four members of the Canadian Parliament--Peggy Nash, Libby Davies, Paul Dewar and Peter Julian-- expressed outrage that the peace activists were barred from Canada and vow to change this policy.

Ann Wright told OpEdNews that this was the second time the two Code Pink activists had been turned away from the border, the first event ocurring on August 19th.

Wright explained, "We decided to go to Canadian border to push the envelope to see if the Canadian Gov would not let us into Canada again until we had been "criminally rehabilitated."

To be criminally rehabilitated, they would have to do a huge amount of paperwork and state that they were no longer going to commit the "crimes" they were convicted of.

Wright told OpEdNews "We were told (by the canadian border agents) if we tried to enter Canada again, we would be officially deported from the country, which is "big trouble. 'We've warned you not to come back until we are criminally rehabilitated.'

Wright asserted, "We will never be criminally rehabilitated since we intend to continue to engage in non-violent peaceful protest of Bush administration policies, particular the war on Iraq and we intend to peacefully and nonviolently protest all of these until they end. They can lead to arrests for civil disobedience, like refusing to move from the fence in front of the whitehouse or standing up and speaking at congressional hearings."

Wright explained that the Canadians, by their own law, do not allow people in who have been convicted of various kinds of offenses.

If, when you are asked by a Canadian immigration officer if you have been arrested, they check the FBI database and that's how they found we were listed.

Wright added, "The fact that the FBI has put us on this list. The National Crime Information Center Computerized Index is a form of political intimidation. The list is supposed to be for felony and serious misdemeanor offenses.

"We don't qualify-- it's for sex offenders, foreign fugitives, gang violence and terrorist organizations, people who are on parole, a list of eight categories all together.

"It is very disturbing. We've asked our congressional representatives to investigate this."

According to Wright, there was almost no coverage of this in the US, except for an AP release. In Canada, Toronto's Globe and Mail and several other newspapers and three Canadian TV stations covered it.

IMF's Rato says dollar undervalued, risks grow

MADRID (Reuters) - IMF chief Rodrigo Rato said on Monday the U.S. dollar was undervalued and risks to the global economy from market turbulence were greater than six months ago.

"From the point of view of comparison on a weighted trade basis, the dollar would be below parity, but that doesn't mean that is the case against all currencies," the International Monetary Fund's managing director said at an economic seminar in Madrid.

The dollar has declined sharply against the euro and some other freely floating currencies since defaults on U.S. mortgages in August triggered a global credit squeeze and an aggressive Federal Reserve interest rate cut last month.

The dollar fell to a record low against the euro last week and an index that gauges its value against a basket of six other major currencies also fell to a record low.

CRISIS FAR FROM OVER

Rato, who hands over the leadership of the IMF to Dominique Strauss-Kahn at the end of this month, said financial markets faced a serious situation that was far from resolved.

"There are risks financial turbulence persists, and its impact on the real economy is greater, for instance a recession in the United States, which is not what we expect at the moment," Rato said.

The credit crunch has so far hit wealthy nations hardest. Rato saw risks of it spreading to developing countries if it jumped into an emerging market.

"This would produce a globalization of risk and an increase in financing cost for all emerging market countries," Rato said, adding that was not a situation the IMF saw happening at present.

He said the Fed's decision to cut interest rates, and moves by the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan to keep them steady, had helped alleviate the credit crunch caused by banks' reluctance to lend to one another.

"These are sensitive decisions that will help to limit the impact on the general economy," Rato said.

European central banks had reacted adequately to the credit crunch, he said.

"The moves taken by the central banks have been the correct ones. From the point of view of governments, they have to understand that this credit crisis is going to have an effect on real growth," he said.

But Rato said it was not yet clear how big an impact the credit crisis had made.

"It will be months before we can evaluate the full magnitude of losses among banks and investors," he said.

The main impact of market turbulence will be on 2008 global economic growth, sending it slightly below levels of 2006 and 2007, Rato said.

He saw strong global expansion during 2008, in historic terms, due to sound fundamentals in developed countries and emerging markets.

"Our view of the world economy in 2008 is relatively optimistic, but we have to say that if the turbulence in credit markets is prolonged, the effect on the economy would be much more grave," he said. "The risks are greater today than six months ago."

NEW ERA IN LATIN AMERICA

Rato said emerging markets could face financing and economic risks if the crisis drags on but Latin America was far better prepared to face shocks.

Some Latin American countries could see 2008 economic growth reduced by half a percentage point, Rato said.

That would be a relatively small impact given previous pain from crises like that of Mexico in 1995 and Argentina in 2002.

"This will mark a break with past vulnerability to contractions in global growth," Rato said.

The former Spanish economy minister said countries with high current account deficits and debt levels were most exposed to the credit crunch.

"International crises have most effect on countries which require international financing," Rato said, urging governments to keep an even stronger grip on public spending.

Robert Fisk: Even I question the ’truth’ about 9/11

Robert Fisk
Bellaciao
September 27 2007

Each time I lecture abroad on the Middle East, there is always someone in the audience – just one – whom I call the “raver”. Apologies here to all the men and women who come to my talks with bright and pertinent questions – often quite humbling ones for me as a journalist – and which show that they understand the Middle East tragedy a lot better than the journalists who report it. But the “raver” is real. He has turned up in corporeal form in Stockholm and in Oxford, in Sao Paulo and in Yerevan, in Cairo, in Los Angeles and, in female form, in Barcelona. No matter the country, there will always be a “raver”.

His – or her – question goes like this. Why, if you believe you’re a free journalist, don’t you report what you really know about 9/11? Why don’t you tell the truth – that the Bush administration (or the CIA or Mossad, you name it) blew up the twin towers? Why don’t you reveal the secrets behind 9/11? The assumption in each case is that Fisk knows – that Fisk has an absolute concrete, copper-bottomed fact-filled desk containing final proof of what “all the world knows” (that usually is the phrase) – who destroyed the twin towers. Sometimes the “raver” is clearly distressed. One man in Cork screamed his question at me, and then – the moment I suggested that his version of the plot was a bit odd – left the hall, shouting abuse and kicking over chairs.

Usually, I have tried to tell the “truth”; that while there are unanswered questions about 9/11, I am the Middle East correspondent of The Independent, not the conspiracy correspondent; that I have quite enough real plots on my hands in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Iran, the Gulf, etc, to worry about imaginary ones in Manhattan. My final argument – a clincher, in my view – is that the Bush administration has screwed up everything – militarily, politically diplomatically – it has tried to do in the Middle East; so how on earth could it successfully bring off the international crimes against humanity in the United States on 11 September 2001?

Well, I still hold to that view. Any military which can claim – as the Americans did two days ago – that al-Qa’ida is on the run is not capable of carrying out anything on the scale of 9/11. “We disrupted al-Qa’ida, causing them to run,” Colonel David Sutherland said of the preposterously code-named “Operation Lightning Hammer” in Iraq’s Diyala province. “Their fear of facing our forces proves the terrorists know there is no safe haven for them.” And more of the same, all of it untrue.

Within hours, al-Qa’ida attacked Baquba in battalion strength and slaughtered all the local sheikhs who had thrown in their hand with the Americans. It reminds me of Vietnam, the war which George Bush watched from the skies over Texas – which may account for why he this week mixed up the end of the Vietnam war with the genocide in a different country called Cambodia, whose population was eventually rescued by the same Vietnamese whom Mr Bush’s more courageous colleagues had been fighting all along.

But – here we go. I am increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11. It’s not just the obvious non sequiturs: where are the aircraft parts (engines, etc) from the attack on the Pentagon? Why have the officials involved in the United 93 flight (which crashed in Pennsylvania) been muzzled? Why did flight 93’s debris spread over miles when it was supposed to have crashed in one piece in a field? Again, I’m not talking about the crazed “research” of David Icke’s Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster – which should send any sane man back to reading the telephone directory.

The Third Stage

I am talking about scientific issues. If it is true, for example, that kerosene burns at 820C under optimum conditions, how come the steel beams of the twin towers – whose melting point is supposed to be about 1,480C – would snap through at the same time? (They collapsed in 8.1 and 10 seconds.) What about the third tower – the so-called World Trade Centre Building 7 (or the Salmon Brothers Building) – which collapsed in 6.6 seconds in its own footprint at 5.20pm on 11 September? Why did it so neatly fall to the ground when no aircraft had hit it? The American National Institute of Standards and Technology was instructed to analyse the cause of the destruction of all three buildings. They have not yet reported on WTC 7. Two prominent American professors of mechanical engineering – very definitely not in the “raver” bracket – are now legally challenging the terms of reference of this final report on the grounds that it could be “fraudulent or deceptive”.

Journalistically, there were many odd things about 9/11. Initial reports of reporters that they heard “explosions” in the towers – which could well have been the beams cracking – are easy to dismiss. Less so the report that the body of a female air crew member was found in a Manhattan street with her hands bound. OK, so let’s claim that was just hearsay reporting at the time, just as the CIA’s list of Arab suicide-hijackers, which included three men who were – and still are – very much alive and living in the Middle East, was an initial intelligence error.

But what about the weird letter allegedly written by Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian hijacker-murderer with the spooky face, whose “Islamic” advice to his gruesome comrades – released by the CIA – mystified every Muslim friend I know in the Middle East? Atta mentioned his family – which no Muslim, however ill-taught, would be likely to include in such a prayer. He reminds his comrades-in-murder to say the first Muslim prayer of the day and then goes on to quote from it. But no Muslim would need such a reminder – let alone expect the text of the “Fajr” prayer to be included in Atta’s letter.

Let me repeat. I am not a conspiracy theorist. Spare me the ravers. Spare me the plots. But like everyone else, I would like to know the full story of 9/11, not least because it was the trigger for the whole lunatic, meretricious “war on terror” which has led us to disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan and in much of the Middle East. Bush’s happily departed adviser Karl Rove once said that “we’re an empire now – we create our own reality”. True? At least tell us. It would stop people kicking over chairs.

Who Wants To Bomb Iran? Democrats, Not Republicans, Says Seymour Hersh

Jon Weiner
The Huffington Post
October 4, 2007

When George Bush and Dick Cheney talk about their plans to bomb Iran, they are told “You can’t do it, because every Republican is going to be defeated”–that’s what a Republican former intelligence official told legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. “But,” the former official went on, “Cheney doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Republican worries, and neither does the President.”

I recently spoke with Hersh, whose new piece, “Target Iran,” is featured in The New Yorker this week.

When I asked Hersh who wants to bomb Iran, he said, “Ironically there is a lot of pressure coming from Democrats. Hillary Clinton, Obama, and Edwards have all said we cannot have a nuclear-armed Iran. Clearly the pressure from Democrats is a reflection of - we might as well say it - Israeli and Jewish input.” He added the obvious: “a lot of money comes to the Democratic campaigns” from Jewish contributors.

But while Democrats argue that we must “do something” about an Iranian nuclear threat, Hersh says the White House has concluded their own effort to convince Americans that Iran poses an imminent threat has “failed.” Apparently the public that bought the story of WMD in Iraq is now singing the classic Who song, “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

Moreover, Hersh reports, “the general consensus of the American intelligence community is that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb” - so the public is right to be skeptical.

As a result, according to Hersh, the focus of the plans to bomb Iran has shifted from an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities to an emphasis on the famed “surgical strikes” on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere. The White House hopes it can win public support for this kind of campaign by arguing that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is responsible for the deaths of Americans in Iraq.

Why don’t Bush and Cheney “give a rat’s ass” about getting Republicans reelected to the Senate and the House in 2008? “Of course that was hyperbole to make a point,” Hersh said. “When it comes to choice between bombing Iran and taking some political heat, the president will do what he wants. Look, no decision has been made, no order has been given, I’ve never said it’s going to happen. But I had breakfast this morning in Washington with somebody who’s close to a lot of military people, and there’s a sense among them that the president is essentially messianic about this. He sees this as his mission. It could be because God is telling him to do it. It could be because his daddy didn’t do it. It could be because it’s step 13 in a 12-step program he was in. I just don’t know.”

The biggest problem in US relations with Iran, Hersh said, is that Bush refuses to “talk to people he doesn’t like. . . . We dealt with China, we dealt with the Soviet Union in those bad days of Stalin and Mao. But there is no pressure whatsoever” coming from the leading Democratic presidential candidates demanding that Bush negotiate with the Iranians rather than bombing them.

Chertoff’s Creeping Surveillance

Technology’s challenge to privacy
BBC
October 4, 2007

Every autumn the privacy world gather for the most important global privacy conference on the calendar.

The International Data Protection and Privacy Commissioner’s conference brings together hundreds of privacy commissioners, government regulators, business leaders, and privacy advocates who spend three days grappling with emerging issues.

The theme of this year’s conference, held in Montreal, Canada, was “Terra Incognita,” a reference to the unknown lands that typify the fear of the unknown in a world of rapidly changing technologies that challenge the core principles of privacy protection.

Yet despite a dizzying array of panels on new technologies such as ubiquitous computing, radio frequency identification devices (RFID), and nanotechnology, it was a reference by United States Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff to a simple fingerprint that struck the strongest chord.

Privacy threat

Canada last hosted the conference in 1996 and it quickly became apparent that privacy has become virtually unrecognisable in the intervening eleven years.

The technological challenges were on display throughout the event including eye-opening presentations on the privacy impact of popular children’s websites such as Webkinz and Neopets, on genetic innovation that is pushing the boundaries of science without regard for privacy, and on the continual shift toward tiny devices that can be used to collect and disclose personal information.

Prof Michael Geist (Michael Geist)
Chertoff seemed to say there is a known reality about our future course and there is little that the privacy community can do about it.
Michael Geist

The conference placed the spotlight on the growing “toolkit” of responses, including privacy audits of both public and private sector organisations, privacy impact assessments that are used to gauge the effect of new regulations and corporate initiatives, trust seals that include corporate compliance programs, and emphasis on global cooperation in a world where personal data slips effortlessly across borders.

While the effectiveness of these measures has improved in recent years, there remained a pervasive sense that these responses are inadequate.

Part of the unease arises from the growing realisation that the legal foundation of privacy law is being rendered increasingly irrelevant.

Privacy and data protection laws have long relied on the twin pillars of notice and consent whereby consumers are notified of, and consent to, the collection, use, and disclosure of their personal information.

Critics argue that both notice and consent are today little more than legal fictions, as consumers ignore overly complex notices and shrinking technology makes it virtually impossible to obtain informed consumer consent.

Moreover, privacy law has also emphasised the distinction between personally identifiable information - information that can be traced to a particular person and is therefore deserving of legal protection - and non-identifiable information that does not enjoy any legal protection.

Technology threatens the ability to easily distinguish between the two as powerful computers and ever-expanding databases make it easier to identify individuals from what was once thought to be non-identifiable information.

Addressing these legal shortcomings will command the privacy community’s attention for the foreseeable future; however, it was Chertoff’s keynote address that crystallised the challenge to global privacy protection.

‘Chilling future’

In a room full of privacy advocates, Chertoff came not with a peace offering, but rather a confrontational challenge.

He unapologetically made the case for greater surveillance in which governments collect an ever-increasing amount of data about their citizens in the name of security.

For example, in support of his security agenda, he noted that US forces in Iraq once gathered a single fingerprint from a steering wheel of a vehicle that was used in a bombing attack and matched it to one obtained years earlier at a US border crossing.

He added that there was a similar instance in England, where one fingerprint in a London home linked to a bombing was matched to a fingerprint gathered at a US airport (the identified person was actually innocent of wrongdoing, however).

Chertoff explained that in the autumn the US intends to expand its fingerprinting collection program by requiring all non-Canadians entering his country to provide prints of all ten fingers (it currently requires two fingerprints).

In the process, his vision of a broad surveillance society - supported by massive databases of biometric data collected from hundreds of millions of people - presented a chilling future.

Rather than terra incognita, Chertoff seemed to say there is a known reality about our future course and there is little that the privacy community can do about it.

As privacy advocates lamented the remarks, warning of creeping surveillance and urging commissioners to take action, delegates were left to wonder whether the privacy world will again be unrecognisable when the Data Protection and Privacy Commissioner’s conference next convenes in Canada.

Report says war on terror is fuelling al Qaeda

Kate Kelland
Reuters
October 7, 2007

LONDON (Reuters) - Six years after the September 11 attacks in the United States, the “war on terror” is failing and instead fuelling an increase in support for extremist Islamist movements, a British think-tank said on Monday.

A report by the Oxford Research Group (ORG) said a “fundamental re-think is required” if the global terrorist network is to be rendered ineffective.

“If the al Qaeda movement is to be countered, then the roots of its support must be understood and systematically undercut,” said Paul Rogers, the report’s author and professor of global peace studies at Bradford University in northern England.

“Combined with conventional policing and security measures, al Qaeda can be contained and minimized but this will require a change in policy at every level.”

He described the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq as a “disastrous mistake” which had helped establish a “most valued jihadist combat training zone” for al Qaeda supporters.

The report — Alternatives to the War on Terror — recommended the immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq coupled with intensive diplomatic engagement in the region, including with Iran and Syria.

In Afghanistan, Rogers also called for an immediate scaling down of military activities, an injection of more civil aid and negotiations with militia groups aimed at bringing them into the political process.

If such measures were adopted it would still take “at least 10 years to make up for the mistakes made since 9/11.”

“Failure to make the necessary changes could result in the war on terror lasting decades,” the report added.

Rogers also warned of a drift toward conflict with Iran.

“Going to war with Iran”, he said, “will make matters far worse, playing directly into the hands of extreme elements and adding greatly to the violence across the region. Whatever the problems with Iran, war should be avoided at all costs.”

Polio outbreak in Nigeria sparked by vaccine, experts say

The Associated Press

Friday, October 5, 2007

LONDON: (AP)For doctors struggling to eradicate polio, fighting the paralytic disease can mean vaccinating children in war-torn regions, persuading governments to pay attention, and begging donors for money.

A recent polio outbreak in Nigeria revealed another potential problem: the vaccine commonly used against it. Last week, the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported that since 2005, 69 Nigerian children have been paralyzed by a polio virus derived from the oral vaccine. Two other cases made it to Niger.

Such cases are not unknown, but the continuing Nigerian outbreak is the biggest ever, and follows a boycott of the vaccination campaign in Africa's most populous country because of unfounded fears the vaccine was a Western plot to sterilize Muslims.

Officials now worry that the latest Nigerian outbreak traced to the vaccine could trigger another vaccine scare.

"This is the oral polio vaccine paradox," said Olen Kew, a virologist at the United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "This vaccine is the most effective tool we have against the virus, but it's like fighting fire with fire."

What's needed to stop Nigeria's outbreak is more of the same vaccine that caused it.

The oral polio vaccine contains a weakened version of polio virus. Children who have been vaccinated pass the virus into the water supply. Other children who then play in or drink that water pick up the vaccine's virus, which gives them some protection against polio.

But in very rare instances, as the virus passes through unimmunized children, it can mutate into a form that is dangerous enough to spark new outbreaks.

That happened for the first time in 2001, when 22 children were paralyzed in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Subsequent vaccine-caused polio outbreaks have occurred in the Philippines, Madagascar, China and Indonesia.

Experts say these types of outbreaks only happen when not enough children are vaccinated. In northern Nigeria, only about 39 percent of children are fully protected against polio.

In the West, an injectable polio vaccine with inactivated virus is used, to avoid the problems with the oral vaccine. But the oral vaccine used in the developing world is much cheaper than the injectable vaccine, and can be given to children by volunteers with little training.

The latest outbreak linked to the vaccine comes "in the wake of all the other problems they've had in Nigeria," said Dr. Donald A. Henderson, who led WHO's smallpox eradication campaign in the 1970s.

In 2003, politicians in northern Nigeria canceled vaccination campaigns for nearly a year, claiming the vaccine was a Western plot to sterilize Muslims. That led to an explosion of polio, and the virus jumped to approximately two dozen countries worldwide.

Now, health officials' decision to keep quiet about the outbreak linked to the vaccine for so long — WHO and CDC have known about the Nigerian outbreak since last year — may look suspicious.

Dr. David Heymann, WHO's top polio official, said that because WHO considered the Nigerian outbreak to be an "operational" issue, it was unnecessary to share the information beyond its scientific committees.

CDC's Kew said added: "The people who are against immunization may seize on anything that could strengthen their position, even if it's scientifically untenable."

Rumors are still rife among Nigerians that the vaccine is unsafe, and several religious leaders continue to lecture on its dangers. If there is another mass vaccine boycott that unleashes the virus further, that could derail the global eradication effort for good.

Nigerian health officials contacted by AP declined to comment on the situation.

"Convincing the Nigerians to take even more of this vaccine will be a tough sell," said Dr. Samuel Katz, an infectious diseases specialist at Duke University and co-inventor of the measles vaccine.

The delayed reporting of the Nigeria situation may also have delayed the scientific response. If WHO had shared information sooner, "the global research community could have started its laboratory and epidemiological studies earlier," said Dr. Isao Arita, of the Agency for Cooperation in International Health in Japan.

Scientists are still learning how the oral polio vaccine behaves, and need details when problems arise to determine how to avoid similar outbreaks in the future.

More than 10 billion doses have been given to children worldwide, and the vaccine has been credited with cutting polio incidence by more than 99 percent since 1988. Many more children are still paralyzed by the wild polio virus as compared to the virus in the vaccine.

But no vaccine is risk-free.

WHO said that changing the vaccination strategy is unnecessary. "It would be nice if we had a more stable oral polio vaccine, but that's not the way it is today," Heymann said. "We will continue working the way we have been working because we don't want children to be paralyzed anywhere."