“Brandeis Boys” come to D.C. Madam’s rescue with website of phone listings
By The Hill.
As the phone records of the “D.C. Madam,” Deborah Jeane Palfrey, became public last week, curious Washingtonians started searching a mysterious database at dcphonelist.com that had organized mountains of her documents.
In their first on-the-record phone interview, the men behind the website spoke to the Hill about who they are, how they created the database and why they put it online.
Kevin, Igor and Yoni described their experiences in a conference call. The crew’s fourth member, Danny, was not present.
All asked that their last names not be printed.
Kevin said they were concerned for their respective employers.
“It also prevents people from calling us up and harassing us, or worse,” he said. “The irony is not entirely lost on us.”
The website’s registration remains private and its purveyors are shy with the press, e-mailing an Associated Press reporter for an article on Palfrey last week.
Many have plugged individuals’ phone numbers into the database in attempts to determine who utilized Palfrey’s services.
Some big fish have come under fire following their outing as possible clients, such as Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) and a former Bush administration official, Randall Tobias.
The proprietor of a Washington, D.C. escort service, Palfrey has been charged by federal authorities with running a prostitution ring. She has maintained her innocence and released her phone records to find witnesses for her potential trial.
All in their mid-20s, the “D.C. Phone Listers” — as they identified themselves in their first e-mail to The Hill — are computer programmers and IT specialists who live and work in the Boston area. All have informed their employers of their work for the website.
Fast friends since 2001, the Brandeis University alumni studied computer science, political science and philosophy and worked on the college newspaper.
The website’s e-mail address includes the name “Dembitz” — the middle name of former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis — in a nod to the group’s alma mater, which was named for the judge.
The four aim to empower local reporters and citizen journalists, who may not have the resources of national media organizations, by posting the searchable database online.
“What this does is let someone in Kansas who has the right phone numbers search the data and see for himself,” Yoni said.
Feedback so far has been “all positive,” according to the group, with a few corrections made and several individuals saying their phone numbers were misdials.
Palfrey is a fan of the group’s work. “God bless them,” said Palfrey, who called the website’s founders “the Brandeis Boys” during an interview.
“I think what they are doing is a great, patriotic service to this country,” Palfrey said. “These fellows are democracy in action.”
Palfrey’s lawyer, Montgomery Blair Sibley, said that since Palfrey’s assets have been seized, she could not post a similar database.
“We got quotes from five or six people that said [it] would cost between $15,000 and $30,000 to do this very thing they have done now,” Sibley said. The attorney said the website has helped find about a dozen witnesses.
Not hired by Palfrey, the website team has had little contact with her or her attorney beyond a few e-mails and linking to one another’s websites. Kevin and others have asked Sibley to rescan some of the phone records so they can be used for the website.
The project’s only monetary expenditure so far was buying the domain for $10. The group said it has neither earned nor lost any money. “We joke about selling T-shirts,” Igor said.
“It would be throwing another layer of complication on it by putting ads up,” Kevin said, adding that that “might raise questions about our integrity.”
But the site has cost everyone involved plenty of time, about 100 man-hours between the four. On Monday, July 9, when Palfrey’s phone records were released, the group stayed up until 5 in the morning to complete the site.
After downloading the phone records, Igor used software to turn scanned images into text files, a process known as “optical character recognition,” or OCR. Kevin then took the lead on writing the computer program to parse the phone numbers from the data, while Danny designed the website.
So far, there have been more than 100,000 visits to the site and close to 50,000 searches, according to the team.
Yet the data is not perfect. OCR cannot catch everything, they said, and many of the scanned images could not be translated into useable text files. Plus, “even if the data is accurate, it is a list of numbers, not a list of clients,” Kevin said — hence a prominent disclaimer on the site.
More records are planned for release next week, according to Palfrey. Of the estimated 75,000 outgoing calls, no calls from 1997 have been made public.
“I understand there are more to come,” said Palfrey, talking about potentially other big names in her phone records. “I think the real meat is the lobbyists here because they’re all connected to a member of Congress.”
– By Kevin Bogardus
Friday, July 20, 2007
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Japan's Nuclear Earthquke
| |||||
Potentially Risky Trickle
Of Bad Nuclear News
July 19, 2007 7:05 a.m.
The Morning Brief, a look at the day's biggest news, is emailed to subscribers by 7 a.m. every business day. Sign up for the e-mail here.
For the fourth straight day, authorities revealed fresh news of a radioactive leak at a Japanese nuclear power plant following Monday's earthquake, potentially exacerbating a development that could set back a nascent revival of atomic-energy projects.
Inspectors from the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency found that radioactive iodine had leaked from an exhaust pipe at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in Japan's northwest, the Associated Press reports, citing the Kyodo news agency. This followed yesterday's revision of the number of upended barrels of radioactive waste to "several hundred" from the 100 reported earlier in the week -- including "a few dozen" with lids that opened -- and revised judgment about the 317 gallons of water that leaked into the Sea of Japan, which was 50% more radioactive than first announced, as the New York Times reports. The inspectors concluded the leak revealed today was too small to harm public health or the environment. But officials from another agency, the Nuclear Safety Commission, today slammed Tepco's response as they were touring the plant and especially the lack of equipment for dealing with a chemical fire that broke out. Yasuhisa Shiozaki, Japan's chief cabinet secretary, urged operators of the country's other 54 reactors to accelerate assessment of their facilities' earthquake resistance.
It was only this week that officials made public findings that show the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant could lie directly on top of the fault line responsible for Monday's 6.8-magnitude temblor, as The Wall Street Journal reports. That was a much stronger quake than the reactor was built to withstand, and nuclear experts elsewhere in the world are watching to see how it performed, the Journal adds. This daily release of bad news comes at a time when concerns about fossil fuels' contribution to global warming has diminished resistance to the construction of new atomic-power plants. But it doesn't bode well for a source of power that became frightful in the public imagination following a series of high-profile accidents in the late 1970s and early '80s, or in a country that suffered the only two atomic-weapon attacks in history.
Regardless of whether the radioactive leaks caused any damage, recurrent updates that paint a bleaker picture can undermine a company or government's credibility during a potential health crisis, as the Japanese learned in recent decades with Mad Cow disease, an outbreak of life-threatening milk contamination and even misreported safety violations at Tepco reactors.
* * *
Delphi Gets Cash Infusion
The troubled auto-parts giant Delphi seemed closer to emerging from bankruptcy protection after a group of hedge funds and other investors led by Appaloosa Management agreed to provide $2.55 billion in new funding. The latest plan, unlike a previous arrangement, won support from a committee of Delphi's current shareholders, the Financial Times reports. That plan had also been scrapped after Cerberus Capital Management pulled out of the Delphi investment following its successful bid for Chrysler Group, The Wall Street Journal adds. On another automotive front, Ford Motor today is expected to receive the initial bids from companies and private-equity firms interested in buying Jaguar and Land Rover, people familiar with the situation tell the New York Times. And Cerberus Capital Management is expected to be among them.
* * *
A Great Food-Brand Merger That Might Have Been
All talks on the matter are now over, but U.S. and European packaged-food-and-beverage giants PepsiCo and Nestle this spring were exploring a merger, people familiar with the matter tell The Wall Street Journal. Several issues disrupted negotiations on how to wed the $150 billion Nestle with the $108 billion maker of Doritos, Lipton Ice Tea and of course Pepsi, the Journal says. But one that stands out was Nestle's anxiety about how to integrate Pepsi's focus on snacking with the Crunch bar and Nesquik maker's growing emphasis on health-and-wellness products.
* * *
Also of Note…
BBC: A volcanic-like explosion created skyscraper-high mountains of steam and rained debris across Lexington Avenue near Grand Central Station, killing one person, injuring at least 20 and frightening the city at a time of heightened terrorism fears. Authorities blamed trouble at an 83-year-old underground pipe, ruling out terrorism but warning asbestos may have been released into the air as well.
Washington Post: Senate Democrats halted their quest to change President Bush's war strategy yesterday after Republicans blocked a proposal to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq. Rather than hold votes on several compromise measures aimed at forcing Mr. Bush to revisit his war plans, Democratic leaders are holding firm in their bid to persuade GOP critics of Bush's Iraq policy to embrace more aggressive measures to begin withdrawing troops.
Bloomberg: China's economy grew at the fastest pace in 12 years in the second quarter and inflation there surged, prompting speculation the government will allow quicker currency appreciation and raise interest rates. Growth was powered by investment in factories and real estate, funded by record exports, that the government has been unable to cool with two rate increases this year and restrictions on bank lending.
Telegraph: U.S. supermarket retailer Wal-Mart is examining a deal to invest in Beijing Hualian, a hypermarket operator with scores of stores in the capital and other cities across China, in a move that would boost its presence in the world's most populous country.
International Herald Tribune: The European Central Bank flatly rejected as "unacceptable" new French attempts to secure greater political influence over monetary policy, but France didn't give ground and suggested that other countries suffering from the strong euro would come around to its view.
Financial Times: German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Europe should adopt a common approach for vetting corporate acquisitions by foreign state-controlled investors, adding that she favored a U.S. model for joint European action.
Times of London: The murder of a second Russian dissident on British soil was averted last month when police and intelligence agencies intercepted a suspected killer in London. In a move likely to damage already strained relations between Britain and Russia, Scotland Yard said that officers last month arrested a man on suspicion of conspiracy to murder billionaire Russian exile Boris Berezovsky and held him for two days before deporting the man back to Russia.
Associated Press: President Bush reiterated his threat to veto Senate legislation that would substantially increase funds for children's health insurance by levying a 61-cent-a-pack increase in the federal excise tax on cigarettes. Renewal of the State Children's Health Insurance Program has been considered by many to be the most important health legislation that Congress is taking up this year.
Reuters: IBM, the world's largest technology-services company, posted a 12% jump in second-quarter profit and raised its 2007 earnings forecast as revenue surged on software company acquisitions.
Wall Street Journal: The Securities and Exchange Commission intends to file civil charges against a Dow Jones board member -- David Li, chairman and chief executive of Bank of East Asia -- in connection with an unfolding insider-trading case, according to people familiar with the matter.
Nature: The island that is now England, Scotland and Wales was severed from continental Europe by a cataclysmic flood during the last ice age, according to new research on the Dover Strait from a group based in Britain.
* * *
Quote of the Day
"With the level of resource utilization relatively high and with a sustained moderation in inflation pressures yet to be convincingly demonstrated, the FOMC has consistently stated that upside risks to inflation are its predominant policy concern," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress yesterday, suggesting Fed policy makers' concern about prices makes any imminent cut in interest rates extremely unlikely. Despite an ailing housing market's consequences for the economy, the Fed is worried that a tight labor market might boost inflation, because persistent demand for new workers could mean U.S. productivity is slowing, Mr. Bernanke said.
Write to Joseph Schuman at joseph.schuman@wsj.com
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Saturday, July 14, 2007
TILMA Blues: Dissecting Canada for Easy Digestion
B.C. Premier shines spotlight on free trade
Progress has been 'slow' on efforts to remove inter-provincial barriers, he says
KATHERINE HARDING
July 7, 2007
IQALUIT -- It wasn't even on the agenda, but the seemingly dry subject of provincial free trade stole some of the spotlight at a meeting between western premiers yesterday.
"When are we going to decide we are a country? When are we going to decide that the free movement of goods and people and services is something that is part of what a national identity should be?" British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell told reporters after the annual conference wrapped up in Iqaluit.
He was flanked by the other three western premiers and three territorial leaders also in attendance. All wore seal-skin vests given to them by the Nunavut government, which hosted the event.
Mr. Campbell said Canada's premiers identified interprovincial trade as a key economic issue a decade ago, but have only made "slow progress on it" since.
B.C. and Alberta signed a first-of-its-kind interprovincial trade agreement that began coming into effect this spring. The deal, which is opposed by unions in both provinces, aims to slash trade barriers and red tape and increase labour mobility in a bid to create the country's second-largest economic trade zone, behind Ontario.
Both governments were confident that the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement would become an example for the rest of the country. However, no other provinces have acted on it or joined it.
Both Manitoba Premier Gary Doer and Saskatchewan Premier Lorne Calvert have serious reservations about signing an agreement such as TILMA.
However, Mr. Doer said issues such as increasing labour mobility between provinces is critical, and he expects major progress will be made at a meeting between the premiers next month in Moncton.
While the western premiers couldn't agree on everything, they said they made progress on long-standing issues such as native relations and northern devolution. The politicians have jointly asked the federal government to start up devolution negotiations as early as this fall.
A devolution agreement with Ottawa would put the Northwest Territories and Nunavut on a more equal footing with the provinces. Those territorial governments would finally be able to manage public lands and natural resources. They would also be entitled to resource-revenue sharing with the federal government.
Yukon already has a devolution deal with Ottawa that took effect in 2003.
Nunavut Premier Paul Okalik said the politicians also made strides on climate change. He said they discussed alternative energy sources and sharing research about the consequences of climate change.
"We can't stop what's happening now, so we have to reform our ways and prepare ourselves better," he said.
Next year's western premiers conference will be held in Saskatoon, and Mr. Calvert said Prime Minister Stephen Harper was welcome to attend.
Relations between Mr. Calvert's government and Ottawa have been strained recently over the issue of resource revenue. Mr. Harper even travelled to Saskatchewan this week - while Mr. Calvert was in Iqaluit - and told reporters the provincial government was "ungrateful."
Mr. Calvert said yesterday the Prime Minister was simply trying to divert attention from breaking a promise about reforms to the federal government's equalization program.
Provinces sluggish on free-trade agreement: B.C., Alta.
Last Updated: Friday, July 6, 2007 | 4:52 PM CT
The premiers of Alberta and British Columbia say they're frustrated with delays in getting other premiers to sign on to an interprovincial trade agreement.
Ed Stelmach and Gordon Campbell, both speaking Friday at the end of the western premiers' conference in Iqaluit, said they want the other provinces to agree to the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA), which both provinces signed last year. It came into effect April 1.
"We have to deal with issues that are trade barriers within the country of Canada," Stelmach said. "They're significant, they're impeding trade, they're increasing costs. And we want to take this agreement further and we've had, of course, interest paid by other premiers."
TILMA allows businesses, tradespeople and professionals to work and move back and forth across provincial borders with less red tape.
Under the agreement, businesses in the two provinces don't face duplicate registration requirements, and occupational standards for professionals like engineers and teachers are harmonized. As well, government procurement is more open to suppliers in both provinces.
But some provinces, like Saskatchewan, have expressed concern that by signing on to TILMA, they may lose control over what happens within their boundaries.
Saskatchewan's New Democrat government is concerned the province's Crown corporations could be hurt by the deal, as it would give all companies equal status in applying for government contracts. And just last week, the Opposition Saskatchewan Party announced it would not sign onto TILMA if elected, saying the deal may take away too much power from the provincial government.
Other jurisdictions are concerned that businesses registered in one province may have to be recognized in another.
But Campbell said all provinces identified the free movement of goods, labour and services as an issue more than a decade ago, so he doesn't understand why there's been so little movement in making TILMA a countrywide agreement.
"I'm proud of the fact that we've got TILMA signed between Alberta and British Columbia, and I think it's time for us to decide whether we're a country or not," Campbell said.
"I think it's ridiculous that someone can be trained as a teacher in Manitoba and isn't able to teach in British Columbia."
All of Canada's premiers will discuss the standardized accreditation and mobility of labour at the Council of the Federation meeting next month in Moncton, N.B. At the meeting of the council, which brings together premiers and territorial leaders to deal with "collaborative intergovernmental relations," Campbell and Stelmach said they'll try to convince everybody to consider signing on to the agreement.
All the western and northern premiers ended the Iqaluit meeting Friday with promises to work together on issues such as climate change, education and infrastructure.
TILMA opposition encouraged
Northern Sentinel
By Tom Fletcher
Jul 08 2007
Opposition critics are urging municipalities to keep the pressure on the B.C. government over its new trade deal with Alberta.
NDP municipal affairs critic Charlie Wyse and economic development critic Jenny Kwan have sent a letter to local councils across the province, the latest step in a campaign against the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA), which went into effect in April. The letter accuses the B.C. Liberal government of giving contradictory answers on the key question of whether municipalities will be open to bylaw challenges or financial penalties from Alberta businesses demanding equal treatment.
Economic Development Minister Colin Hansen has rejected suggestions that TILMA could affect local bylaws governing things like building heights, billboard sizes, noise levels or pesticide use if local rules were stricter than those in Alberta.
The NDP's letter notes that while a B.C. government backgrounder states "municipalities are not required to defend their own measures or pay monetary awards," it gave a different answer in response to a legal opinion obtained by the Union of B.C. Municipalities (UBCM). There it said: "The course of action that the Province would take in any dispute proceeding involving municipalities would depend on the particular circumstances of the dispute."
Hansen has also promised that the Union of B.C. Municipalities will be represented in discussions to clarify grey areas during a transition period that ends in April of 2009. And it appears that significant grey areas remain.
"The agreement is vague and there are no precedents, so one of the issues for councils and boards is the uncertainty that surrounds TILMA," lawyer Donald Lidstone wrote in his analysis for the UBCM.
Lidstone said the key issues relate to tendering for municipal work, whether business regulations will be harmonized, municipal assistance to local business, and "the remote possibility that a regulatory (including land use) bylaw might have the effect of restricting or impairing an investment in British Columbia by an Alberta investor."
Wyse said in an interview the transition period means municipalities have time before they must open up bidding for major goods, services and construction contracts, but bylaws they pass now will soon fall under TILMA rules.
The NDP letter says TILMA is the latest in a series of moves by the B.C. Liberal government to restrict local government control. Others include:
• the 2003 Significant Projects Streamlining Act, allowing the government to overrule local authorities on projects deemed "provincially significant."
• the 2006 legislation taking independent power projects out of the hands of local authorities. Energy Minister Richard Neufeld defended the move, saying projects such as wind and small hydroelectric power are a key part of B.C.'s energy plan and should be handled provincially, like mines and power dams.
• Bill 11, passed this spring, "allows the provincial cabinet to bypass regional districts and create 'instant' municipalities in rural areas to promote resort development," the NDP letter says.
• Bill 36, yet to be passed by the legislature, restructures the Lower Mainland transportation authority, removing day-to-day control from a board made up of municipal politicians.
--
Caelie Frampton
TILMA Campaign Coordinator
604.688.8846
Want to learn more about TILMA and how we can join together and stop this new trade agreement?
Visit: http://groups.google.com/group/stoptilma .
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Bush Flirting with Nuclear Armageddon
Putin ‘Narrowly’ Averts US Nuclear Armageddon
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
[for complete article links, please see original here.]
Russian Military Analysts are reporting today that this past weeks ‘Sudden-Summit’ between Presidents Putin and Bush in the United States has ‘narrowly averted an American nuclear Armageddon’ in which the Americans were planning a massive atomic strike upon Iran.
Putin was advised immediately prior to the ‘Sudden-Summit’ by Russian Military Commanders that the United States had issued the orders for a nuclear strike on Iran, and which has been further confirmed by the Washington Times News Service, and as we can read:
"International radio operators picked up large numbers of coded Air Force communications being sent around the world on June 26 that indicated some type of military activity was about to take place.
A U.S. military official said the radio traffic was monitored from the Air Force Global High Frequency System (GHFS) that some observers regarded as "extraordinary" because of the unprecedented length of messages. They were sent to Air Force commanders at Andrews Air Force Base; Wideawake Airfield on Ascension Island; Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska; Andersen Air Force Base, Guam; Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii; Lajes Field in the Azores; Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska; Salinas Air Base, Puerto Rico; Thule Air Base, Greenland; and Yokota Air Base, Japan. All are sites of GHFS ground stations.
The messages appeared to be emergency action messages, coded communications sent by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to U.S. Air Force strategic nuclear forces.
The messages sent June 26 included 174 characters, much longer than normal 30-character messages, and amateur radio monitors say they have not seen the size of this message since the 1991 Persian Gulf War."
Upon his learning of the Americans planned nuclear attack on Iran, Putin ordered an ‘immediate’ flight change to the United States while he was in route to Guatemala for the 2014 Olympic Games announcement, of which Russia was announced the winner.
These reports state that Putin was ‘blunt’ with the American War Leader Bush in stating that any nuclear attack upon Iran’s nuclear facilities, being built by Russian nuclear engineers and technicians, would be viewed by Russia as attack upon Russia itself.
These reports further state that the planned American nuclear strike upon Iran was to coincide with Israel’s long-planned invasion of Syria, and which their military forces are currently massed in what is described as the largest ‘war games’ on the Golan Heights since Israel’s capturing of this Syrian territory during the 1967 Six Day War.
Russian political analysts state the War Leaders of the United States are ‘frantic’ to engage the entire Middle East in Total War as the support for their present wars has eroded their standing among their citizens with over half of the American people are now calling for the impeachment of both President Bush and his Vice President Cheney.
Of great concern to the American War Leaders, also, is the impending invasion of Iraq by fellow NATO Member Turkey, and as we can read as reported by the International Herald Tribune:
"Turkey's government and military have agreed on detailed plans for a cross-border operation against Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq, the foreign minister said Friday.
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul urged the United States and Iraq, which oppose a Turkish military move into Iraq, to crack down on rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. But he said Turkey was ready to stage an offensive if necessary.
"We have decided how to act, everything is clear," Gul told private NTV television. "We know what to do and when to do it," he said without providing details."
To the greatest concern, however, facing the American War Leaders is the fast coming implosion of their economy due to the massive strain of their war budget, and which is now approaching $1.4 trillion, and which has destabilized the World’s banking system leading many experts to believe the American banking system will be the ‘first to go’ and could likely lead to a Global Depression.
Sadly though, it is acknowledged in these reports that Putin’s ‘warnings’ to Bush this past week resulted in a delay only of the Americans planned attacks against Iran, and which the American War Leader ‘strongly suggested’ that if Putin was concerned about Russian casualties in Iran perhaps they shouldn’t be their in the first place.
As the World continues its mad plunge towards the nuclear abyss, one can only wonder what could possibly stop this insanity from happening.
© July 7, 2007 EU and US all rights reserved.
[Ed. Note: The United States government actively seeks to find, and silence, any and all opinions about the United States except those coming from authorized government and/or affiliated sources, of which we are not one. No interviews are granted and very little personal information is given about our contributors, or their sources, to protect their safety.]
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
[for complete article links, please see original here.]
Russian Military Analysts are reporting today that this past weeks ‘Sudden-Summit’ between Presidents Putin and Bush in the United States has ‘narrowly averted an American nuclear Armageddon’ in which the Americans were planning a massive atomic strike upon Iran.
Putin was advised immediately prior to the ‘Sudden-Summit’ by Russian Military Commanders that the United States had issued the orders for a nuclear strike on Iran, and which has been further confirmed by the Washington Times News Service, and as we can read:
"International radio operators picked up large numbers of coded Air Force communications being sent around the world on June 26 that indicated some type of military activity was about to take place.
A U.S. military official said the radio traffic was monitored from the Air Force Global High Frequency System (GHFS) that some observers regarded as "extraordinary" because of the unprecedented length of messages. They were sent to Air Force commanders at Andrews Air Force Base; Wideawake Airfield on Ascension Island; Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska; Andersen Air Force Base, Guam; Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii; Lajes Field in the Azores; Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska; Salinas Air Base, Puerto Rico; Thule Air Base, Greenland; and Yokota Air Base, Japan. All are sites of GHFS ground stations.
The messages appeared to be emergency action messages, coded communications sent by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to U.S. Air Force strategic nuclear forces.
The messages sent June 26 included 174 characters, much longer than normal 30-character messages, and amateur radio monitors say they have not seen the size of this message since the 1991 Persian Gulf War."
Upon his learning of the Americans planned nuclear attack on Iran, Putin ordered an ‘immediate’ flight change to the United States while he was in route to Guatemala for the 2014 Olympic Games announcement, of which Russia was announced the winner.
These reports state that Putin was ‘blunt’ with the American War Leader Bush in stating that any nuclear attack upon Iran’s nuclear facilities, being built by Russian nuclear engineers and technicians, would be viewed by Russia as attack upon Russia itself.
These reports further state that the planned American nuclear strike upon Iran was to coincide with Israel’s long-planned invasion of Syria, and which their military forces are currently massed in what is described as the largest ‘war games’ on the Golan Heights since Israel’s capturing of this Syrian territory during the 1967 Six Day War.
Russian political analysts state the War Leaders of the United States are ‘frantic’ to engage the entire Middle East in Total War as the support for their present wars has eroded their standing among their citizens with over half of the American people are now calling for the impeachment of both President Bush and his Vice President Cheney.
Of great concern to the American War Leaders, also, is the impending invasion of Iraq by fellow NATO Member Turkey, and as we can read as reported by the International Herald Tribune:
"Turkey's government and military have agreed on detailed plans for a cross-border operation against Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq, the foreign minister said Friday.
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul urged the United States and Iraq, which oppose a Turkish military move into Iraq, to crack down on rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. But he said Turkey was ready to stage an offensive if necessary.
"We have decided how to act, everything is clear," Gul told private NTV television. "We know what to do and when to do it," he said without providing details."
To the greatest concern, however, facing the American War Leaders is the fast coming implosion of their economy due to the massive strain of their war budget, and which is now approaching $1.4 trillion, and which has destabilized the World’s banking system leading many experts to believe the American banking system will be the ‘first to go’ and could likely lead to a Global Depression.
Sadly though, it is acknowledged in these reports that Putin’s ‘warnings’ to Bush this past week resulted in a delay only of the Americans planned attacks against Iran, and which the American War Leader ‘strongly suggested’ that if Putin was concerned about Russian casualties in Iran perhaps they shouldn’t be their in the first place.
As the World continues its mad plunge towards the nuclear abyss, one can only wonder what could possibly stop this insanity from happening.
© July 7, 2007 EU and US all rights reserved.
[Ed. Note: The United States government actively seeks to find, and silence, any and all opinions about the United States except those coming from authorized government and/or affiliated sources, of which we are not one. No interviews are granted and very little personal information is given about our contributors, or their sources, to protect their safety.]
Keeping Smaller Smaller
Record Group Lets Small Webcasters Pay Lower Rates
By Reuters.
LOS ANGELES - A group backed by the record industry that collects Internet music royalties said on Tuesday it would defer new copyright-payment rates for small Webcasters who claim the new payments would bankrupt them.
SoundExchange, which collects and distributes royalties from Webcasters and satellite radio, said the offer was for Webcasters with revenues of $1.25 million or less.
SoundExchange’s latest efforts follows mounting pressure and activity in Congress, where legislators have introduced bills to annul the pending royalty rate increase, which they say threatens the fledgling industry.
Saying it was seeking to address “alleged weaknesses in the small Webcasters’ businesses,” SoundExchange will defer new sharply higher royalty rates for these companies set by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) on May 1, 2007, that would be retroactive to January 1, 2006, and effective through 2010.
“Although the rates revised by the CRB are fair and based on the value of music in the marketplace, there’s a sense in the music community and in Congress that small Webcasters need more time to develop their businesses,” said John Simson, executive director of SoundExchange, which collects royalties on behalf of artists and big music companies like Warner Music Group Corp. and Vivendi’s Universal Music.
But an advocate for Internet radio operators on Tuesday criticized the offer by SoundExchange. “A proposal like this would doom small Webcasters and kill large Webcasters,” said Jake Ward, of the SaveNetRadio Coalition.
Ward said by deeming a Webcaster large and subject to the higher rates, due to its popularity, ignores the fact that many of these larger sites are still small, struggling companies.
“It would also force small companies to stay small,” he said, noting that certain companies might seek to stay below the higher rate levels. “There’s no question that Webcasters with government-set revenue caps would invest less, innovate less and promote less.”
By Reuters.
LOS ANGELES - A group backed by the record industry that collects Internet music royalties said on Tuesday it would defer new copyright-payment rates for small Webcasters who claim the new payments would bankrupt them.
SoundExchange, which collects and distributes royalties from Webcasters and satellite radio, said the offer was for Webcasters with revenues of $1.25 million or less.
SoundExchange’s latest efforts follows mounting pressure and activity in Congress, where legislators have introduced bills to annul the pending royalty rate increase, which they say threatens the fledgling industry.
Saying it was seeking to address “alleged weaknesses in the small Webcasters’ businesses,” SoundExchange will defer new sharply higher royalty rates for these companies set by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) on May 1, 2007, that would be retroactive to January 1, 2006, and effective through 2010.
“Although the rates revised by the CRB are fair and based on the value of music in the marketplace, there’s a sense in the music community and in Congress that small Webcasters need more time to develop their businesses,” said John Simson, executive director of SoundExchange, which collects royalties on behalf of artists and big music companies like Warner Music Group Corp. and Vivendi’s Universal Music.
But an advocate for Internet radio operators on Tuesday criticized the offer by SoundExchange. “A proposal like this would doom small Webcasters and kill large Webcasters,” said Jake Ward, of the SaveNetRadio Coalition.
Ward said by deeming a Webcaster large and subject to the higher rates, due to its popularity, ignores the fact that many of these larger sites are still small, struggling companies.
“It would also force small companies to stay small,” he said, noting that certain companies might seek to stay below the higher rate levels. “There’s no question that Webcasters with government-set revenue caps would invest less, innovate less and promote less.”
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Justice Dropping Warrantless Eavesdropping Warrant
Yesterday's ruling on NSA warrantless eavesdropping
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday, by a 2-1 decision, vacated last August's Order from District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor which enjoined the Bush administration from eavesdropping without warrants. Judge Taylor had found that the President's NSA warrantless eavesdropping program violates both the Constitution as well as federal law (FISA).
Yesterday's ruling (.pdf) had absolutely nothing to do with the merits of the case -- i.e., whether the NSA program is illegal or not -- but instead rested only on the narrow, technical (though important) issue of whether the particular plaintiffs in this case are entitled to sue over the warrantless eavesdropping program (two of the three judges concluded that they are not).
While the two judges in the majority did not rule on the legality of the program, the third judge -- Judge Gilman -- agreed with Judge Taylor's finding that the President's program violated FISA. He thus wrote that he "would affirm its judgment," and he rejected the administration's standard two defenses for that behavior (i.e., (1) that AUMF implicitly authorized FISA violations and (2) the President has "inherent authority" under Article II to eavesdrop with no warrants). In fact, just as was true for Judge Taylor, Judge Gilman found that while the "standing" issue was a close one, the actual merits -- i.e., whether the President broke the law -- was not close:
The closest question in this case, in my opinion, is whether the plaintiffs have the standing to sue. Once past that hurdle, however, the rest gets progressively easier . . . . [The administration's] AUMF and inherent-authority arguments are weak in light of existing precedent and statutory construction.
The two judges in the majority did not dispute any of this. Instead, they ruled, roughly speaking, that because the program was conducted in secret, the plaintiffs cannot prove that they were subjected to warrantless eavesdropping and thus lack "standing" to contest the legality of the NSA program.
Several observations about the decision:
(1) Any journalist or Bush follower claiming that this decision constitutes vindication for warrantless eavesdropping -- or that it constitutes a repudiation of Judge Taylor's finding that the President broke the law and violated the Constitution -- is deeply confused and/or engaged in a campaign of deceit. Even worse than that, anyone celebrating this result is essentially celebrating a situation where our government leaders are able to act in secret -- even when the law makes it illegal to do so -- and as a result of this secrecy, block courts from ruling on whether they broke the law.
Why would anyone -- including those who think the NSA program is legal -- want to empower our government officials to act free of judicial review of whether they acted illegally? If those who claim to believe that the President acted legally are telling the truth, wouldn't they desire a judicial ruling on these questions?
As noted, the majority opinion here did not make a single comment suggesting they believe Judge Taylor's ruling on the merits was wrong, nor did they suggest that warrantless eavesdropping is legal. To the extent they commented on those issues at all, the majority opinion observed that the appeal "presents a number of serious issues," while the other Judge in the majority (Gibbons) described in the first paragraph of her concurring opinion the "complexity" of the "merits issues." Not a word in either of those two opinions constitutes a repudiation of the finding by Judge Taylor that the President broke the law and violated the Constitution.
(2) Unlike the two judges in the majority, the dissenting judge (Gilman) did issue findings regarding the illegality of the NSA program once he found that the plaintiffs had standing to sue. And he decided conclusively that the NSA program violates FISA and that the administration's two legal excuses are invalid. That means that the only two federal judges ever to rule on the legality of the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program -- Judge Taylor and now Judge Gilman -- have both decisively concluded that the President's warrantless eavesdropping is illegal.
Moreover, the rejection by both Judge Taylor and Judge Gilman of the administration's Article II and AUMF "defenses" are completely consistent with the rejection of those same defenses by the Supreme Court in its Hamdan ruling last June, when the Court found illegal the President's Guantanamo military commissions. The two prongs of the Cheney/Addington/Yoo Vision of Presidential Omnipotence used to justify a whole array of presidential lawbreaking -- Article II "inherent authority" and AUMF's "implicit" authorization -- have suffered one legal defeat after the next. If anything, yesterday's decision bolsters that trend, not undermines it.
(3) This is one of those types of legal outcomes which -- understandably so -- can drive laypersons, along with conscientious lawyers, crazy. The result, on its face, is grotesquely unfair, outrageously so.
After all, the whole point of FISA is to make it illegal for the government to spy on us in secret. And yet spying on us in secret is exactly what the Bush administration did; that is the crux of the lawbreaking here. But precisely because it spied on Americans in secret rather than with judicial oversight, nobody knows whose conversations they surveilled and we cannot find out.
It is because of this illegal behavior that the plaintiffs are unable to show that they were subjected to this surveillance. To dismiss the case on the ground that the plaintiffs are unable to make this showing, then, is to reward the Bush administration with the ultimate prize (immunity from judicial review) for having broken the law.
Worse still, it means that if the Government breaks the law in secret, it can be immune from being held accountable in a court because no one individual can ever prove that they were directly and uniquely harmed by the illegal conduct, and thus would lack standing to sue. That result is as destructive as it is Kafka-esque, and it is what happened yesterday.
But the fact that the decision's result is so unfair does not mean, unfortunately, that it was wrongly decided. The role of the judge is to apply the law as it exists, and a judge is not free -- nor should we want them to be free -- to disregard binding legal doctrine whenever the judge decides that doing so is necessary to avoid unfair results. In a society that exists under the rule of law, the solution to bad laws and bad legal doctrines is to change those laws democratically, not to empower judges unilaterally to disregard the law in order to produce (what the individual judge perceives to be) better results.
As technical-seeming as it is, "standing" is a critically important constitutional limitation on the power of the judiciary. Independently, whether one believes in the merits of this doctrine or not, it is a requirement that must be fulfilled before the Constitution permits a court to rule on any matter. And there is good reason for that.
Courts are not omnipotent, free-floating bodies that exist in order to resolve all disputes. If courts had the power to resolve every abstract political and legal dispute, courts themselves would be omnipotent, or at least supreme. The Constitution thus limits the power of courts by narrowing the circumstances in which courts are empowered to act ("The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases . . . [and] to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party"). Rightly or wrongly, the Supreme Court over the years has interpreted that provision to require (roughly speaking) direct and unique injury by the party who is suing, and the Sixth Circuit judges were required to apply that doctrine.
The role of a federal court is thus confined to resolving actual, specific disputes between specific parties where, in essence, one party has harmed the other. If such an injury is lacking, it means that the plaintiffs in a case are basically asking the court to simply issue abstract rulings -- i.e., "is the Government's warrantless eavesdropping program legal"? -- rather than resolving an actual, specific dispute ("I was harmed by the defendant and am entitled to be compensated or otherwise have that wrongful conduct remedied").
Independent of the question of whether the standing issue was correctly resolved here -- and all of the judges appeared to believe that it was a close and difficult question -- the standing doctrine is an important limitation on the power of courts. And that is true even when it produces atrocious outcomes (such as yesterday's finding that our Government can break the law in how its spies on us but remain immune from judicial review as long as it keeps its lawbreaking a secret).
(4) The most important point here is, as usual, the one most overlooked by journalists and Bush followers alike. From the beginning of the NSA scandal, Bush followers have proudly boasted about how confident they were that their warrantless eavesdropping behavior was legal. And yet, the only thing they have done is desperately block one attempt after the next to obtain a legal ruling on whether they broke the law.
There have been countless proposals and other means available to have a court rule on whether the government broke the law and violated the Constitution by spying without warrants, and the administration has resisted every such effort. Yesterday's ruling was but the latest of the obstruction efforts.
Indeed, as Judge Gilman noted -- and as so-called "legal experts" commenting on this case have completely failed to understand -- the Bush administration in this case refused to defend its conduct on the merits. The only argument they made before Judge Taylor was that she had no right to rule on these matters, and they therefore, in effect, conceded the substantive claims that they broke the law. As Judge Gilman wrote:
This is an amazingly simple point that law professors and others who strutted around criticizing Judge Taylor's opinion -- including Orin Kerr and Ann Althouse in her tour de force of ignorance in a New York Times Op-Ed -- have failed to digest.
Judge Taylor did not "fail to address" arguments made by the Bush administration regarding the legality of their behavior because they did not make any such arguments. They refused to do so, because -- as always -- their only objective is to block judicial rulings on the legality of their behavior, not to defend what they have done.
But once myths like this take hold, especially when they are spouted by so-called "experts," they are impossible to eradicate, and hence, we find this on the front page of The New York Times today in an article by Adam Liptak:
Judge Taylor's ruling, which was stayed during the appeal, had attracted criticism from across the political spectrum. Legal experts said it overlooked important precedents, failed to engage some of the government's arguments and relied on novel constitutional arguments where more straightforward ones were available.
Except on the standing issue, yesterday's ruling did not repudiate any of Judge Taylor's findings. The one judge who ruled on them at all said he would have affirmed them, and on the issue of the program's legality, ruled as she did. Moreover, the claim that she "failed to engage some of the government's arguments" is based on the complete falsehood that the government advanced arguments to defend its behavior. It did not. It expressly refused to do so. And that is the key point here, and has been from the beginning.
Since the NSA scandal emerged, there has never been a remotely meritorious -- or even non-frivolous -- defense to the President's lawbreaking. And the administration knows that, which is why they have desperately sought to block judicial review of their behavior and have refused to defend their behavior in court. Rather than simplistically focus on the binary win/loss analysis in discussing this outcome, perhaps journalists could highlight the real scandal here -- having been caught red-handed violating the law in eavesdropping on our conversations, the Bush administration has done everything possible to prevent a judicial ruling on the legality and constitutionality of its actions.
(5) The plaintiffs here will, of course, appeal, though they have no automatic right to have their appeal heard. Either the full Sixth Circuit panel or the Supreme Court must agree to hear their appeal if there is to be a further decision in this case. There are court cases (against AT&T and other telecommunication companies) challenging the legality of the NSA program pending in the Ninth Circuit, where the District Judge has refused to dismiss those lawsuits based on the "state secrets" doctrine and an appellate ruling on that question is expected soon.
There are ways for Congress to act here in order to enable or even compel a court to rule on the legality of the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program. Regardless of one's views on the legality of this program, obtaining a judicial ruling is urgently necessary. It should require little mental energy to contemplate the dangers of allowing our government leaders to spy on us (or take other actions against us) in secret and then simultaneously block any and all processes to determine whether they have broken the law.
-- Glenn Greenwald
source
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday, by a 2-1 decision, vacated last August's Order from District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor which enjoined the Bush administration from eavesdropping without warrants. Judge Taylor had found that the President's NSA warrantless eavesdropping program violates both the Constitution as well as federal law (FISA).
Yesterday's ruling (.pdf) had absolutely nothing to do with the merits of the case -- i.e., whether the NSA program is illegal or not -- but instead rested only on the narrow, technical (though important) issue of whether the particular plaintiffs in this case are entitled to sue over the warrantless eavesdropping program (two of the three judges concluded that they are not).
While the two judges in the majority did not rule on the legality of the program, the third judge -- Judge Gilman -- agreed with Judge Taylor's finding that the President's program violated FISA. He thus wrote that he "would affirm its judgment," and he rejected the administration's standard two defenses for that behavior (i.e., (1) that AUMF implicitly authorized FISA violations and (2) the President has "inherent authority" under Article II to eavesdrop with no warrants). In fact, just as was true for Judge Taylor, Judge Gilman found that while the "standing" issue was a close one, the actual merits -- i.e., whether the President broke the law -- was not close:
The closest question in this case, in my opinion, is whether the plaintiffs have the standing to sue. Once past that hurdle, however, the rest gets progressively easier . . . . [The administration's] AUMF and inherent-authority arguments are weak in light of existing precedent and statutory construction.
The two judges in the majority did not dispute any of this. Instead, they ruled, roughly speaking, that because the program was conducted in secret, the plaintiffs cannot prove that they were subjected to warrantless eavesdropping and thus lack "standing" to contest the legality of the NSA program.
Several observations about the decision:
(1) Any journalist or Bush follower claiming that this decision constitutes vindication for warrantless eavesdropping -- or that it constitutes a repudiation of Judge Taylor's finding that the President broke the law and violated the Constitution -- is deeply confused and/or engaged in a campaign of deceit. Even worse than that, anyone celebrating this result is essentially celebrating a situation where our government leaders are able to act in secret -- even when the law makes it illegal to do so -- and as a result of this secrecy, block courts from ruling on whether they broke the law.
Why would anyone -- including those who think the NSA program is legal -- want to empower our government officials to act free of judicial review of whether they acted illegally? If those who claim to believe that the President acted legally are telling the truth, wouldn't they desire a judicial ruling on these questions?
As noted, the majority opinion here did not make a single comment suggesting they believe Judge Taylor's ruling on the merits was wrong, nor did they suggest that warrantless eavesdropping is legal. To the extent they commented on those issues at all, the majority opinion observed that the appeal "presents a number of serious issues," while the other Judge in the majority (Gibbons) described in the first paragraph of her concurring opinion the "complexity" of the "merits issues." Not a word in either of those two opinions constitutes a repudiation of the finding by Judge Taylor that the President broke the law and violated the Constitution.
(2) Unlike the two judges in the majority, the dissenting judge (Gilman) did issue findings regarding the illegality of the NSA program once he found that the plaintiffs had standing to sue. And he decided conclusively that the NSA program violates FISA and that the administration's two legal excuses are invalid. That means that the only two federal judges ever to rule on the legality of the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program -- Judge Taylor and now Judge Gilman -- have both decisively concluded that the President's warrantless eavesdropping is illegal.
Moreover, the rejection by both Judge Taylor and Judge Gilman of the administration's Article II and AUMF "defenses" are completely consistent with the rejection of those same defenses by the Supreme Court in its Hamdan ruling last June, when the Court found illegal the President's Guantanamo military commissions. The two prongs of the Cheney/Addington/Yoo Vision of Presidential Omnipotence used to justify a whole array of presidential lawbreaking -- Article II "inherent authority" and AUMF's "implicit" authorization -- have suffered one legal defeat after the next. If anything, yesterday's decision bolsters that trend, not undermines it.
(3) This is one of those types of legal outcomes which -- understandably so -- can drive laypersons, along with conscientious lawyers, crazy. The result, on its face, is grotesquely unfair, outrageously so.
After all, the whole point of FISA is to make it illegal for the government to spy on us in secret. And yet spying on us in secret is exactly what the Bush administration did; that is the crux of the lawbreaking here. But precisely because it spied on Americans in secret rather than with judicial oversight, nobody knows whose conversations they surveilled and we cannot find out.
It is because of this illegal behavior that the plaintiffs are unable to show that they were subjected to this surveillance. To dismiss the case on the ground that the plaintiffs are unable to make this showing, then, is to reward the Bush administration with the ultimate prize (immunity from judicial review) for having broken the law.
Worse still, it means that if the Government breaks the law in secret, it can be immune from being held accountable in a court because no one individual can ever prove that they were directly and uniquely harmed by the illegal conduct, and thus would lack standing to sue. That result is as destructive as it is Kafka-esque, and it is what happened yesterday.
But the fact that the decision's result is so unfair does not mean, unfortunately, that it was wrongly decided. The role of the judge is to apply the law as it exists, and a judge is not free -- nor should we want them to be free -- to disregard binding legal doctrine whenever the judge decides that doing so is necessary to avoid unfair results. In a society that exists under the rule of law, the solution to bad laws and bad legal doctrines is to change those laws democratically, not to empower judges unilaterally to disregard the law in order to produce (what the individual judge perceives to be) better results.
As technical-seeming as it is, "standing" is a critically important constitutional limitation on the power of the judiciary. Independently, whether one believes in the merits of this doctrine or not, it is a requirement that must be fulfilled before the Constitution permits a court to rule on any matter. And there is good reason for that.
Courts are not omnipotent, free-floating bodies that exist in order to resolve all disputes. If courts had the power to resolve every abstract political and legal dispute, courts themselves would be omnipotent, or at least supreme. The Constitution thus limits the power of courts by narrowing the circumstances in which courts are empowered to act ("The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases . . . [and] to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party"). Rightly or wrongly, the Supreme Court over the years has interpreted that provision to require (roughly speaking) direct and unique injury by the party who is suing, and the Sixth Circuit judges were required to apply that doctrine.
The role of a federal court is thus confined to resolving actual, specific disputes between specific parties where, in essence, one party has harmed the other. If such an injury is lacking, it means that the plaintiffs in a case are basically asking the court to simply issue abstract rulings -- i.e., "is the Government's warrantless eavesdropping program legal"? -- rather than resolving an actual, specific dispute ("I was harmed by the defendant and am entitled to be compensated or otherwise have that wrongful conduct remedied").
Independent of the question of whether the standing issue was correctly resolved here -- and all of the judges appeared to believe that it was a close and difficult question -- the standing doctrine is an important limitation on the power of courts. And that is true even when it produces atrocious outcomes (such as yesterday's finding that our Government can break the law in how its spies on us but remain immune from judicial review as long as it keeps its lawbreaking a secret).
(4) The most important point here is, as usual, the one most overlooked by journalists and Bush followers alike. From the beginning of the NSA scandal, Bush followers have proudly boasted about how confident they were that their warrantless eavesdropping behavior was legal. And yet, the only thing they have done is desperately block one attempt after the next to obtain a legal ruling on whether they broke the law.
There have been countless proposals and other means available to have a court rule on whether the government broke the law and violated the Constitution by spying without warrants, and the administration has resisted every such effort. Yesterday's ruling was but the latest of the obstruction efforts.
Indeed, as Judge Gilman noted -- and as so-called "legal experts" commenting on this case have completely failed to understand -- the Bush administration in this case refused to defend its conduct on the merits. The only argument they made before Judge Taylor was that she had no right to rule on these matters, and they therefore, in effect, conceded the substantive claims that they broke the law. As Judge Gilman wrote:
This is an amazingly simple point that law professors and others who strutted around criticizing Judge Taylor's opinion -- including Orin Kerr and Ann Althouse in her tour de force of ignorance in a New York Times Op-Ed -- have failed to digest.
Judge Taylor did not "fail to address" arguments made by the Bush administration regarding the legality of their behavior because they did not make any such arguments. They refused to do so, because -- as always -- their only objective is to block judicial rulings on the legality of their behavior, not to defend what they have done.
But once myths like this take hold, especially when they are spouted by so-called "experts," they are impossible to eradicate, and hence, we find this on the front page of The New York Times today in an article by Adam Liptak:
Judge Taylor's ruling, which was stayed during the appeal, had attracted criticism from across the political spectrum. Legal experts said it overlooked important precedents, failed to engage some of the government's arguments and relied on novel constitutional arguments where more straightforward ones were available.
Except on the standing issue, yesterday's ruling did not repudiate any of Judge Taylor's findings. The one judge who ruled on them at all said he would have affirmed them, and on the issue of the program's legality, ruled as she did. Moreover, the claim that she "failed to engage some of the government's arguments" is based on the complete falsehood that the government advanced arguments to defend its behavior. It did not. It expressly refused to do so. And that is the key point here, and has been from the beginning.
Since the NSA scandal emerged, there has never been a remotely meritorious -- or even non-frivolous -- defense to the President's lawbreaking. And the administration knows that, which is why they have desperately sought to block judicial review of their behavior and have refused to defend their behavior in court. Rather than simplistically focus on the binary win/loss analysis in discussing this outcome, perhaps journalists could highlight the real scandal here -- having been caught red-handed violating the law in eavesdropping on our conversations, the Bush administration has done everything possible to prevent a judicial ruling on the legality and constitutionality of its actions.
(5) The plaintiffs here will, of course, appeal, though they have no automatic right to have their appeal heard. Either the full Sixth Circuit panel or the Supreme Court must agree to hear their appeal if there is to be a further decision in this case. There are court cases (against AT&T and other telecommunication companies) challenging the legality of the NSA program pending in the Ninth Circuit, where the District Judge has refused to dismiss those lawsuits based on the "state secrets" doctrine and an appellate ruling on that question is expected soon.
There are ways for Congress to act here in order to enable or even compel a court to rule on the legality of the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program. Regardless of one's views on the legality of this program, obtaining a judicial ruling is urgently necessary. It should require little mental energy to contemplate the dangers of allowing our government leaders to spy on us (or take other actions against us) in secret and then simultaneously block any and all processes to determine whether they have broken the law.
-- Glenn Greenwald
source
Monday, July 02, 2007
Impunity: Bush Commutes Scooter
Bush Commutes Libby's Jail Sentenceby David Corn
It is appropriate.
The president who led the nation into a disastrous war in Iraq by peddling false statements and misrepresentations has come to the rescue of a White House aide convicted of lying by commuting his sentence. Before the ink was dry on today's court order denying Scooter Libby's latest appeal -- a motion to allow him to stay out of jail while he was challenging his conviction -- George W. Bush commuted Libby's sentence. Libby will no longer have to serve the 30-month prison sentence ordered by federal district court Judge Reggie Walton. He will, though, have to pay the $250,000 fine that was part of the sentence.
The commutation -- which is not a pardon and does not erase Libby's conviction -- is a reminder that Bush and his crew do not believe in accountability. Bush has been rather stingy in the use of his pardon power. And regulations issued by his Justice Department note that recipients of pardons should serve their sentences and demonstrate contrition before obtaining presidential absolution. (Libby had expressed no remorse and was not scheduled to report to jail for several weeks.) Yet with this commutation, Bush ducked those requirements, and he is allowing Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, who was found guilty of lying to federal investigators in the CIA leak case, to go unpunished. The fine will be no problem for Libby. His neoconservative friends and admirers will kick in to cover that tab. (Perhaps even Cheney will send a check.)
Libby had become a symbol of the Bush White House's problem with the truth. After all, his lies had been designed to block FBI agents and federal prosecutors from learning the full truth of a White House effort to discredit a critic who had accused the Bush administration of twisting the prewar intelligence. And now the final act in the long-running CIA leak scandal -- Bush's commutation -- stands as another symbol of this grand theme: Lying doesn't really bother this crowd. In the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush claimed he would bring responsibility to the White House and, as a PR stunt, he dubbed his campaign jet Accountability One. Yet with this commutation, he takes the position that in his administration an aide who purposefully misleads government officials investigating a possible national security crime need not be held fully accountable.
This is no shocker. Early on in the CIA leak affair, the White House announced that anyone involved in the 2003 leak that disclosed the CIA employment of Valerie Wilson, an undercover Agency officer, would be booted out of the administration. But Karl Rove, who had disclosed classified information about Valerie Wilson to two reporters and who apparently lied about his actions to White House press secretary Scott McClellan, was not pink-slipped. Bush has never acknowledged this broken promise. (Libby left the White House only after he was indicted in the fall of 2005.)
Bush shielded Rove, and now -- better late than never -- he's doing the same for Libby. Ever since Libby's conviction in March, neoconservative and conservative Libby partisans have been urging -- or demanding -- that Bush pardon Libby. They have cried that his indictment, his conviction, and his sentence were travesties of justice. They blasted Bush for declining to intervene in the proceedings, branding the president (their pal!) a coward. They acted as if Bush's refusal to pardon Libby was a personal betrayal of each and every one of them. They showed more concern for Libby than any of the civilians who have perished in Iraq in the years since they, Libby. and their allies engineered the invasion of Iraq. Libby was their cause; he was one of them.
Once again, Bush, being nudged by the neocons, has sent a clear message: Telling the truth doesn't matter. Bush has refused to acknowledge that he, Cheney, and other administration officials -- to be polite about it -- stretched the truth about Iraq and the threat it posed before the war. Today, he says that if you lie to protect the White House (especially the vice president), you can escape retribution. But if Bush, Cheney and the others could get away with big untruths about war, why shouldn't Libby get away with small lies about a cover-up? Fair's fair, right?
The foundation of a democratic judicial system is that the sentence fits the crime. In this instance, the commutation fits the administration.
David Corn is the Washington editor for The Nation magazine.
Copyright © 2007 The Nation
New York TImes Take on Palestine Heist
Gaza public servants to get Israeli fundsSteven Erlanger in Jerusalem
July 3, 2007
THE Israeli Government has agreed to restore full financial ties with the Palestinian Authority now that its President, Mahmoud Abbas, has decreed an emergency government with no Hamas members. Israel will resume transfers of taxes to the Authority and return - in instalments - about $US600 million ($707 million) withheld from the Palestinians since early last year.
On Sunday Israel transferred about $US120 million, the equivalent of a month's payroll for the entire authority.
The decision ends an Israeli policy of fiscal isolation of the Palestinians that began with the installation of a Hamas-run government in March last year, after Hamas won a legislative majority, beating the rival Fatah faction. The policy, together with a Western ban on aid to the Hamas government, was designed to undermine that government and bring it down, officials conceded at the time.
Now with Hamas having taken over the Gaza Strip, Mr Abbas, of Fatah, has sacked a Hamas-dominated "unity" government and installed an emergency cabinet led by Salam Fayyad, an independent economist close to Fatah.
Israel and the US are trying to bolster Mr Abbas, who favours a peaceful negotiated solution with Israel, and help him create a functional society in the West Bank. Israel views Mr Abbas as weak and indecisive, but officials see that by sacking the old government, he is finally standing up to Hamas.
Mr Fayyad, educated in Texas and a former economist with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, is prime minister, finance minister and foreign minister.
As finance minister he will be receiving direct transfers from the Israeli treasury and from the West. It remains to be seen whether the European Union, which has been paying part of the salaries of up to 80,000 Palestinians through direct transfers to their bank accounts, will now revert to putting its aid - $US900 million last year - solely through Mr Fayyad.
Mr Fayyad has said he plans, as prime minister of the new government, also to pay Palestinian public servants in Gaza. Many Palestinian Authority employees in Gaza work in health and education, and it would be politically impossible for Mr Fayyad to spend all Palestinian income solely in the West Bank. But how he will pay Palestinian security forces in Gaza without financing Hamas, at least indirectly, is unclear.
"Whether he pays Gaza salaries is not our business," said Miri Eisin, a spokeswoman for the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert. "This is a Palestinian government that has already outlawed all armed groups outside the official security services, and we want to co-operate."
The New York Times
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Appeal: John Graham Loses Extradition Defense Bid
JOEY ONLY OUTLAW BAND supports and stands beside our brother John Graham, a long time indigenous and anti-nuclear activist...we have supported Johnboy since day 1 of his arrest years ago! We wish we weren't on tour when the decision came down so we could have been in court with him.---------------------------------------------------------------
1.Article on our friend John Graham's extradition appeal
2.Send Johnboy a letter in prison
3.Send a letter on John's behalf
---------------------------------------------------------------
1.John Graham Loses Extradition Appeal Submitted by blackandred on Sun, 2007-07-01 03:51. British Columbia |Turtle Island | Imperialism | Indigenous | Race | Rights | Security apparatus
Former AIM Member Loses Extradition Appeal
by ROD MICKLEBURGH; Wednesday, June 27, 2007 at 5:15 AM EDT - Globe and Mail
[How very sad! The FBI's 'COINTELPRO' program is still happening as another Indigenous Warrior is railroaded by the combined powers of the settler colonies of 'Canada' and the 'United States' - b&r]
VANCOUVER - Echoes from the turbulent and often violent conflicts that consumed the militant American Indian Movement in the 1970s continue to resound in the courtrooms of British Columbia.
Yesterday, the B.C. Court of Appeal upheld the extradition of former AIM member John Graham to stand trial in South Dakota in the chilling murder more than 30 years ago of Canadian Mi'kmaq Anna Mae Aquash.
After the decision, to the evident distress of his two adult daughters sitting in the courtroom, Mr. Graham was taken into custody to await transport to the United States, pending a possible final appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.
According to U.S. authorities, Mr. Graham executed Ms. Aquash as she wept and prayed for her life on a desolate corner of the Pine Ridge Reservation on a wintry South Dakota night in 1975.
Her death was allegedly ordered by AIM leaders who believed that the 30-year-old mother was an informer for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
A U.S. federal jury convicted Arlo Looking Cloud of murder three years ago for his role in the killing. He has told authorities that he looked on while Mr. Graham shot Ms. Aquash in the back of the head.
Mr. Graham and his many supporters argue, however, that he is being framed by the FBI, as they believe well-known native activist Leonard Peltier was.
Mr. Peltier, currently serving a life sentence for the murder of two FBI agents killed during a 1975 shootout with AIM at Pine Ridge, also fought a long, unsuccessful battle to avoid extradition from B.C.
In a case that continues to arouse emotions today, the main evidence used to extradite Mr. Peltier was a sworn affidavit by native Myrtle Poorbear that later proved to be false. Many, including Amnesty International, have called for Mr. Peltier's release.
AIM was the focus of worldwide attention in those days after rifle-toting natives seized Wounded Knee reservation in 1971, keeping federal agents at bay for 71 days.
Over time, however, the militant movement bogged down in bitter divisions. Some of the statements used against Mr. Graham came from former members and leaders of AIM. They said that Mr. Looking Cloud told them Mr. Graham was involved in the murder of Ms. Aquash.
Court of Appeal Judge Ian Donald referred to the statements in upholding Mr. Graham's extradition to stand trial.
"In my opinion, a properly instructed jury acting reasonably could convict on the evidence that [Mr. Graham]...carried out [Ms. Aquash's] execution with the assistance of Looking Cloud," he concluded.
Mr. Graham's lawyer, Terry La Liberté, said he has little hope his client will receive a fair trial in the United States.
"He's going to be at the mercy of their justice system," Mr. La Liberté said. "It took them just four days to try and convict and sentence Arlo Looking Cloud. It's a railroad down there."
Apart from hearsay statements, the evidence against Mr. Graham is non-existent, he said. "There is not a tittle of forensic evidence. ... In Canada, this case wouldn't even get past the charge approval stage. It's terribly frustrating."
With a report from Canadian Press
----------------------------------------------------------------
2. Please write John a postcard - a postcard so that guards can read it - Write soon as John could be extradited at any time within the next 28 days
Attn: John Graham
North Fraser Pre Trial Center
1451 Kingsway Ave.,
Port Coquitlam,
BC V3C 1S2.
Here are some addresses I am asking people to write in the order given PLEASE send copies of your letters to whoever is appropriate. Never just send off one copy of a letter. It is sometimes in the threat of a copy going elsewhere that something gets done.
N.B ALSO please write Robert Nicholson, Minister of Justice, House of Commons. Ottawa K1A 0A6 and ask him NOT to put his signature on John's extradition order
------------------
AMNESTY ADDRESSES - Write and ask that John Graham's case be looked into as a travesty of justice and ask to have John accepted as a political prisoner. (Links are given to articles giving John's story at the end.)
Write London and US and Germany (Bonn) and the other AI groups listed only as you can. It seems rather useless to write AI Canada in view of this head-in-the-sand answer they have sent us:
( Amnesty(Canada) has previously commented on the need for careful scrutiny of the evidence presented against John Graham, whether in an extradition hearing or in a trial.
However, while we respect efforts to mount an effective defense, we do not share the position that Graham should be shielded from prosecution on the basis of past miscarriages of justice in respect to other, much more prominent members of AIM.
The US justice system is capable of meeting international fair trial standards and should be expected to do in every instance.
The alternative would be to accept that no one could be prosecuted for the murder of Indigenous rights defender Anna Mae Aquash because similar concerns about political interference past investigations would come up in every instance.
I hope that this clarifies our position.
Craig Benjamin
Campaigner for the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------
International Secretariat, London
If you have concerns about human rights issues in any particular country, or wish to report instances of human rights abuse, you should contact the Amnesty International Secretariat which is our research and policy headquarters based in London.
Amnesty International Secretariat
1 Easton Street
London UK
WC1X 0DW
Tel +44 (0)20 7413 5500
Fax +44 (0)20 7956 1157
www.amnesty.org
Amnesty International USA
5 Penn Plaza,
New York, NY
USA 10001
(212) 807-8400
Mid West Office
53 Jackson, Ste. 731, Chicago, IL
USA 60604
(312) 427-2060
Germany - amnesty international - Sektion der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
e. V.
Telefon
Telefax
E-mail +49 (0)228 / 9 83 73-0
+49 (0)228 / 63 00 36
info@amnesty.de
Postanschrift
amnesty international
Sektion der Bundesrepublik Deutschland e.V.
53108 Bonn
Hausanschrift
amnesty international
Sekretariat der deutschen Sektion
Büro Bonn
Heerstr. 178
53111 Bonn
amnesty international
Sekretariat der deutschen Sektion
Büro Berlin
Greifswalder Str. 4
10405 Berlin
****************************.
And
Scotland
Amnesty International Scotland
9 Haymarket Terrace
Edinburgh EH12 5EZ
Tel +44 (0) 844 800 9088
Fax +44 (0) 131 313 7000
Email scotland@amnesty.org.uk
Press and media enquiries should be directed to Naomi McAuliffe at the
above office.
Ireland Amnesty International Northern Ireland
397 Ormeau Road
Belfast
BT7 3GP
Tel +44 (0) 28 9064 3000
Email nireland@amnesty.org.uk
Press and media enquiries should be directed to Fiona Smith at the above
office.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Write to ask that John Graham's case be put into the Supreme Court for the
sake of all Canadians and our threatened sovereignty The Right Hon
Beverley McLachlin Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada
301 Wellington St
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0J1
The Hon Irwin Cotler MP (former Minister of Justice who knows about John's case - as does Peter McKay and Andy Scott and Stephen Owen. I have spoken personally to all of them.)
491 West Block
Ottawa Ontario, K1A 0A6
-Any member can be written at House of Commons, Ottawa. K1A 0A6
Allmand was the solicitor general for Canada when Peltier was extradited)
Warren Allmand
4351 Oxford, Montréal, QC
H4A 2Y7
(514) 486-1811
**************************
International Action Center New York: (This was set up by Ramsay Clark who
was much in sympathy with Leonard Peltier)
5C - Solidarity Center
55 West 17th Street
New York, N.Y. 10011
212-633-6646
Please write Robert Nicholson, Minister of Justice, House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0A6 and ask him NOT to put his signature on John's extradition order. Ron Basford regrettably gave his signature for the extradition of Leonard Peltier)
Also write
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association
360 Bloor St. W.
Suite 506
Toronto
Ontario
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------
Here are addresses for Human Rights Watch. Let them know the story and even ask them re legal help in USA. Washington and San Francisco office have always replied to me.
350 Fifth Avenue, 34th floor
New York, NY 10118-3299 USA
Tel: 1-(212) 290-4700, Fax: 1-(212) 736-1300
hrwnyc@hrw.org
1630 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 500
Washington, DC 20009 USA
Tel:1-(202) 612-4321, Fax:1-(202) 612-4333
hrwdc@hrw.org
11500 W. Olympic Blvd., Suite 441
Los Angeles, CA 90064 USA
Tel:1-(310) 477-5540, Fax: (310) 477-4622
E-mail: hrwlasb@hrw.org
Website
Human Rights Watch
100 Bush Street, Suite 1812
San Francisco, CA 94104
Tel: 415.362.3250, Fax: 415.362.3255
E-mail: hrwsf@hrw.org
Website
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------
Info & links:
"Who killed Anna Mae Aquash?"
by Rex Weyler
Vancouver Sun, January 8, 2005
www.grahamdefense.org/20050108weyler-van-sun.htm
Dr. Noam Chomsky on John Graham's threatened extradition from Vancouver
http://www.members.shaw.ca/johngraham/noam.html
Bob Newbrook, attending officer at Leonard Peltier's arrest
Raises doubts about John Graham's arrest
http://www.grahamdefense.org/news_province1.htm
Bruce Ellison, lawyer, 4 decades defending native activists in the US
An interview about John Graham:
http://www.danieltv.com/movies/jg-400.mov
====================
PLEASE THINK HARD RE GOOD LEGAL DEFENSE FOR JOHN IN THE USA IN THE EVENT
THE CASE DOES NOT GO TO THE SUPREME COURT. Do you know any lawyers in the US?
(www.myspace.com/xjoeyonlyx)
(www.JOEYONLY.com)
---
SOUND RESISTANCE RADIO & PRODUCTIONS
(www.myspace.com/soundresistance)
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Israel: Spinning Fear into Gold
Gaza: Not Just a Prison, a Laboratory By Naomi Klein, The Nation
June 19, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/54216/
Gaza in the hands of Hamas, with masked militants sitting in the president's chair; the West Bank on the edge; Israeli army camps hastily assembled in the Golan Heights; a spy satellite over Iran and Syria; war with Hezbollah a hair trigger away; a scandal-plagued political class facing a total loss of public faith.
At a glance, things aren't going well for Israel. But here's a puzzle: why, in the midst of such chaos and carnage, is the Israeli economy booming like it's 1999, with a roaring stock market and growth rates nearing China's?
Thomas Friedman recently offered his theory in the New York Times. Israel "nurtures and rewards individual imagination," and so its people are constantly spawning ingenious high-tech start-ups -- no matter what messes their politicians are making. After perusing class projects by students in engineering and computer science at Ben Gurion University, Friedman made one of his famous fake-sense pronouncements: Israel "had discovered oil." This oil, apparently, is located in the minds of Israel's "young innovators and venture capitalists," who are too busy making megadeals with Google to be held back by politics.
Here's another theory: Israel's economy isn't booming despite the political chaos that devours the headlines, but because of it. This phase of development dates back to the mid-nineties, when Israel was in the vanguard of the information revolution -- the most tech-dependent economy in the world. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Israel's economy was devastated, facing its worst year since 1953. Then came 9/11, and suddenly new profit vistas opened up for any company that claimed it could spot terrorists in crowds, seal borders from attack and extract confessions from closed-mouthed prisoners.
Within three years, large parts of Israel's tech economy had been radically repurposed. Put in Friedmanesque terms: Israel went from inventing the networking tools of the "flat world" to selling fences to an apartheid planet. Many of the country's most successful entrepreneurs are using Israel's status as a fortressed state, surrounded by furious enemies, as a kind of twenty-four-hour-a-day showroom-a living example of how to enjoy relative safety amid constant war. And the reason Israel is now enjoying supergrowth is that those companies are busily exporting that model to the world.
Discussions of Israel's military trade usually focus on the flow of weapons into the country-US-made Caterpillar bulldozers used to destroy homes in the West Bank and British companies supplying parts for F-16s. Overlooked is Israel's huge and expanding export business. Israel now sends $1.2 billion in "defense" products to the United States-up dramatically from $270 million in 1999. In 2006 Israel exported $3.4 billion in defense products-well over a billion more than it received in US military aid. That makes Israel the fourth-largest arms dealer in the world, overtaking Britain.
Much of this growth has been in the so-called "homeland security" sector. Before 9/11 homeland security barely existed as an industry. By the end of this year, Israeli exports in the sector will reach $1.2 billion-an increase of 20 percent. The key products and services are high-tech fences, unmanned drones, biometric IDs, video and audio surveillance gear, air passenger profiling and prisoner interrogation systems -- precisely the tools and technologies Israel has used to lock-in the occupied territories.
And that is why the chaos in Gaza and the rest of the region doesn't threaten the bottom line in Tel Aviv, and may actually boost it. Israel has learned to turn endless war into a brand asset, pitching its uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the "global war on terror."
It's no coincidence that the class projects at Ben Gurion that so impressed Friedman have names like "Innovative Covariance Matrix for Point Target Detection in Hyperspectral Images" and "Algorithms for Obstacle Detection and Avoidance." Thirty homeland security companies were launched in Israel in the past six months alone, thanks in large part to lavish government subsidies that have transformed the Israeli army and the country's universities into incubators for security and weapons start-ups (something to keep in mind in the debates about the academic boycott).
Next week, the most established of these companies will travel to Europe for the Paris Air Show, the arms industry's equivalent of Fashion Week. One of the Israeli companies exhibiting is Suspect Detection Systems (SDS), which will be showcasing its Cogito1002, a white, sci-fi-looking security kiosk that asks air travelers to answer a series of computer-generated questions, tailored to their country of origin, while they hold their hand on a "biofeedback" sensor. The device reads the body's reactions to the questions and certain responses flag the passenger as "suspect."
Like hundreds of other Israeli security start-ups, SDS boasts that it was founded by veterans of Israel's secret police and that its products were road-tested on Palestinians. Not only has the company tried out the biofeedback terminals at a West Bank checkpoint, it claims the "concept is supported and enhanced by knowledge acquired and assimilated from the analysis of thousands of case studies related to suicide bombers in Israel."
Another star of the Paris Air Show will be Israeli defense giant Elbit, which plans to showcase its Hermes 450 and 900 unmanned air vehicles. As recently as May, according to press reports, Israel used the drones on bombing missions in Gaza. Once tested in the territories, they are exported abroad: the Hermes has already been used at the Arizona-Mexico border; Cogito1002 terminals are being auditioned at an unnamed US airport; and Elbit, one of the companies behind Israel's "security barrier," has partnered with Boeing to construct the Department of Homeland Security's $2.5 billion "virtual" border fence around the United States.
Since Israel began its policy of sealing off the occupied territories with checkpoints and walls, human rights activists have often compared Gaza and the West Bank to open-air prisons. But in researching the explosion of Israel's homeland security sector, a topic I explore in greater detail in a forthcoming book (The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism), it strikes me that they are something else too: laboratories where the terrifying tools of our security states are being field-tested. Palestinians -- whether living in the West Bank or what the Israeli politicians are already calling "Hamasistan" -- are no longer just targets. They are guinea pigs.
So in a way Friedman is right: Israel has struck oil. But the oil isn't the imagination of its techie entrepreneurs. The oil is the war on terror, the state of constant fear that creates a bottomless global demand for devices that watch, listen, contain and target "suspects." And fear, it turns out, is the ultimate renewable resource.
Naomi Klein is the author of "No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies" and "Fences and Windows: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate."
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/54216/
Monday, June 18, 2007
Unfit to Fly in Canada?
Grounding the No-Fly List
'Useless security theatre'?
Rights groups seek to block 'illegitimate' security plan.
By Tom Barrett
June 18, 2007
TheTyee.ca
Starting Monday, anyone boarding a commercial airliner in Canada will be screened against a home-grown no-fly list. But the B.C. Civil Liberties Association is still fighting to kill the list.
Calling the process by which the list was enacted "illegitimate," the association is calling on MPs who belong to the Commons public safety committee to hold public hearings into the list.
The BCCLA is part of a coalition of 10 groups that is calling for the immediate cancellation of the no-fly list.
The list "doesn't do a darn thing for security," BCCLA policy director Micheal Vonn told The Tyee.
"It has terrible implications for rights and it's massively subject to abuse.
"And the other thing that's kind of tied into this is that there has been no democratic process. We say that the process is illegitimate."
Known as Passenger Protect, the federal plan establishes a secret list of persons who are believed to represent an "immediate threat" to airline security.
All passengers in Canada will be automatically screened against the list before they are issued a boarding pass. In the event of a possible match, airlines must immediately contact Transport Canada, which will decide whether the passenger can fly.
'Back door'
The federal cabinet created the list by passing regulations. Unlike legislation, regulations are not debated or voted on by Parliament. And while regulations are supposed to fill in the details on specific pieces of legislation, the BCCLA argues that there is nothing in the relevant law that specifically authorizes a no-fly list.
"No one who passed this legislation would have any reason to believe that they were putting in a no-fly list," said Vonn. "The words 'no fly' have never been uttered in a parliamentary debate on the issue of whether or not we should do this."
The government brought in the list "through the back door," said Vonn. "Clearly this is a national security measure. It should go to the public safety committee."
Although no hearings have ever been held, the public safety committee has been briefed on the list by bureaucrats and several members have been sharply critical of its provisions.
The no-fly list has been criticized by opposition politicians and by the federal privacy commissioner. Earlier this week, Air Canada's head of security warned that the list could create "unruly" situations when passengers are told they cannot fly.
Yves Duguay said the airline supports the idea of a no-fly list, but is worried about the safety of front-line staff.
"That's a point we've been making for two years, the employee security issue," Vonn said.
The BCCLA is also hoping to be given permission to make a public submission to an obscure parliamentary committee that reviews federal regulations. Vonn said the association hopes to hear in the fall whether the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations will grant it permission to argue publicly against the no-fly list.
Made up of senators and MPs, the scrutiny committee reviews new regulations to ensure the government has the authority to make them and that they comply with existing laws, including the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
'Kafka nightmare'
The BCCLA has opposed the no-fly list since plans to implement it were first made public. The group has called the scheme a "useless piece of security theatre" that "may represent a foothold for an electronic infrastructure for unprecedented traveller surveillance."
The association argues that the U.S. No-fly list has had a "devastating impact on thousands of ordinary citizens who have been flagged by the system mistakenly or because they have a name that sounds like a name on the list."
The U.S. no-fly list, which was created in the wake of 9-11, has apparently grown to half a million names, ABC News reports.
"Privacy and civil liberties advocates say the list is growing uncontrollably, threatening its usefulness in the war on terror," ABC reported last week.
With that many names, it's inevitable that confusion will set in. Because the list contains the name T. Kennedy, U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy was stopped and questioned five times at U.S. airports by security staff. It took Kennedy more than three weeks to get his name off the list.
The U.S. no-fly system "can't tell the difference between famous U.S. senators and actual terrorists," the BCCLA has argued
Thousands of ordinary Americans "are now unable to board an airplane or are subject to highly intrusive questioning and searching before being allowed on a plane," the BCCLA says.
"And like a Kafka nightmare, they can't find out how they got on the list and can't get themselves off the list."
Two lists
Americans aren't the only ones who have run into troubles with the U.S. no-fly list. The Canadian Press has reported that Canadian airlines already use the U.S. list for domestic flights and that "dozens of Canadians have formally complained about being delayed at airports because their name -- or at least one that matches theirs -- turned up on the U.S. no-fly roster, or possibly another list that singles out passengers for secondary screening."
And, reports CP, Canadian airlines intend to keep using the U.S. list once the Canadian list goes into effect -- even though the federal government has said they should not be using the U.S. list.
Transport Canada says persons on the Canadian list will include:
"An individual who is or has been involved in a terrorist group, and who, it can reasonably be suspected, will endanger the security of any aircraft or aerodrome or the safety of the public, passengers or crew members"
"An individual who has been convicted of one or more serious and life-threatening crimes against aviation security"
"An individual who has been convicted of one or more serious and life-threatening offences and who may attack or harm an air carrier, passengers or crew members."
Photo ID
As of Monday, everyone travelling by air within Canada who appears to be 12 or older must present one piece of government-issued photo ID -- or two pieces of government ID without a photo -- showing their name, date of birth and gender.
The federal government has said it will "take steps to minimize the risk" of mistakes through several procedures:
"The specified persons list will be limited in scope and focused only on aviation security"
"The list will be reviewed and refreshed at least every 30 days to incorporate any new information quickly"
"The list provided to air carriers will provide name, date of birth and gender for each entry, which will allow accurate identification"
"Air carriers will verify possible matches with the list"
"Individuals will be required to present government-issued ID for the verification of name, date of birth and gender."
"The government, not the airline, will make the final decision on whether to deny boarding to an individual who is a match with the list," states Transport Canada.
A passenger who is mistakenly barred from flying can appeal to a Transport Canada "Office of Reconsideration."
To complain to the office, known as the OOR, a person must provide a notarized document that proves that they are who they say they are.
After reviewing the case, the OOR will recommend to the minister of transport whether the government should consider taking the person's name off the list.
"The OOR process will take approximately 30 working days, and the individual will be informed of the decision," states Transport Canada. "Should the individual not be satisfied with the decision of the Minister, they will still have the option of pursuing other legal avenues to challenge the decision, such as the Federal Court."
Privacy concerns
Despite the complaints of civil libertarians, the government says the Canadian no-fly list will comply with both the Charter and privacy laws.
However, Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart isn't happy.
Stoddart was highly critical of the home-grown no-fly list when it was first announced and a spokeswoman for her office recently told CanWest News that the commissioner's views "have not drastically changed."
When the no-fly list was first proposed, Stoddart sent Transport Canada a list of 24 questions that outlined her concerns.
Stoddart's first question was:
"What studies, if any, has the department carried out to demonstrate that advance passenger information will be useful in identifying high-risk travelers?"
The government's answer:
"The Passenger Protect program proposes to use a watchlist to prevent specified individuals from boarding flights based on practical global experience and risk assessment rather than specific studies."
Critics say this means that the government has no proof no-fly lists work.
The coalition of groups calling for the immediate cancellation of the no-fly list includes the BCCLA, the Canadian Arab Foundation, the Canadian Council for Refugees, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, the Centre for Research Action in Race Relations, the Coalition of Arab Canadian Professionals and Community Associations, the Chinese Canadian National Council, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group and the National Anti-Racism Council of Canada.
The B.C. government's response to the U.S. Patriot Act pre-empted its own privacy commissioner.
Why Are U.S. Drug Cops in Vancouver?
Despite slams from a Supreme Court judge and civil liberties advocates, America's DEA calls B.C. home.
Tom Barrett is a contributing editor to The Tyee. Read his previous stories here.
'Useless security theatre'?
Rights groups seek to block 'illegitimate' security plan.
By Tom Barrett
June 18, 2007
TheTyee.ca
Starting Monday, anyone boarding a commercial airliner in Canada will be screened against a home-grown no-fly list. But the B.C. Civil Liberties Association is still fighting to kill the list.
Calling the process by which the list was enacted "illegitimate," the association is calling on MPs who belong to the Commons public safety committee to hold public hearings into the list.
The BCCLA is part of a coalition of 10 groups that is calling for the immediate cancellation of the no-fly list.
The list "doesn't do a darn thing for security," BCCLA policy director Micheal Vonn told The Tyee.
"It has terrible implications for rights and it's massively subject to abuse.
"And the other thing that's kind of tied into this is that there has been no democratic process. We say that the process is illegitimate."
Known as Passenger Protect, the federal plan establishes a secret list of persons who are believed to represent an "immediate threat" to airline security.
All passengers in Canada will be automatically screened against the list before they are issued a boarding pass. In the event of a possible match, airlines must immediately contact Transport Canada, which will decide whether the passenger can fly.
'Back door'
The federal cabinet created the list by passing regulations. Unlike legislation, regulations are not debated or voted on by Parliament. And while regulations are supposed to fill in the details on specific pieces of legislation, the BCCLA argues that there is nothing in the relevant law that specifically authorizes a no-fly list.
"No one who passed this legislation would have any reason to believe that they were putting in a no-fly list," said Vonn. "The words 'no fly' have never been uttered in a parliamentary debate on the issue of whether or not we should do this."
The government brought in the list "through the back door," said Vonn. "Clearly this is a national security measure. It should go to the public safety committee."
Although no hearings have ever been held, the public safety committee has been briefed on the list by bureaucrats and several members have been sharply critical of its provisions.
The no-fly list has been criticized by opposition politicians and by the federal privacy commissioner. Earlier this week, Air Canada's head of security warned that the list could create "unruly" situations when passengers are told they cannot fly.
Yves Duguay said the airline supports the idea of a no-fly list, but is worried about the safety of front-line staff.
"That's a point we've been making for two years, the employee security issue," Vonn said.
The BCCLA is also hoping to be given permission to make a public submission to an obscure parliamentary committee that reviews federal regulations. Vonn said the association hopes to hear in the fall whether the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations will grant it permission to argue publicly against the no-fly list.
Made up of senators and MPs, the scrutiny committee reviews new regulations to ensure the government has the authority to make them and that they comply with existing laws, including the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
'Kafka nightmare'
The BCCLA has opposed the no-fly list since plans to implement it were first made public. The group has called the scheme a "useless piece of security theatre" that "may represent a foothold for an electronic infrastructure for unprecedented traveller surveillance."
The association argues that the U.S. No-fly list has had a "devastating impact on thousands of ordinary citizens who have been flagged by the system mistakenly or because they have a name that sounds like a name on the list."
The U.S. no-fly list, which was created in the wake of 9-11, has apparently grown to half a million names, ABC News reports.
"Privacy and civil liberties advocates say the list is growing uncontrollably, threatening its usefulness in the war on terror," ABC reported last week.
With that many names, it's inevitable that confusion will set in. Because the list contains the name T. Kennedy, U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy was stopped and questioned five times at U.S. airports by security staff. It took Kennedy more than three weeks to get his name off the list.
The U.S. no-fly system "can't tell the difference between famous U.S. senators and actual terrorists," the BCCLA has argued
Thousands of ordinary Americans "are now unable to board an airplane or are subject to highly intrusive questioning and searching before being allowed on a plane," the BCCLA says.
"And like a Kafka nightmare, they can't find out how they got on the list and can't get themselves off the list."
Two lists
Americans aren't the only ones who have run into troubles with the U.S. no-fly list. The Canadian Press has reported that Canadian airlines already use the U.S. list for domestic flights and that "dozens of Canadians have formally complained about being delayed at airports because their name -- or at least one that matches theirs -- turned up on the U.S. no-fly roster, or possibly another list that singles out passengers for secondary screening."
And, reports CP, Canadian airlines intend to keep using the U.S. list once the Canadian list goes into effect -- even though the federal government has said they should not be using the U.S. list.
Transport Canada says persons on the Canadian list will include:
"An individual who is or has been involved in a terrorist group, and who, it can reasonably be suspected, will endanger the security of any aircraft or aerodrome or the safety of the public, passengers or crew members"
"An individual who has been convicted of one or more serious and life-threatening crimes against aviation security"
"An individual who has been convicted of one or more serious and life-threatening offences and who may attack or harm an air carrier, passengers or crew members."
Photo ID
As of Monday, everyone travelling by air within Canada who appears to be 12 or older must present one piece of government-issued photo ID -- or two pieces of government ID without a photo -- showing their name, date of birth and gender.
The federal government has said it will "take steps to minimize the risk" of mistakes through several procedures:
"The specified persons list will be limited in scope and focused only on aviation security"
"The list will be reviewed and refreshed at least every 30 days to incorporate any new information quickly"
"The list provided to air carriers will provide name, date of birth and gender for each entry, which will allow accurate identification"
"Air carriers will verify possible matches with the list"
"Individuals will be required to present government-issued ID for the verification of name, date of birth and gender."
"The government, not the airline, will make the final decision on whether to deny boarding to an individual who is a match with the list," states Transport Canada.
A passenger who is mistakenly barred from flying can appeal to a Transport Canada "Office of Reconsideration."
To complain to the office, known as the OOR, a person must provide a notarized document that proves that they are who they say they are.
After reviewing the case, the OOR will recommend to the minister of transport whether the government should consider taking the person's name off the list.
"The OOR process will take approximately 30 working days, and the individual will be informed of the decision," states Transport Canada. "Should the individual not be satisfied with the decision of the Minister, they will still have the option of pursuing other legal avenues to challenge the decision, such as the Federal Court."
Privacy concerns
Despite the complaints of civil libertarians, the government says the Canadian no-fly list will comply with both the Charter and privacy laws.
However, Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart isn't happy.
Stoddart was highly critical of the home-grown no-fly list when it was first announced and a spokeswoman for her office recently told CanWest News that the commissioner's views "have not drastically changed."
When the no-fly list was first proposed, Stoddart sent Transport Canada a list of 24 questions that outlined her concerns.
Stoddart's first question was:
"What studies, if any, has the department carried out to demonstrate that advance passenger information will be useful in identifying high-risk travelers?"
The government's answer:
"The Passenger Protect program proposes to use a watchlist to prevent specified individuals from boarding flights based on practical global experience and risk assessment rather than specific studies."
Critics say this means that the government has no proof no-fly lists work.
The coalition of groups calling for the immediate cancellation of the no-fly list includes the BCCLA, the Canadian Arab Foundation, the Canadian Council for Refugees, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, the Centre for Research Action in Race Relations, the Coalition of Arab Canadian Professionals and Community Associations, the Chinese Canadian National Council, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group and the National Anti-Racism Council of Canada.
The B.C. government's response to the U.S. Patriot Act pre-empted its own privacy commissioner.
Why Are U.S. Drug Cops in Vancouver?
Despite slams from a Supreme Court judge and civil liberties advocates, America's DEA calls B.C. home.
Tom Barrett is a contributing editor to The Tyee. Read his previous stories here.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
China: First Starving Casualties of 'Biofuels'
China wants food first, not fuel
By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - A customary Chinese greeting from the years of rations and shortages - "Have you eaten yet?" - is being jokingly resurrected as the public watches the prices of key staples, particularly pork, soaring by the day.
Chinese economic minders, however, are not amused. Worried about social instability fueled by inflation, they have been mulling over whether to steady prices by using the state strategic reserve
of hundreds of thousands of live pigs kept at special farms for contingencies.
Disturbingly, this is the second time in seven months that the Chinese leadership has had to resort to the country's strategic reserves to stave off politically dangerous increases in food prices. In December, Beijing ordered the auctioning of some of the state wheat reserves to halt the rise in crops prices and prevent panic among the public.
"Almost every inflationary crisis in the past 20 years has begun with an increase in food prices," noted Xia Yeliang, professor of economics at Peking University. "Historically Chinese people have always regarded food as their first necessity. For people of middle age and the elderly, the memories of most recent times when food was lacking still endure."
The last big famine China experienced - arguably the greatest in human history - during the disastrous Great Leap Forward experiment with communist industrialization in the late 1950s, killed up to 30 million people. Since then, ensuring food sufficiency for the country's population of 1.3 billion has been regarded by Chinese leaders as a matter of national security.
Current hikes in both grain and pork prices are blamed on the same culprit - the ethanol industry, whose explosive growth has been gobbling up a growing share of China's corn (maize) harvest traditionally preserved for food and animal feed.
Having promoted the production of the environmentally friendly gasoline additive for years, Chinese economic planners now fear the sector has grown too much and too quickly, presenting them with an uncomfortable dilemma of choosing between the country's green agenda and its national food security.
Leadership fears were clearly manifested late last month when Premier Wen Jiabao visited a meat market in Xian, central China, to check the prices of pork. He called on local officials to pay pig breeders to increase production and tried to reassure the public that the situation was under control. As of mid-May, prices of pork were up by 43% compared with the same period last year, said the Agriculture Ministry.
Soaring pork prices have been partly blamed on outbreaks of contagious pig disease, which swept 22 Chinese provinces, killing 18,000 pigs in the first five months of the year and disrupting the pig industry. About a million pigs died from the disease last year.
Yet the root of the problem, according to officials, is not the disease. "The main reason is the big price increases of animal feed that began last June," Jia Youling, director of the Veterinary Bureau affiliated with the ministry, said at a press briefing this week.
Pig feed, which is made mostly of corn, simply followed increases in corn prices. Prices of the commodity have risen by up to 30% since the latter half of last year, according to the ministry.
What is more, producers have ignored a government limit on converting about 3 million tonnes of corn into ethanol a year and used up to 16 million tonnes of the crop in 2006, the ministry said in April.
China has been encouraging the production of biofuel such as ethanol and bio-diesel from renewable resources to satisfy the country's voracious appetite for energy and reduce its growing dependence on imported petroleum.
Biofuel is also touted as green panacea for environmental problems caused by oil. Chinese planners have made the development of green energies a key priority in the country's five-year economic plan. By 2020 they want renewable energy to account for 15% of the country's total supply.
While a relative latecomer to the biofuel market, in the past two years China has grown to be the world's third-largest producer after Brazil and the United States.
The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's top planning body, reported in December that the country's ethanol capacity had reached 10 million tonnes, or 10 times the amount approved for the four government facilities in Jilin, Heilongjiang, Anhui and Henan provinces.
The excess amount has been coming from a cluster of small, unlicensed producers, who sell their production to officially approved mills or oil refineries. Industry insiders say that just Jilin, one of the nine designated provinces where ethanol is sold, has more than 400 ethanol mills, all of them producing the fuel from corn.
Fearing that the explosive growth of the ethanol industry was making a serious dent in the country's grain reserves, the central government stopped approving new corn-based ethanol plants in December. This month it took another step, announcing that it would stop the production of ethanol from corn altogether.
Xiong Bilin, a senior official with the NDRC, said the State Council, China's cabinet, has decided ethanol should be developed without occupying arable land, large-scale consumption of grain, or damage to the environment.
Despite three straight years of bumper harvests, Chinese planners are still worried that fast-shrinking farmland could affect grain supply in the near future. Arable land is said to have shrunk by 8 million hectares between 1999 and 2005.
"The country will not approve new projects of food-based ethanol," Xiong told a development forum in Beijing last week. "The current four [state] plants engaged in making ethanol from corn are urged to switch to new sources."
This, however, might not see the end of corn-based ethanol production in the country. Chinese press reports say domestic corn processors are rapidly expanding their capacities to resume ethanol production when the government relaxes its stance.
(Inter Press Service)
Baghdad U.S.A.
Police crack down on 8 Mile
Norman Sinclair / The Detroit News
21 agencies from across area team up in effort to rid communities of drugs, prostitution, other crimes.
DETROIT -- Officers from 21 agencies today are wrapping up Operation Eight Mile, a three-day crackdown on drugs, prostitution and other crimes in communities bordering the Eight Mile corridor from Harper Woods to Farmington Hills.
The effort netted 67 arrests for offenses ranging from drugs to parole violations between 2-10 p.m. Tuesday, the first day. Traffic officers wrote 512 tickets, made 24 arrests and impounded 19 cars. The action continues until 10 tonight.
"I see Operation Eight Mile as an opportunity to get the police and community together to make the area safer," said Wayne County Sheriff Warren Evans, whose department coordinated the effort.
"A safe and vibrant Eight Mile corridor is critical to the region as well as to the image and perception of the area people have around the country."
Other departments include Macomb and Oakland Sheriff's departments; Detroit and State Police; officers from Harper Woods, Eastpointe, the five Grosse Pointe departments, Warren, Roseville, Hazel Park, Ferndale, Oak Park, Southfield, Livonia, Redford and Farmington Hills; prosecutors from the three counties; agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; the U.S Marshal; the state Department of Corrections; and National Guard also are in the task force.
Evans said he realizes the impressive show of police and hardware during the three-day crackdown, including tanks and helicopters, will not end crime in the area.
"When you hit it that hard for a few days you get a residual drop off in crime and that's a benefit before there is any build up again," he said.
For example, police made arrests at a house on the Detroit side of Eight Mile using information picked up in Eastpointe and Roseville. With an undercover officer posing as a dealer, officers ticketed 45 people who were attempting to buy drugs there and seized 22 cars.
Macomb County Sheriff Mark A. Hackel said the public will see more of these collaborative police efforts in the future.
"Instead of just doing it one week out of the year, you are going to see it on a more continuous basis throughout the year," Hackel said.
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