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Do you work in a large office building? Then you should know about this recently discovered flaw in ALL EXISTING BUILDING CODES AND FIRE REGULATIONS that could cause the complete collapse of your office building. For more information on this phenonmenon, please email NIST at wtc@nist.gov

New Spy Software Coming On-Line: “Surveillance in a Box” Makes its Debut

Tom Burghardt
Global Research
Aug 28, 2008

You’ve heard of the FBI’s “Quantico Circuit” and were outraged by illegal warrantless wiretapping by Bushist minions. To no avail, you flooded Congress with emails and phone calls, angered by the bipartisan “FISA Amendments Act of 2008″ and the swell party thrown by AT&T for “Blue Dog” Democrats in Denver this week for the convention.

But just in time for a new administration (and the bundles of cash always at the ready for the expanding homeland security market), comes a complete “surveillance in a box” system called the Intelligence Platform!

According to New Scientist, German electronics giant Siemens has developed software allegedly capable of integrating

…tasks typically done by separate surveillance teams or machines, pooling data from sources such as telephone calls, email and internet activity, bank transactions and insurance records. It then sorts through this mountain of information using software that Siemens dubs “intelligence modules”. (Laura Margottini, “Surveillance Made Easy,” New Scientist, 23 August 2008)

…….full article here

U.S. may have staged Georgian conflict – Putin

Russia Today
Aug 28, 2008

In an interview with CNN Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict may have been staged to secure a victory for one of the presidential candidates in the U.S. He says preliminary reports show that U.S. citizens may have been present in the combat zone.

“We have serious reasons to believe that American citizens were right at the heart of the military action. This would have implications for American domestic policy. If this is confirmed, we will have grounds to suspect that somebody in the U.S. has created this conflict to aggravate the situation and create a competitive advantage for one of the presidential candidates”.

Russia’s Prime Minister also commented on the media coverage of the recent events.

“As far as the perception of these events by the general public goes, it depends not only on politicians, but also on how artful they are in controlling the mass media. And our American colleagues do this much better than we do and there’s a lot we can learn from them”.

…….full article here

Journalists Arrested without Cause & Possessions Confiscated at RNC

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UK government goes on with its plan for data retention

Eurpoean Digital Rights
Aug 27, 2008

UK government intends to oblige ISPs and telephone companies to keep Internet personal data traffic for at least 12 months and local, health authorities and lots of other public bodies are to be given access to details of everyone’s personal Internet information.

On 15 August 2008, the Home Office published a consultation paper which makes clear that the personal data will now be available for crime and public order investigations and may even be used to prevent people self-harming. Furthermore, as the measure is the result of an EU directive, the data will be made available to public investigators across Europe.

The measure will cover VOIP as well and access to personal Internet and text data will be available to all public bodies licensed under the 2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), meaning that hundreds of public bodies including local councils, health authorities, the Health and Safety Commission, the Food Standards Agency or Ofsted (the education standards watchdog), may require telecom companies to hand them over the personal data.

UK government intends to go further by introducing a draft communications bill this autumn which would require all the telecommunications companies to hand over this data to one central “super” database. The police and other public authorities will be able to access this database directly without having to make a request to the company which keeps the records.

…….full article here

US air strike massacres civilians in western Afghanistan

James Cogan
Global Research
Aug 26, 2008

In one of the worst atrocities of the US-led occupation of Afghanistan, as many as 90 civilians were massacred by an American air strike last Friday in the western province of Herat. At least 60 of those killed were children under the age of 15, according to Afghan government and military sources.

The slaughter was carried out by what is, for defenceless people on the ground, one of the most terrifying warplanes in the US arsenal, the AC-130 “Spooky” gunship. Equipped with a rapid-fire five-barrel 25mm Gatling gun, a 40mm cannon and a 105mm howitzer, it is designed to lay waste to exposed targets with a torrent of bullets and artillery shells.

The victims were part of a large crowd that had gathered in the village of Azizabad—a community near the government airfield at Shindand, some 120 kilometres south of the city of Herat—for a customary commemoration of the 40th day after the death of a local leader. Many of the men in the village work as security guards at the airfield.

…….full article here

ANP: Calm political protest turns chaotic as Denver police use pepper spray and batons on trapped crowd

The Real News
Aug 26, 2008

American News Project: A calm political protest quickly turned chaotic as anxious Denver police surrounded protestors peacefully marching toward the Democratic National Convention Center. After trapping the crowd between two buildings, hundreds of officers used pepper spray, batons and unwarranted aggression. After being surrounded for 20 minutes, two ANP producers managed to escape after recording the whole affair.

…….full article here

FBI Records Chief Describes Unsuccessful Search For Identifying Records Of 9/11 Aircraft Wreckage & Flight Data Recorders

Aidan Monaghan
9/11 Blogger
Aug 26, 2008

The following is a statement by the Section Chief of the Record/lnformation Dissemination Section (“RlDS”) of the FBI regarding the unsuccessful search for records or facsimiles of records, pertaining the 4 aircraft identified by the FBI and NTSB as being used during terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 or wreckage generated by them, including 2 flight data recorders. This statement is a defense exhibit for use in an upcoming oral arguments hearing pertaining to a federal court case for records for the 4 aircraft used during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

SEARCH FOR RECORDS RESPONSlVE
TO PLAINTIFF’S REQUEST

Plaintiff’s original FOIA request sought “documentation pertaining to any formally and positively identified debris” from the aircraft used in the September 11th attacks. In response to this request, RIDS personnel at FBIHQ understood that any potentially responsive records would have been compiled for law enforcement purposes and would be located in a pending file because of an ongoing law enforcement investigation. RIDS personnel therefore determined that any records would be withheld in their entirety pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(A). The FBI then received a copy of plaintiff’s complaint for injunctive relief, later amended, wherein plaintiff requested the FBI to “produce agency records, concerning documentation revealing the process by which wreckage recovered by defendant, from the aircraft used during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, was positively identified by defendant (with the aid of the National Transportation Safety Board) as belonging to the said aircraft, presumably through the use of unique serial number identifying information contained by the said aircraft wreckage, that was collected by defendant and which defendant has improperly withheld from plaintiff.” In response to this request, RlDS conducted a search for potentially responsive records at FBIHQ on February 11, 2008. A search of the CRS was conducted using the following subjects: “Airline Debris,” “Debris Identification,” “Commercial Aircraft,” “Aircraft Identification,” “Aircraft Debris,” “Aircraft Wreckage,” “Aircraft,” “Recovered Debris,” “National Transportation and Safety Bureau,” “National Transportation Safety Board,” “NTSB,” “American Airlines,” “American Airlines Flight,” “American Airlines Flight Eleven,” “American Airlines Flight Number 11,” “American Airlines Flight 77,” “N334AA,” “N612UA,” “N644AA,” “N591UA,” “Flight 175,” “Flight 11,” “Flight 77,” “Flight 93,” “Identifying Aircraft Parts,” “Factual Report Aviation,” “Federal Aviation Administration,” “Pentbomb,” “Ground Zero,” “Freshkills Landfill,” and “Fresh Kills Landfill.”

…….full article here

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Councils spy on sex lives of taxpayers

Marie Woolf
TimesOnline
Aug 24, 2008

The sex lives of council-tax payers are being secretly monitored by local authority inspectors to establish whether residents claiming single person’s discounts are really living alone.

Undercover snoopers are being used to find out how often lovers visit and whether supposedly single residents are sharing a bed every night with the same person.

The covert tactics have been condemned as disproportionate use of council powers. Methods include inspectors parking discreetly outside homes to monitor lovers’ movements and observe whether the same person leaves the house in the morning and returns at night. They also check on how often lovers’ cars are parked outside houses and even whether women are sleeping with their landlords.

A surveillance dossier used by the Labour-run Rotherham council shows permission has been given to inspectors to use “drive-past surveillance”, sweeping round and round the block for a glimpse of lovers staying overnight.

…….full article here