Navy veteran questions why six nuclear missiles were flown on combat aircraft to staging area for Middle East

John Byrne
Raw Story
Tuesday October 09, 2007

A retired lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve who served with the Navy's Supervisor of Salvage questioned in a little-noticed editorial Sunday why six active nuclear armed cruise missiles were being transferred to an active bomber base that "just happens to be the staging area for Middle Eastern operations."

"The United States also does not transport nuclear weapons meant for elimination attached to their launch vehicles under the wings of a combat aircraft," Navy veteran Robert Stormer wrote in the Texas-based Star-Telegram. "The procedure is to separate the warhead from the missile, encase the warhead and transport it by military cargo aircraft to a repository -- not an operational bomber base that just happens to be the staging area for Middle Eastern operations."

Six nuclear W80 nuclear-armed cruise missiles were flown to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana where they sat for ten hours undetected.

"Press reports initially cited the Air Force mistake of flying nuclear weapons over the United States in violation of Air Force standing orders and international treaties, while completely missing the more important major issues, such as how six nuclear cruise missiles got loose to begin with," writes Stormer.

"Let me be very clear here: We are not talking about paintball cartridges or pellet gun ammo. We are talking nuclear weapons."

Stormer doesn't buy reports that the missiles were simply lost. The title of his piece is "Nuke transportation story has explosive implications."

"There is a strict chain of custody for all such weapons," he said. "Nuclear weapons handling is spelled out in great detail in Air Force regulations, to the credit of that service. Every person who orders the movement of these weapons, handles them, breaks seals or moves any nuclear weapon must sign off for tracking purposes."

"All security forces assigned are authorized "to use deadly force to protect the weapons from any threat. Nor does anyone quickly move a 1-ton cruise missile -- or forget about six of them, as reported by some news outlets, especially cruise missiles loaded with high explosives.

"This is about how six nuclear advanced cruise missiles got out of their bunkers and onto a combat aircraft without notice of the wing commander, squadron commander, munitions maintenance squadron (MMS), the B-52H's crew chief and command pilot and onto another Air Force base tarmac without notice of that air base's chain of command -- for 10 hours."

At the end of his editorial, he poses the following questions.

The questions that must be answered:

1 Why, and for what ostensible purpose, were these nuclear weapons taken to Barksdale?

2 How long was it before the error was discovered?

3 How many mistakes and errors were made, and how many needed to be made, for this to happen?

4 How many and which security protocols were overlooked?

5 How many and which safety procedures were bypassed or ignored?

6 How many other nuclear command and control non-observations of procedure have there been?

7 What is Congress going to do to better oversee U.S. nuclear command and control?

8 How does this incident relate to concern for reliability of control over nuclear weapons and nuclear materials in Russia, Pakistan and elsewhere?

9 Does the Bush administration, as some news reports suggest, have plans to attack Iran with nuclear weapons?

10 If this was an accident, have we degraded our military to a point where we are now making critical mistakes with our nuclear arsenal? If so, how do we correct this?

New law means anti-gay comments could lead to seven years in jail

STEVE DOUGHTY and JAMES SLACK
UK Daily Mail
Tuesday October 09, 2007

Stirring up hatred against homosexuals is to become a serious crime punishable with a seven-year jail sentence under a law announced last night.

The legislation - similar to laws already in force outlawing persecution on religious or racial grounds - will make criminals of those who express their views in ways that could lead to the bullying or harassment of gays.

The maximum sentence is longer than the average of around five years handed to rapists.

The announcement widened the rift between opposing supporters of freedom of speech and gay rights.

Christian groups condemned it as "a law to allow Christiansto be locked up for what they believe".

But the gay pressure group Stonewall said those who disapprove of homosexuals would have nothing to fear from the law if they express their views in a manner that is "temperate" and "polite".

Justice Secretary Jack Straw told MPs the gay harassment law will be included as an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill currently going before Parliament, though ministers have yet to decide the wording.

Mr Straw said: "It is a measure of how far we have come as a society in the last ten years that we are now appalled by hatred and invective directed at people on the basis of their sexuality.

"It is time for the law to recognise this."

He raised the prospect of extending the law to cover to "transgendered" people and the disabled.

The new law aims to catch those who do not explicitly call for attacks or discrimination against homosexuals, as this is covered by existing incitement laws.

Instead, police will be allowed to pursue those who create an "atmosphere or climate" in which hatred or bullying can be fostered. Officials said it would not prohibit criticism of gay, lesbian and bisexual people or joke-telling.

The final decision over who has "crossed the line" will rest with the police.

Criminal legislation on gay harassment follows the recent Sexual Orientation Regulations which make discrimination against gays an offence against civil law.

Last night a CofE spokesman said: "We will be scrutinising any legislation to ensure that it safeguards the safety and rights of minorities without jeopardising wider concerns for freedom of expression, including the expression of religious faith."

But Stonewall chief Ben Summerskill said: "We are crystal clear that this is not about constraining anyone from expressing their religious views in a temperate way.

"It is about preventing people from inciting hatred, whether through the lyrics of rap musicians or Muslim organisations which hand out leaflets saying that all homosexuals are paedophiles."

• Parents will be told if a paedophile posing a threat to their child moves into their home or street under amendments to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill introduced last night.

But there is still no general right for parents to ask if there is a paedophile living in their neighbourhood, as demanded by "Sarah's Law" campaigners after the murder of Sarah Payne seven years ago.

60 Minutes w/Kasparov About Russia's Police State

You Tube
Tuesday October 09, 2007

Exclusive interview w/Kasparov fight for freedom inside the Iron Curtain. There are eerie scenes that resemble what's happening here in the US. The Police State is everywhere! This is the NWO agenda for the sheep. There is no liberal or conservative agenda, it's all an illusion to keep you asleep until it's too late. Visit alternative news sites to get the bigger picture.

(Article continues below)

Democratic Concessions Are Expected on Wiretapping

ERIC LICHTBLAU and CARL HULSE
NY Times
Monday October 08, 2007

Two months after vowing to roll back broad new wiretapping powers won by the Bush administration, Congressional Democrats appear ready to make concessions that could extend some of the key powers granted to the National Security Agency.

Bush administration officials say they are confident they will win approval of the broadened wiretapping authority that they secured temporarily in August as Congress rushed toward recess, and some Democratic officials admit that they may not come up with the votes to rein in the administration.

As the debate over the N.S.A.’s wiretapping powers begins anew this week, the emerging legislation reflects the political reality confronting the Democrats. While they are willing to oppose the White House on the conduct of the war in Iraq, they remain nervous that they will be labeled as soft on terrorism if they insist on strict curbs on intelligence gathering.

A Democratic bill to be proposed Tuesday in the House would maintain for several years the type of broad, blanket authority for N.S.A. wiretapping that the administration secured in August for just six months. But in an acknowledgment of civil liberties concerns, the measure would also require a more active role by the special foreign intelligence court that oversees the N.S.A.’s interception of foreign-based communications.

A competing proposal in the Senate, still being drafted, may be even closer in line with the administration’s demands, with the possibility of including retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that took part in the N.S.A.’s once-secret program to wiretap without court warrants.

No one is willing to predict with certainty how the issue will play out. But some Congressional officials and others monitoring the debate over the legislation said the final result may not be much different than it was two months ago, despite Democrats’ insistence that they would not let stand the August extension of the N.S.A.’s powers.

“Many members continue to fear that if they don’t support whatever the president asks for, they’ll be perceived as soft on terrorism,” said William Banks, a professor specializing in terrorism and national security law at Syracuse University who has written extensively on federal wiretapping law.

The August bill, known as the Protect America Act, was approved by Congress in the final hours before its summer recess after heated warnings from the Bush administration that legal loopholes in wiretapping coverage had left the country vulnerable to another terrorist attack. The legislation significantly reduced the role of the foreign intelligence court and broadened the N.S.A.’s ability to listen in on foreign-based communications without a court warrant.

“We want the statute made permanent,” Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said today. “We view this as a healthy debate. We also view it as an opportunity to inform Congress and the public that we can use these authorities responsibly. We’re going to go forward and look at any proposals that come forth, but we’ll look at them very carefully to make sure they don’t have any consequences that hamper our abilities to protect the country.”

House Democrats overwhelmingly opposed the interim legislation in August and believed at the time they had been forced into a corner by the Bush administration.

As Congress takes up the new legislation, a senior Democratic aide said House leaders are working hard to make sure the administration does not succeed in pushing through a bill that would make permanent all the powers it secured in August for the N.S.A. “That’s what we’re trying to avoid,” the aide said. “We have that concern too.”

The bill to be proposed Tuesday by the Democratic leaders of the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees would impose more controls over the N.S.A.’s powers, including quarterly audits by the Justice Department’s inspector general. It would also give the foreign intelligence court a role in approving, in advance, “basket” or “umbrella” warrants for bundles of overseas communications, according to a Congressional official.

“We are giving the N.S.A. what it legitimately needs for national security but with far more limitations and protections than are in the Protect America Act,” said Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California.

Perhaps most important in the eyes of Democratic supporters, the House bill would not give retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies that took part in the N.S.A.’s domestic eavesdropping program — a proposal that had been a top priority of the Bush administration. The August legislation granted the companies immunity for future acts, but not past deeds.

A number of private groups are trying to prove in federal court that the telecommunications companies violated the law by taking part in the program. A former senior Justice Department lawyer, Jack Goldsmith, seemed to bolster their case last week when he told Congress that the program was a “legal mess” and strongly suggested it was illegal.

In the Senate, the Democratic chairman of the Intelligence Committee, John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, is working with his Republican counterpart, Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, who was one of the main proponents of the August plan, to come up with a compromise wiretapping proposal. Wendy Morigi, a spokeswoman for Mr. Rockefeller, said that retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies is “under discussion,” but that no final proposal had been developed.

The immunity issue may prove to be the key sticking point between whatever proposals are ultimately passed by the House and the Senate. Representative Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat who was among the harshest critics of the legislation passed in August, said he would vigorously oppose any effort to grant retroactive legal protection to telecommunications companies. “There is heavy pressure on the immunity and we should not cave an inch on that,” he said in an interview.

Mr. Nadler said he was worried that the Senate would give too much ground to the administration in its proposal, but he said he was satisfied with the legislation to be proposed Tuesday in the House.

“It is not perfect, but it is a good bill,” he said. “It makes huge improvements in the current law. In some respects it is better than the old FISA law,” referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Civil liberties advocates and others who met with House officials today about the proposed bill agreed that it was an improvement over the August plan, but they were not quite as charitable in their overall assessment.

‘This still authorizes the interception of Americans’ international communications without a warrant in far too many instances and without adequate civil liberties protections,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, who was among the group that met with House officials.

Caroline Frederickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said she was troubled by the Democrats’ acceptance of broad, blanket warrants for the N.S.A., rather than the individualized warrants traditionally required by the intelligence court.

“The Democratic leadership, philosophically, is with us, but we need to help them realize the political case, which is that Democrats will not be in danger if they don’t reauthorize this Protect America Act,” Ms. Frederickson said. “They’re nervous. There’s a ‘keep the majority’ mentality, which is understandable. But we think they’re putting themselves in more danger by not standing on principle.”

Ron Paul Fires Back At Union Leader, Calls Military Interventionists the Real Isolationists

Larry Fester
USA Daily
Tuesday October 09, 2007

Ron Paul fired back at the Union Leader, a New Hampshire publication that published an editorial trivializing Dr. Paul’s foreign policy positions.

Paul responding to the paper’s attack on his foreign policy said, “my foreign policy position must rest on two fundamental assertions: first, that the Founding Fathers were not isolationists; and second, that their political philosophy -- the wisdom of the Constitution, the Declaration, and our Revolution itself -- is not just a primitive cultural relic.”

Ron Paul is distinguished from his fellow Republicans running for president, and most Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, in that he voted against the Iraq war. While Paul supported going after terrorists in Afghanistan, Dr. Paul had cited at the time what he viewed as the unconstitutional nature of the Iraq war along with other reasons for not supporting it.

Ron Paul continued his response to the Union Leader with poignant questions, “I have not been accused of deviating from the Founders' logic; if anything I have been accused of adhering to it too strictly. The question, therefore, before readers -- and soon voters -- is the same question I have asked for almost 20 years in Congress: by what superior wisdom have we now declared Jefferson, Washington, and Madison to be "unrealistic and dangerous"? Why do we insist on throwing away their most considered warnings?”

Paul then charged those seeking interventionist foreign policies as being the true isolationists, “It is not we non-interventionists who are isolationists. The real isolationists are those who impose sanctions and embargoes on countries and peoples across the globe because they disagree with the internal and foreign policies of their leaders. The real isolationists are those who choose to use force overseas to promote democracy, rather than seek change through diplomacy, engagement, and by setting a positive example.”

Ron Paul described his administration’s world view on how Americans would interact with people from other nations, “Under a Paul administration, the United States would trade freely with any nation that seeks to engage with us. American citizens would be encouraged to visit other countries and interact with other peoples rather than be told by their own government that certain countries are off limits to them.”

Ron Paul’s response to the Union Leader highlights one of two major distinctions between himself and rival Rudy Giuliani. Paul has promoted a more traditional non interventionist foreign policy abroad and has promoted freedom domestically while his opponent Rudy Giuliani has promoted an interventionist foreign policy abroad and domestically promoted security.

The debate on these two issues will likely heat up as Republicans will either buy into Giuliani’s apparent theme that ‘you can’t have freedom without security’ or Paul’s apparent theme that ‘freedom is security’. (Discuss Ron Paul and other candidates on www.usadaily.net

Couric felt pressured by NBC to support war

John Byrne
Raw Story
October 8, 2007

According to Reality Show, a book by Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz which hits bookshelves this week, CBS’ Katie Couric felt pressured by NBC to ‘lighten up’ on her coverage of the war.

“Two months before the 2004 election, when she was still at NBC’s “Today” show, Couric had asked Condoleezza Rice whether she agreed with Vice President Cheney’s declaration that the country would be at greater risk for terrorist attacks if John Kerry won the White House,” Kurtz writes. “Rice sidestepped the question, saying that any president had to fight aggressively against terrorism.”

Couric asked the question again. “Would a Kerry victory put America at greater risk?”

Rice ducked.

“Soon afterward, Couric got an e-mail from Robert Wright, the NBC president,” Kurtz writes. “He was forwarding a note from an Atlanta woman who complained that Couric had been too confrontational with Rice.

“What was the message here? Couric felt that Wright must be telling her to back off,” he continues. “She wrote him a note, saying that she tried to be persistent and elicit good answers in all her interviews, regardless of the political views of her guests. If Wright had a problem with that, she would like to discuss it with him personally. Wright wrote back that such protest letters usually came in batches, but that he had passed along this one because it seemed different.

“Couric felt there was a subtle, insidious pressure to toe the party line, and you bucked that at your peril,” he adds. “She wanted to believe that her NBC colleagues were partners in the search for truth, and no longer felt that was the case. She knew that the corporate management viewed her as an out-and-out liberal. When she ran into Jack Welch, the General Electric chairman, he would sometimes say that they had never seen eye to eye politically. If you weren’t rah rah rah for the Bush administration, and the war, you were considered unpatriotic, even treasonous.

Despite this, at her new CBS post as anchor she once led with, “With each death, with every passing day, so many of us ask, ‘Is there any way out of this nightmare?’”

“The CBS anchor could never quite figure out how Iraq had become Public Enemy No. 1, how the United States had wound up making many of the same mistakes as in Vietnam,” Kurtz notes. “She was happy, like most people, when the war initially seemed to be going well. Nobody wanted to see all these young kids getting killed. But the frenzied march to war had been bolstered by a reluctance to question the administration after 9/11.”

Leak Severed a Link to Al-Qaeda’s Secrets

Joby Warrick
Washington Post
October 9, 2007

Israeli intelligence connected SITE Institute gets Osama video ahead of its official release

A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release.

Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company’s Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide.

The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group’s communications network.

“Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless,” said Rita Katz, the firm’s 44-year-old founder, who has garnered wide attention by publicizing statements and videos from extremist chat rooms and Web sites, while attracting controversy over the secrecy of SITE’s methodology. Her firm provides intelligence about terrorist groups to a wide range of paying clients, including private firms and military and intelligence agencies from the United States and several other countries.

The precise source of the leak remains unknown. Government officials declined to be interviewed about the circumstances on the record, but they did not challenge Katz’s version of events. They also said the incident had no effect on U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts and did not diminish the government’s ability to anticipate attacks.

While acknowledging that SITE had achieved success, the officials said U.S. agencies have their own sophisticated means of watching al-Qaeda on the Web. “We have individuals in the right places dealing with all these issues, across all 16 intelligence agencies,” said Ross Feinstein, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

But privately, some intelligence officials called the incident regrettable, and one official said SITE had been “tremendously helpful” in ferreting out al-Qaeda secrets over time.

The al-Qaeda video aired on Sept. 7 attracted international attention as the first new video message from the group’s leader in three years. In it, a dark-bearded bin Laden urges Americans to convert to Islam and predicts failure for the Bush administration in Iraq and Afghanistan. The video was aired on hundreds of Western news Web sites nearly a full day before its release by a distribution company linked to al-Qaeda.

Computer logs and records reviewed by The Washington Post support SITE’s claim that it snatched the video from al-Qaeda days beforehand. Katz requested that the precise date and details of the acquisition not be made public, saying such disclosures could reveal sensitive details about the company’s methods.

SITE — an acronym for the Search for International Terrorist Entities — was established in 2002 with the stated goal of tracking and exposing terrorist groups, according to the company’s Web site. Katz, an Iraqi-born Israeli citizen whose father was executed by Saddam Hussein in the 1960s, has made the investigation of terrorist groups a passionate quest.

“We were able to establish sources that provided us with unique and important information into al-Qaeda’s hidden world,” Katz said. Her company’s income is drawn from subscriber fees and contracts.

Katz said she decided to offer an advance copy of the bin Laden video to the White House without charge so officials there could prepare for its eventual release.

She spoke first with White House counsel Fred F. Fielding, whom she had previously met, and then with Joel Bagnal, deputy assistant to the president for homeland security. Both expressed interest in obtaining a copy, and Bagnal suggested that she send a copy to Michael Leiter, who holds the No. 2 job at the National Counterterrorism Center.

Administration and intelligence officials would not comment on whether they had obtained the video separately. Katz said Fielding and Bagnal made it clear to her that the White House did not possess a copy at the time she offered hers.

Around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, Katz sent both Leiter and Fielding an e-mail with a link to a private SITE Web page containing the video and an English transcript. “Please understand the necessity for secrecy,” Katz wrote in her e-mail. “We ask you not to distribute . . . [as] it could harm our investigations.”

Fielding replied with an e-mail expressing gratitude to Katz. “It is you who deserves the thanks,” he wrote, according to a copy of the message. There was no record of a response from Leiter or the national intelligence director’s office.

Exactly what happened next is unclear. But within minutes of Katz’s e-mail to the White House, government-registered computers began downloading the video from SITE’s server, according to a log of file transfers. The records show dozens of downloads over the next three hours from computers with addresses registered to defense and intelligence agencies.

By midafternoon, several television news networks reported obtaining copies of the transcript. A copy posted around 3 p.m. on Fox News’s Web site referred to SITE and included page markers identical to those used by the group. “This confirms that the U.S. government was responsible for the leak of this document,” Katz wrote in an e-mail to Leiter at 5 p.m.

Al-Qaeda supporters, now alerted to the intrusion into their secret network, put up new obstacles that prevented SITE from gaining the kind of access it had obtained in the past, according to Katz.

A small number of private intelligence companies compete with SITE in scouring terrorists’ networks for information and messages, and some have questioned the company’s motives and methods, including the claim that its access to al-Qaeda’s network was unique. One competitor, Ben Venzke, founder of IntelCenter, said he questions SITE’s decision — as described by Katz — to offer the video to White House policymakers rather than quietly share it with intelligence analysts.

“It is not just about getting the video first,” Venzke said. “It is about having the proper methods and procedures in place to make sure that the appropriate intelligence gets to where it needs to go in the intelligence community and elsewhere in order to support ongoing counterterrorism operations.”

Delay in reapproving surveillance may be opening for civil liberties protections

Nick Juliano
Raw Story
Monday October 08, 2007

The next few days will see a furious lobbying effort as progressive lawmakers and their political allies build on a small victory to get privacy protection and liability for telecommunications companies included in a revision to a decades-old surveillance law.

Congressional leaders delayed announcing permanent changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance act Friday, giving civil liberties advocates more time to push for explicit judicial oversight of surveillance aimed at Americans.

The public is expected to get its first peek at the new law's provisions Tuesday, giving progressive lawmakers a tactical victory and allowing them a few more days to lobby Democratic leaders to accept a number of provisions in the bill.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus on Friday released an eight-point plan outlining its position on updating the new law. Just after the plan was released, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer canceled a press conference to announce the updated provisions, as first reported in the Huffington Post.

The House Intelligence Committee had scheduled a mark-up of the new bill for next Wednesday, but that may be pushed back now, as the announcement of the proposed law has not been finalized, a committee spokeswoman told RAW STORY.

It's unclear how much impact the Progressive Caucus had in delaying the bill announcement, but those skeptical of the Bush administration's push to expand its power are cautiously optimistic that the delay will allow more debate than was given to the temporary update passed in July and August. That bill, the Protect America Act, was approved hours before Congress adjourned for a month-long recess and its provisions expire in February.

Permanent FISA revisions are expected to move through Congress by the end of this year, but Friday's delay indicates Democratic leaders may be backing off plans to push an update through before November, a congressional staffer told RAW STORY.

Until Tuesday, no one knows precisely what is to be proposed in the new bill, but primary points of contention include warrant requirements before Americans are spied upon and retroactive immunity to telecommunications carriers.

Draft summaries of the proposed legislation have been circulated to members of Congress and outside advocates, including at least one that did not include immunity from prosecution for telecommunications companies that assisted the government's warrantless wiretapping program, according to the ACLU.

After the Progressive Caucus released its list, the House Intelligence Committee apparently reached out to civil liberties groups in crafting the final bill. The American Civil Liberties Union sent an e-mail to members asking them to urge Democratic lawmakers to support the Progressive Caucus's requests.

Last week's news that the bill was being temporarily put on hold followed dim predictions that Congress would again ram through a bill unacceptable to civil liberties advocates. Matt Stoller reported Thursday that the ACLU and others had been shut out of negotiations over the "new and bad" bill that had been expected Friday.

After news of the delay broke, Stoller observed that it represented unity among freshmen members and progressives against an ineffective, overly expansive bill, and he credited the attention being paid to the debate by bloggers and activists online.

"The Democratic leadership is watching the ACLU's new-found alliance with the blogger activist community," Stoller wrote, "and getting nervous at the unpredictable nature of a potential response."

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."