Fired U.N. diplomat says he warned against fraud

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon fired the top U.S. official at the U.N. mission in Afghanistan on Wednesday over differences the official, Peter Galbraith, had with his boss over how to deal with charges of fraud in the Afghan presidential election. Galbraith tells NPR the dispute was over whether the U.N. should do anything about the fraud in the Afghan presidential election.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon fired the top U.S. official at the U.N. mission in Afghanistan on Wednesday over differences the official, Peter Galbraith, had with his boss over how to deal with charges of fraud in the Afghan presidential election.

A statement issued by Ban’s office said the secretary-general had decided to “recall” Galbraith and end his appointment as the U.N.’s deputy special representative to Afghanistan. Galbraith, the former U.S. ambassador to Croatia, was publicly critical of apparent corruption in the Aug. 20 presidential election, and was at odds with his boss, Special Representative Kai Eide, over how the U.N. should have responded to the election.

Preliminary results from the Aug. 20 election show that President Hamid Karzai won a majority, but final results have been delayed by fraud allegations that prompted a partial recount.

Galbraith tells NPR’s Robert Siegel that the disagreement with Eide centered on “ghost” polling stations — set up in insecure areas and that could be used to produce votes that were never cast. He says he also disagreed with Eide on sharing U.N. data on fraud with Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission.

Eide, Galbraith says, opposed sharing data, and decided that the U.N. would say nothing about the polling centers after the Afghan government complained about Galbraith’s call to close them.

“The dispute was whether the United Nations should do anything about the fraud that took place,” Galbraith says.

Continue reading: SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA PUBLIC RADIO

G20 protesters blasted by sonic cannon

Only a few hundreds protesters took to the streets of Pittsburgh to mark the opening day of the G20 summit of world leaders, but the police were taking no chances.

Sonic weapons or long-range acoustic devices have been used by the US military overseas, notably against Somali pirates and Iraqi insurgents.

But US security forces turned the piercing sound on their own citizens yesterday to widespread outrage. Pittsburgh officials told the New York Times that it was the first time “sound cannon” had been used publicly.

[Warning: the video below contains very loud audio from the start]

The sonic weapon appear to be more effective than the Metropolitan police’s highly contentious kettling tactics used against G20 protesters in London. But it is equally controversial.

It is feared the sounds emitted are loud enough to damage eardrums and even cause fatal aneurysms.

Continue reading: THE GUARDIAN

Maddow Puts ACORN Scandal In Perspective

Rep. Alan Grayson: “Has the Federal Reserve Ever Tried to Manipulate the Stock Market”

Hitman says $25m offered ‘for killing Chavez’ – AJE

Al Jazeera has obtained exclusive footage of a Colombian contract killer detailing an alleged $25m plot to kill Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president.

He says the money was offered by Manuel Rosales, one of Chavez’s main political rivals, during a secret meeting in 1999

A Colombian paramilitary group took up the offer, according to the hitman.

Chavez has long said there is a plot by Colombia to kill him, and the relation between the two countries is tense.

Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo reports.

Sen. Feingold Questions Department of Justice Officials on PATRIOT Act

Senator Feingold questions Assistant Attorney General David Kris and Inspector General Glenn Fine at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on reauthorizing the USA PATRIOT Act on September 23, 2009.

Seven Former CIA Directors Want To Bury The Truth

Last week, seven former directors of the Central Intelligence Agency, who made their own contributions to the CIA’s low esteem over the past 35 years, asked President Barack Obama to make sure there is no criminal investigation of the crimes associated with the Agency’s detentions and interrogations policies over the past eight years.

Their letter to the president is particularly self-serving for three of the directors (Michael Hayden, Porter Goss, and George Tenet), who would presumably be the subject of any investigation, and simply self-aggrandizing for the others (John Deutch, James Woolsey, William Webster, and James Schlesinger), whose stewardship of the CIA since the early 1970s has contributed to the Agency’s loss of influence and credibility.

The key to managing a complex organization such as the CIA is based on the integrity and competence of the director and his senior management. These traits were certainly lacking during the two decades these “magnificent seven” were at the helm.

The letter itself represents a stunning display of irrelevance and wrong-headedness. The former directors argue, for example, that any reopened investigation would damage the intelligence community’s ability to obtain cooperation of foreign intelligence agencies.

In fact, the opposite is the case. Foreign intelligence agencies have been holding back their liaison activities and their cooperation with the CIA because of the crimes associated with secret prisons, torture and abuse, and extraordinary renditions. It is quite unbelievable that CIA leaders decided to compromise the governments and intelligence services of the European community by locating secret prisons and using logistical facilities within their borders. It is very unlikely that any member of the European Union will cooperate with such CIA activities in the future.

The seven directors argue predictably that career prosecutors have already investigated the relevant cases where “Agency officers appeared to have acted beyond their existing legal authorities,” but with the exception of a prosecution of a CIA contractor there was a determination that prosecutions were not warranted. They do not mention that a political appointee in the Bush administration, Paul McNulty, was responsible for these decisions and they do not refer to the unconscionable politicization of the Bush administration’s Justice Department.

Continue reading: THE PUBLIC RECORD

Who killed JFK? Gaddafi asks UN

Eccentric Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi lives up to his reputation during his first visit to America

It was meant to be a day of global reconciliation, when the new leader of the free world put all the rancour of the past eight years behind him and heralded an era of unity. And so it might have been were it not for a short man, swathed in saffron robes and a black felt hat waving his arms around and shouting: “Terrorism!”

Muammar Gaddafi – for it was he – grabbed his 15 minutes of fame at the UN building in New York today and ran with it. He ran with it so hard he stretched it to an hour and 40 minutes, six times longer than his allotted slot, to the dismay of UN organisers.

On his first visit to the US, and in his maiden address to the UN general assembly, Gaddafi fully lived up to his reputation for eccentricity, bloody-mindedness and extreme verbiage.

He tore up a copy of the UN charter in front of startled delegates, accused the security council of being an al-Qaida like terrorist body, called for George Bush and Tony Blair to be put on trial for the Iraq war, demanded $7.7tn in compensation for the ravages of colonialism on Africa, and wondered whether swine flu was a biological weapon created in a military laboratory. At one point, he even demanded to know who was behind the killing of JFK. All in all, a pretty ordinary 100 minutes in the life of the colonel.

To be fair, this was a man suffering from severe sleep deprivation. The US state department, New York city council and Donald Trump had prevented him from laying his weary head in an air-conditioned tent in New Jersey, Central Park and Bedford respectively, and the resulting strain was evident.

“I woke up at 4am, before dawn!” Gaddafi lamented about an hour into his speech, adding for the benefit of the jetlagged diplomats seated stony-faced in front of him: “You should be asleep! You’re all tired after a sleepless night!”

Continue reading: THE GUARDIAN

How Israel silenced its Gaza war protesters

A new report from Adalah shows how the courts and police attempted to stamp out opposition to Operation Cast Lead “This is a time of war, and every incident harms the people’s morale.”

This was not a sentence in a right-wing journal, but rather a statement by an Israel Police representative during Operation Cast Lead seeking to persuade the Tel Aviv District Court to block anti-war protesters from the city.

Around the same time, in a Haifa Magistrate’s Court hearing on extending the remand of minors, Judge Moshe Gilad stated: “Anyone who enables remarks denouncing the state and backing its enemies, even as they rain missiles upon its citizens, must obey its laws, and certainly is prohibited from attacking police who come to impose order. It is similar to a person spitting in the well from which he drinks.”

Here are some of the pearls in Adalah’s new report: “Prohibited protest – how the law enforcement authorities limit the freedom of expression of opponents of the Gaza military attack.” The document, being published for the first time here, was written by attorneys Abeer Baker and Rana Asali. They reviewed and analyzed hundreds of rulings and detention requests, interviewed dozens of human rights activists who were arrested and threatened during the Gaza attack, and documented the behavior of Israeli academia during the moments of truth last winter.

Continue reading: HAARETZ

Rep. Neugebauer: White House positions ‘being handled out as candy suckers’

Rep. Randy Neugebauer: White House positions ‘being handled out as candy suckers’ – 9/19/2009

AJE: Inside Iraq – Iraq’s drug challenge

Since the 2003 US-led invasion, Iraq has witnessed a dramatic rise in the cultivation and trafficking of drugs. Reports indicate that drug abuse is on the rise among Iraqi youth and that armed militias have muscled in on this lucrative trade. So how can Iraq combat this growing problem? Inside Iraq investigates.

EU funding ‘Orwellian’ artificial intelligence plan to monitor public for “abnormal behaviour”

The European Union is spending millions of pounds developing “Orwellian” technologies designed to scour the internet and CCTV images for “abnormal behaviour”.

A five-year research programme, called Project Indect, aims to develop computer programmes which act as “agents” to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and even individual computers.

Its main objectives include the “automatic detection of threats and abnormal behaviour or violence”.
Project Indect, which received nearly £10 million in funding from the European Union, involves the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and computer scientists at York University, in addition to colleagues in nine other European countries.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of human rights group Liberty, described the introduction of such mass surveillance techniques as a “sinister step” for any country, adding that it was “positively chilling” on a European scale.

The Indect research, which began this year, comes as the EU is pressing ahead with an expansion of its role in fighting crime, terrorism and managing migration, increasing its budget in these areas by 13.5% to nearly £900 million.

The European Commission is calling for a “common culture” of law enforcement to be developed across the EU and for a third of police officers – more than 50,000 in the UK alone – to be given training in European affairs within the next five years.

Continue reading: THE TIMES

DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show

Scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence, undermining the credibility of what has been considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases.
The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person.

“You can just engineer a crime scene,” said Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, which has been published online by the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics. “Any biology undergraduate could perform this.”

Dr. Frumkin is a founder of Nucleix, a company based in Tel Aviv that has developed a test to distinguish real DNA samples from fake ones that it hopes to sell to forensics laboratories.

The planting of fabricated DNA evidence at a crime scene is only one implication of the findings. A potential invasion of personal privacy is another.

Using some of the same techniques, it may be possible to scavenge anyone’s DNA from a discarded drinking cup or cigarette butt and turn it into a saliva sample that could be submitted to a genetic testing company that measures ancestry or the risk of getting various diseases. Celebrities might have to fear “genetic paparazzi,” said Gail H. Javitt of the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University.

Tania Simoncelli, science adviser to the American Civil Liberties Union, said the findings were worrisome.

“DNA is a lot easier to plant at a crime scene than fingerprints,” she said. “We’re creating a criminal justice system that is increasingly relying on this technology.”

Continue reading: NEW YORK TIMES

“Fox News: distorting, not reporting” – CNN

CNN ad responds to Fox ad’s false claim: “Fox News: distorting, not reporting”

Why Lie?