The Mothers Act Disease Mongering Campaign

The Mothers Act represents the ultimate example of disease mongering at its worst because the eight-year attempt to pass this federal legislation has evolved into profiteering never before exhibited so conspicuously.

Disease mongering "is the selling of sickness that widens the boundaries of illness and grows the markets for those who sell and deliver treatments," according to Ray Moyniahan and David Henry in the April 11, 2006 paper in PLoS Med, titled, "The Fight against Disease Mongering."

"It is exemplified most explicitly by many pharmaceutical industry -- funded disease-awareness campaigns -- more often designed to sell drugs than to illuminate or to inform or educate about the prevention of illness or the maintenance of health," the authors explain.

"Drug companies are by no means the only players in this drama," they point out. "Through the work of investigative journalists, we have learned how informal alliances of pharmaceutical corporations, public relations companies, doctors' groups, and patient advocates promote these ideas to the public and policymakers -- often using mass media to push a certain view of a particular health problem."

The Mothers Act campaign has operated under the guise of helping women suffering from postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis to develop a new industry, complete with specialties like, "reproductive psychiatry," or "reproductive mental health," with a plan to "screen" and "treat" women of childbearing years for a long list of "perinatal" mental disorders, to financially benefit psychiatric drug makers, as well as the treatment providers and "experts" in the new self-created field.

"Drug companies have been trying for years to get a better deal with pregnant women by saying they were under a lot more stress than people realize," according to UK pharmacology expert, Dr David Healy, author the new book, "Mania: A Short History of Bipolar Disorder."

This is now the easiest marketing for the drug makers, he says. In fact, "almost too easy because lots of people are cooperative."

The Mothers Act has already passed in the House and Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), is the main sponsor of the bill in the Senate. In 2006, his home state of New Jersey became the first state in the nation to enact a law forcing all new mothers to submit to mandatory screening.

Lobbyists paid big bucks to push drugs in Washington

A June 24, 2009 report by the public interest advocacy group, "Common Cause," lists Menedez as one of the top 20 recipients of healthcare industry campaign contributions in the Senate between 2000 and 2008. Since the year 2000, Menendez has received a total of $2,252,169, including $723,550 from Big Pharma.

On June 8, 2009, a headline on New Jersey.com, read: "E-mail: Drug lobbyist targeted Menendez to help with importation bill," and reported that the subject line of the email said: "URGENT"

The strategy to pursue Menendez became known when the email from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the industry trade group, ended up with Senator John McCain, a drug importation advocate. "And McCain read it on the Senate floor -- twice," the article notes.

The email called for New Jersey drug companies to ask Menendez to be their champion on an amendment that would effectively kill any attempt to allow cheaper drugs to be imported from other countries, according to the report.

"We need to locate a Democratic lead cosponsor for the second degree amendment," the e-mail said. "Can … [Johnson & Johnson], Merck, Novartis, Pfizer and the other New Jersey companies coordinate and contact Senator Menendez's office and ask him to take the lead?"

"Menendez's office said that while he supports the drug companies' position, he did not act as their champion," according to New Jersey.com.

Officially known as the "Melanie Blocker-Stokes Post Partum Depression Research and Care Act," the bill is "named after Melanie Stokes, a woman who suffered emotional difficulties after giving birth and was subsequently prescribed a cocktail of intensely controversial psychiatric drugs including anti-psychotic, anti-anxiety, and anti-depressant drugs before being subjected to electroshock treatment," according to a letter made available on the AbleChild, website for persons to sign and send to Senators, via the internet, encouraging them to vote against the Act.

"Melanie Stokes was in the mental health system, was prescribed drugs, was hospitalized, was subjected to the still barbaric practice of electroshock and only after receiving mental health "treatment" did she commit suicide," it further explains.

"That is what the mental health industry did for a new mother named Melanie," the letter points out.

The Mothers Act "quite simply is a feeder line for the psycho-pharmaceutical industry and will result in more mothers and infants being put at risk for being prescribed antidepressant and other dangerous psychiatric drugs," the AbleChild letter warns.

Suicide Prevention Hoax

The disease mongering campaigns for the new generation of psychiatric drugs over the last 20 years were accomplished under the ruse of suicide prevention. However, in 1987, the year Prozac was approved, and kicked off the bogus epidemic of mental illness in this country, the number of suicides was 30,796, and in the latest year reported on the website of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, the number of suicides was 33,292 in 2006.

The suicide related adverse event reports submitted to the FDA's MedWatch system are summarized on the "Adverse Psychiatric Drug Reaction" website. For a two-year period between January 2004 and December 2006, the top 20 list of most commonly reported adverse events for Prozac, included 187 suicides and 68 attempts. Zoloft had 154 suicides and 162 suicide attempts. Paxil's top 20 list included 841 suicides, Celexa had 232 suicide reports, and Lexapro had 189 suicides, and 87 suicide attempts, reported to MedWatch. Only between one and ten percent of adverse events ever get reported to the FDA's system.

In May 2009, journalist, Philip Dawdy, reported on the popular Furious Seasons website, that Wyeth's new Effexor me-too drug, Pristiq, approved in early 2008, had already generated 1,272 adverse event reports in MedWatch by the end of 2008.

"It's discouraging that 17 of those reports involve completed suicides through the end of 2008," Dawdy said. "There are also 48 reports of suicidal ideation."

Symptoms Equal Side Effects

Purely for profit, patients are told to stay on antidepressants indefinitely to prevent a relapse of depression or anxiety disorders. It's doubtful that patients realize that their sex lives could be ruined by taking the drugs or that the use of common pain relievers, vitamins and alcohol is dangerous or that their driving ability might be altered, for years on end.

The website Prozac.com lists depression symptoms as: depressed mood most of the day, nearly every day; lack of interest or pleasure in your usual activities and a lack of motivation; changes in appetite; sleep problems; anxiety or restlessness; feelings of guilt, worthlessness, and insecurity; difficulty concentrating and thinking clearly; fatigue or lack of energy; and thoughts of suicide.

Compare those "symptoms" to the severity and number of adverse events listed and described on the "Safety Information" page for Prozac, which includes the following statement:

"Patients on antidepressants and their families or caregivers should watch for worsening depression symptoms, unusual changes in behavior and thoughts of suicide, as well as for anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, difficulty sleeping, irritability, hostility, aggressiveness, impulsivity, restlessness, or extreme hyperactivity."


Under the heading, "What are possible side effects of PROZAC?" the website states:

"Some people experience side effects like nausea, difficulty sleeping, drowsiness, anxiety, nervousness, weakness, loss of appetite, tremors, dry mouth, sweating, decreased sex drive, impotence, or yawning."


"PROZAC can cause changes in sexual desire or satisfaction," it warns.

Sexual dysfunction, including lack of libido, orgasmic dysfunction and delayed ejaculation, are common side effects of using SSRIs, according to the May 2005 report, "The Marketing of Depression: The Prescribing of SSRI Antidepressants to Women," by Dr Janet Currie.

"Since SSRIs are prescribed more often for women, women are more frequently affected by SSRI-induced sexual dysfunction," she explains.

"Because SSRIs can also lead to a worsening of depression, paradoxical effects, emotional blunting or detachment, reduced emotional activity, memory loss and confusion, these effects, in conjunction with sexual dysfunction, can negatively affect intimate relationships," she warns.

"There are concerns that not all sexual dysfunction may fully resolve after termination of treatment," Currie also reports.

"Be sure to tell your doctor if you are taking PROZAC and are taking or plan to take non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or aspirin since combined use of these drug products have been associated with an increased risk of bleeding," the Prozac website advises.

"Also, tell your doctor if you are taking or plan to take any vitamins, herbal supplements or alcohol," the warning says.

An October 2007 study by researchers led by Dr Sonal Singh, published online in Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics, reported that SSRIs may double the risk of bleeding in the upper digestive gastrointestinal tract including the esophagus, stomach or upper intestine.

The researchers also noted that when SSRIs are taken with aspirin or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as prescription Celebrex or over-the-counter Aleve, the risk of bleeding was 6 times higher than in persons not on the drugs.

"Do not drive a car or operate dangerous machinery until you know what effects PROZAC may have on you," the Prozac website instructs.

A December 2006 study in the, "Journal of Clinical Psychiatry," reported that about seven out of every ten people who take antidepressants have impaired driving ability and that 16% of the people on the drugs have severe motor impairments.

A new May 2009 study, in the "American Journal of Psychiatry," reports that long term use of antidepressants raises the risk of diabetes, especially in moderate to high doses. SSRIs increased the risk by 106% and tricyclic antidepressants increased the risk by 77%.

The precaution section on the labeling for Prozac states: "Hyponatremia may occur as a result of treatment."

"Signs and symptoms of hyponatremia include headache, difficulty concentrating, memory impairment, confusion, weakness, and unsteadiness, which may lead to falls," it explains.

"More severe and/or acute cases have been associated with hallucination, syncope, seizure, coma, respiratory arrest, and death," the label warns.

Antidepressants lose patent profitability

Since the new generation of antidepressants lost their patent profitability, the treatment for all the "mood" and "anxiety" disorders women will be diagnosed with as a result of the Mothers Act disease mongering campaign, now includes not only antidepressants, but drugs used as "mood stabilizers," such as the antipsychotics Zyprexa, Seroquel, Risperdal, Invega, Geodon and Abilify, and antiseizure medications including Lamictal, Depakote, Topamax, Trileptal, Neurontin, Gabitril and Lyrica, along with benzodiazepines like Xanax, Ativan, Valium and Klonopin, and sleeping pills such as Ambien or Lunesta.

In 2008, psychiatric drug makers had overall US sales of $14.6 billion from antipsychotics, $9.6 billion off antidepressants, $11.3 billion from antiseizure drugs, and $4.8 billion in sales of ADHD drugs, for a grand total of $40.3 billion.

"In 2008, 85 million prescriptions were filled for the top 20 benzodiazepines, an increase of 10 million over 2004, according to IMS Health, a health-care information company," the Wall Street Journal reported on June 30, 2009.

"Worldwide revenue for Xanax rose to $350 million last year, up nearly 50 percent from 2003, according to pharmaceutical company Pfizer's financial reports," the Journal reported. Xanax sold for $203 for 100 middle dose tablets, and Ativan cost $230 per hundred at DrugStore.com on July 13, 2009.

Benzodiazepines are often prescribed to manage anxiety, panic and sleep disorders, the Journal noted. "Health professionals and consumers are increasingly recognizing that taking the drugs for more than a few weeks can lead to physical dependence, often ending with a grueling withdrawal," the article said.

Psychiatric drugs are now doled out in multiple drug cocktails to treat "co-occurring" mental illnesses such as "anxiety disorders" and "treatment resistant" depression, or the latest rage, "Adult ADHD."

In an April 2008 report, the market research firm, Datamonitor, announced: "ADHD - Immature adult market continues to offer greatest commercial potential."

"Estimated to be twice the size of the pediatric ADHD population," the reports states, "the highly prevalent, yet largely untapped, adult ADHD population continues to represent an attractive niche to target."

"The rising awareness of ADHD brought about by marketing campaigns for Adderall XR and Strattera has paved the way for the entry of additional adult ADHD drugs," it notes.

"The US dominates the ADHD market with a 94% market share," Datamonitor points out, demonstrating that the rest of the world has apparently not lost the ability to concentrate without the use of "legal speed."

Last year, Adderall and Vyvanse maker, Shire, issued a press release on May 12, 2008, to announce a "Nationwide Adult ADHD Mobile Awareness Tour," and launched a "13-city mobile screening initiative" for adults with ADHD.

"The screening initiative, known as the "RoADHD Trip," is housed, transported and anchored by the RoADHD Trip Tractor Trailer which expands into a tented area housing eight self-screening stations," Shire explained in the press release.

Shire claims that ADHD "affects approximately 4.4 percent of the U.S. adult population aged 18-44 according to the National Comorbidity Survey Replication, a nationally representative household survey."

Dr David Stein, author of, "Unraveling the ADD/ADHD Fiasco," warns that stimulant drugs are "near the top of the heap of potentially addictive drugs."

There is no way of pinpointing which people are at risk of becoming addicted, he says, and "psychiatry has an extremely poor track record for treating addiction problems."

Profitable Victims Spur Disease Mongering

When drugs are peddled through mental illness disease mongering campaigns, stories in the media seldom mention medication prices, much less the number of drugs commonly prescribed together to treat the various disorders; leaving the public unaware of the enormous profit motive behind the mass drugging of the victims.

A women diagnosed with ADHD and treatment resistant depression might end up taking Strattera, Cymbalta and Zyprexa, all sold by Eli Lilly. The recent prices of these drugs at a middle dose on DrugStore.com were $427 for 100 capsules of Strattera, $391 for 90 capsules of Cymbalta, and Zyprexa was $1,195 per ninety pills. A year of these three drugs would bring in roughly $24,156, per patient, for Lilly and the pharmacy alone, not counting the prescribing doctors' fees and the cost of any therapy sessions deemed necessary.

Bristol-Myers Squibb's Abilify is now approved as an "Adjunctive Treatment of Major Depressive Disorder," at a price of $1,230 for ninety capsules at DrugStore.com. The "Information for Patients," section on the labeling states in part:

"Patients, their families, and their caregivers should be encouraged to be alert to the emergence of anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, aggressiveness, impulsivity, akathisia (psychomotor restlessness), hypomania, mania, other unusual changes in behavior, worsening of depression, and suicidal ideation, especially early during antidepressant treatment and when the dose is adjusted up or down."

"A syndrome of potentially irreversible, involuntary, dyskinetic movements may develop in patients treated with antipsychotic drugs," the Abilify labeling warns.

On April 29, 2009, Philip Dawdy's headline on Furious Seasons, read: "10 Percent Of Depressed Patients Now Take Antipsychotics," based on statements made during a conference call by executives of Bristol-Myers Squibb.

"Forget about Prozac Nation, this is Atypical Nation," he said. "Antipsychotics are now the top revenue producing class of drugs, topping even statins.

Zyprexa and Prozac are combined in Lilly's Symbyax, recently approved for "treatment resistant" depression and the Abilify warnings are also on the labeling of this drug. The price of Symbyax was $1,564 for ninety 12-25mg capsules on DrugStore.com in May 2009, meaning each patient could bring in $18,768 per year for Lilly and the pharmacy alone.

A 2007 study titled, "Serious Adverse Drug Events Reported to the Food and Drug Administration," between 1998-2005, by Thomas Moore, Michael Cohen, and Curt Furberg, in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found the number of fatal adverse event reports to the FDA had increased nearly 300%, from 1998 to 2005. The top 15 drugs with the most fatalities included the antipsychotics, Clozaril with 3,277 deaths, Risperdal with 1,093, and Zyprexa with 1,005. Paxil also made the top 15 list with 850 death reports.

In 2008, the FDA warned that anticonvulsants double the risk of suicidal behavior or ideation, with epilepsy treatment having the highest risk, ruling out psychiatric disorders, such as depression, as the underlying culprit. The prices for anticonvulsants at a middle dose ran as high as $1,029 for 180 tablets of GlaxoSmithKline's Lamictal, and $1,286 for 180 tablets of Johnson & Johnson's Topamax, in May 2009.

Unconscionable Disease Mongers Target the Nursery

"The rights of the unborn to a safe and healthy birth are being taken away by this legislation," says Mothers Act opponent Larry Bone.

"One third of pregnant women in the US already take psychiatric drugs at some point during their pregnancies and most are never warned of the known risks for themselves, their unborn and nursing babies, depriving them of their right to informed consent," according to Dr Fred Baughman, author of the "ADHD Fraud," and former director of the March of Dimes, Birth Defects Clinic of Western Michigan.

"Should the Act pass," he warns, "it will guarantee that more mothers-to-be, their unborn still-developing babies, and more nursing mothers and their nursing infants, will join the ranks of the psychiatrically drugged."

A young Texas mother, Amy Philo, is the leader of "Unite for Life," a coalition of 53 groups fighting against the Mothers Act, which includes the Alliance for Human Research Protection, AbleChild, Citizens Commission on Human Rights, International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology; International Coalition For Drug Awareness; Law Project for Psychiatric Rights, Mindfreedom International, and the National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy.

The coalition points out that there is no language in the bill that will ensure mothers are granted the most fundamental right of "informed consent," meaning they will be told about all the risks of the proposed treatments and all the alternatives.

"If this bill was really for moms with PPD," Amy says, "it would ensure express written informed consent and ensure that all medical testing and non-drug options are explored."

"When the sponsors in the Senate refuse to add informed consent language and an examination of existing data on risks of existing treatments, then you know something is wrong," she says. "Seriously wrong."

The lack of an informed consent provision also concerns other experts in the field. "In every case in which a doctor writes a prescription, the person receiving the drug must be fully and understandably provided a statement of the risks associated with treatment," says Harrisburg, Pennsylvania psychiatrist, Dr Stefan Kruszewski, who serves as an expert in litigation on the harms of psychiatric drugs.

"This is never more serious than when two lives are potentially at risk, such as the pregnant or nursing mother and her infant," he advises.

"The risks for a pregnant mom on antidepressants may include withdrawal, akathisia or rapid mood swings," he warns. "For the fetus, the overwhelming worry is a withdrawal syndrome and congenital malformations, resulting in complications for both mother and child."

Drugged Victims

In 2004, Amy was prescribed Zoloft, to "prevent" PPD, because she became extremely anxious and concerned after she witnessed her newborn son's life-threatening choking incident, based on a recommendation of a home visiting nurse.

Without any explanation of alternative treatments, or warnings about side effects, the doctor told Amy that Zoloft would make her and her nursing infant happy, in a consultation lasting about two minutes.

Zoloft caused Amy to become homicidal and suicidal and she ended up locked in a mental ward away from her baby for two days. Rather than recognize the side effects of Zoloft, the "professionals" upped the dose and also tried to feed Amy Zyprexa, Celexa, Ambien, and Klonopin, which she refused to take because she was nursing.

Amy's obsessive homicidal and suicidal thoughts persisted for five months, until she weaned herself off Zoloft against medical advice, and they disappeared and never returned. Her recently obtained medical records show she was labeled with obsessive-compulsive disorder and major depression. These stigmatizing labels will stay in her records forever with no explanation that Zoloft was the cause of any alleged mental disorder.

The family's insurance was billed about $8,000 for the 2-day stay in the mental ward, and Amy and her husband were stuck with an $800 co-payment. Ninety 100mg tablets of Zoloft cost $318, at DrugStore.com on July 13, 2009. Of the drugs Amy refused to take, Celexa sold for $355 for 100 20mg tablets, Klonopin was $209 for 100 2mg tablets, and Ambien cost $173 for 30 10mg pills. As mentioned above, Zyprexa recently sold for $1,195 per ninety tablets.

Andrea Yates is another example of a women drugged into madness. On June 20, 2001, the Texas housewife and former nurse, filled a bathtub with water 3 inches from the top and methodically drowned her five children one by one. After she was done she called 911. When the policemen arrived she led them to the bodies.

"Contrary to the mantra that it is untreated mental illness that causes these tragic events, more often than not, we see these events occurring in individuals who are receiving mental health "treatment," almost always in the form of psychotropic drugs," warns attorney, Karen Barth Menzies, who has worked on cases involving drug-induced homicide and suicide, as well as SSRI birth defect litigation.

"From everything I have read about the Yates case," she says, "it is a tragic consequence of an incompetent, failing and corrupt mental health system."

"Ms Yates was on a chemical soup of various medications and, therefore, it is difficult to point the finger at any one drug," she explains.

"But it seems clear that the drugs she was taking did nothing but exacerbate her condition," she adds.

"I think the drug manufacturers who grossly oversell the benefits of their drugs and the doctors who pile on drug after drug, bear responsibility for the death of these children and deserve to be criminally charged as well," Menzies states.

"What we have observed, particularly in criminal cases," she says, "is that people taking these drugs will commit crimes they normally would never have committed due to a combination of side effects."

"For over a decade, antidepressant manufacturers have monitored the criminal courts for suspects who became violent while taking an antidepressant -- and they secretly help prosecutors fight against an SSRI-antidepressant defense," Menzies reports.

"The last thing drug companies want is for juries (and the public) to learn the truth - that these drugs can cause people to become violent and homicidal," she advises.

"Of course, the drug companies do not give the prosecutors the whole story," she says. "To protect the reputation of their money-making drug, the companies hide the internal evidence of people in clinical trials who become violent and homicidal on their drug, but then fully-recovered once they were off."

"These adverse reactions normally include an agitated state as well as a condition called "depersonalization" where the individual becomes disconnected from the reality of their actions, where everything seems unreal, as if they are watching a movie," Menzies explains.

"Often times," she notes, "there is a state of disinhibition, where normal inhibitions are no longer present, such as when people become intoxicated or are on street drugs."

"Unfortunately," she says, "the cost to bring a drug-induced violence (involuntary intoxication) defense is extraordinary, especially because the state is backed by drug company resources to fight this defense."

"Not exactly a level playing field," she says, "And the drug companies, as we've seen, will spare nothing when it comes to protecting the profits they make on these drugs!"

An April 20, 2009 press release by Senator Menendez claimed the Mothers Act legislation would increase federal efforts to combat postpartum depression by:

"Creating a grant program to public or nonprofit private entities to deliver or enhance outpatient, inpatient and home-based health and support services, including case management and comprehensive treatment services for individuals with or at risk for postpartum conditions.

"Activities may also include providing education about postpartum conditions to new mothers and their families, including symptoms, methods of coping with the illness, and treatment resources, in order to promote earlier diagnosis and treatment."

As will be shown in the next parts of this series, the "public or nonprofit private entities" are already in place and the profiteers are waiting with their hands out for the tax dollars to start rolling into their bank accounts.

Source: Natural News

Israeli art students show up at interesting times

The way the corporate media would have it believed is that Israeli “art students” who aggressively sell cheap art door-to-door, usually at federal office buildings and the houses of government employees, are merely traveling abroad after their military service in Israel to “see the world.” In fact, these “art students” are classic intelligence operatives who have appeared before and after major terrorist events and covert operations conducted by the Mossad.

WMR has learned that an Israeli art student cased the offices of an investigator of the suspicious February 26, 2004, death of Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski. Trajkovski’s Beechcraft King Air 200 crashed near Stolac, Croatia, in southern Bosnia while en route to an investors’ conference in Mostar.

After the crash, U.S. Ambassador to Macedonia Lawrence Butler quickly met with Nikolai Gruevski, the minister of finance in the VMRO-DPMNE government. Gruevski was an ardent supporter of denationalization, a globalist, and supporter of NATO membership for Macedonia. Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski, although a Social Democrat, was also seen as close to the globalists.

Although Trajkovski, a Methodist minister, was also a member of the VMRO-DPMNE party he was viewed as less accommodating to international demands for privatization of state enterprises in Macedonia.

After Trajkovski and his party were killed in the plane crash, Macedonian and Bosnian authorities complained that NATO’s investigation of the plane crash was secretive and the two countries’ aviation authorities were kept in the dark. Many Macedonian officials were opposed to allowing the United States to investigate the crash and there was confusion about who had access to the two “black boxes” on Trajkovski’s plane. NATO troops stationed in Bosnia were the first to arrive at the crash scene.

In April 2004, Crvenkovski, the pro-American, won the Macedonian presidential election. VMRO-DPMNE officials charged that there was massive ballot box stuffing in th election and refused to accept the results. The pro-U.S. Gruevski is now the prime minister of Macedonia.

Although the crash of the King Air 200 was blamed on dense fog, on Febriary 27, 2004, the Xinhua news agency reported another scenario, one that suggests terrorism: “A suspected blast occurred on board shortly before the crashed Macedonian presidential plane went lost from radar, a local Bulgarian radio reported Thursday. The report quoted Sasho Yordanovski, editor-in-chief of the Macedonian magazine Forum, as saying that there have been two versions of the cause of the tragic incident, which claimed the lives of the Macedonian president and other eight people. One version attributed the accident to bad weather conditions in the area early Thursday and the other suggested a technical failure of the 25-year-old aircraft . . . Besides the president, the victims include his councilors Dimka Ilkova-Boshkovic, Risto Blazhevski and Anita Lozanovska, foreign affairs official Mile Krastevski, two bodyguards Atse Bozhinovski and Borsi Velinov, and two pilots Marko Markovski and Branko Ivanovski.”

WMR has learned that an independent firm hired to investigate the crash was not able to conduct its investigation because its private investigator received death threats if he went to the Balkans to conduct his probe. In addition, a young Israeli male “art student” showed up selling art sketches at the U.S. offices of the investigation firm. The Israeli arrogantly entered three office rooms in the facility without invitation. When asked by office workers what he was doing, he abruptly left. No other offices in the vicinity received a visit from the art student. It was later discovered that the office’s surveillance camera had been disabled by an intruder.

The reported involvement of Israeli security advisers in the coup d’état in Honduras also puts into another perspective the following report from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) on the espionage activities involving Israeli art students in the months prior to 9/11:

“Tegucigalpa Country Office

“On February 28, 2001, a couple attempted to sell at the residence of the Tegucigalpa Country Attaché. His neighbors advised the Country Attaché that a man and a woman in a red car were trying to open the CA’s gate. The neighbors asked the couple what they wanted and advised them that no one was home. The couple left the area. No identification information was revealed.”

Some FBI counter-intelligence agents are painfully aware that Israelis traveling on tourist visas in the United States and who mask their true intelligence functions as art students, movers, and mall kiosk vendors pose a significant hostile intelligence threat to U.S. national security. However, the FBI agents are also aware that any push to pursue Israeli agents will result in career-ending personnel actions taken as a result of pressure from the all-too-powerful Israel Lobby in the United States.

Source: Online Journal

Gideon Levy on the “inhumane and illegal siege”

By Gideon Levy

For the past several weeks it has been very hard to get coffee in Gaza. Gas is dirt cheap (NIS 2.40 per liter), and diesel is even cheaper (NIS 1.70); it’s all flowing through the tunnels from Egypt. But there is no coffee. Only after inquiring at a number of grocery stores might you find a bag of coffee, but the grocer will sell you only 250 grams for NIS 18 shekels - an exorbitant price in Gaza. Coffee, as you know, is not a “humanitarian” item; you can live without it. And indeed, Gaza has gone over to tea. Spoil them rotten - that’s Israel’s Gaza policy.

Every few weeks there’s a shortage of another item. Water is in sufficient supply for the time being, but electricity is intermittent. They are repairing the power station but there aren’t any spare parts. You try living in the Gaza heat and poverty without electricity. On Tuesday, for example, the electricity supply to Beit Lahia was cut off for hours. They have begun to clear away the rubble from Operation Cast Lead, but they haven’t started to rebuild, not even a room, except for mud houses, because there is no cement and gravel.

The $2 billion promised with much ceremony at the Sharm el-Sheikh summit about six months ago - of it $900 million from the new America under President Barack Obama - is lying in vaults at the international banks. A senior American diplomat explained a few days ago that his country is not transferring the money “because Israel is objecting,” and an American law prohibits trading with Hamas. He said this in utter seriousness, as if there were no American commitment to transfer the money, and as if the great America were dependent on Israel. However, the burden of Gaza’s suffering is also weighing on Obama’s shoulders: Without its rehabilitation, his great promise is hollow.

The Hamas government has been in existence for two years and the siege on Gaza continues at full strength and cruelty. Washington is busy with the fate of the Migron settlement, Israel is busy with the Dudu Topaz case, and the world has lost interest. When there are no terror attacks, there are no Arabs: When Gaza isn’t shooting, it is abandoned to its fate. That is the message Israel is sending its imprisoned neighbors: Launch Qassams and we’ll take an interest in you, don’t launch Qassams and we won’t take an interest. Only abducted soldier Gilad Shalit is still reminding us of Gaza’s existence: The activists for his release demonstrated again last week. But instead of demonstrating for the release of Palestinian prisoners, they demonstrated for tightening the siege and collective punishment. Only Gilad was born to be free.

The mass experiment on human beings has failed miserably; two years is enough time to determine this. Not one of the siege’s aims have been achieved and the damage is only piling up, perhaps for all eternity. Folly and malevolence, a fairly common combination, have melded into one of Israel’s most fateful mistakes. Even if we leave aside the moral aspect of the inhumane and illegal siege, it is no longer possible to ignore its stupidity as a policy. Shalit has not been released - no siege is going to free him. Hamas has not fallen - the group is only more firmly establishing its regime. And above all, a new reality is developing before our eyes that is worse for Israel than all its predecessors.

The siege has splintered the Palestinian people even more. This is not the first time Israel has split up the Palestinians: Since 1948 it has been systematically separating Palestinians from Palestinians, dividing and ruling. The diaspora abroad, the refugees in the Arab countries, the inhabitants of the territories, the Arabs of East Jerusalem and the Arabs of Israel - sometimes members of a single family - are developing into separate splinter peoples.

Now the next splintering has come along, the most stupid of all: the split between Gaza and the West Bank. While Israel is preventing Gaza from having any connection with the West Bank, it complains that there is no Palestinian partner. While we are strengthening the Hamas regime, thanks to the siege’s hardships and the wrongs of Operation Cast Lead, we are lamenting “the Hamastan in Gaza.” And what would happen if Israel were to lift the siege, enable the reconstruction and bring Gaza and the West Bank closer together? A huge disaster; a chance for moderation.

Leave aside, then, the moral aspect - it doesn’t have any takers in Israel. But what about good sense? What is Israel getting out of the siege, apart from the enjoyment of the other side’s suffering and another stage in its disintegration? Yasser Arafat was too strong, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is too weak and now there is a new ray of hope for all the spoilers: The Palestinians are split and there’s no one to talk to.

Source: Haaretz News Jerusalem

The genocide Britain hushed up: A new film tells the terrible story of Stalin's own Final Solution - and Churchill's shameful complicity

Keep in mind when reading this, that Katyn was blamed on the Nazis, and charges were brought against German officers at the Nuremberg Trials. They were found guilty and executed.

A blindfold is ripped from a soldier's eyes. Looking up to get his bearings, he notes that he is in a forest. Looking down, he sees a long, deep pit, its floor carpeted with dead bodies in khaki uniform. He has moments left to live. He feels for his crucifix, but a bullet interrupts the conversation with his Maker. His lifeless corpse topples into the hole in the ground.

After him another man is shunted forward, the blindfold removed. The same ritual. Another bullet whistles through another brain. Then another. And another. The gruesome procedure is repeated until the hole fills with the bodies of hundreds and hundreds of innocent men.

This is the harrowing scene of a devastating new film, Katyn. It takes its name from the village in western Russia where the bodies of more than 4,000 Polish prisoners of war were dug up in 1943.

Gruesome: A scene from the new film shows a Russian solider shooting a Polish officer in the back of the head before another pushing his body into a mass grave

But these bodies were by no means the only ones to be disinterred. Near the Soviet city of Kalinin, now known as Tver, another 6,000 bodies were unearthed. Near Kharkov in Ukraine there were 4,000.

In all, more than 22,000 Poles - roughly two-thirds of them officers and policemen, the rest political prisoners - suffered the same appalling fate: to be executed, without trial or even warning, and thrown like carcasses into mass graves.

Their murderers were the NKVD, the Soviet secret police. Indeed, the chief executioner of the NKVD personally pulled the fatal trigger no fewer than 6,000 times in just 28 days.

The first genocide of World War II has become known as the Katyn Massacre. It took place in April 1940, 21 months before the Nazi regime devised the Final Solution at the Wannsee conference in January 1942.

The whole world knew that a large group of Polish officers had mysteriously disappeared soon after the Soviet annexation of eastern Poland on September 17, 1939.

The invasion came after the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact which allowed Germany and the Soviet Union to carve up Poland between them. But the fate of the officers remained unknown until the bodies were discovered after the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

Even as the Nazis were liquidating Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, Goebbels's propaganda machine trumpeted the atrocity as evidence of Bolshevik brutality. Stalin counterinsisted that the mass murders had been committed by the Nazis.

Churchill knew the brutal truth, but it made sense to keep quiet. Stalin was our ally in the epic fight against Nazism, and his nose was not to be put out of joint. British silence remains one of the worst stains on our country's war record.

Even by the grisly standards of the 20th century, the Katyn Massacre was a crime of appalling enormity: a concerted attempt to wipe out an entire stratum of a great European nation. Behind the slaughter was a grisly piece of forward planning.

Stalin's long-term intention was for Poland to become a friendly neighbour under the Soviet sphere of influence. The fewer bourgeois enemies of Communism to oppose him, the better. So he started liquidating those Polish officers who, in long, punitive interrogations, could not be coaxed into taking a pro-Soviet stance.

The butchery of the cream of Polish manhood was characterised by a breathtaking lack of fuss. In the Katyn forest, the soldiers were frogmarched to deep, open pits. As his blindfold was removed, each officer would have seen the corpses mounting at his feet, and then heard the trigger.

In other locations - PoWs from camps at Starobilsk, near Kharkov, and Ostashkov, near Kalinin, the extermination took place indoors.

One by one, the officers were dragged to a prison cell, their hands tied behind them with wire, and then shot from behind. To drown out the noise, the cell door was lined with felt, and the drone of loud machines masked the incessant sound of gunshots-The bodies were unceremoniously lugged out through another door to a line of waiting trucks.

On that first night of killing, the NKVD butchers managed to dispatch 390 men. In subsequent days they confined the nightly tally to 250.

Devastating: Andrzej Wajda's movie dramatises the events of 1939 in Russia

The grim cargo was then driven to the site of the mass grave in the forest, and its contents dumped. It was a function of Soviet efficiency that, to make use of every cubic inch of space, the corpses were neatly stacked. (When the pits were exhumed, some were found to contain the bones of murdered Poles up to 12 deep. One pit had 1,200 corpses). Only one detail was unvarying: there were 22,000 holes in 22,000 Polish skulls.

Yet for some reason, the name of Katyn has never entered the global consciousness as other atrocities have.

Former Nazi concentration camp guard John Demjanjuk has just been extradited from the U.S. to Germany to stand trial as accessory to 29,000 deaths in the Holocaust. Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic awaits trial in The Hague for his part in the mass murder of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica. But no one has ever stood in the dock for their part in the Katyn massacre.

The new film is the work of the great Polish director Andrzej Wajda, whose father, Jakub, was one of the murdered officers. As well as telling the story of their deaths, Katyn dramatises the aftermath of the war when, in communist Poland, it was forbidden to mention the dead officers.

For those who did, prison awaited. As a result, ignorance of the crime spread throughout Poland over 40 years. For decades, it fell to emigre Poles to keep the name of Katyn alive.

Among them are British Poles for whom Katyn remains a wound which refuses to heal. It's not just that their fathers were murdered - the officers' families also felt the blunt instrument of Soviet oppression. As part of Stalin's larger plan to weaken Polish opposition to Communism, 1.6 million Poles were deported to far-flung corners of the Soviet Union.

One of those British Poles is Andrzej Polniaszek. Now 81, he was 12 in 1939 when his father Franciszek, a doctor of law and an officer, was captured when the Soviets moved into Poland.

Soviet documentation has revealed that his father was taken to the camp in Starobelsk, where, over a long, bitterly cold winter, he would have been subjected to intense political agitation.

By March 5, when Stalin signed his execution order, he had been condemned to death as one of 22,000 'hardened and uncompromising enemies of Soviet authority'.

By April 13, Andrzej's father may well have been already dead. It was on that date that the young Andrzej, with his mother and sister, heard a knock on their apartment door.

'At three in the morning the soldiers came. We had an hour to pack only the things we could carry. They even warned: "Take warm clothes. You'll be there for some time." '

Meanwhile, in the Polish countryside, Waclaw and Janusz Gasiorowski, aged ten and seven, were rounded up with their mother and sister.

Their father Tadeusz, a lieutenant in the Pomeranian infantry, had been taken prisoner the previous September, and they feared the worst.

'There had been regular letters from our father,' recalls Janusz. 'And then it abruptly stopped. Not only our correspondence, but that of everyone who had someone in those camps.'

Andrzej Polniaszek ended up in Kazakhstan - 'a godforsaken part of the country with a Siberian climate'. When Waclaw and Janusz got off an overcrowded train carriage after 27 days, they were in Uzbekistan, 100 miles from the Chinese border.

Genocide: Polish officers await their fate in the new Katyn film which is out now

They were sent to live in stables spattered with manure, which was the only source of fuel. Waclaw still has the cheerful advice of a Soviet soldier ringing in his ears: 'Don't worry. You will get used to it. And if you don't get used to it, you will die.'

The boys were lucky. Their aunt was a dental surgeon whose skills were valuable. 'If she pulled out the tooth of a Russian, she got half a kilo of butter, a chicken or a bag of potatoes and this kept us going.'

Others were not so lucky. Of the 1.6 million Poles deported into far-flung outposts of the Soviet Union's gulag system, approximately a million died of cold, starvation and disease.

There was a seismic mood swing when news broke of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. The Soviets suddenly needed their captive Poles, so they were freed to join a Polish army mustering under General Anders, who was released from the Lubyanka prison in Moscow, where he had been tortured, to fight with the Red Army.

For young Polish deportees, the only problem was how to join up. Railway carriages were clogged with wounded Soviet soldiers, permission to travel was hard to secure and distances were unimaginably vast.

Anders made things harder by taking the first wave of volunteers to Persia. Among them were the Gasiorowski boys, who travelled through Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. On the way, Andrzej was separated from his mother and acknowledged that it had known all along who had been the true perpetrators of the Katyn Massacre.

Most, though not all of the graves in Ukraine, have since been exhumed. In 2000, Andrzej went to Kharkov to see the opening of the mass grave where his father was believed to have been buried. The bodies there had been buried in clay and failed to decompose.

To hide the atrocity, the NKVD returned to the grave with massive drilling devices and punched holes in the ground to aerate the grave and encourage decomposition. In the process, they destroyed the bodies.

'You can imagine how I felt when it was opened,' says Andrzej softly. 'The only way they could tell how many dead there were was by counting the skulls which had remained intact. Out of the 4,500 buried in Kharkov, we were only able to find 150 bodies. The rest was a mess.'

Andrzej has spent more than 60 years in his adoptive country. He married an Englishwoman and had three children who speak only pidgin Polish. He thinks he survived the hell of two Siberian winters because 'someone above decided that I could do something useful'.

Twenty years ago he founded the Association of Katyn Families Abroad, which has about 2,000 members. Now that the mood is changing towards the dark Soviet style of old in Putin's Russia, it becomes ever more certain that the murder of thousands of men such as Franciszek Polniaszek. Tadeusz Gasiorowski and, indeed, Jakub Wajda will go unpunished. So the task that remains is clear.

'One of the last things we have to do,' says Andrzej, 'is to keep the memory of what happened to our fathers for future generations. With my son and daughter I went back to Kharkov where my father was killed.

'In the cemetery there is a big bell half-submerged underground, so when it rings the sound goes into the ground where they are still buried. My son and I rang it and listened. And both of us cried.'

And as he recalls the knell clanging dolefully among Polish bones, Andrzej Polniaszek cries again.

KATYN is on release in selected cinemas.

Source: Mail Online

"Ask God What Your Judgment Is": Another Speech Code Topples in Court

The Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) didn't have to "ask God" to discover that it came out on the wrong side of a hearing in which U.S. District Judge George H. King temporarily enjoined the district from enforcing a harassment policy that banned "offensive" speech on campus—a policy so problematic that the judge has ordered it to be taken down from the district's websites while the legal process continues. LACCD's speech code came in for legal scrutiny after one of its students, Jonathan Lopez, was told to "ask God what your grade is" by Professor John Matteson after Lopez gave a speech—in a speech class—about his Christian faith. (For good measure, Matteson also allegedly called Lopez a "fascist bastard.")

With the help of Alliance Defense Fund Senior Counsel David French (formerly FIRE's president), Lopez sued the LACCD, challenging the district's unconstitutional speech code. As French reported:

[T]he Los Angeles Community College District has a rather oppressive speech code, which permits the school to punish "offensive" speech or speech that has an undefined "negative impact" on a student's academic performance (one section of the school's policies even permits punishment for mere "generalized sexist statements").

Well, it had such a code at one time, anyway. While the LACCD vigorously defended its speech code up through the oral argument on June 10, 2009, after the hearing it decided that it had in fact revoked the unconstitutional speech code in 2007. If this sudden realization seems suspect to you, you are not alone, as the judge pointed out in a deadpan footnote:

We are chagrined that defense counsel and Defendants' representative who were present at the oral argument on June 10, 2009 were apparently ignorant of the status of a policy they purported to defend. This lack of preparedness is viewed with great disfavor.

The judge's order itself is well worth a read for those interested. It cites the FIRE-related case of DeJohn vs. Temple Univ. several times (DeJohn, by the way, is still waiting for Temple University to let him finish his degree) in support of the conclusion that a trial is likely to find that LACCD's policy unlawfully restricts "constitutionally protected speech that is merely offensive to some listeners, such as discussions of religion, homosexual relations and marriage, sexual morality and freedom, polygamy, or even gender politics and policies." The judge goes on to point out that "[w]hile it may be desirable to promote harmony and civility, these values cannot be enforced at the expense of protected speech under the First Amendment."

The LACCD has not decided whether it will accept or appeal the ruling. Any appeal, though, would face a very steep uphill battle, considering this ruling and the weight of precedent. Schools including Shippensburg University, Texas Tech, Citrus College, SUNY Brockport, and San Francisco State have all dispensed with their speech codes after legal action. Let's hope the LACCD joins these institutions and permanently consigns its speech code to the scrap heap.

Source: FIRE

10 lessons on empire

By Stephen M Walt

As I mentioned awhile back, I devoted a good chunk of my vacation out west reading Piers Brendon's The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997. As you might imagine, I spent a lot of time thinking about possible parallels and lessons for America's current global position, just as English imperialists spent a lot of time pondering the Roman experience (ably documented by Edward Gibbon).

In a tapestry this rich and varied, it is easy to read into it just about any "lesson" one wants to draw. With that caveat in mind, here are the top ten lessons on empire that I drew from Brendon's book. Even if you don't agree with them, you should still read the book.

1. There is no such thing as a "benevolent" Empire.

In his classic history of ancient Rome, Gibbon had noted that "There is nothing more adverse to nature and reason than to hold in obedience remote countries and foreign nations, in opposition to their inclination and interest." Britons thought of the empire as a positive force for themselves and their subjects, even though they had to slaughter thousands of their imperial subjects in order to maintain their control. Americans should be under no illusions either: if you maintain garrisons all over the world and repeatedly interfere in the internal politics of other countries, you are inevitably going to end up breaking a lot of heads.

2. All Empires depend on self-justifying ideology and rhetoric that is often at odds with reality.

British imperialists repeatedly portrayed their role as the "white man's burden" and maintained that imperial control brought considerable benefits to their subjects. (This is an old story: France proclaimed its mission civilizatrice, and the Soviet empire claimed it was spreading the benefits of communism. Today, Americans say we are spreading freedom and liberty). Brendon's account describes the various benefits of imperial rule, but also emphasizes the profound social disruptions that imperial rule caused in India, Africa, and elsewhere. Moreover, because British control often depended on strategies of "divide-and-conquer," its rule often left its colonies deeply divided and ill-prepared for independence. But that's not what English citizens were told at the time.

3. Successful empires require ample "hard power."

Although the British did worry a lot about their reputation and prestige (what one might now term their "soft power") what really killed the Empire was its eroding economic position. Once Britain ceased to be the world’s major economic and industrial power, its days as an imperial power were numbered. It simply couldn't maintain the ships, the men, the aircraft, and the economic leverage needed to rule millions of foreigners, especially in a world where other rapacious great powers preyed. The moral for Americans? It is far more important to maintain a robust and productive economy here at home than it is to squander billions of dollars trying to determine the political fate of some remote country thousands of miles away. External conditions may impinge on U.S. power, but it is internal conditions that generate it.

4. As Empires decline, they become more opulent, and they obsess about their own glory.

Brendon's description of the British Empire Exposition at Wembley in 1924-1925 is both slightly comical and bittersweet; with cracks increasingly evident in the imperial façade, Britain put on a lavish show designed to bind the colonies together and highlight its continuing glory. Moral: when you hear U.S. politicians glorifying America's historical world role, get worried.

5. Great Empires are heterogeneous.

The British empire was not a uniform enterprise; the various bits and piece were acquired at different times and in different ways, and the relationship between London and the different components was far from uniform. One could say the same thing for America's less formal global "empire": its relationship with NATO is different than the alliance with Japan, or the client states in the Middle East, or the bases at Diego Garcia or Guantanamo. An empire is not one thing.

6. When building an empire, it's hard to know where to stop.

The expansion of the British empire after 1781 shows how difficult it is to engage in a rational assessment of strategic costs and benefits. Once committed to India, for example, it was easy for Britain to get drawn into additional commitments in Egypt, Yemen, Kenya, South Africa, Afghanistan, Burma, and Singapore. This was partly because ambitious empire builders like Cecil Rhodes were constantly promoting new imperial schemes, but also because each additional step could be justified by the need to protect the last. History has been described as "just one damn thing after another," and so is the process of imperial expansion.

7. It takes a lot of incompetent people to run an empire.

A recurring theme in Brendon’s account is the remarkable level of ignorance and incompetence with which the British empire was administered. Although there were obviously some very able individuals involved, Britain’s colonial endeavors seem to have attracted an equal or greater number of arrogant, corrupt, and racist buffoons. The bungling that accompanied the U.S. occupation of Iraq looks rather typical by comparison.

8. Great Powers defend perceived interests with any means at their disposal.

Great powers like to portray themselves as "civilized" societies with superior moral and ethical standards, but realists know better. Like other empires, Britain used its technological superiority without restraint, whether in the form of naval power, the Maxim gun, airplanes, high explosive, or poison gas., and the British showed scant regard for the effects of this superior technology on their "uncivilized" targets. Today, the United States uses Predators and Reapers and smart bombs. Plus ca change ...

9. Nationalism and other forms of local identity remain a potent obstacle to long-term imperial control.

Britain's supposedly "liberal" empire contained a deep contradiction: a society that emphasized individual liberties could not hold in bondage whole societies and deny the inhabitants independence. Once nationalism took root in the colonies (intermingled with other tribal and/or religious identities), resistance to imperial rule increased apace. As the United States is now discovering in Iraq and Central Asia, most peoples don’t like taking orders from well-armed foreigners, even when the foreigners keep telling them that their aims are benevolent.

10. "Imperial Prestige" is both an asset and a trap.

Britain's leaders fretted constantly about any erosion in their image of superiority, fearing that one or two setbacks might lead their subjects to rise up or encourage other great powers to poach on Britain’s holdings. As a result, Britons found themselves fighting to defend marginal possessions in order to preserve their position in the places they believed mattered. Ironically, the refusal to liquidate far-flung commitments early so as to focus resources on more vital interests may have hastened Britain's imperial decline.

There are undoubtedly other morals one can draw from Brendon's account, and other historical treatments would undoubtedly suggest a somewhat different set of lessons. I wouldn't want to overplay the parallels between Britain and the United States, if only because the U.S. empire is mostly ad hoc and informal rather than a network of formal colonies. But there is one final moral one could also draw from Brendan's fine work: there is life after Empire. Britain may be past the glory of its imperial heyday, but life expectancy, health care, educational levels, GDP/capita, etc. are all higher now than they were in Victoria's time. Defenders of the Empire foresaw doom-and-gloom if it ever dissolved -- and sent many men to their deaths to prevent that from happening -- but its eventual demise did not produce the disasters back home that many had feared. Great Britain remains in influential force in world affairs, if anything batting slightly above its weight, and is more secure now than at any time in its modern history. For those of us who think the United States should stay out of the empire business, that's a reassuring thought.

Source: Foreign Policy

Britain backs call for Israeli settlement freeze

LONDON (Reuters) - A freeze on Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank could help restart the peace process in the region, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Thursday.

"The deadlock has to be broken in some way," Brown told a committee of British lawmakers.

"I feel that if the Israelis were prepared to freeze settlement construction, there would be a response in the Arab world. And I think that is a way that you can see that movement forward could happen."

U.S. President Barack Obama wants a complete halt to settlement construction, a demand that has caused the most serious rift in U.S.-Israeli relations for a decade.

"All of us are putting pressure (on Israel), recognizing of course that Israel must have guarantees about its security, recognizing that a Palestinian state cannot be viable unless it is economically viable," Brown said.

Brown said he believed the United States could play a central role in trying to secure progress.

"I believe that the talks that President Obama has called in Washington are important and I think that has a potential for being the next step forward. I know Senator George Mitchell is doing a huge amount of work in the region and he has our support."

A spokesman for the British prime minister said Brown was referring to talks Obama has held with Israeli and Palestinian political leaders in recent months, rather than signaling a new U.S. initiative.

Obama hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in separate meetings 10 days apart in late May. Mitchell is the U.S. Middle East envoy.

Source: Reuters

Secret evidence imperils the core values of British justice

To have the basis of a case against you withheld tests the very idea of a fair trial – yet secrecy is seeping across the system

One of the most alarming trends since 9/11 has been an ever-expanding fixation with secrecy in British courts. And at the heart of this is the creeping use of secret evidence: you face a case against you, but the very basis for it is withheld. It is a practice that is entirely antithetical to our most ancient and venerable concepts of a fair trial.

The problem with this debate is that it can go only so far. The government more or less agrees that secrecy is undesirable in legal proceedings, but insists that keeping evidence closed represents the lesser of two evils, and is a necessary tool in the battle to protect national security.

It is difficult to challenge this position, for obvious reasons. Because the material is secret, its contents are immune from outside scrutiny. Neither the person subject to the proceedings nor, in some cases, the court itself – let alone the press – have any idea what this evidence contains. Meaningful engagement with the government's position is difficult or, in most cases, impossible.

There are exceptions, however, when we get glimpses into the quality of evidence that is being kept secret. One was offered by high court judge Sir Robert Owen last week. The court was considering the case of an Egyptian man, known by the initials HAY, whose finances were frozen when the government was notified of his "designation" by the ominously named "1267 Committee" – a UN committee established to identify suspected al-Qaida members.

The effect of the freezing order on HAY's life was described by the court as "draconian": he no longer has access to his bank account and cannot buy food or clothing. For a third party to provide him with money would be a criminal offence.

But, as Owen's judgment makes clear, not even the government has any confidence in the evidence – kept secret – on which the 1267 Committee's decision was based. The only insight his lawyers, and the public, have into the quality of this evidence is that, having conducted its own review, the Foreign Office agrees the sanctions against HAY should be lifted.

For the government to be on the side of the suspect in challenging the validity of secret evidence is, however, rare. In most cases, it is the government that has produced the secret evidence, and the only insight third parties – including the suspects – can hope to get is from their lawyers, who are allowed to see it.

Clive Stafford Smith, who has been privy to secret evidence in the cases of Guantánamo Bay detainees he has represented, says he can make the case against this material using information that is in the public domain.

"After seven years of interrogating people in Guantánamo Bay," Stafford Smith says, "they have whittled 779 prisoners down to 219 – supposedly the worst of the worst. But judges in the US have so far acquitted 84% of the prisoners we have brought before the court."

Stafford Smith's strongest claims against secret evidence, however, can't be discussed, because the evidence is secret. He believes that the motive for keeping much of this material outside the public domain is not to protect national security, but to protect the government's own agents from viable allegations of serious criminal wrongdoing – a claim backed up by reporters who also, not surprisingly, cannot reveal what they have seen.

Journalists are severely limited in their access to genuinely secret material, but special advocates are in the unique position of experiencing both sides of the cases that take place behind closed doors. These special advocates – often barristers with a background in human rights law – have been among the most vociferous opponents of the use of secret evidence.

Ian Macdonald QC, who famously withdrew from his role as a special advocate in 2004, said he had initially signed up to the scheme believing it would allow those whose cases involved necessarily secret evidence to have a fair hearing.

"My role was altered to provide a false legitimacy to indefinite detention without knowledge of the accusations being made and without any kind of criminal charge or trial," Macdonald said at the time. "It is a totally bizarre, ridiculous and odious system."

In 2006 Andrew Nicol QC, now a high court judge but then a special advocate, noticed that one piece of evidence was being used to support two contradictory arguments in separate cases at the Special Immigration Appeal Commission. And in 2007 another special advocate revealed that evidence deemed "highly sensitive" had in fact been published on the internet a year earlier.

It is hard to imagine such basic mistakes being made in open court, given the inevitability of scrutiny by the defence and the press. Not that judges haven't provided some gems of insight into the failings of the security services themselves. Last year a judge quashed a control order, finding that MI5 had assumed "guilt by association".

Claims that this sloppiness is the tip of the iceberg can only be speculation, but these cases do not inspire confidence. The errors made by the security services seem even less sophisticated when rolled out across the legal system, with a report by civil rights group Justice last month describing the use of secret evidence in parole board hearings to deal with what should have been straightforward issues of witness protection.

Secret evidence shows no sign of slowing its creep across the legal system, but cases of suspected terrorism remain at the centre of the problem. Ironically, some of the highest-profile cases are likely to be among the first listed at the UK's new supreme court when it opens for business in October.

The legal teams representing these men – who still have no idea why their lives have been taken under government control – are likely to be greeted by phrases from the Magna Carta when they arrive. Tokens of wisdom such as "To no one will we deny or delay right or justice" are etched into the glass doors of the newly renovated building which, the government says, was specifically designed to inspire an atmosphere of justice, transparency and openness.

The judiciary has neither produced this secret evidence nor justified its use, so it would be unfair to dismiss the new building as meretricious. But the government may well have some explaining to do if it is to continue its push for transparency and secrecy simultaneously, without giving the concept of window-dressing a whole new meaning.

Source: The Guardian

The Criminal Gossip Bureau can ruin your job prospects

It's been a big week for databases, although nobody has managed to make them sexy. On Monday, the pressure group Liberty underlined the failings of the Criminal Records Bureau – more precisely its enhanced check – for the Today programme. It was quite a story: a woman had been turned down for voluntary work, having been "spoken to" (as opposed to "reprimanded" or "warned") by police for leaving her children in the park while she went to the shops. It's one of those stories you can imagine Basil Fawlty popping an eyeball over. And then you think, hang on – I'm popping an eyeball. This is outrageous. She only went to the shops.

This evening Damian Green, the shadow immigration minister, gave a speech to the Centre for Policy Studies, asking if Britain is a free country. He identifies 28 agencies that hold personal data about individuals. In the light of his very credible starting position – that politicians have a duty to create an environment in which "the citizen has some personal space in which the state has no power, interest, or influence" – many of these agencies and their purview do seem … well, bogus is a strong word. Let's start with "a bit much".

The Tories have seized this ground – they are tighter with Liberty than is Labour; and there is no telling whose manifesto will promise the most in terms of individual privacy.

It's not a bad time, therefore, to look at database management as practised by the Criminal Records Bureau, which is as uncontroversial and hi-tech as any similar initiative of the past three terms of government. It is also a massive undertaking – the 1.5m people checked in 2002 had gone up to 4m in 2008-09.

Now, this park lady (who wishes to remain anonymous) was the victim of the enhanced criminal records check – the standard check, everybody agrees, is almost totally unproblematic. It passes on only current and spent convictions, cautions, reprimands, and warnings – which proceed from an admission of guilt (to be cautioned you have to accept a caution). A standard CRB check can also access List 99, a register of people who have been barred from working with children – but basically this check is not open to tittle-tattle. Furthermore, and I believe more important, the CRB is on target to process 95% of its standard-check applicants within 10 days.

The enhanced check, conversely, has come to the attention of Liberty – and not just on behalf of the park lady – because it can include, above and beyond that raft of convictions and warnings, "relevant and proportional information held on that individual", as decided by the chief officer of police. This really could be anything. People are warned when they put in for an enhanced check that it could even flag up other people living at their address.

As another for-instance (if you are of a mind that one shouldn't go to the shops while one's children are in the park), say you have a very loud argument with your partner, and a neighbour calls the police: this information will be logged even if you personally don't make a complaint, and rightly so, because the police are thereby alerted to respond maybe fractionally faster if you were to make a 999 call.

But say this isn't domestic violence, and it's just a very loud argument – it will still end up on your CRB check. This has now entered the realm of gossip: it will be passed on to a prospective employer with no warning to you. When you do find out, you have no right to get it struck from your record; and if your application was for a job in a domestic violence refuge, for instance, you might well find yourself considered unsuitable to work there.

Worse to my mind, however, is the sheer bureaucracy of the enhanced check – the bureau has targets of 90% of applications being processed within 28 days. That sounds good, but it is missed in 10% of cases. And in the Metropolitan police area applicants are quoted six to eight weeks. Moreover you have to re-apply every time you change jobs; or every three years, and after maternity leave, if you stay in the same job. In summer the system is slower because teachers are all being vetted.

This is no victimless matter – people in these "caring professions" are left without income, or even the means to bring in a temporary income, for weeks at a time. Bear in mind that working with children or vulnerable people is rarely well paid in the first place, and you have a system with unjust financial penalties built into the very bureaucracy.

The gossip element will, I believe, be ironed out in time, especially as a new vetting and barring process will be introduced in October that should in the long run obviate the enhanced check. But the way people are treated by government agencies – this high-handed, "well, we do most of you in a month, what are you complaining about?" attitude – is astonishing to people who work outside these altruistic sectors. The Conservatives might have a much bigger vote-winner with their anti-surveillance crusade than it initially appears.

Source: The Guardian

The war on street photography

Photographer Alex Turner has been arrested by Kent police for being "too tall" in an action which must cast further doubt on the collective sanity of Kent Police (see Kingsnorth) and which also suggests that some police forces are now really behaving as if we lived in police state, a phrase that I have been reluctant to use.

In his blog, Turner gives a full account of being stopped by two men in Chatham High Street, after he took a picture of a fish bar called Mick's Plaice, which stands between Specsavers and a shop called Mr Flower and advertises jacket potatoes and an all day breakfast in a colour scheme of bold blue and white. The men said they worked for Medway Council.

"I saw a badge attached to one of the men's waistband and saw the logo of Kent Police. The men asked me why I was taking pictures in the High Street.

I told them photography was a hobby and explained what and who I had taken pictures of and why".

Turner continues, "I asked them under what authority they were making their request. They did not provide a clear answer to this question in that they failed to state the legal authority under which they were making their enquiries."

Because they neither stated their authority nor properly identified themselves, Turner refused to answer their questions. The men summoned uniformed police. Turner took photographs of two officers as they approached him reproduced with blurred faces on his blog – and arrest followed. He was handcuffed held in police van and then questioned by two plain clothes officers. "They spoke about the threat of terrorism. They were keen to seek my agreement with regards to the views they expressed, both about the threat of terrorism and the suspicious nature of people with cameras and especially those who chose not to provide identifying details about themselves when requested to do so."

He was searched while still handcuffed. The officer told him to take of his trainers and patted down the soles of his feet. At some point the officers made a veiled threat about Turner's ability to continue as photographer.

"Whilst sharing their views about the threat of terrorism officer xxxxx [name redacted] stated she had felt threatened by me when I took her picture. I cannot recall exactly what she said but I do recall her referring to my size and implying she found it intimidating at the time (I am 5ft 11in and weigh about 12 stone)."

Turner concludes with this, "I believe the way I was treated was unjustified and wholly disproportionate. I assert that officer xxxxx misused her powers of arrest and demonstrated a poor understanding of the law in relation to arrest, the use of force, the use of detention, photography in public places, obstruction and the ... Terrorism Act 2000. Furthermore I assert that officer xxxxx is unsuitable to act as a police officer or at the very least requires further training if she is intimidated by a male of an unremarkable stature taking a single picture with a camera pointed in her direction."

Clearly something has to be done about the police attitude to photography and filming. This week it was reported that Essex Police photographed residents who attended a peaceful meeting about the future of Southend Airport. The Lib Dem MP Norman Baker who attended the meeting likened the behaviour of the police to "Stasi like spying" and attacked the "gross intrusion into people's civil liberties". The images have subsequently been destroyed and the officer in charge sent a half penitent letter to the local newspaper. The police response underlines how important it is for the public to challenge the use of covert and overt surveillance of law abiding political activity.

In another development, the magazine Amateur Photographer, has sought to clarify whether police have the right to delete photographic images. The Metropolitan Police's guidance suggests that they have the power "to seize and retain any article found during a search that they reasonably suspect is intended to be used in connection with terrorism."

But Rupert Grey, a lawyer working for Swan Turton, one of the best new law firms, told the magazine, "This is correct as far as the powers conferred by section 44 are concerned. But the advice fails to point out that although film and memory cards may be seized as part of a search, officers do not have a legal power to delete images or to destroy film."

He added: "The Association of Chief Police Officers' practice advice on stop and search in relation to terrorism makes this clear; so do guidelines for MPS staff on dealing with media reporters, press photographers and television crews: "Once images are recorded, [the police] have no power to delete or confiscate them without a court order."

Despite being too tall, Alex Turner did not have his pictures deleted.

However, the offence to his rights as a law abiding citizen are shocking and he is due an apology. What is needed now is clear statement from the home secretary on the rights of photographers and the limits of police surveillance.

Source: The Guardian

Cheney ‘ordered CIA to hide plan’

Former US Vice-President Dick Cheney gave direct orders to the CIA to conceal an intelligence programme from Congress, US media reports say.

The existence of the programme, set up after 9/11, was hidden for eight years and even now its nature is not known.

CIA director Leon Panetta is said to have abandoned the project when he learnt of it last month.

He has now told a House committee that Mr Cheney was behind the secrecy, the unnamed US sources say.

There has been no comment from Mr Cheney.

War of words

The claims come amid an increasingly bitter row between the CIA and Congress over whether key information was withheld about other aspects of the agency’s operations.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has claimed that the CIA misled her about interrogation methods including waterboarding, while other senior Democrats have quoted Mr Panetta as admitting that his agency regularly misled Congress before he took office.

Details of the newly-revealed secret programme have still not been divulged, but sources say it did not relate to the CIA’s rendition programme, interrogation methods or a controversial domestic surveillance project.

Officials quoted by the New York Times say the programme was launched by anti-terror operatives at the CIA soon after the 2001 attacks, and involved planning and training but never became fully operational.

Another unnamed official told AP it was an embryonic intelligence-gathering effort, aimed at yielding intelligence that would be used to conduct covert operations abroad.

Sources have told a number of US media outlets Mr Cheney personally instructed the CIA to withhold information about the programme from Congress.

Mr Panetta - who took over directorship of the CIA under President Obama’s administration - is said to have learnt about the programme only on 23 June.

The next day he called an emergency meeting with congressional intelligence committees to tell them about its existence and to say that it was being cancelled, the reports say.

Veto threat

The allegations come as Democrats in Congress are trying to push through new rules that would increase the number of members of Congress who are told about covert operations.

The White House is threatening to veto the bill, fearing that operational secrecy could be compromised.

The CIA has not commented on the reports of Mr Cheney’s role.

“It’s not agency practice to discuss what may or may not have been said in a classified briefing,” said spokesman Paul Gimigliano.

“When a CIA unit brought this matter to Director Panetta’s attention, it was with the recommendation that it be shared appropriately with Congress. That was also his view, and he took swift, decisive action to put it into effect.”

A CIA spokesman insisted earlier this week that “it is not the policy or practice of the CIA to mislead Congress.”

SOurce: RINF News

DNA of thousands of innocent people held by police

MORE than ten people have their DNA recorded and stored by Redbridge Police every day, the Guardian can reveal.

A total of 3,654 samples of genetic material were taken in the borough last year - with only 368 of these subsequently being destroyed, a Freedom of Information request as found.

And 2,201 samples have been taken on under-18s since the beginning of 2006 – the vast majority of whom innocent of any crime - prompting fierce complaints from parents.

Elizabeth Canavan, 39, of Merlin Road, Aldersbrook, said she would not want any of her children’s DNA on record.

The mum-of-four said: “I think it’s a bit intrusive and there’s sort of the assumption of guilt there.

“It’s a bit Big Brother when the Government knows even your children’s intricate body chemistry.”

The European Court of Human Rights ruled last December that all DNA samples of innocent people held by police must be destroyed as holding such information “could not be regarded as necessary in a democratic society”.

However, the British Government has since been fighting this ruling.

Paul Donovan, of Dangan Road, Wanstead, told the Guardian that readers were right to be concerned.

The 46-year-old said: “It seems rather worrying as it seems like they are trying to build up some sort of database of youth in the area.

“If a person is convicted of a crime then the police should be able to keep their DNA on record for a specific time but if the charges are dropped or they are found innocent in a court of law then these records must be destroyed.

“Again, it’s the creeping hand of the Big Brother state. We all want to be safer but it’s the old equation of give us your liberty and we’ll give you security and it depends how much liberty we are willing to part with.

“The basic assumption in this country is that you are innocent until proven guilty and this is heading towards the other way around. We shouldn’t be lying back and taking it.”

Borough Commander Chief Supt Peter Terry said: “Since its introduction DNA has provided the police with approximately 400,000 leads to the possible identity of offenders.

“In 2007 – 2008 over 17,000 crimes were detected in which a DNA match was available.

“People cannot be arrested purely to obtain DNA and although samples obtained following arrest can help detect crimes, we do not actively seek to obtain DNA for this purpose.

“These figures relate to all DNA that has been taken on the borough, not just from Redbridge residents or indeed for Redbridge crimes.”

Source: RINF News

Israeli soldiers claim that they were ordered to fire, regardless of the risk to civilians.

By Alex Thomson Israeli soldiers involved in the attacks on Gaza at the start of this year claim that they were ordered to fire, regardless of the risk to civilians. Alex Thomson reports. Israel banned journalists from its invasion of Gaza in December and January, making it hard to verify allegations of indiscriminate firing, the use of phosphorous bombs, and forcing Palestininas to be human shields. Now an Israeli human rights group has produced a disturbing account of what it says happened in Gaza, as told by soldiers.

Bavaria relaxes smoking regulations

"Smokers in Bavaria rejoiced on Wednesday as the state’s parliament loosened the regulations on a smoking ban instituted 18 months ago." The new regulations are said to reflect reality and Bavaria’s “live and let live” attitude. Story HERE.

Funnily enough, we recently commissioned an article by musician and writer Joe Jackson. A supporter of Forest and the campaign to amend the smoking ban, Joe now lives in Berlin. He is currently on tour but took time out to write an 800-word article comparing British pubs and German bars. Here's a taste:

I’ve always loved pubs, but just how awful they are becoming wasn’t completely clear to me until I relocated a couple of years ago to Berlin. While too many English pubs these days are soulless, generic commercial enterprises, staffed by people who clearly don’t give a damn, Berlin bars are often wonderfully idiosyncratic, and operated and patronised by people who clearly love them.

In my neighbourhood there are, for instance, a bar run by a Frank Zappa lookalike who brews his own beer, a surreal dive run by an Albanian refugee who has Gypsy musicians playing on the street outside, a bar where patrons sit outside in an ex-Soviet Army jeep, and the world’s campiest gay bar, whose walls and ceilings are lined with pink fur.

Many bars are just holes in the wall, furnished with flea market junk, but made welcoming with a few candles, a few flowers, some local artwork, good music or good beer. Most allow smoking, though some don’t and others have separate rooms. They also keep their prices reasonable, keep their vodka in the freezer, serve mojitos in the summer and hot chocolate laced with rum in the winter, and open and close whenever they like. And why not? We’re adults, aren’t we?!

Source: Taking Liberties