TWIDDLE DUM & TWIDDLE DEE AGREE THAT AUSTRALIAN TERRORISM MUST CONTINUE

Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott agree on need to stay course in Afghanistan

• Ben Packham, Antonia Magee From: Herald Sun & Tetractys Merkaba From the Mikiverse June 22, 2010 12:00AM

KEVIN Rudd and Tony Abbott were at one as they argued the need to stay the course in Afghanistan. They are also "at one" on issues such as as; The Bali, 9/11 & 7/7 false flag op's, the unconstitutional private minting of our currency, the rape of the poor & working classes by business & government & the war on the Constitution, the law book of the Australian people.

But the debate on whether Australian troops should stay in the war-torn country -because of Western Countries- is gathering momentum.

Greens leader Bob Brown renewed his call for the withdrawal of Australian soldiers after the deaths of Sapper Jacob Moerland and Sapper Darren Smith two weeks ago.

But Mr Rudd and Mr Abbott yesterday expressed their firm commitment to the conflict, -it is actually an invasion- which has claimed 16 Diggers/terrorists so far.

The Prime Minister said the tragedy -inevitable result- was a sad day for the the nation, but the fight against the Taliban was vital to national security. Whose national security? Ours? Is Rudd & Abbott REALLY claiming that the Taliban are going to attempt, much less succeed in an attempt to INVADE AUSTRALIA????? C'mon now.

"We know our mission/our invasion in Afghanistan is hard/doomed to fail but this mission/invasion is critical for our common security," -Exactly how?- Mr Rudd told Parliament.

"We work alongside our allies from the United States and from other NATO countries, to avoid Afghanistan once again becoming a breeding ground for terrorists -the ONLY terrorists that have ever been in Afghanistan were those trained and supported by US secret service branches- who can then strike at innocent -rhetoric- Australians both at home -Can you name the last time The Taliban, Al- CIAda, Bin Laden engaged in a terrorist "at home" in Australia?? Me neither. BUT...... The Australian Government has engaged in a bi-partisan terrorist assault on the health, wealth, land & welfare of the Originie inhabitants of this land. Maybe this terrorist activity was funded by the Taliban and this is why we to invade this foreign country. Or maybe the elitist LIBOR and LABREL parties are just lying.... AGAIN!!and abroad." Try to name an act of terroism that HASN'T been carried out by the US and/or one of her allies.

Australia has 2351 troops serving/invading & particiating in terrorist activity in Afghanistan.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said the Diggers/the terrorists were crucial -2351 terrorists will make or break this invasion according to John Howard (who has not satisfactorilly answered charges that he had foreknowledge on the 9/11 false flag op)'s cronie Tony Abbot, who is apparently Kevin Rudd's crony on this terrorist activity as well to the outcome in Afghanistan.

"I commend the work/terrorist activity that the Un-Australian "Defence" Force is doing in Afghanistan," Mr Abbott said.

"It is vital to ensure that that country does not again become a safe haven for terrorists. -Such as when the CIA were funding and training terrorists- It's a task vital for the security of all Australians. Really? How?"

The mother of Private Benjamin Renaudo, who was killed in Afghanistan last year, said the troops needed to stay and finish the job. -This is an IMPARTIAL opinion that is employed to try to win you over to a preconditioned Herald Sun opinion. If you were not sure of the HS's position on this issue, you now should be.

"They've got to complete the job and the job is to rebuild for those people," Jennifer Ward said. It is such a shame to hear hypnotised people repeating the government propaganda.

"There's gonna be people trying to stop us but we are doing the right thing by rebuilding their country." WE ALSO USED THIS DITTY IN VIETNAM, IRAQ AND WHEN WE STOLE ORIGINIE CHILDREN FROM THEIR PARENTS AND HOMES.

Governor-General Quentin Bryce -the REAL leader of Australia. Is she the Queen of Australia when Elizabeth is fouling the air of some other poor country? praised the courage of three Australian soldiers who died yesterday.

Ms Bryce said it was "a heartbreaking day for the nation. As Australia's Commander-in-Chief, she had been struck by the professionalism and comradeship of the troops she had visited in Afghanistan.

"They knew the risks, and met them with real courage," Ms Bryce said of the latest victims.

"Their families should be assured that those who died and are suffering have done so upholding the values that Australians hold dear."

The Australian Defence Association said Australia should be increasing its military commitment in Afghanistan, not reducing it. Another impartial opinion that suits the overall opinion being expressed here. I have never heard of the Australian "Defence" Association, but, I certainly do not associate defence with invading innocent countries.

"We're already seeing the clamour of people saying this means an increase in the fighting and therefore it's too dangerous and we should quit, but this incident wasn't due to any direct enemy action," ADA executive director Neil James said.

Mr James, who served in the army for 31 years, said troop casualties were inevitable in any war. Bill Hicks that you need TWO sides to have a war. Here we have an invading force who are wrong, and a defensive force who are right. Yet, we have an inclination about the desires of this so-called "defence" association.

"The last thing we should do is give any indication that our will is faltering because all war/invasions in the ultimate analysis is a contest of will.

"We believe our strategic goal should be to win the war/invasion but the Government has a different point of view because they are looking at it very much in terms of casualties and electoral consequences, and that is no way to fight wars/invasions." So it would seem that not only is Mr. James a warmonger, but that the HS is quite happy to quote him.

But the ADA said debate about whether to stay or withdraw should be put off until the dust had settled on the latest tragedy.

"People get too emotional at a time like this and they also get too simplistic," Mr James said.

"We would be far better off having this discussion next week or the week after." Mr. James thinks we are emotional and simplistic people who will forget our opinions in a week or two. Maybe he thinks we will lose ourselves in tv shows and the like.

The only problem here is that this invasion will be as wrong in one week as it will be in two weeks. It will be as wrong today as it was in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 or any time in 2010 or beyond.

This terrorist invasio is into it's tenth year, meaning it has gone on for as long as WW1 AND 2.

This terrorist invasion is wrong. We are wrong. We are war criminals. We are as wrong as Israel was last week, as wrong as the US in Vietnam, as wrong as Nazi Germany was when it murdered 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, as wrong as the Australian government was when it subjegated and murdered and broke up the families of our Originie Ausralian brothers and sisters.

Enough is enough. Bring the terrorists home.

David Rockefeller speaks about population control.

BILDERBERG 2010: WHY THE PROTESTERS ARE YOUR VERY BEST FRIENDS

David Rockefeller enters the secretive Bilderberg meeting
The people who are being detained, searched and questioned are not playing some game. They are deadly serious, and they are worried to death

Guerrilla journalists in Sitges, where the Bilderberg conference is being held. Photograph: Alex Amengual Photograph: Alex Amengual/guardian.co.uk

Ivan was alone on the roundabout. He had been left in charge of the banners while everyone else ate breakfast.

He slipped an empty bottle of red wine into a binliner and stretched. At his feet was a chalk-drawn pyramid showing the structure of society, the word "pueblo" at the bottom, and the tip pointing up the hill towards Bilderberg. It's a short pyramid today, maybe half a heavily-armed mile from Rockefeller down to Ivan.

Ivan's bed last night – is it had been the night before – was the scrub by the roadside. "It's not so cold in my bag," he said. "A lot of times I travel in the mountains – in the mountains, you can sleep anywhere."

A lone Catalonian in green trousers, he clutched a leaflet and stood in the Sitges sun as, up the hill, billionaires and finance ministers ate kiwifruit patisseries.

The shame, the awful poignancy of Bilderberg, is that, for much of the time, there are more delegates up the hill than there are protesters at the foot of it.

On that point, there's something I'd like you to do. I'd like you to extend a grateful thought, a prayer of thanks, an idle nod of acknowledgment – a something, an anything – towards Ivan and all the others who have come to Sitges to bear witness to Bilderberg 2010.

These people are on your side, they are fighting your corner. And if you don't think it's a corner that needs fighting, or if it's a corner you think is being fought by the people up the hill ... well, good luck to you.

I want you to know, though, that the people who are crawling around on pine needles with long lenses, trying to identify delegates (and doing pretty well, by the way), the people who are being detained, searched, questioned, then heading out again into the hills, the people who are sitting late into the night at the campsite bar, talking about distracted populations and central banks, are not lunatics.

They are your very best friends. They're not feeble-minded or playing some kind of game. They are deadly serious, and they are worried to death.

These people look at the state of the world and they pack a rucksack and sleep at the side of a roundabout.

The head of the IMF (and Bilderberger), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, looks at the world and declares: "Crisis is an opportunity." He sees the precarious global economy and floats the idea for "a new global currency issued by a global central bank".

Now, if you think that's a good idea – if you think yet more centralisation of debt (and interest payments), and more unelected financial control is a good thing – then good luck (what are you? The chairman of Barclays?)

We already have a world, says Daniel Estulin, the arch Bilderbotherer, "where unelected bodies like the IMF can tell sovereign nations like Greece what to do".

Estulin is here in Sitges, wearing the fanciest trousers I've seen in a long time. He says the Bilderberg endgame is "one world company ltd". And the board of directors is sitting half a mile away.

And they're being watched. I can't say from where – I don't know where the guerilla camerafolk are out crawling today. And I can't ring them, because they've turned their mobiles off and taken out the sim cards so they can't be triangulated by the signal.

They're out getting sunstroke on your behalf, on my behalf. I'll publish some of their photos, and some of their spottings, tomorrow.

Later today, a bunch of Spanish activists are providing paella for everyone in a mountain restaurant. Some of us won't make it. Some of us will be under arrest, or lying in a ditch holding our breath until the footsteps pass.

One last time: if you think what they're doing is ridiculous, you're wrong. It's the fact they're having to do it at all that's absurd.

This morning, a policeman screeched up beside me as I went for a stroll and told me to take the recording device out of my pocket. I did. It was a bit of driftwood from the beach. Yesterday, I had my car searched (and was detained for 50 minutes while the Mossos d'Esquadra checked and rechecked my passport).

They asked me what was in the boot. I dug them out a T-shirt. The patrolman radioed the station and read out the slogan on the shirt in heavily accented English: "I went to Bilderberg 2010 and all I got was this lousy new world order." His partner asked me why I was laughing. I couldn't really explain.

BIlderberg is an absurdity. The secrecy is absurd. The lack of a relationship between the event and the mainstream media is absurd. Ivan standing alone by his roundabout bed is absurd. The paranoia of the participants is more than absurd – it's pathetic.

This year, most of the delegates were whisked into the hotel through an underground entrance, dodging the lenses, like a bunch of James Bond baddies, like a dieter creeping downstairs at midnight to eat chocolate cake from the fridge.

But the good news is that not everyone has dodged the cameras (John Elkann, the heir to Fiat, was spotted by the German blog Schall und Rauch looking particularly dapper this year). And the even better news – the very best news – is that the press seems, finally, to have woken up to Bilderberg.

We have had camera crews from Spanish TV and Spanish newspapers both local and national (Javier from El Mundo is currently up a tree with a camera). French journalists, Portuguese documentary makers and al-Jazeera are picking up the story. Russia Today has sent a film crew.

We've had articles in the Independent and the Times, and on the Today programme on Radio 4. Daniel Estulin has been doing interview after interview. He's getting quotes from inside the meeting. The veil of secrecy is looking decidedly tatty. It might be time to bin it.

And yet the veil of ignorance is still holding up pretty well. As Ivan says, handing me a leaflet from the Anwok collective, "it is difficult to talk about the Bilderberg agenda if people don't even know about the group".

I know what he means – I've spoken to countless news agencies and outlets in the last few weeks, and the most common response, from journalists, editors and commissioners, is: "I'm sorry, the Bilderberg what?"

But seriously, if you work on the foreign desk of a major news corporation and you're at the "Bilderberg what?" level of political awareness, you need to think about getting a different job. Take a sabbatical. Take up carpentry, or read a book. It's like calling yourself a porn star and not knowing the reverse cowgirl. "The reverse what...?"

Get with the programme. Shimmy up a pine tree. Take a leaflet. Resign. You're not helping anyone.

AUSTRALIAN POLICE TO PROBE GOOGLE OVER PRIVACY

Australian police to probe Google over privacy
AFP June 7, 2010, 12:43 am
The Australian government has ordered a police investigation into Internet giant Google over alleged privacy breaches, Attorney General Robert McClelland said Sunday.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy last month accused the company of committing the "single greatest breach in the history of privacy" by collecting private wireless data while taking pictures for its 'Street View' mapping service.

McClelland said the government had asked the Australian Federal Police to investigate after receiving numerous complaints.

"Obviously I won't pre-empt the outcome of that investigation but they relate in substantial part to possible breaches of the Telecommunications Interception Act, which prevents people accessing electronic information other than for authorised purposes," McClelland said.

Whether any charges are laid is up to the police, but the government felt "there were issues of substance that required police investigations", McClelland said.

Google said it collected the data in error.

"This was a mistake. We are talking to the appropriate authorities to answer any questions they have," a spokeswoman said in a statement.

The development comes after the Internet giant reportedly said its Street View cars taking photos in more than 30 countries had inadvertently gathered fragments of personal data sent over unsecured WiFi systems, and would hand information over to European data protection authorities.

Google has led criticism of Australia's planned Internet filter, warning it could damage the nation's reputation as a liberal democracy and set a dangerous global precedent.

EXCERPT FROM IMPORTANT BOOK BY FORMER US/FOREIGN GOV SEX SLAVE

The Most Dangerous Game Excerpt from Trance-Formation of America by Cathy O'Brien and Mark Phillips

During Christmas vacation of 1974, my father flew us all to Disney World by route of Tampa, Florida. Ignorant of geography, it did not occur to me that Tampa was out of the way to Disney World until my father drove the rented van to the gates of MacDill Air Force Base. Military personnel met me there and escorted me into the base TOP SECRET high tech mind control conditioning facility for "behavioral modification" programming. This was the first in what became a routine series of mind control testing and/or programming sessions on government installations that I would endure throughout my Project Monarch victimization. Whether I was in a military, NASA, or government building, the procedure for maintaining me under total mind control remained consistent with Project Monarch requirements. This included prior physical and/or psychological trauma; sleep, food, and water deprivation; high voltage electric shock; and hypnotic and/or harmonic programming of specific memory compartments/ personalities. The high tech equipment and methodisms I endured from that time on gave the U.S. government absolute control of my mind and life. I had been literally driven out of my conscious mind and existed only through my programmed subconscious. I lost my free will, ability to reason, and could not think to question anything that was happening to me. I could only do as I was told. In the summer of 1975, my family drove all the way from Michigan to the Teton Mountains of Wyoming. I was ordered to ride in the back storage area of the family Chevy Suburban since I was forbidden to associate or communicate with my brothers and sister. So I dissociated into books, or into the metaphorical, hypnotic suggestions from my father and tranced deeper as I watched the prairie's seemingly endless sea of "amber waves of grain" streak past my window. Once when we stopped at a gas station, my father took me inside to show me a stuffed "jackalope" mounted on the wall. Due to my tranced, dissociative state and high suggestibility level, I believed it was indeed a cross between a jack rabbit and antelope. It was 100+ degrees in the Badlands when it cooled down at night. The intense heat of the day accentuated my ever increasing thirst. My father was physically preparing me though water deprivation for the intense tortures and programming I would endure in Wyoming. Dick Cheney, then White House Chief of Staff to President Ford, later Secretary of Defense to President George Bush, documented member of the Council on Foreign relations (CFR), and Presidential hopeful for 1996, was originally Wyoming's only Congressman. Dick Cheney was the reason my family had traveled to Wyoming where I endured yet another form of brutality -- his version of "A Most Dangerous Game," or human hunting. It is my understanding now that A Most Dangerous Game was devised to condition military personnel in survival and combat maneuvers. Yet it was used on me and other slaves known to me as a means of further conditioning the mind to the realization there was "no place to hide," as well as traumatize the victim for ensuing programming. It was my experience over the years that A Most Dangerous Game had numerous variations on the primary theme of being stripped naked and turned loose in the wilderness while being hunted by men and dogs. In reality, all "wilderness" areas were enclosed in secure military fencing whereby it was only a matter of time until I was caught, repeatedly raped, and tortured. Dick Cheney had an apparent addiction to the "thrill of the sport." He appeared obsessed with playing A Most Dangerous Game as a means of traumatizing mind control victims, as well as to satisfy his own perverse sexual kinks. My introduction to the game occurred upon arrival at the hunting lodge near Greybull, Wyoming, and it physically and psychologically devastated me. I was sufficiently traumatized for Cheney's programming, as I stood naked in his hunting lodge office after being hunted down and caught. Cheney was talking as he paced around me, "I could stuff you and mount you like a jackalope and call you a two legged dear. Or I could stuff you with this (he unzipped his pants to reveal his oversized penis) right down your throat, and then mount you. Which do you prefer?" Blood and sweat became mixed with the dirt on my body and slid like mud down my legs and shoulder. I throbbed with exhaustion and pain as I stood unable to think to answer such a question. "Make up your mind," Cheney coaxed. Unable to speak, I remained silent. "You don't get a choice, anyway. I make up your mind for you. That's why you're here. For me to make you a mind, and make you mine/mind. You lost your mind a long time ago. Now I'm going to give you one. Just like the Wizard (of Oz) gave Scarecrow a brain, the Yellow Brick Road led you here to me. You've 'come such a long, long way' for your brain, and I will give you one." The blood reached my shoes and caught my attention. Had I been further along in my programming, I perhaps would never have noticed such a thing or had the capability to think to wipe it away. But so far, I had only been to MacDill and Disney World for government/military programming. At last, when I could speak, I begged, "If you don't mind, can I please use your bathroom?" Cheney's face turned red with rage. He was on me in an instant, slamming my back into the wall with one arm across my chest and his hand on my throat, choking me while applying pressure to the carotid artery in my neck with his thumb. His eyes bulged and he spit as he growled, "If you don't mind me, I will kill you. I could kill you -- Kill you -- with my bare hands. You're not the first and you won't be the last. I'll kill you any time I goddamn well please." He flung me on the cot-type bed that as behind me. There he finished taking his rage out on me sexually. On the long trip back to Michigan, I lay in a heap behind the seats of the Suburban, nauseated and hurting from Cheney's brutality and high voltage tortures, plus the whole Wyoming experience. My father stopped by the waterfalls flowing through the Tetons to "wash my brain" of the memory of Cheney. I could barely walk through the woods to the falls for the process as instructed, despite having learned my lessons well from Cheney on following orders. The next year when our "annual" trip to Disney World rolled around, my father drove, pulling his new Holiday Rambler Royale International trailer. My father dropped me off en route at the Kennedy Space Center in Titusville, Florida where I was subjected to my first NASA programming. From then on, I was "obsessed" with following the "Yellow Brick Road" to Nashville, Tennessee. Moving to Nashville was all I could talk about. If anyone asked me the question I could not think to ask myself "Why?", I would respond by reiterating it was something "I had to do."

NEW YORK TIMES STORY ABOUT ENGLISH CURRENCY PROBLEMS

May 24, 2010

In Europe, Britain May Face Largest Debt Hurdle

By LANDON THOMAS Jr.

LONDON — As governments from Greece to Portugal to Spain try to sell markets on their budget-cutting zeal, the country that may face the biggest hurdle is Britain.

Propelled by a robust economy that finally collapsed in 2008, Britain’s spending boom was the most expansive in Europe, producing a welter of shiny hospitals, school buildings and highways, along with a cadre of well-paid public sector officials.

Now the new government must unwind not so much the debt incurred from two years of economic stimulus efforts, but more broadly, the structural deficits built up over more than a decade of expanded health care, education and pension commitments.

Prime Minister David Cameron has talked boldly of closing a British budget deficit now equal to 11 percent of its gross domestic product. But he also has said that he will allow health spending to outpace inflation, continuing a trend started by the Labour government that has doubled the cost of the government’s elephantine National Health Service since 2000.

It is this apparent disconnect between the promises of politicians and the harsh demands of investors for immediate and across the board spending cuts that is at the root of the financial crisis in Europe today.

Even after the nearly $1 trillion rescue package arranged by European Union leaders to shore up the weaker euro zone members, financial markets have gyrated as fears build that debt-plagued nations lack the will to stand up to powerful unions and pare back once generous welfare programs.

“You need a martyr to cut this type of deficit,” said Andrew Lilico, chief economist at Policy Exchange, a right-leaning London research group, who has argued that quick and immediate spending cuts would actually hasten economic recovery rather than derail it.

“You need someone to say, ‘I will do the right thing and everyone will hate me.’ ”

According to a recent analysis by Citigroup, Britain’s structural deficit — meaning the part of the budget gap that will not close even when the economy improves — was 9.2 percent of G.D.P. last year, ranking third in the world behind rapidly aging Japan and almost bankrupt Greece.

As is the case with other countries in Europe, like Spain, Greece and Ireland, Britain has a deficit that has grown mostly because of a decade of rising government outlays that seemed reasonable at the time, but rested heavily on rising tax revenue that disappeared when the bubble burst.

In a recent report, the International Monetary Fund warned that the countries that would have to make the biggest sacrifices in spending cuts and tax increases to return to precrisis levels of indebtedness — Britain, France, Ireland, Spain and the United States — also face the biggest increase in spending demands. These are driven by the rising number of the elderly, thus making the cuts all the harder to impose.

“All developed economies now have in-built structural components in their government deficits due to having pension and health systems and aging populations,” said Edward Hugh, an independent economist based in Barcelona. “And these costs will go up by the year.”

The British chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, who has long urged the Conservative Party to trim the deficit, said on Monday that he would push through £6 billion ($8.65 billion) in spending cuts.

Though decidedly modest when compared with a budget deficit estimated to be about £178 billion, the cuts represent an effort to convince skittish markets that Mr. Cameron’s team is committed to fiscal restraint.

The latest menu of restrictions, freezes and spending reversals also represents an effort to convince the public that Britain must be in tune with the budget-cutting in Greece, Portugal, Spain and other parts of Europe.

“The years of public sector plenty are over,” Mr. Osborne said. “The more decisively we act, the more quickly we can come through these tough times.”

Mr. Cameron has fulminated publicly about cutting public sector pay and decreed that members of Parliament themselves take a 5 percent pay cut.

But it remains unclear whether he can force significant savings in what has become in many respects a public sector aristocracy of elite civil servants, heads of national railroads and top officials of obscure agencies, like the National Policing Improvement Agency and the Horserace Betting Levy Board. The heads of those two agencies, for example, were paid salaries last year that exceed Mr. Cameron’s pay of £197,000 (about $284,000) — £211,831 and £220,665, respectively.

Among the highest paid have been administrators and doctors within the country’s government-financed National Health Service, which has become its own separate economy with its 1.7 million employees and £100 billion plus budget.

For example, David Taube, a doctor, administrator and medical director for five hospitals comprising the Imperial College Healthcare N.H.S. Trust, was paid £260,000 (about $375,000) at the exchange rates last year. That is also more than the prime minister received.

According to the TaxPayers’ Alliance, an advocacy group for spending cuts, the highest-paid 805 government employees in Britain received a 5.4 percent pay increase last year, with the average official taking in £209,224.

Whether it be the £1.3 million paid to the chief executive of the Royal Mail, the £267,000 for the head of information technology in the Department for Work and Pensions, or the £270,000 earned this year by the chief executive of the Guy’s and St. Thomas Hospitals in London, the galloping pay of public sector workers in Britain has become a major component of the structural deficit and shows little sign of letting up.

“We have been doing this for five years now, and the numbers just get bigger and bigger,” said John O’Connell, an analyst at the TaxPayers’ Alliance.

Starting in 2000, the Labour government made it a priority to improve the N.H.S.’s lackluster reputation and invested billions in bricks and mortar as well as the salaries of its growing ranks of doctors and administrators.

Health care spending in Britain soared to 9 percent of G.D.P. from 3 percent. The image of the service has been transformed from one that exemplified drab inefficiencies of the British state to what is now hailed as a world archetype, even by Conservative politicians like Mr. Cameron.

As for Dr. Taube, a spokeswoman for the Imperial College Healthcare N.H.S. Trust said that he was a leading renal clinician and that the bulk of his salary, £180,000 to £185,000, came from his clinical work. He was paid an additional £75,000 to £80,000 for his administrative duties.

Now the new government must wrestle with whether it can restrain such pay and spending and at what political cost.

David Rockefeller admits to wanting a World Government

" POPULIST PARANOIA
For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as "internationalists" and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure-one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."

David Rockefeller; Memoirs Chapter 27 Proud Internationalist P.405

Still Abusing Detainees At Bagram.

Marc Ambinder confirms that there is a secret facility at Bagram run by the Pentagon's Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center where detainees are subject to abusive interrogation techniques, under "secret authorization" from the Obama administration to ignore the executive order the President signed last year:

However, under secret authorization, the DIA interrogators use methods detailed in an appendix to the Field Manual, Appendix M, which spells out "restricted" interrogation techniques.

Under certain circumstances, interrogators can deprive prisoners of sleep (four hours at a time, for up to 30 days), to confuse their senses, and to keep them separate from the rest of the prison population. The Red Cross is now notified if the captives are kept at the facility for longer than two weeks.

When interrogators are using Appendix M measures, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Gen. James Clapper (Ret.) is the man on the hook. Detainees designated as prisoners of war cannot be subjected to Appendix M measures.

The administration says that the Red Cross is given access to detainees and that they are not abused, but this is false on its face, in two ways. The BBC has previously reported that as many as nine detainees have reported being subject to abuse at Bagram's "black jail."

The second is that the use of sleep deprivation is torture. As former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin wrote of his time in the custody of the KGB:

In the head of the interrogated prisoner, a haze begins to form. His spirit is wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one sole desire: to sleep... Anyone who has experienced this desire knows that not even hunger and thirst are comparable with it.

Reducing people's minds to mush also has the downside of making it difficult for them to answer questions coherently.

Let's also not let "confuse the senses" slip by. This is possibly a euphemism for sensory deprivation, which can be among the most excruciating forms of torture imaginable. Here's an excerpt from an account on early experimentation with sensory deprivation that Hilzoy flagged last year:

Dr Donald O. Hebb at McGill University found that he could induce a state akin to psychosis in a subject within 48 hours. Now, what had the doctor done? Hypnosis, electroshock, LSD, drugs? No. None of the above. All Dr Hebb did was take student volunteers at McGill University where he was head of Psychology, put them in comfortable airconditioned cubicles and put goggles, gloves and ear muffs on them. In 24 hours the hallucinations started. In 48 hours they suffered a complete breakdown.

II don't know if this is what "confuse the senses" means in the context of Bagram, but it's worth more looking into.

Whatever credibility the Obama administration had remaining on the subject of breaking continuity with the Bush administration on issues of human rights is fast eroding. The irony is that the torture wing of the Republican Party will both feel vindicated and argue that the Obama administration represents a radical departure from the policies of the last administration.

-- A. Serwer

Posted by Adam Serwer on May 14, 2010 10:39 AM

Fines for refusing to take part in ABS health survey

By Sue Dunlevy From: The Daily Telegraph May 19, 2010 12:08AM

People face fines if they fail to provide information on their health and lifestyle to ABS researchers Source: Supplied

• Fines for refusing to answer
• Up to 50,000 people face fines
• ABS says participation is compulsory

UP TO 50,000 people face a fine of $110 a day if they refuse to divulge information on their health and lifestyle to Australian Bureau of Statistics researchers.

The Australian Health Survey announced in last week's Budget will be the most comprehensive research on the health of Australians ever undertaken and will be jointly funded by the National Heart Foundation.

But the 50,000 people chosen to take part will be compelled to do so.

Participants will be weighed and measured and will be asked to give a blood and urine sample.

They will also be asked detailed questions on what they drink and eat and their physical activity.

The ABS said participation "is ultimately compulsory for those chosen by random sampling to ensure the survey accurately represents the Australian population as a whole".

However, participants would only be compelled to answer questions. Providing a blood and urine sample and weighing in would be voluntary.

While it would seek co-operation of those selected, the ABS said it had the power to direct unwilling respondents to provide information.

"If a participant was directed in writing and continued to refuse to comply, they may be prosecuted under the Census and Statistics Act 1905 and a fine may be imposed," a spokesman for the ABS said.

"A fine of up to $110 per day may be imposed until such time as the information is supplied."

Australian Medical Association president Dr Andrew Pesce said the survey would provide valuable information for designing preventative health policies.

"I can't imagine the Government has any intention of prosecuting people who don't co-operate," he said.

National Heart Foundation chief Lyn Roberts said she understood the survey would be conducted in a similar way to the ABS's National Health Survey.

"The difference is a voluntary component allowing participants to provide biomedical data which will allow policy-makers to use verified data on their health for the first time rather than self-reported data, which we know . . . can be unreliable."

POLICE STATE 4

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Kagan Involved In 9/11 Cover Up
Supreme Court Nominee Helped Obama Shut Down 9/11 Families Lawsuits

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

In addition to the attacks on free speech, detainee rights and the close connections to Goldman Sachs, another noteworthy black mark on the record of Elena Kagan, the president's nominee to the Supreme Court, is that she played a significant part in killing off the efforts of 9/11 victims' families to bring lawsuits against members of the Saudi Royal family for financial links to the conspiracy.

Last year, thousands of family members filed suits claiming that Saudi Arabia and four of its princes actively aided in financing the terrorist attacks through front groups posing as charities.

The New York Times ran a report in June highlighting how documents uncovered by lawyers for the 9/11 families “provide new evidence of extensive financial support for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups by members of the Saudi royal family.”

The documents consisted of “several hundred thousand pages of investigative material” assembled by the 9/11 families, according to the report.

The families also pointed to a 28-page, classified section of the 2003 joint congressional inquiry into 9/11 that deals with the Saudi role in the attacks.

Had the cases been heard, the exposure given to the Saudi connection would have undoubtedly opened the flood gates for more suppressed evidence surrounding the attacks to emerge.

"The revelations would undoubtedly shatter the official explanations of the September 11 attacks and point to complicity on the part of US intelligence and security agencies." writer Barry Grey noted at the time in his excellent piece on the government's effort to shut down the lawsuits.

"Given its longstanding and intimate ties to the Saudi royal family and Saudi intelligence, it is not possible to believe that the CIA would have been unaware of Saudi support for Al Qaeda and at least some of the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals, as they were preparing to carry out the attacks on New York and Washington." Grey wrote.

Enter Elena Kagan.

In her previous role at the Justice Department as Obama's Solicitor General, she declared that “that the princes are immune from petitioners’ claims” owing to “the potentially significant foreign relations consequences of subjecting another sovereign state to suit.”

Kagan effectively protected the oil rich Saudi monarchy in seeking to halt further legal action to hold it liable for the attacks.

The move just happened to come less than a week before Obama was scheduled to meet and bow before Saudi King Abdullah as part of his "rebuilding" trip to the Middle East.

More than 6000 9/11 family members denounced the move as an "apparent effort to appease a sometime ally" in a public statement.

Less than a month later, The Supreme Court ruled that it would not allow any of the lawsuits to go ahead, agreeing that the Saudi princes should be protected by sovereign immunity - a concept that seems to have no bearing on CIA drone delivered missiles raining down on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Following the debacle, Senators Arlen Specter and Lindsey Graham introduced legislation to allow US citizens to sue foreign governments if there is evidence they may be supporting terrorist activity. Spector said of Kagan "She wants to coddle the Saudis".

The Saudi 9/11 Connection

Senator Bob Graham, who sat on the 9/11 Commission, has also charged that Saudi involvement in the attacks has been covered up.

As we have previously reported, US authorities, including the FBI, allowed the entire Bin Laden family to fly out of the US, and back to Saudi Arabia, in the days after 9/11, without questioning any of them.

Furthermore, agency documents later revealed that the FBI were aware that Osama Bin Laden himself may have personally chartered one of the flights. They subsequently redacted his name from the records in order “to protect privacy interests.”

The documents provide clear proof that the FBI was protecting the Bin Laden while the rest of the world was being told that he had masterminded the biggest terror attack in history. The FBI then attempted to cover up this fact.

The same documents revealed that the Bureau did not consider a single Saudi national nor any of the Bin Laden family worthy of investigative value.

The protection of Bin Laden by federal authorities has been ongoing since BEFORE 9/11 when agents were told to "back off the Bin Laden family" in order to protect business interests that the Bush family had with the Bin Ladens and other Saudi nationals.

The FBI asserts that no one on the planes that left had any terrorist links, yet documents (specifically FBI document 199I WF213589) uncovered back in November 2001 prove this to be a falsehood.

The Obama administration is now continuing the exact same long running policy as the Bush administration by obediently backing the Saudi monarchy and keeping secret this vital information on 9/11.

TUCKER TRUMPS TRILATS

By James P. Tucker, Jr.

DUBLIN, Ireland—Trilateral Commission (TC) members, angry over their failure to establish a world government and the economic crisis they generated, called for war with Iran when they gathered behind closed doors here in Dublin, Ireland May 7-10.

War plans were revealed by Mikhail Slobodovsici, a chief adviser to the Russian leadership, when he strolled off the grounds of the Four Seasons resort, where TC had hunkered down behind armed guards and locked doors. He thought he was talking to a TC colleague when speaking with Alan Keenan, who operates the web siteWeAreChange.org.

“We are deciding the future of the world,” Slobodovsici said. “We need a world government,” he said, but, referring to Iran, said “we need to get rid of them.”

Clearly, it was a TC war call. Many of the TC’s billionaires and millionaires are heavily invested in manufacturing, and wars produce huge profits.

Suddenly, Slobodovsici noticed that Keenan’s nametag was different from the TC label and said: “I can’t talk—we operate under Chatham House rules.”

Slobodovsici was ordered by the TC to order more apologies for the slaughter of an estimated 30 to 60 million inhabitants of the old Soviet Union by dictator Josef Stalin. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had abjectly apologized on the anniversary of the Katyn Forest execution of 20,000 Polish soldiers. Putin admitted that the massacre was conducted by the Soviets, not by Germans, which the Communists had claimed for half a century. Nevertheless, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev apologized again the next day (May 9), denouncing Soviet citizens for tolerating the slaughter, saying they were fully aware of the bloodletting.

Never have the illustrious members of the TC been so depressed.

“It gets worse every year, not better,” one said. “Why do we even bother to meet anymore?”

“We can’t simply give up and quit,” another responded. “Bilderberg expects us to have a plan outlined.”

Much of their distress is due to the failure to establish a world government. In the 1990s, both TC and Bilderberg confidently predicted they would obtain a world government by the year 2000. A decade later, their goal is even further away. This they blame on detested “nationalists,” who oppose surrendering sovereignty to international bodies.

Bilderberg will meet June 4 to June 7 in Sitges, Spain, a resort city about 20 miles from Barcelona to make final decisions on what to impose upon the world.

Bilderberg will seal off the entire grounds of the Dolce Resort with armed guards and private security. Bilderberg is composed of about 120 international financiers, heads of state from Europe and high officials of the White House, and the secretaries of the State and Commerce departments, among others.

The TC is the junior varsity, with slightly more than 300 participants. Bilderberg, the senior group in the wannabe secret world government, has slightly more than 100. The two groups have an interlocking leadership and common goal of a world government under their control.

Still, the TC attracts heads of state and other high officials in Europe and international financiers, including David Rockefeller and members of the Rothschild family. High officials of the Obama administration from the White House and departments of Treasury, State and Commerce will attend.

TC boys are upset they were unable to exploit the economic crisis they helped generate by creating a world “treasury department” under the UN. They blame “rising nationalism” and ask “how those people knew about this,” according to witnesses inside the TC hotel. Still, the TC is charging ahead. In a commentary based on interviews with (or dictated by) TC leaders, economist Richard Douthwaite wrote May 7 in The Irish Times:

Economic growth cannot increase incomes reliably and quickly enough to deliver the desired result. The only possible remedy is inflation. This could be engineered by having the European Central Bank create money out of nothing to give all the euro zone countries to spend. . . . Another irrational obstacle is the feeling that money cannot be created out of nothing. . . .

In this column, Douthwaite calls for Europe’s central bank to turn on the printing presses in the same way the privately owned and controlled Federal Reserve Bank has been flooding its cronies in the United States with dollars.

According to banking regulations in Europe, the European Central Bank is limited in how many euros it can release into the money supply through a 2-percent cap on inflation. Douthwaite, however, would like to see this hobble taken off the bankers.

In the United States, the Federal Reserve has been handing out free money to its member banks by lowering the discount rate to near zero. In Europe, Douthwaite writes, “this could be engineered by having the European Central Bank create money out of nothing to give to all the euro zone countries to spend.”

The result, he notes, would be inflation, because more money would be in circulation for governments to pay their bills. But he doesn’t see that as a bad thing.

However, as Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) notes, the problem with inflation is that it hurts the working class because it acts like an indirect tax.

“Simply put, printing money to pay for federal spending dilutes the value of the dollar, which causes higher prices for goods and services,” says Paul. “Savers and those living on fixed or low incomes are hardest hit as the cost of living rises. Low- and middle-income families suffer the most as they struggle to make ends meet while wealth is literally transferred from the middle class to the wealthy.”

The phony money idea was embraced by Gary Jenkins of Evolution Securities. He said the EU Central Bank may begin to print more money to dig itself out. “If we approach the brink, it may just be the only viable option left,” Jenkins said. “Only the ECB can print euros to save the system.”

For now, Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank, denies that he will be turning on the printing presses. Trichet appears to be in the minority here, and pressure on the part of the globalists may eventually force him to increase inflation in an effort to stave off the inevitable collapse of the EU.

Ireland’s prime minister, Brian Cowen, was invited to make a welcoming address at the TC confab, then get out. This is routine with TC and Bilderberg: The head of the host country speaks, then leaves. But Cowen resented being banished, so he deliberately appeared 35 minutes late—and TC boys are unaccustomed to being kept waiting.

Paul Volker, chairman of President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board and a past Fed chairman, expressed his anger with hostile questions. Cowen had tried to distance Ireland’s economy from that of Greece and other EU countries that are under attack for the economic crisis.

Volker told Cowen that while he had been “historically . . . very much attracted to the euro,” it was now “challenged.” Volker said: “You face some very difficult decisions here, but the general question of having an independent central bank, the common interest rate, the common currency . . . I’m just curious, in your mind, as to whether that does raise questions on the general governing structures of Europe.

“You’re not in favor of more centralization, as I understand it, although other people are, but what does this crisis mean for how Europe moves ahead?” Volker asked.

Cowen conceded that the euro faced problems with its credibility. He said EU finance ministers would be reviewing “present arrangements” in the months ahead to see how they could be improved “in a way that would add credibility to the currency and in a way that would meet with wide popular agreement.”

In other action, the TC plans to:

Raise gas costs in the United States. Europeans now pay $10 a gallon, Americans about $3. The TCers say Americans must pay $7.

Oil is being produced at only 81 percent of capacity to increase demand and, thus, prices. Many of the members were born to oil wealth.

They celebrate the healthcare legislation, which they believe will dramatically increase costs and reduce services. It is European style, and Obama is their boy. They look forward to the day when Americans pay at least 50 percent of their income in federal taxes, as is prevalent in Europe.

AFP editor James P. Tucker Jr. is a veteran journalist who spent many years as a member of the “elite” media in Washington. Since 1975 he has won widespread recognition, here and abroad, for his pursuit of on-the-scene stories reporting the intrigues of global power blocs such as the Bilderberg Group. Tucker is the author of Jim Tucker’s Bilderberg Diary: One Man’s 25-Year Battle to Shine the Light on the World Shadow Government.Bound in an attractive full-color softcover and containing 272 pages—loaded with photos, many never published before—the book recounts Tucker’s experiences over the last quarter century at Bilderberg meetings. $25 from AFP. No charge for S&H in U.S.

UK ECONOMY MAY BE ALLOWED TO CRASH AND BURN LIKE US BANKING GIANT

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UK Economy May Be Allowed To Crash And Burn Like US Banking Giant
Analysts, Economists: Britain May Become Lehman To Greece's Bear Stearns

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

Leading financial analysts and economists have warned that Britain may crash and burn following the European bailout of Greece, comparing the situation to that of Lehman Brothers following the rescue of Bear Stearns in 2008.

“The big question I am asking myself is whether Greece is Bear Stearns” Anthony Fry, senior managing director at Evercore Partners, told CNBC.

“What I really fear is that if Greece is Bear Stearns then the UK is Lehman Brothers.” Fry, who previously worked for Lehman added.

While other economists disagree, indicating that the UK can and will continue to devalue and print money, Fry believes the country's huge deficit puts it firmly at risk.

“I can’t believe (the UK) can avoid trouble," he said. "The current coalition talks are like arguing over a birthday cake.” Fry said, alluding to the ongoing negotiations between the political parties following the indecisive election last week.

“Once they decide how much of the cake they get they realize no one bothered to bake the cake.” Fry added.

“My big fear is that after (Chancellor of the Exchequer) Alistair Darling refused to support the EU/IMF/ECB bailout of the euro zone bond market, the euro zone may stand by and do nothing when the UK gets into trouble,” he said.

Fry's warning is particularly pertinent following comments by senior French policymaker Jean-Pierre Jouyet, who today indicated that Britain will be punished for refusing to fully sign up to the trillion dollar bailout of the eurozone, despite pledging €60bn in taxpayer funds.

“The English are very certainly going to be targeted given the political difficulties they have. Help yourself and heaven will help you. If you don’t want to show solidarity to the eurozone, then let’s see what happens to the United Kingdom,” the head of the French markets regulator told Europe 1 radio.

Anthony Fry added that he expects to see a strengthening of the Euro through consolidation and centralization of fiscal policy in Europe, echoing comments made yesterday by other leading bankers and economists.

“Talk of the euro breaking up is nonsense," Fry said. "What we will get is tighter fiscal cooperation. If Germany is lending money to Spain it will demand tough measures on spending.”

NEW UK GOVERNMENT TO BE INFESTED WITH BANKERS

One in ten new MPs has background in international banking

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

No matter which parties eventually form a coalition to govern in the UK following last week's general election, one thing is for certain - the House of Commons will be infested with bankers.

A report by the PR group The Madano Partnership, highlighted today in the London Telegraph outlines the fact that the number of MPs with a financial services background has increased two fold over the past thirteen years.

One in 10 new MPs have come from a career in investment banking, fund management, or other areas associated with the financial sector, according to the report.

The roll call of MPs includes three former directors of Barclays Bank, a former managing director of JP Morgan, and a former mergers and acquisitions banker at Goldman Sachs.

Former investment bankers and economists at Deutsche Bank, Barings, Warburg, and the previously bailed out Lloyds TSB also hold seats.

Conservative MP Jacob Rees Mogg also previously held management positions at Rothschild and Lloyd George Management in London.

With the impending push to radically reform the banking industry, these are the heavy hitters likely to be in the driving seat when it comes to forming economic policy and tabling financial legislation.

Google and Yahoo criticise Australia's 'heavy-handed' internet filter plans

US is also 'concerned' at plans to block flow of information and experts say state-controlled check will slow browsers

• Charles Arthur guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 March 2010 21.45 BST

Google have expressed concern over Australian government's plans to introduce internet filters Photograph: Virginia Mayo/AP

Australia came under fire today from the United States for its proposed internet filtering system, which, if implemented, would be the strictest of any democracy.

A US state department official said that it had raised concerns with Australia over the plans, which are to be voted on by its parliament.

"We remain committed to advancing the free flow of information, which we view as vital to economic prosperity and preserving open societies globally," Michael Tran, a state department spokesman told the Associated Press.

"We don't discuss the details of specific diplomatic exchanges, but I can say that we have raised our concerns on this matter with Australian officials."

Internet companies Google and Yahoo have already condemned the proposal as a heavy-handed measure that could restrict access to legal information.

Australia's communications minister, Stephen Conroy, said the filter would block access to sites that include child pornography, sexual violence and detailed instructions in crime or drug use. The list of banned sites could be updated based on public complaints. But he declined to say what the US had told Australia.

National censorship of overseas sites is becoming a trade issue. Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, told the Guardian last week :"Since services and information are our most successful exports, if regulations in China effectively prevent us from being competitive, then they are a trade barrier."

Many countries – including the UK – use filtering systems to limit access to outlawed material: in the UK the independent Internet Watch Foundation lists sites internet service providers (ISPs) are asked to block. The list is secret, and frequently updated. In Germany and Canada ISPs use similar blocking systems; in Italy gambling sites are blocked.

But critics say that the Australian plan, which has been proposed repeatedly over the past five years, exceeds what is necessary and strays into matters of free speech.

"Our primary concern is that the scope of content to be filtered is too wide," Google wrote in its submission to the Australian government, suggesting that the filter – which would be mandatory and state-controlled – would slow browsing speeds.

The company said it already had its own filter to block child pornography.

"Some limits, like child pornography, are obvious. No Australian wants that to be available and we agree," Google said. "But moving to a mandatory ISP-level filtering regime with a scope that goes well beyond such material is heavy-handed and can raise genuine questions about restrictions on access to information."

Lucinda Barlow of Google Australia told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation the proposal raised the possibility of banning politically and socially controversial material and went beyond filters used in Germany, Canada and Italy. Other critics say the filtering would put Australia in the same censorship league as China.

Yahoo said the filter would block many sites with controversial content such as euthanasia discussion forums and gay and lesbian forums that discuss sexual experiences. Yet it would not block peer-to-peer file-sharing, nor prevent predators approaching children in chat programs or social networking sites.

Conroy said his department would take the comments from Google and Yahoo into consideration before sending a proposal to parliament later this year.

The US State Department sided with Google in its row with China over censorship when in January the search engine company complained that its systems had been hacked into in what it implied was an attack all but government-sanctioned by China. Last week Google moved its search systems to the Chinese island dependency of Hong Kong. The communist government responded by blocking searches from the mainland for forbidden topics such as the pro-democracy movement.

David Vaile of the Cyberspace Law and Policy Center at the University of New South Wales said China and Australia had markedly different approaches to restricting the Internet.

"China's filter is explicitly about discouraging access to and discussion of certain clearly political topics," he said, while Australia's filter would focus on specifically restricted material.

While some critics of Australia's filter have said it puts the nation in the same censorship league as China, Vaile pointed out that the freedom-of-speech argument used by American companies follows a legal tradition that other countries do not necessarily share.

Yahoo and Google are accustomed to the protections of the First Amendment of the US constitution,which guarantees freedom of speech and elevates it to a very high legal status, Vaile said.

"In Australia there is no equivalent," he said. "There is no law that says you've got free speech. Having a lack of any legal protection for free speech for any effective restraint on [filters] is something that's worrying."

Responding to lawsuit, US justifies Predator drone program as ’self defense’ | Raw Story

After months of waiting that ultimately triggered an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit under Freedom of Information Act, the United States government has for the first time offered a legal justification for its' Predator drone program.

The principle upon which unmanned weapons are deployed, according to a state department legal adviser, is "self defense" under international law.

The CIA attacks by unmanned aircraft in Pakistan, Somalia and elsewhere have sharply increased under President Barack Obama's administration but have remained shrouded in secrecy, with some human rights groups charging the bombing raids amount to illegal assassinations.

Broaching a subject that has been off-limits for official comment, State Department legal advisor Harold Koh laid out the legal argument for the strikes in a speech late Thursday, referring to "targeting" of Al-Qaeda and Taliban figures without mentioning Pakistan or where the raids are carried out.

The United States was in "an armed conflict" with Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and its affiliates as a result of the September 11 attacks, Koh said, "and may use force consistent with its inherent right to self-defense under international law."

Story continues below...

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"With respect to the subject of targeting, which has been much commented upon in the media and international legal circles, there are obviously limits to what I can say publicly," he told a conference of the American Society of International Law.

"What I can say is that it is the considered view of this administration -- and it has certainly been my experience during my time as legal adviser -- that US targeting practices, including lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, comply with all applicable law, including the laws of war."

The CIA would not comment on the speech.

A Freedom of Information Act request for this information was filed by the ACLU in January, but had for months gone unanswered. Finally, earlier in March, the civil rights watchdog group sued, claiming the public has a right to know the legal grounds upon which the program stands, along with basic data on lethality and civilian casualties.

"We're encouraged that Koh has articulated the legal rationale for the program," said Jonathan Manes, a legal fellow at the ACLU. But he added that he hoped the administration would provide a more detailed account of its legal justification.

"The public has a right to know whether the targeted killings being carried out in its name are consistent with international law and with the country's interests and values," said Jonathan Manes, a legal fellow with the ACLU National Security Project, in a media advisory released after the group's lawsuit was filed. "The Obama administration should disclose basic information about the program, including its legal basis and limits, and the civilian casualty toll thus far."

The group added: "The CIA and the military have used unmanned drones to target and kill individuals not only in Afghanistan and Iraq but also in Pakistan and, in at least one case in 2002, Yemen. The technology allows U.S. personnel to observe targeted individuals in real time and launch missiles intended to kill them from control centers located thousands of miles away. Recent reports, including public statements from the director of national intelligence, indicate that U.S. citizens have been placed on the list of targets who can be hunted and killed with drones."

"While the Obama administration may legitimately withhold intelligence information as well as sensitive information about military strategy, it should disclose basic information about the scope of the drone program, the legal basis for the program and the civilian casualties that have resulted from the program," argued ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer, who heads the non-profit's National Security Project.

Rights activists and some legal experts charge the drone strikes in Pakistan and other countries, outside of a traditional battlefield, amount to extrajudicial executions that violate both international and US law.

Koh, a fierce critic of former president George W. Bush's policies before he took his post, disagreed -- saying a US ban on government sanctioned assassinations did not apply.

Under US law, "the use of lawful weapons systems -- consistent with the applicable laws of war -- for precision targeting of specific high-level belligerent leaders when acting in self-defense or during an armed conflict is not unlawful, and hence does not constitute 'assassination,'" he said.

He also argued that the US government was not obliged to offer legal rights to the militant figures targeted in the strikes as the United States was at war and acting in self-defense.

Koh said the government was careful to limit attacks to only "legitimate" military objectives and to ensure attacks adhered to the principle of "proportionality," keeping civilian casualties to a minimum.

Civilian deaths from the drone war have triggered popular anger and fed anti-US sentiment in Pakistan.

Pakistan publicly criticizes the targeted assassinations but quietly cooperates with the Americans, analysts say, with Islamabad allowing the use of an air base on Pakistani soil -- a detail a US senator accidentally let slip at a hearing last year.

With AFP.

'We are not satisfied'

February 27, 2010 - 1:16PM

Australia is not satisfied with Israeli explanations about the fraudulent use of Australian passports in the assassination of a Hamas operator, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says.

Mr Rudd said on Saturday the federal government had to "proceed very carefully" in the controversy because of its complex security nature.

Israeli's ambassador to Australia was summoned on Thursday for an urgent meeting with Foreign Minister Stephen Smith.

"When it comes to Australian passport fraud or the use and abuse of Australian passports, this government has an absolutely hard line on defending the integrity of our passport system because millions of the travelling public depend on that each year," Mr Rudd told reporters in Adelaide on Saturday.

"That is why the foreign minister has called in the Israeli ambassador and asked for an explanation.

"Thus far we are not satisfied with that explanation."

Assassins with suspected links to the Israeli spy agency Mossad are believed to have stolen the identities of three Victorians.

The suspects were then involved in the murder of senior Hamas operator Mahmud al-Mabhuh in a Dubai luxury hotel on January 20.

Mr Rudd sidestepped criticism from one of the three Australians involved that they had not been contacted by Australian officials.

Nicole McCabe, 27, said she had no idea how her identity was stolen, as she still had her Australian passport in her Tel Aviv apartment, where she lives with husband.

Mr Rudd said: "My advice is that Australian officials have been in contact with a range of those associated with the most recent matters.

"Because these involve very complex and security intelligence matters, we have to proceed very carefully.

"I am just weighing my words very carefully.

"I wish to tread very carefully with the security and intelligence matters which arise in relation to each of the individuals and families concerned with this matter.

"Therefore I'm choosing my words very carefully so as not to compromise any person or so as not to compromise any continuing investigation."

AAP

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/national/we-are-not-satisfied-20100227-p9tm.html

Dick Cheney Admits to Torture

Dick Cheney Admits to Torture Conspiracy

By Robert Parry, Consortium News
Posted on February 15, 2010, Printed on February 16, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145671/

On Sunday, Cheney pronounced himself "a big supporter of waterboarding," a near-drowning technique that has been regarded as torture back to the Spanish Inquisition and that has long been treated by U.S. authorities as a serious war crime, such as when Japanese commanders were prosecuted for using it on American prisoners during World War II.

Cheney was unrepentant about his support for the technique. He answered with an emphatic "yes" when asked if he had opposed the Bush administration’s decision to suspend the use of waterboarding – after it was employed against three "high-value detainees" sometimes in repetitive sequences. He added that waterboarding should still be "on the table" today.

Cheney then went further. Speaking with a sense of impunity, he casually negated a key line of defense that senior Bush officials had hidden behind for years – that the brutal interrogations were approved by independent Justice Department legal experts who thus gave the administration a legitimate reason to believe the actions were within the law.

However, on Sunday, Cheney acknowledged that the White House had told the Justice Department lawyers what legal opinions to render. In other words, the opinions amounted to ordered-up lawyering to permit the administration to do whatever it wanted.

In responding to a question about why he had so aggressively attacked President Barack Obama’s counter-terrorism policies, Cheney explained that he had been concerned about the new administration prosecuting some CIA operatives who had handled the interrogations and "disbarring lawyers with the Justice Department who had helped us put those policies together. …

"I thought it was important for some senior person in the administration to stand up and defend those people who’d done what we asked them to do."

Cheney’s comment about the Justice lawyers who had "done what we asked them to do" was an apparent reference to John Yoo and his boss, Jay Bybee, at the Office of Legal Council (OLC), a powerful agency that advises the President on the limits of his power.

In 2002, Yoo – while working closely with White House officials – drafted legal memos that permitted waterboarding and other brutal techniques by narrowly defining torture. He also authored legal opinions that asserted virtual dictatorial powers for a President during war, even one as vaguely defined as the "war on terror." Yoo’s key memos were then signed by Bybee.

In 2003, after Yoo left to be a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and Bybee was elevated to a federal appeals court judgeship in San Francisco, their successors withdrew the memos because of the sloppy scholarship. However, in 2005, President George W. Bush appointed a new acting chief of the OLC, Steven Bradbury, who restored many of the Yoo-Bybee opinions.

Legal Fig Leaf

In the years that followed, Bush administration officials repeatedly cited the Yoo-Bybee-Bradbury legal guidance when insisting that the "enhanced interrogation" of "war on terror" detainees – as well as prisoners from the Iraq and Afghan wars – did not cross the line into torture.

In essence, the Bush-Cheney defense was that the OLC lawyers offered honest opinions and that everyone from the President and Vice President, who approved use of the interrogation techniques, down to the CIA interrogators, who conducted the torture, operated in good faith.

If, however, that narrative proved to be false – if the lawyers had colluded with the policymakers to create legal excuses for criminal acts – then the Bush-Cheney defense would collapse. Rather than diligent lawyers providing professional advice, the picture would be of Mob consiglieres counseling crime bosses how to evade the law.

Though Bush administration defenders have long denied that the legal opinions were cooked, the evidence has long supported the conspiratorial interpretation. For instance, in his 2006 book War by Other Means, Yoo himself described his involvement in frequent White House meetings regarding what "other means" should receive a legal stamp of approval. Yoo wrote:

"As the White House held its procession of Christmas parties and receptions in December 2001, senior lawyers from the Attorney General’s office, the White House counsel’s office, the Departments of State and Defense and the NSC [National Security Council] met a few floors away to discuss the work on our opinion. …

"This group of lawyers would meet repeatedly over the next months to develop policy on the war on terrorism. "

Yoo said meetings were usually chaired by Alberto Gonzales, who was then White House counsel and later became Bush’s second Attorney General. Yoo identified other key players as Timothy Flanigan, Gonzales’s deputy; William Howard Taft IV from State; John Bellinger from the NSC; William "Jim" Haynes from the Pentagon; and David Addington, counsel to Cheney.

Yoo’s Account

In his book, Yoo described a give-and-take among participants at the meeting with the State Department’s Taft challenging Yoo’s OLC view that Bush could waive the Geneva Conventions regarding the invasion of Afghanistan (by labeling it a "failed state"). Taft noted that the Taliban was the recognized government of the country.

"We thought Taft’s memo represented the typically conservative thinking of foreign ministries, which places a priority on stabilizing relations with other states – even if it means creating or maintaining fictions – rather than adapting to new circumstances," Yoo wrote.

Regarding objections from the Pentagon’s judge advocate generals – who feared that waiving the Geneva Conventions would endanger American soldiers – Yoo again stressed policy concerns, not legal logic.

"It was far from obvious that following the Geneva Conventions in the war against al-Qaeda would be wise," Yoo wrote. "Our policy makers had to ask whether [compliance] would yield any benefit or act as a hindrance."

What Yoo’s book and other evidence make clear is that the lawyers from the Justice Department’s OLC weren’t just legal scholars handing down opinions from an ivory tower; they were participants in how to make Bush’s desired actions "legal."

They were the lawyerly equivalents of those U.S. intelligence analysts, who – in the words of the British "Downing Street Memo" – "fixed" the facts around Bush’s desire to justify invading Iraq.

The importance of this question – whether the OLC lawyers were honest brokers or criminal conspirators – was not missed by some of the congressional leaders who pressed for a serious investigation of Bush’s use of torture and other war crimes.

Two years ago, Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, wrote a letter to the Justice Department’s watchdog agencies requesting an investigation into the role that "Justice Department officials [played] in authorizing and/or overseeing the use of waterboarding by the Central Intelligence Agency... and whether those who authorized it violated the law."

In the Feb. 12, 2008, letter, the senators questioned whether the OLC lawyers were "insulated from outside pressure to reach a particular conclusion" and whether Bush’s White House and the CIA played any role in influencing "deliberations about the lawfulness of waterboarding," a technique that creates the sensation of drowning.

Whitehouse, a former federal prosecutor, said those questions were designed to get to the point that having in-house lawyers dream up a legal argument doesn’t make an action legal, especially if the lawyers were somehow induced to produce the opinion.

Defining Torture

In the case of waterboarding and other abusive interrogation tactics, Yoo and Bybee generated a memo, dated Aug. 1, 2002, that came up with a novel and narrow definition of torture, essentially lifting the language from an unrelated law regarding health benefits.

The Yoo-Bybee legal opinion stated that unless the amount of pain administered to a detainee led to injuries that might result in "death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions" then the interrogation technique could not be defined as torture.

Since waterboarding is not intended to cause death or organ failure – only the panicked gag reflex associated with drowning – it was deemed not to be torture.

The "torture memo" and related legal opinions were considered so unprofessional that Bybee’s replacement to head the OLC, Jack Goldsmith, himself a conservative Republican, took the extraordinary step of withdrawing them after he was appointed in October 2003.

However, Goldsmith was pushed out of his job after a confrontation with Cheney’s counsel Addington, and the later appointment of Bradbury enabled the Bush White House to reinstate many of the Yoo-Bybee opinions.

Last month, Newsweek reported that Yoo and Bybee had avoided any disciplinary recommendations because a draft report by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility had been rewritten to remove harsh criticism that the two lawyers had violated professional standards, softening the language to simple criticism of their judgment.

The weaker language meant that the Justice Department would not refer the cases to state bar associations for possible disbarment proceedings.

Cheney’s frank comments on "This Week" – corroborating that Yoo and Bybee "had done what we asked them to do" – suggest that former Bush administration officials are confident that they will face no accountability from the Obama administration for war crimes.

Though the ABC News interviewer Jonathan Karl deserves some credit for posing the waterboarding question to Cheney, it was notable that Karl didn’t react with any shock or even a follow-up when Cheney pronounced himself a fan of the torture practice. Cheney’s waterboarding endorsement was only a footnote in ABC’s online account of the interview.

Surely, if a leader of another country had called himself "a big supporter of waterboarding," there would have been a clamor for his immediate arrest and trial at The Hague.

That Cheney feels he can operate with such impunity is a damning commentary on the rule of law in the United States, at least when it comes to the nation’s elites.

Robert Parry's new book is Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq."

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