Benazir Bhutto said Osama bin Laden was dead
Bhutto asserted to David Frost in November 2007 that bin Laden had been murdered by Omar Sheikh, whom the Sunday Times once described as “no ordinary terrorist but a man who has connections that reach high into Pakistan’s military and intelligence elite and into the innermost circles” of bin Laden and al-Qaeda. (Watch video starting at 5:33 for mentioned part.) On December 27, 2007 she was assassinated. You be the judge…
Guidelines Released Amid Protest from Congress, Privacy Groups and American Public
Source: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/37031prs20081003.html
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (202) 675-2312 or media@dcaclu.org
(212) 519-7829 or 549-2666 or media@aclu.org
Washington, DC – New FBI guidelines governing investigations were released today after being signed by Attorney General Michael Mukasey. The American Civil Liberties Union quickly blasted the Department of Justice and FBI for ignoring calls for more stringent protections of Americans’ rights. The guidelines replace existing bureau guidelines for five types of investigations: general criminal, national security, foreign intelligence, civil disorders and demonstrations. The ACLU has been vocal in its disapproval of the overly broad guidelines, citing both the FBI’s and DOJ’s documented records of internal abuse.
The new guidelines reduce standards for beginning “assessments” (precursors to investigations), conducting surveillance and gathering evidence, meaning the threshold to beginning investigations across the board will be lowered. More troubling still, the guidelines allow a person’s race or ethnic background to be used as a factor in opening an investigation, a move the ACLU believes may institute racial profiling as a matter of policy.
“The attorney general today gave the FBI a blank check to open investigations of innocent Americans based on no meaningful suspicion of wrongdoing,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. “The new guidelines provide no safeguards against the FBI’s improperly using race and religion as grounds for suspicion. They also fail to sufficiently prevent the government from infiltrating groups whose viewpoints it doesn’t like. The FBI has shown time and time again that is incapable of policing itself and there is good reason to believe that these guidelines will lead to more abuse.”
The FBI originally adopted internal guidelines in the mid-1970s after investigations showed widespread abuses and violations of constitutional rights by the agency, including the politically-motivated spying on figures like Martin Luther King, Jr. Ironically, these newly revised guidelines could open the bureau up to exactly that kind of abuse once more. Though the DOJ and FBI Director Robert Mueller have consistently claimed that the new guidelines would not give agents new authority, the previous guidelines governed very different types of investigations, and tearing down the walls between them will invariably mean that new powers will be applied where they were not before.
Last month, the ACLU formally requested the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General investigate current abuses of the attorney general guidelines. The investigation should particularly examine the manner in which the FBI uses race, religion, national origin or First Amendment protected activities in determining whether to initiate, expand or continue an investigation.
“Attorney General Mukasey has decided to implement these disastrous guidelines against the protests of members of Congress, privacy groups and the American public,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “It is naïve to think these guidelines will not result in abuse. Though the DOJ and FBI claim they are doing what they must to meet the law enforcement needs of the future, they are only doomed to repeat the abuses of the past. Since, under these guidelines, a generalized ‘threat’ is enough to begin an investigation, the FBI will be given carte blanche to begin surveillance without factual evidence. The standard of suspicion is so low and the predicate for investigations so flimsy that it’s inevitable we will all become suspects.”
Durbin Statement on Announcement of New FBI Guidelines
Source: http://durbin.senate.gov/showRelease.cfm?releaseId=304117
Friday, October 3, 2008
[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – United States Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) made the following statement in reaction to the Justice Department’s announcement late Friday afternoon that the Attorney General is revising the guidelines for FBI investigations:
“The American people will react skeptically to the Administration’s efforts to rewrite the rules for FBI surveillance one month before the election in the eighth year of the Bush Administration.”
“The Justice Department claims that they consulted with Congress, but they made only cosmetic and superficial changes and ignored all of the significant changes we suggested, including prohibiting racial profiling and requiring some factual basis for FBI surveillance.”
“These guidelines would permit FBI surveillance of innocent Americans with no suspicion and on the basis of their race, religion or national origin. These guidelines will hinder the FBI’s efforts to protect our national security and threaten the constitutional rights of American citizens.”
Last week, Senators Durbin, Kennedy, and Feingold sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey suggesting significant revisions to the guidelines. The Senators also urged Mukasey to make the draft guidelines public to allow for more meaningful input. The Senators never received a response to their letter.
The text of the letter appears below:
September 23, 2008
The Honorable Michael Mukasey
Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20530
Dear Attorney General Mukasey:
We write to urge you again to make public draft Attorney General guidelines governing FBI investigations and to suggest modifications to the guidelines.
On August 20, we sent you a letter urging you not to sign new Attorney General Guidelines governing FBI investigations until after making the draft guidelines public and allowing a reasonable period of time for members of Congress, experts, and affected minority communities to provide input. We have yet to receive a response to our letter.
In a letter to Senator Patrick Leahy, the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Keith Nelson indicated that you would not sign the guidelines prior to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s FBI oversight hearing on September 17. We welcomed this delay, but are concerned that the Justice Department has made it difficult to consult with experts and provide informed input that could result in substantive changes to the guidelines.
Mr. Nelson stated in his letter that “it is critical that these guidelines become effective on our planned effective date of October 1, 2008 … we will continue to train FBI employees in preparation for the October 1, 2008 implementation date.” The Justice Department’s decision not to delay the effective date of the guidelines and to continue training FBI agents on the draft guidelines suggests that the Department is not seriously considering meaningful changes to the guidelines.
This impression is reinforced by the Department’s refusal to make the draft guidelines publicly available or even to provide a copy of the draft guidelines to members of the Judiciary Committee, as requested by Chairman Leahy and Senator Arlen Specter, the Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee. In fact, you have only permitted members of Congress, congressional staff and a small number of advocacy groups to review the guidelines for limited periods of time in the presence of Justice Department personnel. In short, while you have said that you welcome our suggestions for revisions to the guidelines, under these conditions it is difficult to provide constructive input.
You and other Justice Department officials have noted that you have the authority to issue new Attorney General guidelines without consulting with Congress or the American people. It is also true that Congress has the authority to block implementation of the new guidelines. The fact that you and Congress have these respective powers does not mean that exercising them is the wisest course of action. The Justice Department has committed not to act unilaterally but rather to consult with Congress and the American people, which we appreciate. In order to fulfill this commitment, we believe it is necessary to make the draft guidelines publicly available.
To do otherwise could hinder the Justice Department’s efforts to protect our national security. It is a fundamental tenet of effective community policing that law enforcement should seek to build trust with the communities they police. However, the Justice Department’s actions over the last eight years have alienated many Americans, especially Arab and Muslim Americans. We are concerned that issuing new Attorney General guidelines without a more transparent process will actually make the FBI’s job more, not less, difficult by exacerbating mistrust in communities whose cooperation the FBI needs.
This concern is heightened because new guidelines that are issued in the eighth year of a two-term Presidency and only one month before an election are likely to be greeted with great skepticism by the American people unless they are a product of bipartisan consultation and consensus. In fact, it would be more constructive to give the next Administration, whether Democratic or Republican, the opportunity to consider the new guidelines before they are issued. While the Justice Department has said it is “critical” that the guidelines take effect on October 1, you have not explained why this is the case. To the contrary, the Justice Department has already revised both the guidelines governing criminal investigations and those governing national security investigations since the September 11th terrorist attacks. It is difficult to understand why you cannot wait four more months until a new Administration takes office to consider additional changes.
If you are nonetheless determined to issue the guidelines prematurely, we would like to take this opportunity to suggest the following modifications, which we believe are necessary, at a bare minimum, to protect the civil liberties of innocent Americans and ensure that limited FBI resources are used effectively. To be clear, these recommendations do not address all of our concerns, and given the conditions placed on our access to the draft guidelines, they are necessarily general.
# Revise the guidelines to explicitly prohibit profiling on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, and religion. The draft guidelines would apparently allow surveillance of innocent Americans on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion.
The draft guidelines state that the FBI’s activities are governed by the Justice Department’s June 2003 “Guidance regarding the Use of Race by Federal Law Enforcement Agencies.” To be clear, this guidance permits racial profiling in national security investigations, stating, “Federal law enforcement officers who are protecting national security … may consider race, ethnicity and other relevant factors to the extent permitted by our laws and the Constitution” [emphasis added].
In contrast, with respect to “traditional law enforcement activities,” the guidance on the use of race states:
In making routine or spontaneous law enforcement decisions, such as ordinary traffic stops, Federal law enforcement officers may not use race or ethnicity to any degree, except that officers may rely on race and ethnicity in a specific suspect description [emphasis added]. This prohibition applies even where the use of race or ethnicity might otherwise be lawful.
We believe the standard for “traditional law enforcement activities” should apply to all FBI activities. The guidance on the use of race states, “Racial profiling in law enforcement is not merely wrong, but also ineffective.” We believe this principle applies with equal force to counterterrorism activities. We note that in response to a question from Senator Feingold at the September 17th hearing, FBI Director Mueller said he “absolutely” agreed that it would be ineffective and counterproductive for the FBI to engage in racial profiling in national security and foreign intelligence investigations.
# Revise the guidelines to require some factual predicate, however minimal, as the basis for initiating an “assessment.” The draft guidelines would allow the FBI to use a broader range of more intrusive surveillance techniques on innocent Americans with no indication of wrongdoing. We are concerned that allowing FBI agents to engage in techniques like long-term physical surveillance and pretext interviews to investigate Americans with no indication of wrongdoing will lead to fishing expeditions that waste valuable resources and damage the reputations of innocent people.
# Include in the guidelines specific protections for United States persons whose information is collected, retained and shared, particularly in the course of foreign intelligence collection. We are concerned about the extent to which the FBI may be permitted to gather or use information about Americans under the rubric of foreign intelligence gathering when there is no suspicion of a crime, threat to national security, or any other wrongdoing. The guidelines currently contain only an admonition that the FBI should conduct such investigations openly and consensually to the extent possible. This is inadequate, and explicit protections for Americans should be included in the guidelines and not relegated to FBI policies.
The Justice Department has cited the “clear-eyed and bipartisan” 9/11 Commission in support of the draft guidelines. However, the 9/11 Commission concluded that, “The burden of proof for retaining a particular governmental power should be on the executive, to explain (a) that the power actually materially enhances security and (b) that there is adequate supervision of the executive’s use of the powers to ensure protection of civil liberties.” We do not believe that the Justice Department has met this burden for the new Attorney General guidelines. We again urge you to make the draft guidelines public and work with Congress and the American people to ensure the guidelines will enhance the FBI’s vital efforts to protect our national security while respecting the constitutional rights of all Americans.
Sincerely,
Richard J. Durbin
U.S. Senator
Edward M. Kennedy
U.S. Senator
Russell D. Feingold
U.S. Senator
As Translated by Google.com:
Rand’s “war to save the market” too absurd
雷思海 Lei Sihai
Lei Sihai
According to French media, the U.S. think tank the Rand Corporation agency Department of Defense has submitted an assessment report on the assessment to launch a war to be passed on the feasibility of the current economic crisis. According to the report, with 700,000,000,000 U.S. dollars to rescue the market effect, it may not be used 700,000,000,000 U.S. dollars to launch a war, and the object of the war against Iraq in the past or Afghanistan, may be a great power.
It is undeniable that the war has always been to continue the political, economic and political foundation and the ultimate goal. Continuous deepening of the U.S. sub-loan crisis and economic recession, has developed to a certain extent, is likely to trigger war, the crisis in order to pass.
However, other countries, especially major powers to wage war, is not child’s play, even a superpower like the United States is no exception. First of all, the current inability of the United States has launched a large-scale war. Recently, the new U.S. security think-tank Center and the United States, “Foreign Policy” magazine, the U.S. military on active duty and retired military officers conducted a public opinion poll showed that nearly 90% of the active-duty and retired military officers believe, dragged down by the war in Iraq, the U.S. military Has quietened down considerably, 80% of the respondents believe that the United States at this time unable to re-launch another large-scale war.
Second, the United States has no moral cohesion, it is difficult to find allies in the war. 1991 In 1991 the first Gulf War, although the main U.S. military is fighting, but the money is in Japan and its allies in Western Europe. War allies to join not only the United States won the moral high, and obtained the help of a lot of money; but in 2003 the war in Iraq, the United States of the Western European allies France, Germany, none joined the opposition, the United States to bear the basic All of the costs of war and morally by the world media condemned for a long time.
This shows that although the strength of the United States is very powerful, and can not be changed with the development of human civilization and progress of the war. In today’s world, the United States to launch a financial crisis in order to transfer for the purpose of the war, and the same fascist war, will surely be cast aside all over the world, and to speed up their decline.
Third, the United States and a major power in any war, is bound to accelerate the rise of other powers. The United States is facing the worst situation is not limited to domestic, from other economies, the threat of the United States is most worried about. French President Sarkozy issued a “tear down the U.S. economy and rebuild the world economy” is aimed at overturning the U.S. economic hegemony, replaced by the European Union; Japan is also actively preparing for the Asian dollar zone in Southeast Asia replaced the United States ; By Russia for energy and military wings, ready to build a regional rubles; In addition, China has become a recognized leader in the new economic voice in Third World countries one after another.
In this case, the United States and any of the great powers of the war, will accelerate the rise of other competitors. The so-called “struggle between snipe and the clam grapple, Fisherman’s benefit”, in World War I and World War II, the United States are waiting for the two warring sides have huge losses when the final accession to the profit and thus able to achieve hegemony in the world today . Old Road here in the United States, also is not clear how this will be?
As a result, the United States think-tank of the “war to save the U.S. financial crisis” argument, may seem a threat to other countries, but is in fact a kind of “almost hopeless” feeling. And the financial crisis is a struggle between different interests, the world’s great powers in any war, would be a struggle for survival, whether Russia, China, India and Europe or the U.S. itself, will be involved in more than The interests of a more fundamental right to life for is the crux of the interests of any one of the major powers can not give up. Therefore, if the United States through other countries on the war solve the financial crisis in the nuclear age, does not have is operational, it will not work.
In the financial turmoil in the world, countries have to question the current U.S. hegemony as the main indicator of the international financial system, irrationality, the United States are allies in the European Union put forward the idea of returning to the Bretton Woods system. In the next month on the 15th of the global financial upcoming summit, the United States on the war and save the market, rather than real strategic options in the United States, the United States might as well be said to be a bargaining chip to increase the shout out. 国际在线-世界新闻报 International Online – News of the World
Original Chinese-Language Story at Sohu.com
(10/31/08)
* Story Highlights
* Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said in Tennessee on Thursday
* McConnell cited 1993 World Trade Center attack shortly after Bill Clinton took office
* Also cited 9/11attacks less than eight months after George W. Bush took office
* McConnell said presidential candidates have received intelligence briefings
From Pam Benson
CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The nation’s chief intelligence official warned Thursday that a new president’s first year in office is the most perilous time for the country.
“I would say the period of most vulnerability for the United States is the first year of a new president,” Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell told an annual conference of intelligence officials and contractors in Nashville, Tennessee, on Thursday.
McConnell cited the attack on the World Trade Center shortly after Bill Clinton took over the presidency in 1993 and the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, which occurred less than eight months after George W. Bush took the oath of office.
McConnell’s comments seemed similar to those made recently by Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, who was criticized when he suggested his running mate Barack Obama would be tested by an international crisis within his first six months in office. Biden referred to it as a “generated crisis to test the mettle” of Obama.
Republican nominee John McCain seized on Biden’s remarks, telling supporters, “We don’t want a president who invites testing from the world when the economy is in crisis and Americans are already fighting two wars.” Obama’s campaign responded that Biden raised “the simple fact that history shows presidents face challenges from Day One.”
McConnell indicated that presidential candidates have received intelligence briefings with the focus mostly on terrorism. After the election, the new president will immediately begin getting a more comprehensive intelligence briefing — including details about operations and covert activities — that is provided President Bush each day.
McConnell said the president-elect’s excitement “is going to be dampened somewhat when he begins to focus on the realities of the myriad of changes and challenges we are going to face in the future.” One of those “challenges” include the prospect of an attack by a biological agent, which he said might “create casualties greater than 9/11.”
Source: CNN.com
You’d think the emergence of a fatal disease—especially one that can be spread without physical contact—would be a big story. Yet a threatening new form of tuberculosis called extremely drug-resistant TB, or XDR-TB, has garnered almost no attention. That could soon change, with a new publicity campaign in 50 cities worldwide, centered on a series of dramatic pictures by photographer James Nachtwey and an Internet campaign at xdrtb.org. As the campaign shows, TB is not just an affliction of an earlier era. It still infects millions of people, killing about 1 in 6 of them. In the 1990s, there emerged a scary new version called multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB). And now there is XDR, which is even harder to treat.
NEWSWEEK’s Anne Underwood spoke with Dr. Mario Raviglione, director of the World Health Organization’s Stop TB Department, and Anna Cataldi, world ambassador for WHO’s Stop TB Partnership. Cataldi has served in the past as a U.N. messenger of peace for former Secretary General Kofi Annan, and as spokeswoman for UNICEF in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: Why have we heard so little about XDR-TB? When did it emerge?
Anna Cataldi: It emerged several years ago. [The first official reports from the WHO and CDC were published in March 2006.] It didn’t get much attention because of all the publicity surrounding avian flu.
How many cases of XDR are there?
Dr. Mario Raviglione: We don’t know for sure, because the vast majority of countries have no sophisticated laboratory equipment to detect it. There are nine million cases of TB every year, including half a million cases of MDR. The general estimate is that about 10 percent of MDR cases are actually XDR. We’re talking 30,000 to 50,000 cases worldwide in the latest estimate.
Cataldi: Some of the first places where it was found were South Africa, where it is spread by miners who are migrants, and in jails in the former Soviet Union. But now there are cases in more than 40 countries. A few cases have been diagnosed in New York.
How high is the death rate?
Cataldi: In KwaZulu-Natal [South Africa], there is 90 percent mortality. Patients survive one to two months. There are no good drugs to treat it. That’s why it’s so dangerous. It could become much worse than SARS. If it spreads, it could turn into a deadly pandemic.
Raviglione: But the mortality rate isn’t entirely known. In other countries with more aggressive treatment protocols, mortality is more like 50 percent. In Peru, a study in the New England Journal of medicine showed a cure rate of 60 percent. That’s the highest anyone has achieved with XDR.
Read the rest of the story here at Newsweek.com
Extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) can be cured in HIV-negative patients through individualised outpatient treatment, even in countries with limited resources and a heavy burden of TB.
XDR-TB has been reported in 49 countries throughout the world. This study shows that a comprehensive, ambulatory management program can cure more than 60% of HIV-negative XDR-TB patients in spite of numerous, prior unsuccessful TB treatments. This ambulatory model could be widely implemented in resource-poor settings.
The death sentence that too often accompanies a diagnosis of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) can be commuted if an individualised outpatient therapy program is followed – even in countries with limited resources and a heavy burden of TB.
A study conducted in Peru between 1999 and 2002 shows that more than 60% of XDR-TB patients not co-infected with HIV were cured after receiving the bulk of their personalised treatment at home or in community-based settings. The paper appears in the August 7, 2008 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.
“It’s essential that the world know that XDR-TB is not a death sentence,” says lead author Carole Mitnick, instructor in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS). “As or even more importantly, our study shows that effective treatment does not require hospitalisation or indefinite confinement of patients.”
In some parts of the world, however, patients with XDR-TB and other drug-resistant forms of the disease are confined against their will in TB hospitals that resemble prisons, Mitnick adds.
Researchers from HMS, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Partners In Health, Harvard School of Public Health, and the Massachusetts State Laboratory Institute, along with Lima, Peru-based organisations Socios en Salud, the Peruvian Ministry of Health, and Hospital Nacional Sergio E. Bernales, had already demonstrated that aggressive, outpatient treatment could cure multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), which is resistant to two first-line anti-TB drugs. That pilot program has been adopted as a national endeavour by the Peruvian government.
A similar protocol was used for the recent study of XDR-TB, which is caused by TB bacteria that are resistant not only to the same first-line anti-TB drugs, but also to the two most important second-line drug classes.
A total of 810 patients with unsuccessfully treated tuberculosis were referred for free individualised drug treatment and additional services as needed, including surgery, adverse-event management, and nutritional and psychological support. Sputum culture and drug-susceptibility testing results, performed at the Massachusetts State Laboratory Institute in Boston, were available for 651 patients. Based on susceptibility results for 12 anti-TB drugs, clinicians developed regimens that included five or more drugs to which the infecting strains were likely to respond. Forty-eight patients had XDR-TB; 603 had MDR-TB. None of the XDR-TB patients were co-infected with the HIV virus.
At the end of treatment, 60.4% in the XDR-TB group were cured; 66.3% with MDR-TB were cured. The outcomes among XDR-TB patients were better than most reported from hospital settings in Europe, the U.S., and Korea, Mitnick says.
Frequent contact with healthcare workers afforded many benefits and was an important element of success. Daily, supervised treatment was delivered in patient homes and at community health centres. The community health workers ensured a high level of treatment adherence and promptly detected circumstances requiring additional attention, including adverse events. Psycho-social needs were also assessed continuously and addressed through a range of interventions.
“It’s important for people to understand that this ambulatory form of treatment exists, is successful, and can be widely implemented in resource-poor settings,” Mitnick says.
Community-based interventions also protect hospital patients and staff from transmission of TB and allow TB patients to remain with their families during this protracted treatment. If hospitals have to accommodate only those with serious medical needs, this intervention can be implemented widely, and earlier in the disease course.
The benefits would be profound, Mitnick says. In addition to reduced morbidity and mortality among patients, an epidemiologic impact could be expected: a decrease in the incidence of resistant TB has been reported only in places where universal screening and treatment for DR-TB are offered at first TB diagnosis.
“DR-TB is everywhere in the world it’s been looked for and it’s not going away without additional resources,” Mitnick says. According to a notice issued by the World Health Organisation this year, ever since it was first described in 2006, XDR-TB has been reported in 49 countries, including the United States. Approximately 1.5 million people are estimated to have MDR-TB, “but no one really knows how many have XDR-TB.” Expanded community-based delivery of improved treatment is essential to stem this epidemic.
Source:BizCommunity.com
