|  Author | Topic: Gulag World XII (Read 3,127 times) |
Big Bunny
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|  | Re: Gulag World XII
« Reply #30 on Nov 16, 2011, 10:42am » | |
Romanian arrested for hacking into NASA's servers
November 17, 2011 - 2:20AM
A court in Romania has ordered the arrest of a Romanian man accused of hacking into NASA's servers.
Court spokesman Lucian Marian in the northwest city of Cluj says Robert Butyka would be arrested for 29 days as he awaits trial.
The 26-year-old Romanian national, currently in detention, is charged with breaching security measures to access several of NASA's servers in December 2010.
Advertisement: Story continues below
Prosecutors said Wednesday that he interfered with server data, causing NASA losses of about $500,000 (euro371,000). There was no comment from the U.S. Embassy.
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-tec....117-1njli.html
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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Posts: 50,825
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| | Re: Gulag World XII
« Reply #31 on Nov 16, 2011, 11:18am » | |
UK urged to prevent vulture funds preying on world's poorest countries
Campaigners demand Jersey legal loophole be closed as financiers seek $100m from the DRC
* Greg Palast, Maggie O'Kane and Chavala Madlena
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 November 2011 23.15 GMT
Britain is being urged to help close down a legal loophole that lets financiers known as "vulture funds" use courts in Jersey to claim hundreds of millions of pounds from the world's poorest countries.
The call came from international poverty campaigners as one of the vulture funds was poised to be awarded a $100m (£62m) debt payout against the Democratic Republic of the Congo after taking action in the Jersey courts.
"The government could close this loophole tomorrow if it wanted to and stop tax havens becoming the 'go-to' destinations for vulture speculators. These people seek to profit by forcing the world's poorest countries to pay them millions," said Max Lawson, head of policy at Oxfam.
Vulture funds legally buy up worthless debt when countries are at war or suffering from a natural disaster and defaulting on their sovereign debt. Once the country has begun to stabilise, vulture funds cash in their cheap debt deeds, at massively inflated cost to the countries.
In the case before the Jersey court, to be decided next month, FG Hemisphere, run by vulture financier Peter Grossman, is trying to collect $100m from the DRC on a debt that appeared to start out at just $3.3m. The original debt was owed to the former Yugoslav government to build power lines.
Jubilee Debt Campaign, Oxfam and Christian Aid are just three of the big international charities calling for vulture funds to be banned.
"It would be catastrophic for the world not to close these loopholes. Offshore centres such as Jersey are the outriders for dangerous deregulated dealing … The Jersey government also needs to act fast to close the loophole before it is too late," said Tim Jones, of the JDC. Jones will arrive in Jersey on Wednesday to lobby the government to close the loophole.
Grossman told a joint investigation by BBC's Newsnight and the Guardian: "I am not doing anything wrong. I am collecting a legitimate debt."
However, the investigation has found evidence that the debt was improperly acquired. The investigation has discovered that the original loan, owed to Bosnia and intended to finance the power lines, may have been illegally sold to Grossman, according to the Bosnian authorities.
Bosnia's police claim the former prime minister, Nedzad Brankovic, who sold the debt, was acting illegally as he did not personally own it. Instead, it belonged to the Bosnian state.
Zufer Derviševic, chief inspector of Bosnia's financial police, says Brankovic acted illegally: "Of course it is illegal, that's why we filed a criminal complaint. The financial police saw elements of criminal activity within the management's actions and this crime is abuse of power."
Although the Bosnian police have recommended Brankovic be charged, no charges have been brought against him.
The critical ruling on the DRC comes when the country is facing yet another cholera outbreak. Boukari Tare, a Unicef sanitation specialist in the DRC, said the $100m that could be awarded to the fund would save the lives of 200,000 children.
Outside his New York home, Grossman was questioned on whether he thought his pursuance of $100m from the war-ravaged country was fair. He replied: "Yeah, I do, actually." He added he was unaware the debt was tainted by any potential illegality and disputed its real value was $3.3m.
Before turning to the Jersey loophole, Grossman's company had tried unsuccessfully to seize the DRC embassy in Washington as a downpayment on the debt.
The bid was turned down by the US authorities, but FG Hemisphere tried once more in the US before moving on to Hong Kong. Both actions were unsuccessful.
Despite previous success for FG in the English courts, winning $30m from the DRC in 2007, the new Debt Relief Act in effect on the mainland meant Jersey became an attractive breeding ground for vulture funds as it did not apply there.
The exact number of lawsuits involving vulture funds operating in offshore tax havens is unclear, as many of these funds are highly secretive of their holdings.
The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank said many countries had been pursued by vulture funds, including Cameroon, Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda, and the DRC. The IMF has said that vulture funds are engaged in claims seeking a total of $1.47bn from the world's poorest countries.
Lawson added: "It's outrageous that when the rest of the world is trying to help rebuild these desperately poor countries, these guys can swoop in and use a legal loophole in Jersey to demand millions of dollars that could be spent instead getting kids into school."
The DRC's hopes rest on an appeal next month, when the privy council in London will decide whether the $100m award should stand and Jersey considers shutting down the loophole for good.
Additional reporting by the Centre for Investigative Reporting in Sarajevo
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-develop....ds-preying-poor
AND:
Vulture funds – how do they work?
Funds who buy up debts of countries mired in war and chaos have received payouts of $1bn and are due a further $1.3bn
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 November 2011 23.15 GMT
![[image]](http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/5151/peoplewalkalongthemai00.jpg "[image]")
People walk along the main road to Goma in Democratic Republic of Congo after fleeing fighting. The country can ill afford to pay off vultures. Photograph: Reuters
How do vulture funds make their money?
They buy up the debts of countries in chaos and war, speculating on the fact that when investors finally come back into the country – often encouraged by generous debt writedown schemes and International Monetary Fund programmes – the vultures will get their money back with huge interest on top, benefiting from the fledgling trade and new liquidity.
What's wrong with that?
These desperately poor countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, where 100 women a week are dying in childbirth, have better things to do with their money than pay off the vultures. Investors and companies who want to put money into rebuilding the countries, by investing in natural resources – mining, gold, diamonds and cobalt for example – simply stay away. They worry that they will also be targeted by the vultures by getting involved in joint projects with the government. One vulture fund, FG Hemisphere, tried to seize the embassy of the DRC in Washington as payment for the debt.
How big is the problem with these vulture funds?
The World Bank estimates that more than one-third of the countries that have qualified for its debt relief programmes have been targeted with lawsuits by at least 26 vultures. The funds have so far received payouts totalling $1bn.
Why is the Jersey loophole so important?
Many countries have now banned the vulture funds from collecting on the debts through their courts. But a few places, mainly tax havens like Jersey and the British Virgin Islands, still have not closed the loophole. Next month one vulture is hoping for a $100m payout through a court in Jersey. There is still a flock of at least another 22 vultures waiting for a further $1.3bn in payouts.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-develop....s-how-they-work
AND:
Vulture funds await Jersey decision on poor countries' debts
Pressure grows to end trade that has made $1bn for speculators but has been blamed for delaying recovery of war-torn countries
* Greg Palast, Maggie O'Kane and Chavala Madlena
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 November 2011 23.15 GMT
Jean Ngaigy, the head of a school in Lepaigagone, interprets the words of one of her six-year-old students. The girl is happy to have a school now. Her favourite subjects are maths and French.
Like many children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, both the girl's parents were killed in the country's civil war, which left up to 7.2 million people dead. Now, though, a fragile peace in the town, outside the capital Kinshasa, means mines are reopening and the factory is coming back to life. The school has been rebuilt and has running water. In the DRC, that represents hope.
The DRC should be one of Africa's richest countries. It has a mineral wealth estimated to be around $24 trillion (£15tn). There are huge deposits of cobalt, diamonds, gold, copper, oil and 80% of the world's supplies of coltan ore – a valuable mineral used in computers and mobile phones.
Yet 100 women a week are still dying in childbirth and 16,000 children under the age of five die every year. One in three children in the DRC will never get anything more than primary education.
One of the reasons the country has been unable to recover is that it is being pursued by international debt speculators, known as vulture funds, through offshore tax havens such as Jersey, for debts that were run up during 30 years of war and civil war.
Vulture funds operate by buying up a country's debt when it is in a state of chaos. When the country has stabilised, vulture funds return to demand millions of dollars in interest repayments and fees on the original debt. New York vulture fund FG Hemisphere has gone to Jersey to claim $100m from the DRC because a legal loophole means that the island remains free of anti-vulture laws that were passed in the UK last year.
Jersey will decide next month whether to allow its courts to let the $100m go to FG Hemisphere.
It has been 16 years since most of the world began writing off the debts of the world's poorest countries, but the vulture funds, a club of between 26 and 35 speculators, have ignored the debt concerts by pop stars such as Bono and pleas from the likes of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to give the countries a break and a chance to get back on their feet.
The DRC has been a particularly fruitful target for vulture funds, being ravaged by conflict but rich in natural resources. One of the earliest cases against the country came in 1996 when $30m worth of Congolese sovereign debt was purchased by Kensington International Inc, a subsidiary of the well-established hedge fund Elliott Associates, headed by prominent vulture financier Paul Singer.
Singer, a major contributor to the Republican party, reportedly bought the debt at a significant discount and began pursuing lawsuits against the impoverished African nation through the world's courtrooms. Bloomberg has reported that the DRC has spent an estimated $5m fighting Singer's lawsuits. Finally in 2005 Kensington International was awarded $39m in the UK high court.
So far, according to the World Bank, the top 26 vultures have managed to collect $1bn from the world's poorest countries and still have a further $1.3bn to collect. Gordon Brown has described the payouts as "morally outrageous".
The World Bank has described vulture funds as "a threat to debt relief efforts" and the former, Bush-era US treasury secretary Henry Paulson said: "I deplore what the vulture funds are doing" in testimony before the House of Representatives' financial committee in 2007.
In terms of public donations, the impact of the vulture funds is huge. The $1bn collected by the funds is equivalent to more than double the International Committee of the Red Cross's entire budget for Africa in 2011. $1bn could fund the entire UN appeal for the famine in Somalia and is more than twice the amount of money raised by Save the Children last year.
Vulture funds also scare off new investors, who the vultures will target their investment, from a country. In the DRC, a large US company with plans to invest millions in mining pulled out last year after one vulture sued it as a result of its business with the DRC government.
It is thought FG Hemisphere bought the debt for which it is claiming $100m in the Jersey court for $3.3m, with the help of another vulture fund, Debt Advisory International (DAI).
FG Hemisphere, headed by Peter Grossman and DAI, run by Michael Sheehan – both men were former Morgan Stanley consultants – have attempted to collect on the debt by suing DRC state companies and their foreign investors.
When interviewed as part of a joint investigation between Newsnight and the Guardian, Grossman defending his involvement in the DRC, saying "he wasn't beating up on the Congo but collecting on a legitimate debt". The last decade has seen FG and DAI chase the DRC, for the same debt, in the United States, Jersey, Hong Kong and Australia. In 2010, Britain passed a law banning vulture funds from collecting in UK courts. But the legislation failed to mention Jersey. Because Jersey is not specifically mentioned, it is automatically excluded under British law, a loophole that FG Hemisphere immediately exploited.
Grossman said it was not the vultures whose activities needed to be investigated but mismanagement in the DRC. He also denied having any knowledge that, as alleged by the Bosnian police, the debt was acquired illegally in the first place.
Sheehan, who is nicknamed Goldfinger, brokered the original deal with Bosnian state company EnergoInvest and owns some of the debt. The DRC originally owed the money to EnergoInvest for a contract to build power lines.
But as Grossman looks for payment from DRC through the Jersey legal system, the world's biggest charities, including Oxfam, Christian Aid and Jubilee Debt Campaign UK, are appealing to Jersey to close the loophole.
Jubilee Debt Campaign UK, which has been campaigning for debt relief for over a decade, is sending a representative to Jersey next week to put the case directly to the island's government to close the vulture funds' loophole.
Tim Jones, of Jubilee Debt Campaign, said: "The DRC is the second poorest country in the world. The country desperately needs to be able to use its rich resources to alleviate poverty, not squander them on paying unjust debts to vulture funds left by the dictator Joseph Mobutu. Jersey has to shut vulture funds down."
UK legislation on vulture funds has already had an impact, when Liberia last year reached agreement to repay just over 3% of the face value of a $43m debt.
That case was originally brought by two Caribbean-based vulture funds, Hamsah Investments and Wall Capital Ltd, over a debt dating back to the 1970s and it sparked a furore when the high court ordered Liberia to repay the full debt in 2009. Liberia mobilised debt campaigners, who pushed for a change in the law, resulting in the Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Act 2010 being passed.
The law, a world first, requires commercial creditors to comply with the terms of international debt cancellation schemes, which specify a single discount rate for creditors to ensure equal treatment.
The law applies to the UK courts and ensures that public money given towards debt cancellation is not diverted to private investors.
The World Bank estimates that more than one-third of the countries which have qualified for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) debt relief have been targeted by vulture funds. HIPC countries are those whose debt is unsustainable and qualify for loans from the World Bank's International Development Association or the IMF's poverty reduction and growth facility.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is poised on the edge of a fragile peace but elections later this month could again destabilise the country. Having spent $5m fighting off the vulture funds, the DRC is waiting for news from 4,000 miles away, where Jersey will decide whether the vultures will get their money.
Additional reporting by the Centre for Investigative Reporting in Sarajevo, Josh Strauss and Nicolas Niarchos
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-develop....-decision-debts
AND:
Vulture funds – the key players
Profiles of the people using courts in Jersey to claim hundreds of millions of pounds from the world's poorest countries
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 November 2011 23.15 GMT
![[image]](http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/2389/michaelsheehanthedirec0.jpg "[image]")
Michael Sheehan, the director of the vulture fund Donegal International. Photograph: Guardian
Michael Sheehan
The director of the vulture fund Donegal International likes to be known as Goldfinger, after the James Bond villain, and has a penchant for expensive Cadillacs.
Donegal owns a $15m (£9.5m) Zambian debt, dating back to 1979, which was originally purchased from Romania in 1999 for $3m. Once in possession of the debt, Donegal began demands from Zambia, which handed over $2.5m before the firm sued them in the UK for defaulting. The high court awarded Donegal $15.5m in 2007 despite the judge's concerns that Sheehan was "cavalier in presenting his evidence". An experienced lawyer, Sheehan has worked at law firms in Washington DC and Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Incongruously, he spent most of the 1990s as a counsel to a debt relief NGO before setting up DAI, a firm that advises vulture funds. DAI was instrumental in brokering the deal between FG Management in the acquisition of Congolese debt from Bosnia.
Peter Grossman
A former Morgan Stanley consultant, Grossman is the co-founder of the vulture fund FG Hemisphere, now FG Capital Management. Like Sheehan, Grossman and his now deceased partner Keith Fogerty are trained lawyers and set up an advisory firm for investors in the developing world in the 1990s.Grossman has successfully sued the DRC for $100m after acquiring debts owed to Bosnian state company EnergoInvest for $2.6m. The sale was signed off by the former Bosnian prime minister, Nedzad Brankovic, who has been investigated on corruption charges relating to his tenure at EnergoInvest. FG Management has chased its claim on the DRC's debt around the world's courtrooms, from Hong Kong to the US. Last November in Jersey FG's claim on $108.3m of Congolese money was successful. At present representations are being made to the Jersey government to ensure that this does not happen again. The privy council will meet on 8 December to discuss the issue.
Paul Singer
Singer is a major donor to the US Republican party and the founder of Elliott Management, which controls about $17bn from its Manhattan offices, including a 17% stake in UK company National Express. Elliott's principle investment strategy is buying distressed debt cheaply and selling it at a profit or suing for full payment. In 1995 it bought defaulted Peruvian bank debt for $20m and successfully sued for $58m.
A subsidiary of Elliott, Kensington International, bought a $30m debt owed by the DRC at a cut-down price, and was awarded more than $100m in interest in 2002 and 2003. Singer has so far managed to seize $39m of the country's oil sales. Another firm affiliated to Elliott, NML Capital, is currently trying to recoup at least $182m bought from Argentina before it defaulted in 2002.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-develop....nds-key-players
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: Gulag World XII
« Reply #32 on Nov 16, 2011, 12:06pm » | |
Neo-Nazi terror scandal grows in Germany
Further evidence emerges of German security service failures that let far-right terrorists commit 10 murders
* Helen Pidd in Zwickau, Germany
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 16 November 2011 10.57 GMT
![[image]](http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/4526/neonaziterrorcell008287.jpg "[image]")
Beate Zschäpe, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt, believed to be founder members of the neo-Nazi terror group the NSU. Photograph: Reuters
More damaging evidence has emerged of the German authorities' failure to stop a group of neo-Nazi terrorists who killed 10 people, robbed 14 banks and planted two nail bombs during 13 years on the run.
On Tuesday, the Hessen branch of the domestic intelligence service, the Verfassungsschutz, or BfV, admitted that one of its agents had been present in April 2006 when two members of the National Socialist Underground (NSU) shot dead a 21-year-old Turk in an internet café.
It has now emerged that the agent, who was transferred to less-sensitive work following an investigation at the time, openly held rightwing views and was known in the village where he grew up as "Little Adolf". When police raided his flat following the murder, they found a cache of guns, for which he had a legitimate licence, and extracts from Mein Kampf, according to Der Spiegel. There are unconfirmed reports that the man was present at three or more other neo-Nazi murder scenes.
Hajo Funke, one of Germany's most foremost experts in rightwing extremism, said on ARD television: "It can't be ruled out that his BfV employee took part in the murder, and that is a scandal." He has called the case "a Watergate-scale" crisis for German secret intelligence.
The interior minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, has called for a national register listing all neo-Nazis. The database should hold "information about potentially violent rightwing extremists and rightwing politically motivated acts of violence", he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. It should be accessible to all 16 regional branches of the domestic intelligence service, as well as the national umbrella organisation, plus police authorities, he said.
Following the discovery of the terror cell's base in the quiet town of Zwickau, near the Czech border, the German government is under pressure to explain how the group managed to carry out their murderous acts undetected for so long. The two men and one woman believed to be founder members of the NSU were known to police in their home town of Jena, east Germany, after a bomb-making factory was discovered in the garage rented by the woman, Beate Zschäpe, in 1998.
The local branch of the Thuringian secret service allegedly had 24 lever-arch files on the trio and yet they only uncovered the cell years after they carried out at least 10 murders – and after the men were found dead, apparently following a joint suicide pact, and Zschäpe turned herself in to police.
Zschäpe has remained silent since turning herself in to police last week, but some local media reports suggested she had told police she was ready to be interviewed about her involvement on Wednesday.
On Tuesday evening, Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) voted at its party conference in Leipzig for a ban on the NPD (German Democratic party), a legal far-right group which has seats in a number of local parliaments in former east Germany. The opposition Social Democrat (SPD) party has also called for the NPD to be outlawed.
Such calls have been criticised by politicians in Merkel's own coalition. Hans-Peter Uhl, an expert in interior security from the CSU, the Bavarian sister party of the CDU, said: "There is no better sign of democracy than for the electorate to vote against the NPD at elections," he said. "That's the most noble way."
Uhl said it would be better for Germany's strict data protection laws should be changed to allow detectives to analyse communications. "The whole country is wondering how big the neo-Nazi quagmire is in Germany. Without using internet and telephone data collected from the Zwickau cell that is going to be difficult to establish," he told the Neue Osnabrücke Zeitung.
Earlier this week Merkel described the case as a "disgrace" for Germany.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov....service-scandal
PREVIOUSLY:
Germany shocked by secret service link to rightwing terror cell
Undercover officer was at scene of Turk's murder as rightwingers killed 10 times but stayed free for 13 years
* Helen Pidd in Zwickau
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 November 2011 19.59 GMT
An agent working for Germany's answer to MI5 was at the scene of one of the 10 murders carried out by neo-Nazi terrorists, the domestic intelligence agency has confirmed, fuelling speculation that the killers' movements were known to the authorities during their 13 years on the run.
The undercover officer was in an internet cafe in the central city of Kassel in Hessen when a 21-year-old Turk was shot at point blank range on 6 April 2006, a spokesman for the Hessen branch of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) said on Tuesday.
The admission has added yet more controversy to an already contentious case, which the chancellor, Angela Merkel, has described as "mortifying" for Germany.
The investigation into the activities of the so-called National Socialist Underground was broadened on Tuesday to take in previously unsolved crimes across the country, amid fears that a network of supporters may have helped them carry out further attacks.
These include suspected terror attacks in Cologne and Düsseldorf from 2000 to 2004 that injured more than 30 people, most of them foreigners, and the attempted 2008 murder of a Bavarian police chief who was stabbed by a masked assailant who yelled: "Greetings from the national resistance!".
Critics say German authorities have played down the existence of rightwing extremism, concentrating instead on the threats posed by leftwing terrorists and Islamic fundamentalists. Whether they deliberately turned a blind eye or genuinely did not have a handle on the violence being wrought by neo-Nazis is open to interpretation.
Authorities in the state of Thuringia, where the three key members of the terror cell all come from, admit they have 24 ringbinders full of intelligence on the trio.
"The intelligence service has completely failed," said Hans-Christian Ströbele, a member of the parliamentary committee which monitors Germany's secret service agencies, following an emergency meeting on Tuesday. "It's probably the biggest secret service cock-up since German reunification," said the Berliner Zeitung newspaper in an editorial.
The scandal has gripped Germany for days as the country struggles to understand how the rightwing terror cell managed to evade capture for so long despite being apparently responsible for 10 murders, including the death of a policewoman, at least 14 bank robberies and two vicious nail bomb attacks between 2000 and 2007. The group has been dubbed the Brown Army Faction, a reference to the Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader Meinhof gang, a leftwing terrorist group that committed a series of murders in the 1970s and 80s. In Germany, brown remains a colour inextricably linked with the Nazi uniform.
The case came to light earlier this month when two known neo-Nazis, Uwe Mundlos, 38, and Uwe Böhnhardt, 34, were found shot dead in a burnt out campervan in what appeared to be a twin suicide pact. Hours later, their flat in the quiet suburbs of the east German town of Zwickau was blown up, an explosion detonated by alleged accomplice Beate Zschäpe, 36, who turned herself into police days later.
When investigators searched the charred remains of the van and the house, they found a number of highly incriminating pieces of evidence, including the gun carried by Michele Kiesewetter, the 22-year-old police officer believed to have been shot dead in Heilbronn, Baden-Württemberg in 2007. They also discovered a bizarre Pink Panther-inspired homemade DVD gloating that the National Socialist Underground was responsible for a series of unsolved murders known as the Döner Killings, which targeted mostly Turkish immigrants in Germany, some of whom worked in fast food stalls, between 2000 and 2006.
Until now, German detectives have suggested that foreign gangs, probably from Turkey, were responsible for the murders: their investigation was even codenamed Operation Bosphorus.
Relatives of the victims say the reputations of the dead men were besmirched by investigators. Kerim Simsek, whose father Enver was shot down on 9 September 2000, claimed police said his father "was mixed up with the mafia and smuggled drugs – no one even mentioned a rightwing extremist motive," he told Bild.
Ströbele said Germany's elite had totally underestimated the threat of rightwing terrorism. "They have been determined to play it down. Just a few weeks ago, Hans-Peter Friedrich, the interior minister, was saying there was no rightwing terrorism in Germany," he said. "They are always very quick to jump to conclusions if they think leftwing terrorists or Islamist fundamentalists are responsible for a crime and yet they didn't want to believe there could be a serious problem with neo-Nazis."
Ströbele said that 160 officers worked on Operation Bosphorus, investigating 11,000 people "Why didn't they follow the trail to rightwing radicals?" he said, as he called for a thorough investigation to discover how the terror cell managed to evade capture. More information was needed to establish how and why the secret service agent was in the Kassel internet cafe when the shots were fired in 2006, he said. Until now, the agent has insisted it was an unhappy coincidence he was at the crime scene "either during the murder or within a minute or two of it", said Ströbele.
The agent was arrested after other witnesses noticed he was the only customer who failed to call the police. After being questioned as a suspect, he confessed his identity and no charges were brought. A spokesman for Hessen's BfV said he was subsequently moved out of intelligence work and into a less sensitive department of Hessen's regional council.
The national BfV continues to deny any contact with the three suspects or any knowledge of their whereabouts since 1998, when a warrant was issued for their arrest following the discovery of a bomb-making factory in a garage rented by Zschäpe. The Hessen branch said it had found no evidence that its agents were in contact with Mundlos, Böhnhardt and Zschäpe.
Germans try to make sense of scandal
Germany has been gripped by the scandal unfolding around the neo-Nazi National Socialist Underground. But so much of what has emerged so far does not quite make sense. Here are some questions ordinary Germans would like answering:
1. Why did Beate Zschäpe decide to turn herself in to the police? Is she hoping to turn supergrass and give state's evidence in return for a shorter sentence?
2. Did Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt really kill themselves? One man was shot in the head; another in the chest (the latter is an unusual form of suicide). Could Zschäpe have murdered them both? Did they set fire to their campervan before killing themselves or did someone else light the match afterwards?
3. Why did the two men burn the money they had apparently stolen from a Zwickauer bank that day rather than give it to Zschäpe?
4. How did the Pink Panther confession DVDs survive flames in the trio's Zwickau flat despite temperatures being so hot that investigators say they found melted guns?
5. How did the National Socialist Underground choose their victims? Were they all chosen at random?
6. Can the group be linked to any other unsolved crimes?
7. Did the authorities have any contact with the group during their 13 years on the run?
8. Why did investigators looking into the nine so-called Doner Killings blame foreign mafia rather than properly investigating rightwing hatred as a motive, considering that all the victims were immigrants?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov....-doner-killings
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
|
Big Bunny
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Posts: 50,825
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| | Re: Gulag World XII
« Reply #33 on Nov 17, 2011, 12:27pm » | |
Pope-imam kiss ad withdrawn
November 17, 2011 - 11:03AM
![[image]](http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/6048/scaledphpserver213filen.jpg "[image]")
A Benetton advertisement in Paris shows Pope Benedict XVI kissing Egypt’s Ahmed el Tayyeb on the lips. Photo: AFP
Italian clothes company Benetton has pulled a photo montage showing the Pope kissing a leading imam from its new global ad campaign after the Vatican issued a stern condemnation.
The company, which is no stranger to controversy over its advertising campaigns, said it was "sorry that the use of the image had so hurt the sensibilities of the faithful".
The statement, issued on Wednesday, came shortly after the Vatican expressed "the firmest protest for this absolutely unacceptable use of the image of the Holy Father".
Benetton's poster showed Pope Benedict XVI kissing on the lips Egypt's Ahmed el Tayyeb, imam of the Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo and a leading voice in Sunni Islam.
It launched Wednesday a new global advertising campaign called UNHATE that contained a series of photo montages of political and religious leaders kissing.
The company defended the campaign, saying its purpose "was solely to battle the culture of hate in all its forms".
There were other shock pictures showing US President Barack Obama kissing Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao in one picture and Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez in another.
One picture showed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu smooching Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas. In another, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is depicted kissing German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
A picture of Silvio Berlusconi kissing Merkel was pulled at the last minute after the jovial billionaire submitted his resignation last week.
The Vatican strongly criticised the Benedict ad.
"We must express the firmest protest for this absolutely unacceptable use of the image of the Holy Father, manipulated and exploited in a publicity campaign with commercial ends," Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said in a statement.
"This shows a grave lack of respect for the pope, an offence to the feelings of believers, a clear demonstration of how publicity can violate the basic rules of respect for people by attracting attention with provocation."
The Vatican was examining what steps to take "to guarantee a fair defence of respect for the image of the Holy Father", he said.
The posters appeared in Benetton clothing stores across the globe as well as in newspapers, magazines and on internet websites.
The passionate embrace between the pope and the imam was briefly shown on a banner held up near Rome's landmark Castel Sant'Angelo castle not far from the Vatican.
Benetton deputy chief Alessandro Benetton said earlier in a statement that the ads were "constructive provocation" intended "to give widespread visibility to an ideal notion of tolerance".
He said Benetton "chooses social issues and actively promotes humanitarian causes that could not otherwise have been communicated on a global scale".
But Luca Borgomeo, head of the Association of Italian Catholic Television Viewers, called for the ad to be removed.
"Is it possible Benetton could not come up with anything better?" he said.
The company, which became famous in the 1990s with a series of shocking ads, said it was also setting up a foundation to promote international tolerance.
The company said: "The central theme is the kiss, the most universal symbol of love, between world political and religious leaders."
One of the iconic Benetton ads - photographed by Oliviero Toscani - was of a young nun in white kissing a priest dressed in a black cassock, and others addressed important social issues such as AIDS and homosexuality.
Relations between the pope and the Al-Azhar imam, one of the leading voices in Sunni Islam, have been very tense particularly after Benedict expressed his solidarity with the victims of an attack on a Coptic church in Alexandria.
The statement was interpreted by Tayyeb as interference and he did not send a delegation to an inter-religious meeting hosted by Benedict last month.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/popeimam-kis....l#ixzz1dz5tkISp
FURTHER:
Al-Azhar slams pope-imam kiss ad as “absurd”
November 17, 2011
Al-Azhar, whose grand imam was pictured kissing the pope in a photo montage by Italian clothes company Benetton, on Thursday slammed the advertisement as "irresponsible and absurd."
So absurd was the concept that the institution – Sunni Islam's highest seat of learning – "is still hesitating as to whether it should issue a response," Mahmud Azab, adviser to Grand Imam Ahmed el-Tayyeb, told AFP.
Azab said he wondered if this type of campaign was "in fact dangerous for universal values and freedom of expression as understood in Europe."
For its part, the Vatican said Thursday it was taking legal action against Benetton, despite the Italian clothing company agreeing on Wednesday to pull the photo, saying it was "sorry that the use of the image had so hurt the sensibilities of the faithful."
Benetton's poster showed Pope Benedict XVI kissing on the lips Egypt's Ahmed el-Tayyeb, a leading voice in Sunni Islam.
It launched Wednesday a new global advertising campaign called UNHATE that contained a series of photo montages of political and religious leaders kissing.
The company had defended the campaign, saying its purpose "was solely to battle the culture of hate in all its forms.”
-AFP/NOW Lebanon
To read more: http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=333243#ixzz1dz6T1bQW
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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« Reply #34 on Nov 17, 2011, 12:32pm » | |
India's hitman trial exposes criminal world thriving on economic boom
The trial of Jagghu Pehlwan, for more than 150 murders, shows the effect of India's new wealth on its poorer hinterlands
o Jason Burke in Delhi
o guardian.co.uk, Thursday 17 November 2011 15.48 GMT
![[image]](http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/332/outsidethegurgaontech00.jpg "[image]")
The massive investment in technology centres such as this one in Gurgaon, near Delhi, contrasts sharply with local poverty. Photograph: Marco Cristofori/Alamy
It was a late summer's evening in Ghaziabad city. Two small cars were parked outside the Bikaner Wallah sweetshop. Sitting in one, with two friends, was Jagghu Pehlwan, wanted for more than 150 murders. In the other, five more men were drinking and talking. Watching through the heavy monsoon rain were members of the Ghaziabad police special operations group.
According to Inspector Anil Kaparwan, who leads the group, Pehlwan fired "two or three shots" from his Beretta pistol but otherwise was captured without a struggle. If the charges against him are true, the man who is India's most notorious contract killer and one of the world's most lethal serial murderers, was soon behind bars.
With his case making its slow way through India's courts, Pehlwan gave his first interview last week, to the Guardian. Talking on a mobile phone in his cell, the 130kg (20-stone) prisoner claimed he had been framed and was innocent. He denied involvement in any of the key cases – mainly murders of local businessmen and politicians alleged to have been ordered by the victims' rivals – or the secondary accusations of extortion, kidnap and gun-running.
"These charges are all invented," the 28-year-old said. "I have never hurt anybody, let alone murdered someone."
For Kaparwan, however, Pehlwan is a "killing machine". Pehlwan's arrest was briefly reported in the Indian media but the case was swiftly forgotten.
Interviews with police and Pehlwan's relatives have revealed that the affair is much more than a simple "true crime" story. They shed light on the appalling violence, corruption, political intrigue and poverty that occurs only a short drive from India's capital: the dark side of the astonishing economic development of the country in recent years.
Pehlwan was born in Nithora, a rough village on the outskirts of Ghaziabad, in 1983. Other than the local reputation for producing wrestlers and streetfighters, Nithora is typical of tens of thousands of other such villages across India. Buffaloes are tethered in the yard of each brick home. Water comes from a well and there are no sewers. Dusty, rubbish-strewn fields are crossed by dirt roads.
Pehlwan's father, a retired minor government clerk with a small transport business, sent his son to a good local school. By his teens, however, the boy was in trouble for brawling. Nithora village is known for a tradition of wrestling and has long been a source of soldiers, policemen and local criminal enforcers. Soon Pehlwan – the nickname means "wrestler" – had left school, married and joined the tens of millions of young Indian men born in rural villages who have no real qualifications or skills.
According to the police – if not his family – he soon found a way to make a living, becoming an accomplished car thief and working as a hardman for local gangsters by his early 20s.
Deprivation
Ghaziabad, the nearby city, is a tough place. It lies in Uttar Pradesh, the vast northern Indian state with a population of 200 million and levels of deprivation often worse than sub-Saharan Africa. Delhi, where wealth has quadrupled since the liberal economic reforms pushed through when Pehlwan was a teenager, is only 30 miles away.
With patchy rule of law, however, recent decades have seen a free-for-all with huge riches available to the clever, powerful, daring or brutal. Nowhere is this more true than in the frontier zone between Delhi and its poor, rural hinterland. Cities such as Ghaziabad are favourite places for Delhi-based criminals to find what they need: guns manufactured in clandestine workshops, false identities, drugs and men prepared to kill for money.
Kaparwan estimates there are more than a dozen contract killers working in Ghaziabad. They are usually hired by gangsters, businessmen and local politicians. Last month a 45-year-old mother of six was charged with paying 100,000 rupees (£1,250) for her abusive husband to be murdered.
"That's around the going rate for a low-level guy," said Kaparwan.
According to his charge sheet, obtained by the Guardian, Pehlwan's favoured places of work were the raw new satellite towns such as Gurgaon and Noida springing up around the capital. With their call centres, multinational firms, malls and metro, both epitomise the new India. So did Pehlwan's alleged clients and victims.
Pehlwan is accused of murdering a hotel owner in Delhi's upmarket Safdarjung Enclave in 2003. In 2008 he allegedly killed three political leaders around Ghaziabad and in Noida, close to where the Formula One track was built for last month's Indian Grand Prix.
Then there was a transport contractor killed on the orders of a jailed gangster, a rival shot dead in a new private hospital and a building materials supplier murdered in the town of Sahibabad. In June in Gurgaon, home to scores of call centres and multinational businesses, Pehlwan is suspected by police of killing two gangsters in a contract taken out by a local councillor.
In recent months Pehlwan is accused of killing a political activist and a businessman after a dispute over a deal to install cable TV locally. Before he was detained police allege that he had been hired by a Gurgaon-based businessman to undertake five murders for a fee of around £125,000.
If Pehlwan was indeed earning vast sums, he remained relatively discreet, however. As he moved around, he stayed with friends and associates, police said. But there was extensive work on the family home in Nithora, a new car and expensive holidays. In recent years, Pehlwan himself boasted to the Guardian, he had flown to Indian resorts favoured by the newly wealthy middle classes such as the Himalayan Kullu valley and Goa. Pehlwan also wanted to see Europe or the US, like millions of other Indians for whom overseas trips are now feasible.
"I couldn't get a passport," he said.
Police say Pehlwan confessed to more than 100 murders while in custody and has been charged with 31. "He co-operated," said Kaparwan, whose team received a 50,000-rupee reward for his arrest. "He told us everything."
Pehlwan and his family say otherwise, denying even the charge of beating up a local official last year. "My son went to speak to the local bureaucrats but there was no violence. He just convinced him to connect the electricity to the village," says Daramvir Singh, his father. Unlike nearby villages, deprived of power by government sloth and graft, Nithora now has electricity almost round the clock. One result was the unanimous election of Pehlwan's wife to the vacant post of village chief.
Corruption claims
"My son got into trouble for fighting once or twice but otherwise would not harm a mosquito," Pehlwan's father told the Guardian. The alleged killer's wife said he was "a family man" and his lawyer claimed the police were routinely bought off by politicians or rival gangs.
Pehlwan said that the police had beaten him so badly that they fractured a bone in his leg, and fired live rounds into the floor to intimidate him.
Kaparwan denies the claims, but such practices are common in India. "I hope I will get out soon. I am praying for that. But there are so many cases against me it seems unlikely," Pehlwan said.
His detention has made little difference in Ghaziabad. Kaparwan, who has served in the city for eight years, said he saw "new faces and more crime" every day. When he arrested Pehlwan, he found some teenagers with the alleged killer. It is these "youngsters" who worry him most. "They kept saying 'sorry sir'," Kaparwan remembered. "I asked them why they were there. 'Just to be with [Pehlwan]', they said. They idolised him. We let them go."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/17/india-hitman-trial-criminal-world
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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« Reply #35 on Nov 17, 2011, 8:02pm » | |
Foreign investment in Mali's arable land jumps by 60%
Report says largescale foreign agri-investment offers 'few solutions to the poverty and hunger plaguing the country'
* Claire Provost
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 17 November 2011 17.00 GMT
Foreign investment in arable land in Mali increased by 60% between 2009 and 2010, says a report published on Thursday to coincide with the first international farmers' conference to tackle the global rush for land.
The report, by the US-based Oakland Institute and the Malian national farmers organisation, estimates that more than 544,500 hectares of Malian land have been leased or were under negotiation for lease by the end of 2010. The bulk of these land deals – covering an area the report says could sustain more than half a million small farmers – were negotiated by just 22 foreign agri-investors. Less than 5% of west Africa's largest country is arable.
Mali has been at the centre of agri-investor interest and farmer resistance to the largescale deals that have sparked growing concern from international aid and development organisations.
"Corporations, fund managers and nations anxious to secure their own future food security have sought and secured large landholdings for offshore farms or speculation," says the report, noting that the food and fuel crises of 2008 appear to have jump-started the rush to acquire farmland across Africa. The report updates a study produced by the Oakland Institute earlier this year, which showed Harvard and other major American universities were key emerging investors in the continent's farmland.
Thursday's report notes that 40% of the recent large land deals negotiated in Mali have been flagged for the production of agrofuels, despite government assurances that such investments were to strengthen food security and transform the country into a major food supplier for the region.
An "ideological divide" has blocked progress on negotiating investments that benefit local communities, says the report. "While [industrialised agriculture] may involve smallholder support projects, the purpose is rarely to strengthen and promote traditional farming systems … Rather the aim is to 'modernise' them, increase competitiveness, focus on value chains for commodities, and orient smallholders towards the global marketplace."
The report levels significant blame on the World Bank, which it says has "shaped the economic, fiscal and legal environment of Mali in a way that favours the acquisition of vast tracks of fertile lands by few private interests instead of bringing solutions to the widespread poverty and hunger plaguing the country". Mali ranked 175 out of 187 countries in this year's UN Human Development Index. The most recent figures suggest more than 50% of the population live on less than $1.25 a day and nearly a third of children under the age of five are malnourished.
The famine and food crisis in the Horn of Africa has pushed policymakers to focus on the potential of Africa's small farmers to strengthen countries' food security and ultimately drive economic development on the continent. Smallscale farmers are credited with producing as much as 80% of Africa's food.
Much of Mali's large deals concern state-owned land, where the informal rights of communities living on the land are not protected by law, and rarely recognised by public officials.
Ibrahima Coulibaly, head of the Malian national farmers' organisation, said "land-grabbing is a denial of historical rights", and that in many cases farmers have for generations lived on land that only formally became state assets after independence in the 1960s.
Publication of the report comes as hundreds of smallholder farmers and civil society activists from 30 countries descend on Selingue, in southern Mali, to draft a strategy to strengthen local communities' resistance to "land grabbing".
The conference, which runs from Thursday to Sunday, and is co-ordinated by the Malian national farmers organisation and the international peasants' movement La Via Campesina, plans to focus on examples of farmers' resistance to land grabs. While large land deals have received increasing attention from international organisations, conference organisers argue this has often been directed by large NGOs and rarely by small farmers themselves.
Research by Oxfam, published this year, suggests that nearly 230m hectares of land – an area the size of north-west Europe – have been bought or leased, largely in Africa, mostly by foreign companies, in thousands of secretive deals made since 2001. Earlier, the World Bank had published estimates putting that figure at just under 60m hectares.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-develop....ali-land-report
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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« Reply #36 on Nov 19, 2011, 9:52am » | |
Gaddafi son seized in southern Libya
November 20, 2011 - 12:28AM
Muammar Gaddafi's son Seif al-Islam - the only member of the ousted ruling family to remain at large - has been captured while travelling with aides in a convoy in Libya's southern desert, Libyan officials say.
Thunderous celebratory gunfire shook the Libyan capital as the news spread yesterday.
A spokesman for the Libyan fighters who captured Seif al-Islam Gaddafi said he was detained about 50 kilometres west of the town of Obari with two aides as he was trying to flee to neighbouring Niger, but the country's acting justice minister later said the convoy's destination was not confirmed.
The International Criminal Court had charged Gaddafi, Seif al-Islam and Libya's former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senoussi with crimes against humanity for the brutal crackdown on dissent as the uprising against the regime began in mid-February and escalated into a civil war.
Seif al-Islam's capture leaves only al-Senoussi at large.
Libyan TV posted a photo purportedly of Seif al-Islam in custody. He is sitting by a bed and holding up three bandaged fingers as a guard looks on.
Mohammed al-Alagi, the National Transitional Council's justice minister, told The Associated Press that Seif al-Islam was detained deep in Libya's desert on Friday night by revolutionary forces from the mountain town of Zintan who had been tracking him for days.
Seif al-Islam was being held in Zintan but would be transported to Tripoli soon, al-Alagi said.
A spokesman for the Zintan brigades, Bashir al-Tlayeb, who first announced the capture at a press conference in Tripoli, said the NTC, which took over governing the country after Gaddafi was ousted, would decide where Seif al-Islam would be tried.
He also said that there was still no information about al-Senoussi's whereabouts.
Seif al-Islam, at 39 the oldest of seven children of Muammar and Safiya Gaddafi, had long drawn Western favour by touting himself as a liberalising reformer in the autocratic regime, but then staunchly backed his father in his brutal crackdown on rebels in the regime's final days.
He went underground after Tripoli fell to revolutionary forces and issued audio recordings to try to rally support for his father.
The International Criminal Court had earlier said it was in indirect negotiations with a son of the late Libyan leader about his possible surrender for trial.
Mindful of past arrest claims that proved false, an ICC spokesman said the court was waiting for proof that Seif al-Islam had been captured, but stressed that Libya had a legal obligation to co-operate with the international arrest warrant.
"First we have to verify if it really is him and that he's actually been arrested this time," the spokesman, Fadi El Abdallah, said. "If they decide they want to try the suspect in Libya instead of at the ICC, there's a necessary process."
He said the Libyans could formally request that the case be transferred, then ICC judges would make a decision.
"The main criteria is that he generally be prosecuted for the same crimes," the spokesman said. "For us there's an obligation, a legal obligation under international law, for the national government to co-operate with the ICC."
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/gaddafi-son-....l#ixzz1eAAeLH00
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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« Reply #37 on Nov 19, 2011, 7:41pm » | |
Saif al-Islam goes from fugitive to facing the Libyan people
Wherever Muammar Gaddafi's son stands trial, he will be defending not just himself but his whole family
o Peter Beaumont
o guardian.co.uk, Saturday 19 November 2011 14.07 GMT
Even on the run, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the 39-year-old son of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, continued to insist on his innocence of crimes against humanity for which he has been indicted, contacting the international criminal court late last month through an intermediary.
It was suspected then that Saif was in Libya's vast desert areas close to the border with Niger, perhaps travelling in a convoy. In reality, it appears, Saif was travelling with only a handful of bodyguards when he was caught by National Transitional Council forces near the southern town of Obari. Now it seems likely that he will have to prove his innocence not in The Hague but in Tripoli, the capital he fled, in what is certain to become a show trial. Saif will be answering not only for himself but for his whole family.
The ICC had sought Saif on an international warrant as an "indirect co-perpetrator of murder and persecution as crimes against humanity", accusing him of "assuming essential tasks" to enact a plan, between 15 and 28 February this year, to launch attacks on Libyan civilians.
Saif was flown by pro-government forces to Zintan, where an angry crowd attempted to storm the plane. Dressed in a Tuareg scarf, heavily bearded and with a bandaged hand, he refused, however, to confirm his identity to a Reuters correspondent who saw him and described the prisoner as looking like Saif.
A commander in Zintan and the country's interim justice minister confirmed his capture. The ICC said that it was in discussions to ensure he was treated appropriately.
If Saif makes it safely to trial – not a certainty, given the deaths of his father and his brother Mutassim after their capture in Sirte – that court appearance will be the culmination of a long and extraordinary journey for the man many once believed was the reformer in the Gaddafi clan.
It was a journey that took Saif, a handsome and plausible figure with an excellent command of English, German and French, from the London School of Economics, where he studied, to meetings with high-ranking international figures.
Even in 2010 the New York Times was able to describe the wealthy playboy as "the western-friendly face of Libya and symbol of its hopes for reform and openness". Perhaps some of that was true. For a while at least Saif seemed to offer a prospect of change in Libya. He advocated opening up the country's economy, and was a key player in the talks between the west and Muammar Gaddafi that saw his father renounce nuclear weapons and settle a deal over the Lockerbie bombing.
Known as "the engineer", he had studied for a degree in engineering in Libya and a business degree in Austria before completing his education at the LSE in 2008. His engagement in Libyan politics began in the 1990s, when he became the president of the Gaddafi International Foundation for Charity Associations.
But behind the polished front there were always suggestions of a very different Saif, at odds with the carefully cultivated image of an urbane intellectual and reformer held back only by conservative elements in his father's regime, including his brother Mutassim.
There were suggestions his doctoral thesis from the LSE – which benefited financially from the relationship with Saif – had plagiarised other work. He sued the Sunday Telegraph successfully in 2002 for suggesting in two articles that he had been involved in a money-laundering scheme in the mid-1990s.
More recently, the man who had been seen as Gaddafi's political heir apparent seemed to signal that he was retreating from Libyan politics, in a speech in 2008 in which he did not explain his decision, although he denied widely reported claims of a rift with his father.
In 2009 Saif's influence was visible again, when he aided talks in Britain that eventually secured the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only man convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. But it seems that his public role as an intermediary with the west came at a price for him in Libya, where he lost ground in his rivalry with Mutassim to succeed their father.
A 2009 US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks said that Saif's "high-profile role as the public face of the regime to the west has been a mixed blessing for him. While it has bolstered his image ... many Libyans view him as self-aggrandising and too eager to please foreigners at the expense of Libyans' interest."
Whatever went on before, however, Saif's image was to be utterly transformed earlier this year. In the third week of February, with the uprising against the Gaddafi regime still in its early stages, he gave a national address on television. In the 40-minute speech, broadcast five days after anti-government protests broke out in the eastern city of Benghazi, a haggard-looking Saif warned of "rivers of blood" if demonstrators refused to accept government offers of reform.
The man once seen as the acceptable face of the family now sounded like his father, vowing that the regime would "fight until the last man, the last woman, the last bullet". He added: "We will not lose Libya."
Even if Saif continues to deny charges of crimes against humanity, it is clear that by this point any doubts he may have had about his father's strategy had been put aside. It was Saif and his close aides who briefed the international media they had invited to Tripoli in the Rixos hotel and elsewhere. It was his strange, incoherent story that told of a conspiracy between al-Qaida and the west to topple the regime, underscored by an almost fantastical level of denial when it came to both the level of opposition facing the regime and what was being done in its name.
By far the most visible member of the family as his father retreated ever further from the scene, towards the end it was Saif who represented the Gaddafi family and whose aides were behind several efforts to secure a ceasefire.
Indeed, it was on 21 August, during the fall of Tripoli to forces loyal to the interim government of the NTC, that Saif was first reported captured. A little later, however, even as the battle was still raging for his father's compound, he made a defiant appearance at the Rixos hotel where he was seen briefly by journalists.
After that Saif simply disappeared. According to some accounts, he was hiding in the besieged city of Bani Walid, but when the city fell he was nowhere to be seen. Other reports said he had crossed into Niger or had been killed in the fighting for the city of Sirte. But none of it was true. The question now is why he did not escape when his father and brother died.
His capture will present a series of challenges to Libya's new government, not least because he was arrested by fighters from the powerful militia faction from Zintan which has been locked in a power struggle with its rivals in Tripoli's military council. The NTC government, which came under strong international pressure to investigate the circumstances of the deaths of Saif's father and brother in Sirte, will be under pressure not only to ensure Saif is properly treated but is given a fair trial.
Mindful of past arrest claims that proved false, the ICC is treading cautiously, but says that it has received confirmation of the arrest. Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo said: "Saif must face justice. Whether it's in Libya or in The Hague, he should face justice. We have to co-ordinate together with the Libyan authorities."
The residents of Tripoli will be hoping that the stage is now set for the biggest trial in Libya's history.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/19/saif-islam-fugitive-libyan-people
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: Gulag World XII
« Reply #38 on Nov 19, 2011, 8:55pm » | |
Egypt: violent clashes in Cairo leave hundreds injured
Egyptian security forces open fire on thousands of protesters in Tahrir Square, leaving one dead and more than 600 injured
* Jack Shenker in Cairo
* guardian.co.uk, Saturday 19 November 2011 21.59 GMT
![[image]](http://img546.imageshack.us/img546/8071/egyptclashesintahrirs00.jpg "[image]")
An Egyptian protester holds a national flag in front of a burning police vehicle in Cairo during after government forces fire on thousands of protesters. Photograph: Ahmed Assadya/EPA
Egypt has been hit by another wave of major violence ahead of parliamentary elections after security forces opened fire on thousands of protesters demonstrating against the military junta.
One person was reported dead and more than 600 injured in central Cairo after riot police sent volleys of tear gas, rubber bullets and "birdshot" pellet cartridges into the crowds. The clashes put further pressure on the ruling generals and cast doubt on the ability of police to secure the poll, scheduled to begin on 28 November.
"All options are on the table, but right now – given the state Egypt is in – nobody can see how the military council can pull off these elections," said Mahmoud Salem, a prominent blogger who is running for parliament but who has now frozen his campaign. "I'm at the international eye hospital at the moment with my friend Malek Mustafa, who has been shot in the head by police with a pellet cartridge and looks likely to lose his eye. How can I continue?"
Mustafa was one of dozens of demonstrators left with serious head wounds during the police assault on Tahrir Square. Trouble began after riot police moved to disperse tents set up after a large rally calling on Egypt's Supreme Council of Armed Forces (Scaf) to return the country to civilian rule.
Protesters succeeded in driving the security forces from the square and captured one of their trucks. Crowds jumped up and down on the vehicle, chanting "The interior ministry are thugs" and calling for the downfall of Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the country's de facto leader since the toppling of Hosni Mubarak in February. It was later set ablaze.
By mid-afternoon police had returned to Tahrir in far larger numbers and began firing from armoured vehicles. Pro-change activists sent out calls for solidarity and as darkness fell police and the protesters saw their ranks swell. As the night wore on and control of Tahrir shifted back and forth between the security forces and demonstrators, running battles spilled down side streets and along several of downtown Cairo's most important thoroughfares.
The Observer saw heavy fighting along Talaat Harb street, a key shopping district and one of the main roads running into Tahrir Square. Street lighting was cut and amid the gloom hundreds of protesters tore up paving stones to throw at police lines, sporadically falling back as clouds of tear gas filled the air.
"The scenes are reminiscent of the Friday of Anger," said journalist and pro-change activist Hossam el-Hamalawy, referring to 28 January, the day protesters beat Mubarak's security forces off the streets during the uprising against his regime. "We are being hit with showers of US-made tear gas canisters, and I've watched with my own eyes at least five people being struck by rubber bullets."
A military police car which at one point approached the centre of the unrest was chased away by protesters, another sign of public support for the junta apparently waning. "Ordinary people are making a stronger link than ever between Scaf and the hated troops of the interior ministry," added el-Hamalawy. "The police and Scaf are revealing their true colours with this brutal attack on Egyptians. They have succeeded in only one thing today, and that is mobilising even more of Egyptian society against them."
By late evening the number of demonstrators had grown to several thousand with the arrival of the ultras – hardcore fans of Cairo's main football teams, some of whom played a significant role in the anti-regime uprising earlier this year – and some Islamist political groups, forcing police units to fall back from Tahrir where protesters quickly built barricades and fires continued to burn.
The retreat marked a significant blow to the security forces, which over the past few months have generally avoided attacking large protests, preferring to wait instead until numbers dwindle and the remaining activists can be isolated and labelled as hardcore troublemakers. On Saturday that tactic appeared to have backfired, with the police assault provoking a strong public response.
"Considering the small numbers that we had this morning, it's amazing," said Hady Kamar, a 26 year old artist who was hit twice by rubber bullets, once in the foot and once in the head. "When things looked darkest and the police had pushed us out of Tahrir, we returned in huge numbers. To see this many on the street and feel this much energy, is special. Today it feels like the revolution is back up and running, but we'll see what tomorrow brings. It's always been a day by day struggle."
Reprising many of the slogans used during mass protests against Mubarak, demonstrators vented their anger at Scaf and chanted 'Here is the revolution, nothing else'.
Many expressed scepticism about the elections, saying they were designed to entrench military control over the country, but most insisted they still wanted the vote to go ahead. "The generals want to rule Egypt, but this is our revolution," said Ahmed Mohamed, a 24-year-old accountant. "Look around you – you don't see different political parties or rival candidates, you just see the Egyptian people. People have come down from their homes to join the fight; we are battling the remnants of Mubarak's regime who remain in power at the moment, and both this and the elections are all part of that same process."
Solidarity rallies also erupted in the large cities of Alexandria and Suez. Egypt's interior ministry claimed its forces had acted with restraint, and blamed protesters for escalating tensions so close the parliamentary vote.
On Friday a group of prominent intellectuals, including former UN nuclear weapons chief Mohamed ElBaradei, unveiled an alternative transition plan which would involve postponing the parliamentary ballot and wresting executive control of Egypt away from the armed forces whilst a new constitution is drawn up.
The ruling generals have yet to respond to the proposal.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/19/egypt-violent-clashes-cairo-injured
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: Gulag World XII
« Reply #39 on Nov 19, 2011, 9:31pm » | |
Egyptian police open fire on thousands as pre-election violence flares
Security forces shoot rubber bullets and tear gas into crowds, leaving 500 injured after removing tents from Tahrir Square
* Jack Shenker Cairo
* The Observer, Sunday 20 November 2011
Egypt has been hit by another wave of major violence ahead of parliamentary elections after security forces opened fire on thousands of protesters demonstrating against the military junta.
More than 500 people were reported injured in central Cairo after riot police sent volleys of tear gas, rubber bullets and "birdshot" pellet cartridges into the crowds. The clashes put further pressure on the ruling generals and cast doubt on the ability of police to secure the poll, scheduled to begin on 28 November.
"All options are on the table, but right now – given the state Egypt is in – nobody can see how the military council can pull off these elections," said Mahmoud Salem, a prominent blogger who is running for parliament but who has now frozen his campaign. "I'm at the international eye hospital at the moment with my friend Malek Mustafa, who has been shot in the head by police with a pellet cartridge and looks likely to lose his eye. How can I continue?"
Mustafa was one of dozens of demonstrators left with serious head wounds during the police assault on Tahrir Square. Trouble began after riot police moved to disperse tents set up after a large rally calling on Egypt's supreme council of armed forces (Scaf) to return the country to civilian rule.
Protesters succeeded in driving the security forces from the square and captured one of their trucks. Crowds jumped up and down on the vehicle, chanting "The interior ministry are thugs" and calling for the downfall of Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the country's de facto leader since the toppling of Hosni Mubarak in February. It was later set ablaze.
By mid-afternoon police had returned to Tahrir in far larger numbers and began firing from armoured vehicles. Pro-change activists sent out calls for solidarity and as darkness fell police and the protesters saw their ranks swell.
The Observer saw heavy fighting along Talaat Harb street, a key shopping district and one of the main roads running into Tahrir Square. Street lighting was cut and amid the gloom hundreds of protesters tore up paving stones to throw at police lines, sporadically falling back as clouds of tear gas filled the air.
"The scenes are reminiscent of the Friday of anger," said journalist and pro-change activist Hossam el-Hamalawy, referring to 28 January, the day protesters beat Mubarak's security forces off the streets during the uprising against his regime. "We are being hit with showers of US-made tear gas canisters, and I've watched with my own eyes at least five people being struck by rubber bullets."
By late evening the number of demonstrators had grown to several thousand with the arrival of the ultras – hardcore fans of Cairo's main football teams, some of whom played a significant role in the anti-regime uprising earlier this year – and some Islamist political groups, forcing police units to fall back from Tahrir where protesters quickly built barricades and fires continued to burn.
Reprising many of the slogans used during mass protests against Mubarak, demonstrators vented their anger at Scaf and chanted "Here is the revolution, nothing else".
Many expressed scepticism about the elections, saying they were designed to entrench military control over the country, but most insisted they still wanted the vote to go ahead. "The generals want to rule Egypt, but this is our revolution," said Ahmed Mohamed, a 24-year-old accountant. "Look around you – you don't see different political parties or rival candidates, you just see the Egyptian people. People have come down from their homes to join the fight; we are battling the remnants of Mubarak's regime who remain in power at the moment, and both this and the elections are all part of that same process."
Solidarity rallies also erupted in the large cities of Alexandria and Suez. Egypt's interior ministry claimed its forces had acted with restraint, and blamed protesters for escalating tensions so close the parliamentary vote.
On Friday a group of prominent intellectuals, including former UN nuclear weapons chief Mohamed ElBaradei, unveiled an alternative transition plan which would involve postponing the parliamentary ballot and wresting executive control of Egypt away from the armed forces whilst a new constitution is drawn up.
The ruling generals have yet to respond to the proposal.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov....arak-democrarcy
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: Gulag World XII
« Reply #40 on Nov 20, 2011, 4:52pm » | |
Gaddafi's intelligence chief captured in southern desert
Abdullah al-Senussi caught two days after Saif al-Islam Gaddafi's arrest by militia fighters
* Chris Stephen in Zintan and Luke Harding
* guardian.co.uk, Sunday 20 November 2011 20.11 GMT
Libya's interim authorities have captured the last totem of the Gaddafi regime, seizing former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi in the southern desert near to where Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was apprehended two days earlier.
Militia units surrounded a house where Senussi was holed up, near the town of Birak. The arrest means that all leading figures from the Gaddafi regime have now either been killed, captured or driven into exile. Senussi was the henchman of the Gaddafi regime, "the executioner", according to Luis Moreno Ocampo, prosecutor at the international criminal court.
Both Senussi and Saif al-Islam have been indicted by the ICC on war crimes charges for their role in the bloody suppression of anti-government protests this year. But after they trumpeted his capture, Libyan officials said Saif al-Islam would not be handed over to the Hague court, but tried at home. The charges against him could carry a death penalty.
The National Transition Council's spokesman, Mahmoud Shamman, said Libya's interim government would inform the ICC of its decision next week.
See further: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/20/gaddafi-son-pretended-camel-herder
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: Gulag World XII
« Reply #41 on Nov 20, 2011, 5:07pm » | |
Japan's nuclear disaster towns hold remote local elections
Evacuated residents from Okuma and Futaba in Fukushima plant exclusion zone ballot for regional assemblies from afar
* Justin McCurry in Osaka
* guardian.co.uk, Sunday 20 November 2011 16.27 GMT
They have been deserted for eight months, and could stay that way for years, their former inhabitants now scattered around north-east Japan.
But the towns of Okuma and Futaba, located in the shadow of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, have shown that civic life must go on, even in the wake of a major nuclear accident. In one of the more surreal episodes of world democracy, tens of thousands were eligible to vote on Sunday for regional assemblies and mayors in towns that have all but ceased to exist.
Fukushima is the last of the three hardest-hit prefectures to go have gone to the polls since elections were postponed after the 11 March tsunami. Elections in Japan are usually characterised by early-morning speeches outside railway stations and last-ditch appeals for support from candidates perched atop campaign vehicles. Their faces, accompanied by pithy slogans, stare out from numerous billboards.
But none of that was evident in the 11 cities, towns and villages that lie inside the 12-mile exclusion zone imposed around Fukushima Daiichi in March.
Residents of Futaba and Okuma, which were electing mayors and assembly members on Sunday, have only been permitted brief visits home since the disaster to survey the damage and retrieve valuables and heirlooms.
Of the 80,000 people evacuated from the no-go zone, 58,000 are reportedly living in other prefectures, creating a logistical nightmare for officials who have had to oversee candidacy applications in temporary offices far from the election battlegrounds.
The absence of polling stations created a spike in the number of absentee ballots, forcing officials to extend the official campaign period by several days to give displaced residents time to size up the candidates and submit their ballot papers.
The campaign has been dominated by the slow pace of decontamination efforts and financial aid for the tens of thousands of people whose lives have been put on hold since March.
All of the parties and groups involved in the Fukushima assembly election said last month that they wanted nuclear power to be phased out. That degree of consensus may have kept voters away, however. As of 11am, the turnout was below 13%, according to Kyodo news agency.
For as long as they remain uninhabitable and their residents dispersed, the future of the contaminated areas will be clouded by uncertainty. According to a recent poll by Fukushima University, 27% of people living in the Futaba district said they had no intention of returning home. More than half of those aged below 35 said they planned to stay away.
That bodes ill for the area's survival, the Mainichi Shimbun said in a recent editorial: "The results have demonstrated that many younger residents, who are supposed to play a key role in restoring their disaster-ravaged communities, have given up on returning to their neighbourhoods for fear of radiation contamination."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov....towns-elections
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: Gulag World XII
« Reply #42 on Nov 20, 2011, 5:12pm » | |
Egyptian elections in doubt after violent clashes in central Cairo
Several candidates suspend campaigns after army attack on protesters leaves five dead and almost a thousand injured
* Jack Shenker in Cairo
* guardian.co.uk, Sunday 20 November 2011 19.39 GMT
Egypt's revolution entered a dangerous phase of confrontation on Sunday after the army attacked thousands of anti-junta protesters in Cairo, putting the viability of imminent parliamentary elections in serious doubt.
Several political parties and individual candidates said they were suspending their electoral campaigns after a weekend in which at least five people were killed and almost a thousand injured in some of the fiercest clashes seen since the heady days of February when Hosni Mubarak was ejected from power.
Protesters later retook Tahrir Square, in central Cairo, and vowed to stay put until the military authorities are removed. Many said they were ready to die for the revolution, which began in late January as an anti-Mubarak movement, but is now targeting the army generals of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (Scaf) who replaced him.
Amid calls for a national government of salvation to be set up to face down the junta, the opposition figurehead, Mohamed ElBaradei, said he was ready to do "whatever it takes" to save Egypt from deepening crisis.
"I think what we've seen today is an excessive use of force, bordering on a slaughterhouse, against innocent civilians exercising their inalienable right to demonstrate," ElBaradei told the Guardian.
But the interim authorities merely stated that the elections, due to start on 28 November, would go ahead as planned – and thanked officers for "self-restraint in dealing with the events".
ElBaradei said: "It's yet another indication that Scaf and the current government are failing to govern and I fully sympathise with the increasing calls coming from different quarters, including Tahrir, for a new government of national salvation that represents all shades of Egyptian society, one with full power.
"I will do anything to save the country from falling apart and what we are seeing right now is the country going down. People are calling on me to present this government, and I will do whatever it takes to save our country from falling apart."
As Egypt's interim cabinet gathered for an emergency meeting, several political parties and individual candidates announced they were suspending their electoral campaigns.
Critics say the elections will be meaningless if they are not accompanied by the retreat of Scaf and a return to civilian rule. So far the generals have refused to set a date for presidential elections, and say they will continue ruling until after a new constitution is created.
Street fighting continued in central Cairo on Sunday night, transforming parts of the city into a war zone. Protesters used rocks and molotov cocktails to repel attacks by armed riot police and built barricades to defend Tahrir. The Guardian saw volleys of teargas and rubber-coated steel bullets fired into the crowds by security forces, as well as "birdshot" pellet cartridges which appeared to be aimed at head height.
Major unrest spread beyond Cairo to the large cities of Suez and Alexandria, where at least one leading activist was killed. Mass demonstrations and attacks on police stations were reported in several other towns throughout the Nile Delta and southern Egypt.
Among those believed to have been arrested during the clashes was Bothaina Kamel, the country's only female presidential candidate and an outspoken opponent of military rule. Speaking just before her detention, Kamel told the Guardian that the violence exposed "the ugly face of Mubarak that has been lurking behind Scaf all along", and that she backed ElBaradei, who is also running for the presidency, to lead a transitional civilian government that would wrest control of the country back from the generals.
Such a move would throw Egypt into unprecedented confusion, with two rival political entities potentially declaring themselves to be the country's legitimate government, and would almost certainly lead to a postponement of the poll.
But to have any chance of succeeding, any self-declared civilian authority would require support from a broad consensus of the political landscape, including the Muslim Brotherhood whose Freedom and Justice party are predicted to be the biggest single winners in the new parliament.
"What happens next is anyone's guess because everything is up in the air right now," said Issandr el-Amrani, a prominent blogger and analyst on Egyptian affairs. "The Islamists are relatively invested in elections taking place as planned, and we are still waiting for the political elite to put forward concrete alternative proposals. But the fact is that events on the ground are moving so fast that they are overtaking all these political considerations."
Throughout Saturday protesters fought running battles with the central security forces, who were a hated symbol of brutality under the Mubarak dictatorship. Motorbikes ferried hundreds of wounded civilians to a makeshift field hospital on the edge of Tahrir Square, where a handful of doctors, aided by volunteers, struggled to deal with the influx.
"We are seeing many patients suffering from severe gas inhalation and flesh wounds from different types of ammunition," explained Amr Wageeh, a 21-year-old medical student.
"I've been here four hours and helped treat over a hundred in that time; it's hard because the teargas that's being used is stronger than what we've dealt with in the past, and appears resistant to [the normal remedies of] vinegar and soda."
"The elections can go to hell; Tahrir comes first, and we must complete our half-finished revolution before starting to organise a vote," he continued.
"If Scaf think they can do to us what Assad has done to the Syrians and Saleh has done to Yemenis, they are in for a surprise. The Egyptians will do to Scaf what Nato did to Libya: the generals are a remnant of Mubarak, and they will be swept aside."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/20/egypt-elections-cairo-clahes
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: Gulag World XII
« Reply #43 on Nov 22, 2011, 7:59am » | |
Saif Gaddafi did not inform on Abdullah Senussi, captors say
Forces deny media reports that Muammar Gaddafi's son told them where to find toppled regime's intelligence chief
* Chris Stephen in Zintan
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 November 2011 18.34 GMT
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi's captors have denied media reports that he has given them information leading them to the hiding place of another high profile war crimes suspect, Libya's former intelligence chief, Abdullah Senussi.
Senussi, 62, one of the most feared men in the regime of the late Muammar Gaddafi, was found hiding in the home of one of his sisters in the southern city of Sabha on Sunday, 48 hours after Gaddafi's son was arrested at a rebel checkpoint at Obari, 100 miles from Sabha.
Revolutionary forces have been hunting for the pair, both indicted for crimes against humanity by the international criminal court, since the fall of Tripoli in late August.
"Libya Alhurra [Free Libya TV] said Saif had given them information about Senussi. I deny it," said Osama Jweli, chief of the Zintan military council. "I asked the channel who gave the source because this is not true."
Military sources have yet to reveal how Senussi, having evaded capture for so long, was found so soon after Saif was arrested.
Jweli said he had talked to Saif several times since his capture – at his makeshift jail cell in a private home at an undisclosed location in the vicinity of Zintan.
But, he said, Saif did not pass on information leading to the arrest of his co-defendant.
He added that Saif is banned from making phone calls but is allowed to have messages relayed to lawyers and his surviving family.
A government "interrogation committee" will arrive in Zintan later this week to question Saif about crimes allegedly committed before and during the revolution, Jweli said.
He said he supported the view of the National Transitional Council that Saif should be tried in Libya.
Senussi is being held, like Saif, by the local militia that caught him – the Sabha military council.
The council has not said what it intends to do with him. Zintan's council said it wants to try Saif in Zintan, rather than Tripoli.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov....senussi-captors
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: Gulag World XII
« Reply #44 on Nov 22, 2011, 8:06am » | |
Post-Fukushima 'anti-radiation' pills condemned by scientists
Green party distances itself from Dr Christopher Busby, a former spokesman promoting products following Japanese nuclear disaster
* George Monbiot and Justin McCurry in Tokyo
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 November 2011 16.59 GMT
The Green party's former science and technology spokesman is promoting anti-radiation pills to people in Japan affected by the Fukushima nuclear disaster, that leading scientists have condemned as "useless".
Dr Christopher Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster, is championing a series of expensive products and services which, he claims, will protect people in Japan from the effects of radiation. Among them are mineral supplements on sale for ￥5,800 (£48) a bottle, urine tests for radioactive contaminants for ￥98,000 (£808) and food tests for ￥108,000 (£891).
The tests are provided by Busby Laboratories and promoted through a body called the Christopher Busby Foundation for the Children of Fukushima (CBFCF). Both the pills and the tests are sold through a website in California called 4u-detox.com, run by a man called James Ryan.
Though a controversial figure, Busby has been championed by the anti-nuclear movement and some environmentalists. He is still consulted by the Green party on issues such as low-level radiation and depleted uranium, but when contacted by the Guardian the party distanced itself from Busy's activities. Penny Kemp, the Green party communications director, said that the party did not condone Busby's promotion of the products.
In a video on YouTube, Busby says that the calcium and magnesium pills will be supplied "at the cost of production". But the prices being charged by 4u-detox.com are far greater than those of other mineral supplements on sale in Japan. Chemists in Tokyo sell bottles of 200 pills containing similar combinations of ingredients for ￥1,029 (£8.49). James Ryan's website also charges a minimum shipping cost of ￥2,300 (£19).
The Japanese government already monitors human exposure to radiation and tests food and water, banning contaminated products from sale. It works to stricter radiation limits than the EU.
Fukushima prefecture has launched a comprehensive radiation testing programme, as well as distributing radiation monitors to 280,000 children at elementary and junior high schools. Hospitals at the edge of the exclusion zone are offering full body radiation scans and the government plans to check the thyroid glands of 360,000 children by March 2014 — with follow up tests continuing for the rest of their lives.
The CBFCF also solicits donations from the public, to be paid into an account called Green Audit at a bank in Busby's home town of Aberystwyth. Green Audit is an environmental consultancy and research organisation founded by Busby.
Launching the products and tests, Busby warns in his video of a public health catastrophe in Japan caused by the Fukushima explosions, and claims that radioactive caesium will destroy the heart muscles of Japanese children.
He also alleges that the Japanese government is trucking radioactive material from the Fukushima site all over Japan, in order to "increase the cancer rate in the whole of Japan so that there will be no control group" of children unaffected by the disaster, in order to help the Japanese government prevent potential lawsuits from people whose health may have been affected by the radiation. The pills, he claims, will stop radioactive contaminants attaching themselves to the DNA of Japanese children.
But Gerry Thomas, professor of molecular pathology at the department of surgery and cancer at Imperial College, London, describes his statements about heart disease caused by caesium as "ludicrous". She says that radioactive elements do not bind to DNA. "This shows how little he understands about basic radiobiology." Of the products and services being offered, she says, "none of these are useful at all. Dr Busby should be ashamed of himself."
Professor Ohtsura Niwa, a member of the International Commission on Radiological Protection, said that Busby had offered no evidence for his claims of deliberate contamination. "It is not possible for the government and Tepco [the company that runs the Fukushima nuclear plant] to cheat people, now that so many citizens equipped with dosimeters are measuring radiation levels all over Japan," he said.
Niwa described Busby's faith in magnesium and calcium supplements for guarding against radionuclides such as strontium, uranium and plutonium as "baseless".
A Japanese government spokesman also rebutted the accusation of deliberately contaminating other parts of Japan. Noriyuki Shikata, deputy cabinet secretary for public affairs in the prime minister's office, said that so far only tsunami debris from Miyako in Iwate prefecture has been transported to Tokyo for incineration, adding that the disposal of waste generated by the disaster applies only to Iwate and Miyagi prefectures, not Fukushima.
"At this point, there are no plans to transport radioactive waste outside Fukushima prefecture," Shikata said. "Efforts are now being co-ordinated to construct intermediate storage facilities for radioactive waste inside Fukushima prefecture."
Yasuhito Sasaki, executive director of the Japan Radioisotope Association, described the idea that large swaths of the country were being deliberately contaminated as "ridiculous". "No decision has been made on the final disposal of radioactive waste," he said. "Local governments in Fukushima haven't even approved a government proposal to store it locally on a temporary basis."
Busby told the Guardian that the money from the sales of pills and tests goes to the CBFCF, which was established by James Ryan. When asked what his involvement with the foundation is, Busby said: "It's got nothing to do with me. He phoned me up and asked if he could use my name and I said he could." But he added: "I'm conducting the tests. I promised him I would measure the samples he sent to me." Asked if Busby Laboratories was his operation, he said, "I'm Busby Laboratories."
Ryan did not respond to a question from the Guardian on why the products and services provided by 4u-detox.com are so expensive. Nor did he provide any evidence for the efficacy of the products when asked.
He did say: "All money from 4u Detox goes to children of Fukushima and children throughout Japan. We have donated a great amount to children of Japan".
Products and services offered by Busby Laboratories and sold through 4u-detox.com
Testing urine for uranium and strontium: ￥98,000 (£808)
Testing food for caesium and iodine: ￥29,800 (£246)
Testing food for plutonium, uranium and strontium: ￥108,000 (£891)
Testing water for caesium and strontium: ￥59,800 (£493)
Russian-made radiation monitors: ￥28,000 yen + ￥3,200 yen for shipping (£257 in total). The same model is available on eBay for £170, including shipping costs.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20....pills-fukushima
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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