US detains 'Iran-linked militant'

US detains 'Iran-linked militant'

US troops have detained an Iraqi man suspected of links with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' elite Quds Force in Karbala, the US military has said.

The "highly-sought individual" is suspected of working with the force to transport militants to its training camps in Iran, the military said.

He is also believed to have provided "lethal aid to terrorists" in Baghdad.

US officials have often accused the Quds Force of training and arming Iraqi militia, an allegation Tehran denies.

Two weeks ago, Washington said such efforts to destabilise Iraq might lead it to designate the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) a "terrorist" organisation.

'Proxy war'

The pre-dawn raid in the southern Shia holy city of Karbala was carried out after other detainees led US-led forces to the man's house, the military said in a statement.

Troops confiscated computer equipment, communication devices and other documents which may lead "to information on other IRGC-Quds Force illicit activities intended to disrupt security operations in Iraq", it said.

"The capture of individuals affiliated with the IRGC-Quds Force is an integral part of dismantling terror networks that seek to kill innocent Iraqis and security forces," said Lt-Col Christopher Garver, a US military spokesman.

In other news, a bomb exploded near a military convoy in Baghdad, reportedly killing at least one person.

Also on Wednesday, Iraqi television reported Prime Minister Nouri Maliki was visiting Iraq's most prominent Shia cleric, Ali al-Sistani, in the holy city of Najaf.

The two are expected to discuss "the security situation and services".

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/in_depth/6979256.stm

Published: 2007/09/05 09:40:56 GMT

Germany foils 'massive' bomb plot

Germany foils 'massive' bomb plot

Three men have been arrested in Germany on suspicion of planning a "massive" terrorist attack on US facilities in the country, officials have said.

Federal prosecutor Monika Harms said the three had trained at camps in Pakistan and procured some 700kg (1,500lbs) of chemicals for explosives.

She said the accused had sought to target facilities visited by Americans, such as nightclubs, pubs or airports.

Defence minister Franz Josef Jung said the men had posed "an imminent threat".

Media reports said they were planning attacks against a US military base in Ramstein and Frankfurt airport.

Surveillance effort

Ms Harms said the men planned to use vehicles loaded with the explosives to kill or injure large numbers of people.

The arrests had prevented "massive bomb attacks", she added.

The suspects, all thought to be in their twenties, were suspected members of the German cell of a group she named as Islamic Jihad Union.

Joerg Ziercke, the head of Germany's federal crime office, said the men had a "profound hatred of US citizens".

They had been under surveillance for six months, but the authorities decided to act when it became clear the men were planning to move their huge stores of hydrogen peroxide.

They were arrested on Tuesday afternoon in a raid on an apartment in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Another 40 raids were also carried out on properties across the country.

'Major targets'

Wolfgang Bosbach, an MP with Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, said the planned attacks "would have had considerable consequences" and might have been timed to coincide with the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US.

Frankfurt airport is continental Europe's busiest, and the base at Ramstein in western Germany is a major transport hub for US military operations.

Germany, which has soldiers in Afghanistan but did not send troops to Iraq, has been largely spared terrorist attacks.

However, there have been growing concerns that Islamist militants are operating in the country.

Six years ago, the northern city of Hamburg was thrust into the spotlight after it emerged a cell had used it as a base for planning the 9/11 attacks.

Last summer, two suitcase bombs were planted on commuter trains in several German towns but they failed to explode.

On Monday, two people with suspected links to al-Qaeda were arrested in Denmark on suspicion of planning a bomb attack.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/6979295.stm

Published: 2007/09/05 12:20:43 GMT

China denies Pentagon cyber-raid

BBC
Tuesday Sept 4, 2007

China has denied reports that its military hacked into the computer network of the US Department of Defense in Washington.
A Foreign Ministry official said the claims "reflected Cold War mentality".

The Financial Times quoted US officials as saying the Chinese army made the attack, which crashed part of a system for the defence secretary's office.

Last week China dismissed reports that its armed forces had infiltrated German government computer systems.

The reports come as US President George W Bush prepares to meet his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, at the Apec summit in Sydney, Australia.

'Wild accusations'

Chinese Foreign Ministry official Jiang Yu said Beijing "opposed and vigorously attacked" all attacks on the internet including hacking.

"Some people are making wild accusations against China ... These are totally groundless and also reflect a Cold War mentality," she said.

The Financial Times earlier quoted a senior official as saying the Pentagon had pinpointed the origins of the attack and another as saying there was a "high level of confidence" that the People's Liberation Army was responsible.

The Pentagon itself has declined to say who it thinks is behind the attack, which took place in June.

Correspondents say the US and Chinese military regularly probe each other's networks, but the scale of disruption in the recent attack has raised concern.

The Pentagon shut down the network for more than a week while attacks continued, the newspaper said.

It quoted a source with knowledge of the attack as saying the data downloaded by the hacker was probably unclassified.

Ex-president urges Iran to beware of 'US dangers'

AFP
Tuesday September 4, 2007

Former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on Tuesday urged Iran to preserve national unity and beware of being provoked in the face of the "dangers" posed by arch enemy the United States.

"They (the United States) made a big issue of the nuclear issue and they are mobilising public opinion, their Greater Middle East plan is still on the table," Rafsanjani told the opening session of Iran's Assembly of Experts.

"Because of the dangers threatening us, we should pay attention to the supreme leader's decree for national unity and Islamic cohesion," Rafsanjani told the body before it elected him its new chairman.

"Now they have started an anti-Shiite wave and we should be careful not to fall into their traps," added Rafsanjani. "We should not let ourselves be provoked and give an excuse for the enemy."

Rafsanjani had been acting head of the Assembly of Experts, which supervises the work of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, following the death in July of its chairman Ayatollah Ali Meshkini.

President from 1989-1997, Rafsanjani has always shown a strong pragmatic streak and his pleas for vigilance contrast with the more confrontational rhetoric of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The president has repeatedly in recent weeks dismissed the prospect of US military action against Iran over its nuclear programme, saying he was confident this would never happen.

Washington accuses Tehran of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons -- an allegation vehemently denied by the Islamic republic -- and has never ruled out taking military action against it.

Rafsanjani was soundly thrashed by Ahmadinejed in the 2005 presidential elections but made something of a comeback last year by polling the highest number of votes in the Assembly of Experts polls.

Surveillance drone used to spy on concert attendees

Heather Brooke
London Times
Tuesday Sept 4, 2007

Two weekends ago at the V Festival, revellers were surprised to see a remote-controlled surveillance drone flying and filming overhead. Little to nothing was known beforehand about the drone’s use, and news reports after the fact shed little light on why or how its use was approved.

I put in a Freedom of Information Act request and discovered that the drone was part of a sales demo by a company called MW Power at the invitation of Staffordshire Police. What about the legality of the drone, I asked the police? They wondered why I was asking. Was I a competitor? Did I want to sell them a drone? It was unbelievable to the police, I suppose, that a citizen might be concerned about her privacy.

MW Power told me that more than half of Britain’s police forces have asked for a drone demo and many are finalising packages to buy the £30,000 kit – this without any public discussion about whether it is a useful way of combating crime.

Overarching surveillance infringes our privacy. So, for such an infringement to be justified, the police ought to have evidence to show its effectiveness. Instead, the police grab at invasive technologies without regard to the cost in terms of individual privacy or community trust. The police claim that drones will prevent thefts, but they can’t provide any proof. Shouldn’t such proof exist before the police throw taxpayer’s money into the sky?

Cops with helmet cameras, the DNA database, automatic numberplate recognition, CCTV – all these technologies have been slyly introduced: imagined future benefits are played up while the very tangible, immediate costs of lost privacy are airily discounted.

The Crown Prosecution Service, for example, has no figures on the success of CCTV in prosecuting crime. As for prevention, violent crime has doubled in the ten years since CCTV came to blanket the country. And yet Simon Byrne, the Assistant Chief Constable of Merseyside, still says: “People clamour for the feeling of safety which cameras give.”

I don’t. Far better to rely on real eyes in real human heads with real police officers backing them up.

But I’m told by Merseyside Police – the first force to buy a drone – that the flying spy has been “a great success and people feel they’ve reclaimed their parks”.

Has the drone’s footage been used as evidence to prosecute or arrest anyone? No. Not much of a success then.

If police forces were directly accountable to the people they serve, it’s doubtful that we would have agreed to such costly blanket surveillance – whether drones in the sky or cameras on every street corner – without the solid facts to persuade us of its necessity. But when the only person that the police have to please is the Home Secretary, then citizens’ rights are irrelevant.

NEW WORLD ORDER - BUSH'S MARTIAL

In this clip, you will see congressional questioning to answer questions about Bush being able to suspend the constitution.

When the 9/11 truth about the conspiracy comes to light, people like Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld may see the same fate as Saddam Hussein. Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda are CIA assets. The network they operate is funded through the ISI by the central intelligence agency. When you have building 7, freefall speed, Silverstein saying "Pull it" and all the vast evidence about September 11th, you come to understand the detail. There were bombs in the WTC, or World Trade Center, and the Pentagon was hit by a missile. Flight 93 was shot down over Pennsylvania. The 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia which has direct ties right to George Herbert Walker Bush, Bush SR. Prescott Bush funded Hitler and the nazi party. If we don't stop this it will lead to World war 3, or WW3. You will not find any Britney Spears or Anna Smith videos on my channel. Please subscribe to my channel at www.youtube.com/realitynetwork to get REAL news that you may have missed on FOX, NBC, CBS, and CNN. Olbermann, Lou Dobbs, Bill Oreilly, or Sean Hannity will not cover this topic. The Iraq war, Afghanistand, and coming Iran war are all based on the pretext of 9/11, which was a total lie. We are sending our soldiers off to war based on a lie. All this torture and death for a lie. This has to stop.



*****************************************
If you trust anything the New World Order tools say. Your uninformed or retarded

Martial Law is coming

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Local news piece worshipping Martial Law

Iran may hire others to finish Russian nuclear plant: report

AFP
Friday, August 31, 2007

Iran is considering alternative builders to finish its first nuclear power plant amid disputes with Russia, which now heads the project, a Russian daily quoted an Iranian official as saying Friday.

"Iran is interested in the atomic power station at Bushehr being finished on time and specifically by Russia," daily Gazeta quoted Iranian presidential spokesman Ali Akbar Javanfekr as saying.

"However, we are already considering other candidates to finish construction of the Bushehr plant in the event that problems arise again," he said, the newspaper reported.

Tehran says the much-delayed power station is the key to its plans for a civilian nuclear programme. Washington accuses the Islamic republic of using its energy programme to hide nuclear weapons development.

Moscow has repeatedly pushed back the target date for the plant's opening in recent months, saying in July that the project was in "crisis" because Iran was falling behind on payments for the 1.2-billion-dollar (870-million-euro) plant.

Russian officials have said Bushehr may not be completed until late 2008 -- a year later than Iranian officials had planned.

Bank warns emergency borrowers

Chris Giles and Peter Thal Larsen
Financial Times
Friday Aug 31, 2007

The Bank of England has warned financial institutions authorised to use its emergency lending facility that they are not supposed to discuss it publicly.

The warning came after it announced on Thursday that the facility had been tapped for a second time since turmoil gripped global money and credit markets.

On Wednesday, one or more banks borrowed £1.55bn ($3.13bn) overnight from the central bank, reigniting fears that UK banks faced severe liquidity difficulties and sending sterling and money markets sharply lower.

The overnight rate in the interbank market spiked higher to 6.13 per cent, almost 0.4 percentage points higher than the Bank of England’s official 5.75 per cent rate. The pound initially fell 0.5 per cent to $2.0046 against the dollar before recovering ground to close slightly up in London at $2.0160.

But the fears in the market appeared to be groundless last night. It is understood that the lending facility was used for operational reasons and not because a UK-based bank faced a sudden shortage of sterling.

The amount borrowed was large but the circumstances were understood to be of a technical nature. At the end of June other technical problems led to nearly £4bn being borrowed using the same facility.

The Bank of England stands ready to lend unlimited amounts at a rate of 6.75 per cent, one point above its official rate, in a facility that has been used 14 times already this year.

On Wednesday afternoon, the link between Crest, the UK ­settlements house, and the Bank of England’s electronic settlements system, broke down for an hour, potentially interfering with banks’ transactions. Crest said that it had extended the deadline for settlements by an hour in order to clear any backlog, and had not received any complaints.

Use of the Bank of England’s reserve facility, which goes largely unnoticed in calm markets, has been the subject of intense scrutiny in recent weeks as investors search for signs of financial distress. Last week, Barclays was drawn into an embarrassing dispute with HSBC, its UK rival, after being forced to borrow £314m from the reserve facility.

After the central bank’s ­warnings to users not to ­comment publicly, all the UK banks contacted by the Financial Times yesterday declined to ­comment.

Documents Show FBI Spied on King's Widow

ERRIN HAINES
AP
Friday Aug 31, 2007

Federal agents spied on the widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for several years after his assassination in 1968, according to newly released documents that reveal the FBI worried about her following in the footsteps of the slain civil rights icon.

In memos that reveal Coretta Scott King being closely followed by the government, the FBI noted concern that she might attempt "to tie the anti-Vietnam movement to the civil rights movement."

Four years after Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, the FBI closed its file on Coretta Scott King, saying, "No information has come to the attention of Atlanta which indicates a propensity for violence or affiliation of subversive elements," according to a memorandum dated Nov. 30, 1972.

The documents were obtained by Houston television station KHOU in a story published Thursday. Coretta Scott King died in January 2006 at the age of 78.

The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who served as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference - which King co-founded in 1957 - said the documents illustrate the FBI's pattern of "despicable and devious" civil-rights-era behavior against the organization and those affiliated with it.

"The FBI kept a microphone everywhere they could where the SCLC was concerned," said Lowery, who said the agency had a member of the SCLC's staff on its payroll.

"Since we had nothing to hide, it was no great problem for us. But we don't put it past the FBI; (then-FBI Director) J. Edgar Hoover hated Martin Luther King and everything that the SCLC stood for."

Andrew Young, a lieutenant of King's during the civil rights movement, agreed. But he said he was surprised that the government would focus on Coretta Scott King.

"I didn't know it and I don't think she knew it," Young said. "If ever there was a woman that had the makings of a saint, it was Coretta. I don't know what they were looking for, I don't know what they were expecting to find. I don't know why they wasted the government's money."

Also included in the documents:

_ The FBI suggested that Ralph Abernathy, a close aide to Martin Luther King, be made aware of death threats against his life for the benefit of "the disruptive effect of confusing and worrying him."

_ An intercepted letter written by Coretta Scott King in 1971 to the National Peace Action Coalition, in which she said the Vietnam War has "ravaged our domestic programs."

_ One memo shows that the FBI even read and reviewed King's 1969 book about her late husband, "My Life with Martin Luther King Jr." The agent made a point to say that her "selfless, magnanimous, decorous attitude is belied by ... (her) actual shrewd, calculating, businesslike activities."

There is also evidence that the Nixon administration and then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were kept informed of the FBI's nearly constant surveillance.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s activities were known to have been monitored by the federal government as he led the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Intelligence gathering on famous Americans and war critics became so infamous that rules to curtail domestic spying were put in place in the 1970s.

King's nephew, Isaac Newton Farris Jr., said on Thursday that the surveillance of his aunt comes as no surprise.

"We knew she was surveilled," said Farris, who is also chief executive officer of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. "The only surprise is the intensity of the surveillance after his death. It appears it was as intense as the surveillance on my uncle."

Farris said there was no reason to monitor either one of them, since they were law-abiding citizens who were standing up for their constitutional rights.

"This is a woman who basically was trying to raise four kids and honor her deceased husband," Farris said. "I don't know how that was a threat to anybody's national security."

Rewritten surveillance law passed by Congress could give Bush more power for domestic wiretaps

Jason Rhyne
Raw Story
Thursday, August 30, 2007

The recently passed law which allows President Bush to continue wiretapping Americans' telephone calls overseas may allow for domestic spying as well, according to a new report commissioned by Congress.

A recently-acquired Congressional Research Service report of the controversial Protect America Act, which formally legalized communications surveillance where one party is overseas, offers nebulous language which is broadly open for interpretation, according to Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News.

The new legislation seems to provide legal latitude that could smooth the way for domestic spying initiatives involving US citizens. Given the Administration's penchant for signing statements, such an open door may be irresistible.

“The new CRS report offers a careful reading of each provision of the Act,” writes Aftergood, who obtained a copy of the CRS review Wednesday. “But instead of fully clarifying its impact, the report serves to highlight just how unclear and indeterminate the new law actually is.”

Wendy Morigi, a spokeswoman for Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) told RAW STORY by email that she would familiarize herself with the report.

Steven Aftergood points out instances where the CRS summary can’t definitively say what the Act calls for.

Quoting the report, he says, “One provision ‘could conceivably be interpreted’ to apply to parties within the United States. Another provision ‘might be seen to be susceptible of two possible interpretations.’ Still others ‘appear to’ or ‘would seem to’ or ‘may also’ have one uncertain consequence or another.”

“In other words,” he says, “the new law bears the hallmarks of its hasty, poorly-considered origins.”

In an email to RAW STORY Thursday, Aftergood characterized what he thought was a fundamental flaw in the new provisions.

“I would say the most basic problem is that the new law redefines basic legal terms such as 'electronic surveillance,' he wrote. "It adopts new terms such as '[surveillance] directed at' without a clear definition at all. The upshot is that the practical meaning of the law is uncertain in many cases."

On the report's summary page, CRS states that the legislation was enacted "with regard to past abuses of electronic surveillance for national security purposes and to the somewhat uncertain state of the law on the subject," adding that the Act "also creates a mechanism for acquisition, without a court order under a certification by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the Attorney General, of foreign intelligence information concerning a person reasonably believed to be outside the United States." Powers conferred by the amendments are set to expire in six months, although they can extended if Congress so chooses.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who voted against the measure, said in a statement after its passage that the bill "does violence to the Constitution of the United States," and "also could produce convictions that may well be overturned because the bill does not heed the instructions from the Supreme Court."

President Bush, meanwhile, commended the bill for giving intelligence professionals "the legal tools to gather information about the intentions of our enemies," and said that, because of the amendments, "America is safer."

If anything, Aftergood writes, the new CRS report may help identify questions Congress may have when it revisits FISA legislation next month.

FOREX-Dollar down vs yen, up vs euro after Bernanke

NEW YORK, Aug 31 (Reuters) - The dollar gained against the euro but fell against the yen on Friday as investors debated whether the credit crisis would drag on global growth despite initial enthusiasm for a White House plan to help U.S. homeowners cope with tough lending conditions.

President George W. Bush and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in separate speeches on Friday that there would be no bailout of speculators and gave no indication an end to mortgage market turmoil is near, sparking a small safe-haven bid in the dollar.

But most gains eroded as investors came to realize that Bernanke offered little new guidance on the outcome of a Fed policy meeting in September, and Bush's plan was viewed as vague and perhaps too limited to contain market turbulence.

"People are keying in to the fact there is risk and that there is more in the pipeline," said Joseph Trevisani, chief market analyst at FX Solutions in Saddle River, New Jersey.

The dollar fell 0.1 percent to 115.78 yen after earlier touching session lows around 115.50 yen .

Against the yen, the euro was down 0.2 percent to 157.74 yen .

The euro traded around session lows against the dollar at $1.3623 , down 0.1 percent, largely pressured by the decline in the euro/yen and other crosses, Trevisani said.

The dollar index <.DXY>, a gauge of the greenback's performance against a basket of six major currencies, was flat at 80.824.

Dealers said volume thinned out as the New York session progressed as people prepared to leave early for the long holiday weekend in the United States, with markets closed on Monday for Labor Day.

CARRY TRADE SUFFERS IN AUGUST

High-yielding currencies such as the Australian dollar and the New Zealand dollar initially gained on news reports about the White House plan, which was mostly aimed at enabling troubled homeowners to renegotiate their mortgages with their lenders to avoid default.

However, by late afternoon in New York, only the Australian dollar was up, about 0.4 percent at $0.8184 .

Investors have been reducing their exposure to risky assets as the crisis that began in the U.S. subprime mortgage market spread to other markets. The main beneficiary has been the yen, as investors unwind carry trades, in which a low-yielding currency such as the yen is used to finance purchases of higher-yielding, riskier assets.

The New Zealand dollar was on course for the largest monthly drop against the yen since October 1998, and the Australian dollar was set for the biggest monthly loss against the yen since September 2001.

This week, financial markets have stabilized, and the yen's rapid ascent earlier in the month slowed.

The market's attention will likely focus on whether economic data from now until the next Fed policy meeting on Sept. 18 would reflect enough weakness to cause policy-makers to cut the benchmark fed funds rate. The central bank has kept its target for fed funds, the rate banks charge each other for overnight loans, steady at 5.25 percent since late June 2006.

"The Fed has not decided today whether it will cut rates in September, and the question is whether ongoing credit strains until September 18th would qualify as sustained," said Nick Bennenbroek, head of currency strategy with Wells Fargo in New York.

Snow to Leave White House Post on Sept. 14

NPR.org, August 31, 2007 · President Bush announced Friday that Tony Snow will leave his post as press secretary on Sept. 14.

Snow, 52, had said previously that he would leave for financial reasons before Mr. Bush's presidential term ended.

Snow, who makes $168,000 a year, has been battling cancer.

Before coming to the White House in April 2006, Snow was a conservative pundit and syndicated talk show host on Fox News Radio.

He is the latest in a string of White House officials who have announced they are leaving their posts, including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and White House political strategist Karl Rove. Rove's last day was today, and Gonzales is scheduled to step down on Sept. 17.

Snow will be replaced by his deputy, Dana Perino.

From NPR reports and The Associated Press

Attorney General Gonzales resigns: NY Times

Reuters
Monday Aug 27, 2007

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has resigned from office, an official confirmed on Monday.

The Justice Department refused to comment on Gonzales' departure but has scheduled a press conference for 10:30 a.m. EDT.

Chinese officials predicted 9/11 attacks

dnaindia.com
Monday Aug 27, 2007

NEW DELHI: Imagine someone predicting the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in the US two years before the terror strike!

Such a forecast was part of an analysis of the weaknesses of the American military system by two Chinese military planners, who also identified Osama bin Laden as one of the likely perpetrators of a possible attack.

The officials, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, who were in service at that time, made the forecast in the book "Unrestricted Warfare" written in 1999, which has now beenpublished in India, several years after being translated into English for the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other US national security departments.

The officials, who were then senior colonels, said, "Actually, with the next century having still not yet arrived, the American military has already encountered trouble from insufficient frequency bandwidth brought on by the above-mentioned types of enemies.

Whether it be the intrusion of hackers, a major explosion at the World Trade Center, or a bombing attack by Osama bin Laden, all of these greatly exceed the frequency bandwidths understood by the American military.

The American military is naturally inadequately prepared to deal with this type of enemy psychologically, in terms of measures and especially as regards military thinking and the methods of operation derived from this," they said.

The US was an area of major focus in the book, which proposed tactics for developing countries like China and measures to compensate for their military inferiority vis-a-vis America in a possible hi-tech war.

US recession risk highest since 9/11: ex-Treasury secretary

AFP
Monday Aug 27, 2007

WASHINGTON: Former US Treasury secretary Larry Summers said Sunday it was too early to declare the financial markets crisis over and said chances had risen sharply of an economic downturn in the United States.

Despite interventions by the US Federal Reserve last week which appeared to reverse heavy selling pressure over the collapsing US housing debt market, Summers said the risk of recession was its highest since the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

"We certainly saw some repair and some return to normality this week, but I think it would be far premature to judge this crisis over for at least two reasons," Summers told ABC television.

"First, we can't yet know that there aren't more shoes to drop in the financial area," he said, referring to the massive loss of confidence in securitised housing loans as US real estate prices sag.

"Second, we haven't yet had the time to observe what all this is going to mean for the real economy and for the actual process of job creation in our economy.

"I do not think we yet have ... a basis of making a prediction that there will be a recession, but I would say that the risks of recession are now greater than they've been any time since the period in the aftermath of 9/11."

Summers, who headed the US Treasury from 1999 to 2001 and then was president of Harvard University until a year ago, criticised the administration for not using government-backed mortgage lenders to help homeowners facing default on their loans.

He said policy should not be targeted at protecting investors or corporate lenders in the risky "sub-prime" sector, which targets borrowers with patchy credit records.

"You know, the substantial majority of the firms that were in the sub-prime mortgage business have already gone out of business. Many of the firms that remain have seen their stock prices fall by half or more," said Summers, now with the New York investment bank DE Shaw & Co.

"But the focus shouldn't be on those firms. The focus should be on the homeowner. The focus should be on the guy who bought a mortgage," he said.

Activists Question If SPP Provocateur Orders Came From Prime Minister

Ben Russell
Raw Story
Monday Aug 27, 2007

Flashback: Canadian Police Caught Attempting To Stage Riots

A video recently posted on YouTube documents a strange occurrence at a recent protest during the recent Montebello Summit in Québec, Canada, which has activists questioning the motives of police, and suspicious that the orders came down from the Prime Minister's office.

Masked men were spotted near the riot police, who held back despite one man holding a large rock, himself and two others appearing to attempt an incitement to riot. The three were confronted by other attendees and eventually handcuffed and taken away.

During the confrontation, one of the three appears to be talking directly to one of the officers.

Union President Dave Coles at a recent news conference: "The Communications, Energy and Paper Workers Union of Canada believes that the security force at Montebello were ordered to infiltrate our peaceful assembly and to provoke incidents."

In addition to the video footage, the three suspected plants wore the same brand boots, as evidenced by the soles, as the Sûreté du Québec riot police. Neither the SQ, nor the RCMP, commented; each initially denied planting agents provocateurs.

"Oops. Somebody took a picture," quips Coles.

Former police officer Doug Kirkland, who runs a private security, says that planting undercover police at protests is beneficial when used to root out true troublemakers, but, says Kirkland while viewing the video footage: "That's a very slippery slope."

Continues Kirkland, "I think you're stretching the bounds of proper police intelligence when you're doing that kind of work."

Sûreté du Québec later issued a press release confirming that the three men in question were indeed officers, there to maintain order rather than disrupt the protest, and that no crime was committed.

Long-time lawyer for activists Lawrence Greenspon calls for politicians to act.

"There's a serious issue about proper police conduct here," says attorney Lawrence Greenspon, a longtime defender of protesters.

"I think the people that represent us in the legislature should be looking at some form of legislation that says 'Wait a second. This is not proper use of police resources, and we should be setting guidelines.'"

"This is the face of it," says Dave Coles, "where people can't even ask a question without having to face these kind of goons," referring to riot police, who are said to attempt to incite violence with aims to suppress speech, even when the activity takes place in designated spaces.

"It's time that all the secrecy and backroom deals end."

Minister of Safety Stockwell Day deflects blame from the RCMP, encouraging utilization of the "complaints process" available through the SQ.

US Government, complicit in Iraq corruption, helps punish whistleblowers

Raw Story
Monday Aug 27, 2007

People who have brought war-related fraud and corruption to the attention of law enforcement suffer horribly as a result, reports the Associated Press Saturday.

The article profiles people who have filed lawsuits on behalf of the American taxpayer after witnessing misuse of funds and materials at the hands of private contractors. After blowing the whistle on his employer at the time, Shield Group Security Co., Navy Veteran Donald Vance, in his suit, says he and a colleague were held in an American military prison for over three months and subject to harsh interrogation tactics "reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants."

Employees of the Federal Government and private military contractors are shown to have faced demotion, detention, shunning by colleagues, and a destroyed family life as consequences of reporting corruption.

#
EXCERPTS:

“If you do it, you will be destroyed,” said William Weaver, professor of political science at the University of Texas-El Paso and senior advisor to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.

“Reconstruction is so rife with corruption. Sometimes people ask me, ‘Should I do this?’ And my answer is no. If they’re married, they’ll lose their family. They will lose their jobs. They will lose everything,” Weaver said.

“The only way we can find out what is going on is for someone to come forward and let us know,” said Beth Daley of the Project on Government Oversight, an independent, nonprofit group that investigates corruption. “But when they do, the weight of the government comes down on them. The message is, ’Don’t blow the whistle or we’ll make your life hell.’

#
The entire article can be read at MSNBC.com.

Evidence Suggests CIA Spiked Investigations

www.UnansweredQuestions.org
Monday Aug 27, 2007

Dear Members of the Press:

A grave miscarriage of justice is afoot. After years being withheld the Administration finally is forced to release the CIA's IG Report on 9/11. While earlier news accounts said the report would be released in early September it was released in the middle of a Congressional recess, in the middle of a Summer break, thus insuring it will not receive the attention it deserves. Worse still is the conclusion in most press reports since its release that bolsters the official narrative ie. that all the myriad failures were simply due to 'systemic failure' and/or incompetence.

The circumstantial evidence running contrary to this conclusion is compelling and convincing.

It appears that Al-Hazmi and Al-Mihdhar were being protected by higher ups in the CIA. Respected author Joe Trento has reported that they were working for Saudi Intelligence. Others reported the two were removed from the watchlist two days before 9/11. I don't know if either was the case. It is clear however that there was a concerted effort to protect them similar in some respects to the way authorities in FBI HQ refused to allow Rowley and company in Minnesota to go into Mousaoui's laptop computer or how higher ups prevented Robert Wright in Chicago from going after the money trail of Yassin Al-Kadi (Qadi) who financed the software company Ptech and the terrorist group Hamas and who was later named a /Specially Designated Global Terrorist/ by President Bush in October of 2001.

There is a pattern here that cannot be adequately explained by charges of 'systemic failure' or incompetence. As Kristen Breitweiser http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristen-breitweiser/enabling-danger- par t-one_b_5951.html has suggested, something else is going on, and the repeated missed opportunities (She has documented 7) and blocked communications suggests something "purposeful" on the part of authorities. The IG Report says 60 agents reviewed the Intel about the two.

Please review the statement below made by 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser and by Investigative Journalist Michael Isikoff of Newsweek. These are merely jumping off points to following a trail few have had the courage to examine closely and relentlessly until answers to the questions raised by Kristen and others are answered. In the wake of 9/11, billions of dollars, the lives of soldiers and the Constitution are being sacrificed. Let not truth be sacrificed as well, not when it comes to what happened on September 11th, 2001.

Thank you.

Kyle F. Hence Co-Producer, 9/11: Press for Truth http://www.911pressfortruth.com

*Statement of Kristen Breitweiser, Co-Chairperson, September 11 Advocates Concerning the Joint 9/11 Inquiry Senate Select Committee on Intelligence House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence September 18, 2002 * [snip] Perhaps even more disturbing is the information regarding Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, two of the hijackers. in late August, the CIA asked the INS to put these two men on a watchlist because of their ties to the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. On August 23, 2001, the INS informed the CIA that both men had already slipped into the country. Immediately thereafter, the CIA asked the FBI to find al-Midhar and Alhazmi. Not a seemingly hard task in light of the fact that one of them was listed in the San Diego phone book, the other took out a bank account in his own name, and finally, an FBI informant happened to be their roommate. [snip]*

Later after three more years of connecting dots, Kristen Breitweiser wrote in Huffington Post, August 20, 2005 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristen-breitweiser/enabling-danger- part -one_b_5951.html *

[snip] Additionally, when one carefully reads the 9/11 chronology and information provided in the public record, it becomes increasingly clear that the CIA´s repeated failure to share information with the FBI about two of the 9/11 hijackers-al Mihdhar and al Hazmi-- was purposeful. There exists at least seven instances between January 2000 and September 11th, 2001, that the CIA withheld vital information from the FBI about these two hijackers who were inside this country training for the attacks. Once, twice, maybe even three times could be considered merely careless oversights. But at least seven documented times? To me, that suggests something else. (To read about these instances, I suggest you read 9/11 materials relating to the "watchlisting issue" involving al Mihdhar and al Hazmi which is a story so detailed, that it deserves its own lengthy blog.) [snip]

*From an interview with Newsweek Investigative Reporter Michael Isikoff for the documentary, 9/11: Press for Truth http://www.911pressfortruth.com :*

MICHAEL ISIKOFF: The CIA learned about this meeting. It arranged for it to be under surveillance by the Malaysian special branch... The CIA subsequently learned within days that... Almihdhar and Alhazmi were headed for the United States. ...An FBI detailee who knew about this at the Counter Terrorism Center of the CIA drafted a cable to alert the FBI, and that cable was quashed by superiors at the CIA.

*************** STANDARD DISCLAIMER FROM UQ.ORG: UnansweredQuestions.org does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in the above article. We present this in the interests of research -for the relevant information we believe it contains. We hope that the reader finds in it inspiration to work with us further, in helping to build bridges between our various investigative communities, towards a greater, common understanding of the unanswered questions which now lie before us.

Outrage at 500,000 DNA database mistakes

Toby Helm
London Telegraph
Monday Aug 27, 2007

Civil liberties campaigners and MPs have raised doubts about the national DNA database after the Home Office confirmed it contained more than 500,000 false or wrongly recorded names.

Suspects arrested over any imprisonable offence, including rape and murder, can have their DNA held even if they are not charged or are acquitted.

The database, the biggest in the world, contains about four million names.

But it has been dogged by problems. Statistics released by the Home Office show it contains around 550,000 files with wrong or misspelt names.

Lynne Featherstone, a Liberal Democrat frontbencher, told The Daily Telegraph that she wanted a full parliamentary inquiry into the "shocking" number of errors.

"What lies behind these statistics? Is it the police just accept the 'say-so' of those whose DNA they are taking and don't check their names and addresses?" she said.

"While the use of DNA can obviously be vital in solving crimes, anything that raises questions about the credibility of the base is not acceptable."

It is understood that some of the errors have been caused by people deliberately giving someone else's name - or names of people who do not exist. The database, which police are determined to expand, also contains spelling errors and other inaccuracies.

Another source of concern to opponents, shown in the figures, is that the system has the DNA profiles of about 150,000 children, many of whom were arrested by police but found to be innocent.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of civil rights group Liberty, said the disclosure raised questions about police plans to expand the database to include information about those suspected of far less serious offences, such as dropping litter or dodging rail fares.

"It is bad enough that we have a DNA database stuffed with innocents not charged with any offence, containing too many children and too great a percentage of ethnic minorities," she said.

"Now it turns out we don't know the accuracy of the data. How many Postman Pats and Donald Ducks have entries on a system worthy of the Keystone Cops?"

Ministers accept the system is suffering teething problems but insist it is vital in solving crimes, some of which have remained open for decades.

In a case in November 2005, a 50-year-old builder was found guilty of a murder and rape that he committed in Essex 28 years ago.

He was stopped for drink- driving in 2004 and his DNA matched a sample taken from the original crime scene.