Press Conference, Room C, 1 Parliament St.
(just off Parliament Sq.)
Tuesday 15th January 2008 3pm
John McDonnell MP and members of the Campaign to Make War History will brief MPs and the media on allegations of war crimes committed against the people of Iraq by Britain’s former Prime Minister and former Attorney General.
Officers from Scotland Yard have commenced a criminal investigation into the deaths of Iraqi citizens killed during the armed invasion and occupation of Iraq. The Metropolitan Police are acting in response to crimes reported by peace activists from We Are Change UK and The Campaign to Make War History. In an unprecedented step, the case was handed to the War Crimes division of the Counter Terrorism branch who are now investigating allegations of 14 criminal offences committed by Tony Blair, Lord Goldsmith and others. The offences are under the International Criminal Court Act 2001, which came into effect under English common law, just two days before 9/11.
Two Members of We Are Change UK and a representative from the Campaign to Make War History were interviewed for six hours at Belgravia Police station on the 20th December 2007. Evidence was provided to the police relating to the crimes of:-
• genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and conduct ancillary to these crimes under Sections 51 and 52 of The International Criminal Court Act 2001.
• a crime against peace and complicity in a crime against peace under Articles 6 and 7 of The Nuremburg Principles.
• murder, incitement to murder and conspiracy to murder under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.
• conspiracy to commit genocide, a crime against humanity and war crimes under the Criminal Law Act 1977.
Details of the alleged breaches of international treaties and violations of the laws of war will be provided at the meeting.
Contacts:-
Chris Coverdale (The Campaign to Make War History): 020 8540 2865;
John McDonnell MP: 020 7219 6908;
Simon Moore 0208 560 1319, Rob Little 07915 063322 (We Are Change UK)
Body: Check this out. We can actually sue News Corp as a class action suit
on behalf the American People. We need to do this while they still
have some money. We have been able to affect their stock prices by
seling off but now it is time to go in for the kill. We can do this
people. See the links below.
Class Action Suit against Fox News on Behalf of the US Citizens,
Investors Dump Fox (NWS) Stock
Category: News and Politics
Pursuant to Rule 23 of the United States Rules of Civil Procedure,
the people of the United States of America bring this Class Action
Legal Suit against Fox News and its parent company News Corporation.
Complainant will prove through over seven dozen direct video quotes
that Fox News did commit libel and fraud which led directly to the
adoption of the Iraqi War by the American people, and that said war
directly resulted in three trillion dollars in damages to the
American people in the form of war related debt. Complainant seeks
reparations for damages in the form of payment to the United States
Treasury, to be used toward satisfying the national debt, and an
order to cease further libel and fraud against the Islamic Republic
of Iran.
You can put the video for the above link on your website with the
following code.
Post bulletins and tell your friends. The value of a news company is
tied to public trust. Public trust in NWS has been lost. Let’s try to
recoup some of our damages before News Corp stock becomes completely
worthless.
.. .. This just further reminds us of the unique kid-glove treatment George W. Bush receives from the media.
.. George Bush toured the Holocaust memorial in Israel yesterday, and through tears, came up with a telling formulation about what his predecessor, Pres. Franklin Roosevelt, should have done to stop the horror at the German concentration camps:
..President George W. Bush had tears in his eyes during an hour-long tour of Israel’s Holocaust memorial and told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the U.S. should have bombed Auschwitz to halt the killing, the memorial’s chairman said…..Bush emerged from a tour of the Yad Vashem memorial today calling it a “sobering reminder” that evil must be resisted, and praising victims for not losing their faith…..Wearing a yarmulke, Bush placed a red-white-and-blue wreath on a stone slab that covers ashes of Holocaust victims taken from six extermination camps. He also lit a torch memorializing the victims…..Bush was visibly moved as he toured the site, said Yad Vashem’s chairman, Avner Shalev…..”Twice, I saw tears well up in his eyes,” Shalev said…..At one point, Bush viewed aerial photos of the Auschwitz camp taken during the war by U.S. forces and called Rice over to discuss why the American government had decided against bombing the site, Shalev said…..”We should have bombed it,” Bush said, according to Shalev…If the only tool you have is a hammer, the saying goes, then every solution will look like a nail. Thus, in Bush’s primitive brain, the best way to stop the horror at the camps would have been to bomb the hell out of them.
Mainly, though, it’s hard to get past the cognitive dissonance of reading an utterance from Bush that was not crafted by the White House political shop and focus-grouped in Paramus to ensure the words he speaks do not mean what they say.
It also reminds us of the unique kid-glove treatment George W. Bush receives from the media. It is impossible to imagine any other politician whose grandfather had profited from Nazi slave labor who could tour a Holocaust memorial with the media in tow and not be hounded for a comment on his grandfather’s role in the horror.
.. .. First the history: Before the war, the Hitler regime’s mistreatment of Jews — particularly the government’s policy of ethnically cleansing Jews out of mixed neighborhoods into Jewish-only ghettos — may have seemed less outrageous in the racially segregated America of the late 1930s than it does today. The same goes for conscripting Jews into forced labor. In 1942, just four years after the Germans began sending Jews to labor camps, the U.S. government sent thousands of Japanese-American citizens into camps in the west, for example.
While the American public had no idea about the mass killings until after the camps were liberated in 1945, the debate continues even now among historians about the extent of FDR’s knowledge of the genocide while it was underway. He died in April that year, just four months after Auschwitz was captured.
In the scheme of things, however, the martyrdom of the Jews, Gypsies and gay people in the camps has had a positive effect on European and German society, for the entirety of civilization, because the fact that the camps were intact at the war’s end provided irrefutable evidence of the genocide.
For example, after the war, the Allied commanders forced rank and file German citizens, who claimed not to have known that their government was gassing 6 million people literally under their noses, to tour the camps to see with their own eyes the horror wrought in their names (and with their tax dollars) — and to witness the inevitable result of the bigotry ingrained in their culture. Forcing the Germans to accept the horrible truth about Nazism contributed to bringing an end to Germany’s decades of aggression against its neighbors, once and for all.
What has been all but forgotten, however, is the role of Prescott Bush, George W. Bush’s grandfather, who was in business with the Nazis even after the U.S. entered the war in late 1941:
..George Bush’s grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany…..The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism…..His business dealings, which continued until his company’s assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy…We will never know if George Bush gave any thought to his grandfather’s role in the creation of the Nazi camps while he toured a memorial to the horror they produced. One of his biggest flaws is his instinctive reflex to deflect responsibility for his own failings, so it is unlikely he’d see any connection between himself, the family fortune that paved his way to power and the portion of it that came from profits from his grandfather’s business dealings with Hitler’s government.
States, MySpace Agree to New Measures on Child Predators
By MICHAEL GORMLEY
Associated Press Writer
ALBANY, N.Y. Jan 14, 2008 (AP)
MySpace.com has agreed with more than 45 states to add extensive measures to combat sexual predators.
An official familiar with the multistate agreement said MySpace, the huge online social networking Web site, has agreed to include several online protections and participate in a working group to develop age-verification and other technologies.
The official said MySpace will also accept independent monitoring and changes to the structure of its site.
The agreement is scheduled to be announced today in Manhattan by attorneys general from New Jersey, North Carolina, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the agreement hadn’t yet been announced.
The attorneys general have been seeking greater controls for online networking sites to prevent sexual predators from using those sites to contact children.
There was no immediate comment from MySpace, a unit of News Corp.
Investigators have increasingly examined MySpace, Facebook.com and similar social networking sites that allow people to post information and images on the Web and invite contacts from others.
Last year, New York investigators said they set up Facebook profiles as 12- to 14-year olds and were quickly contacted by other users looking for sex.
A multistate investigation of the sites announced last year was aimed at putting together measures to protect minors and remove pornographic material, but lawsuits were possible, officials said.
“We have to find the best way to make sure parents have the tools … to protect their children when they’re on social networking sites,” North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said in September.
Nothing new, don’t be alarmed… just compiling killer robots already rolled out to commit mass murder in Iraq. The US government will never use this against its own people. Not even during Martial Law. Rest assured.
The company behind the only armed robots in Iraq is rolling out a new model of gun-toting machine, built from the start for combat. DANGER ROOM has exclusive pictures and footage.
During the early days of the Iraq war, the roboteers at Foster-Miller modified their bomb-disposal machines, to have them carry machine guns, grenade launchers, or rockets.
After years of safety testing and modifications, three of these deadly SWORDS (“special weapons observation remote reconnaissance direct action system”) robots were recently sent to Iraq.
But even now, safety concerns (among other reasons) have kept those machines from firing a shot in combat. But Foster-Miller is already rolling a new model of armed robot — one that’s comes with additional extra, built-in precautions, and has been designed from the beginning to fight.
MAARS (Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System) features new software controls, which allow the robot’s driver to select fire and no-fire zones. The idea is keep the robots from accidentally shooting a flesh-and-blood American. A mechanical range fan also keeps MAARS’ gun pointed away from friendly positions.
The robot is also equipped with a GPS transmitter, so it can be seen on — and tap into — the American battlefield mapping programs, just like tanks and Humvees. These “Blue Force Trackers” have been credited with dramatically reducing friendly-fire incidents during the Iraq war. MAARS comes with an extra fail-safe, which won’t allow it to fire directly at its own control unit.
Nor does the robot always have to carry a gun. A mechanical arm can be swapped “in a couple of minutes” for the weapon, according to MARRS program manager Charles Dean, a retired Army Lt. Colonel. Which means the robot could be used for “inspecting IEDs, opening doors, even dragging casualties.”
The tracks can also be removed, and changed out for wheels; better for urban operations, perhaps. Combined with a lower center of gravity, Dean believes the MAARS will be about 50% faster than its predecessors, which rumbled over streets at 5 miles per hour. Here’s a short of video of MAARS in action:
There’s a good piece in this month’s National Defense magazine on the deployment of the first armed ground robots in Iraq. These are tele-operated rather than autonomous machines, giving ground troops a way of extending their presence into dangerous areas without exposing themselves to fire.
The robots could prove their worth in urban areas with blind corners or curves and little intelligence of what lies beyond, he said.
One skeptic knowledgeable about military robots questioned whether this new weapon would make a long-term impact.
Insurgents will attempt to defeat them just as they have with the military’s new counter-roadside bomb technology. The three robots could last weeks rather than months in the field, said the source, who declined to be named because he is still involved in the military robot community.
James Canton, chief executive officer of the Institute for Global Futures and an expert on military technologies, said SWORDS is a relatively simple machine and just the cusp of where the military is going with robots. The coming robot army will change the military world both tactically and strategically, he predicted.
These first SWORDS ‘bots are fairly primitive, but the users seems to like them. And faster and more agile machines giving the user a better situational awareness are not far away. As with many weapons systems from biplanes to UAVs, what we see here is a machine originally meant for other purposes with a weapon bolted on. But if it works, I predict the v2.0 will have armor, additional weapon options and a whole range of other kit built into it.
There are some provocative ideas, such as the idea that instead of 2,000 soldiers and 150 robots, a future unit might have 150 soldiers and 2,000 robots. Read the full article here.
Armed robots — similar to the ones now on patrol in Iraq — are being marketed to domestic police forces, according to the machines’ manufacturer and law enforcement officers. None of the gun-toting ‘bots appear to have been deployed domestically, yet. Both cops and company officials say it’s only a matter of time, however.
“Other than some R&D with the shotgun mount, we haven’t used it operationally,” Massachusetts State Police Trooper Mike Rogowski tells DANGER ROOM. “But they’re on the way. They’re coming,”
In addition to the Massachusetts State Police, SWAT teams in Houston, San Francisco, and Lubbock, TX all have the robots, according to Foster-Miller spokesperson Cynthia Black. None of the team have armed the machines, so far. But Trooper Rogowski, for one, is extremely interested — especially in equipping the robot with a less-lethal weapon, like a three-shot Taser stun gun. “That would be phenomenal,” he says.
However, Trooper Rogowski adds, “Massachusetts is a pretty liberal state. To get management to sign off on an armed weapons platform — that’ll be pretty interesting, to see how that goes.”
(Foster-Miller competitor iRobot recently teamed up with Taser International to build a stun gun-packing ‘bot of their own.)
Like the SWORDS, the Talon SWAT/MP is based on Foster-Miller’s line of bomb-disposal robots which have seen years’ worth of action in Iraq. Rogowski says handling ordnance is his robot’s main mission, too. But the machine has also been deployed in SWAT-type situations — even before it gets armed.
Last fall, Rogowski remembers, a person in the town of Wilbraham, Massachusetts had barricaded himself into his house. But the overwhelming odor of propane fumes made police reluctant to send humans in. The robot went instead — and discovered propane tanks, as well as the man. “He had shot himself in the master bedroom,” Rogowski recalls.
Love them or hate them, TASER stun guns have become an essential and effective part of law enforcement armory. Perhaps their main drawback has been that even the long-range wireless shotgun-mounted TASER XREP puts a police officer within 30 feet of a potentially dangerous suspect before they’re in range. Now, a new partnership between TASER and iRobot will see the construction of TASER-wielding robots that can be sent in to incapacitate violent suspects without ever exposing police officers to the risk of harm. What’s more, TASER has released their Remote Area Denial (TRAD) system, an unmanned device that operates in a network to identify and incapacitate intruders in secured areas. It all points towards an interesting future with embedded moral implications; how long will it be until suspects are told “you have 15 seconds to comply?”
TASER International recently announced the forming of a strategic alliance with iRobot corporation. Under the terms of this alliance the two companies will work collaboratively to develop a new robotic capability utilizing TASER technologies. This combination of capabilities will allow law enforcement, federal, and military users to employ TASER technology from an iRobot platform at a safe distance to engage, incapacitate, and control dangerous suspects without exposing those personnel, the suspect, or bystanders to unnecessary risks.
As the first step in this alliance, the two companies have integrated a TASER X26 unit into the iRobot PackBot Explorer. The Explorer is a twin-tank-track remote-controlled robot that can relay real-time audio and video back to its operator at a remote location. This proof-of-concept integration is being shown to Law Enforcement and Military customers to explore customer needs and requirements. The result of these customer interactions will lead to the development of products that may include a full line of TASER kits for iRobot platforms or a family of fully integrated robots.
“TASER International is very excited to be entering into this alliance with a forward thinking and proactive company such as iRobot,” said Tom Smith, Chairman of TASER International. “We have been working on expanding the delivery platforms of our proven TASER Neuromuscular Incapacitation technology. Integrating our technology with the increasingly necessary capability of remotely controlled or autonomous robotic systems is a natural fit.”
In unrelated news, TASER has released their TASER Remote Area Denial (TRAD) system, a three-legged, rugged standalone device with infra-red cameras and the ability to discern friend from foe. Operating in a TASERNET network, the devices are designed to identify intruders and bring them down with TASER cartridges, keeping them incapacitated until response teams can arrive.
Were the iRobot and TRAD systems to be integrated together, the potential exists to have an autonymous, patrolling robot guard authorised to inflict incapacitating pain on those it deems “intruders.” A scary thought – is it time to look at incorporating Asmiov’s three laws of robotics into international law?
NEW YORK (Fortune Magazine) — It’s 1900 hours on Veterans Day in Fayetteville, N.C., a pistol shot from the Fort Bragg military base. Ten minutes ago a 25-year-old self-taught engineer named Adam Gettings pulled into the Waffle House parking lot, lifted the hatch of his black SUV, and unveiled what could very well be the future of urban warfare: a toy-like but gun-wielding robot designed to replace human soldiers on the battlefield.
It’s two feet tall, travels ten miles an hour, and spins on a dime. Remote-controlled over an encrypted frequency that jams nearby radios and cellphones, it’ll blow a ten-inch hole through a steel door with deadly accuracy from 400 meters.
Now Gettings is sitting calmly on the other side of a plate of fried eggs and sliced tomatoes, talking about how his company, Robotex, has teamed up with a wild-eyed Tennessee shotgun designer to rethink the development strategy for military technology. “
The idea that you can use investor money rather than [government] research money – that’s a new thing,” says Gettings, who’s in town for SpecOps, a war-fighter technology conference.
Military contractors typically get the funding to build, test, and sell new weapons systems from federal agencies. It can take forever.
Robotex, based in Palo Alto, is financed by angel investors and went from idea to product in six months. “This is the new defense, Silicon Valley-style,” says Gettings. “You build only what’s necessary, iterate quickly, and keep the price low.”
How low? Try $30,000 to $50,000. A similar bot, the Talon, which was developed by defense contractor Foster-Miller and is being tested in Iraq, costs six times that amount. “Our system does all the same things as the Talon, weighs half as much, and costs a fraction,” says Gettings.
When Izumi decided to build a better war robot in 2005, he recruited Nathan Gettings, a former PayPal software engineer and founder of Palantir Technologies, who brought in his brother Adam as well as a fourth (silent) partner who hails from both PayPal and YouTube. They had a prototype in no time. But they needed a weapon, and that’s how Jerry Baber, his revolutionary shotgun, and a pilotless mini-helicopter come into the picture.
Baber is the fast-talking, white-haired founder of Military Police Systems, an arms manufacturer and ammunition distributor based in the hills of eastern Tennessee. When his chums at Blackwater, the security contractor, told him that the Robotex guys were the real deal, he invited them for a visit.
“I called Nathan and Adam on a Monday, and on Thursday they were here,” says Baber.
With that meeting, he turned a promising little robot into something both multifunctional and truly scary. His company’s $8,000 Atchisson Assault-12 shotgun was fresh off the assembly line after a dozen years in development. It’s made of aircraft-grade stainless steel, never needs lubrication or cleaning, and won’t rust. Pour sand through it and it won’t clog. It doesn’t recoil, so it’s accurate even when it’s firing in automatic mode, which it does at a rate of 300 rounds per minute.
“It delivers the lead equivalent of 132 M16s,” says Baber. “When they start firing from every direction, it’s all over.”
Limited-range bullets are important in urban combat situations, Baber explains, because once an insurgent gets between the robot and a soldier operating it on the ground, the bot is rendered useless – unless the soldier wants to shoot at himself.
Baber has paired the AH and its smaller sibling, the MH, with a remote-control mini-helicopter called the AutoCopter, which holds two AA-12s and can carry the bots into battle. His plan is to buy the robots from Robotex and the helicopter from Neural Robotics in Huntsville, Ala. Then he’s going to arm them, resell the systems, and split the profits.
It’s a classic Silicon Valley tale of a few engineers who do what they’re best at, team up with some kindred spirits, and together build a product to take on the establishment.
The wild cards here, of course, are Beltway bureaucracy and public sentiment. Is the military really ready for low-cost killer robots? Are you?
At 72, Baber says he doesn’t have a lot of time to wait to see his system deployed. And the next step is the toughest. “It’s a bitch, let me tell you,” he says of trying to sell innovative concepts into an entrenched government procurement system. But he has a plan.
First, the entire armory will go on display in Blackwater’s lobby. That should get some attention. If not, he’s counting on a public outcry.
“If moms and dads around the country find out this system is available while their sons are off sopping up bullets in Iraq, they’re going to tear the White House down,” he says. “This will take the soldiers out of harm’s way.”
Air Force scientists are looking for robotic bombs that look — and act — like swarms of bugs and birds. In a recent presentation, Colonel Kirk Kloeppel, head of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s munitions directorate, announced the Lab’s interest in “bio-inspired munitions.”
These, “small, autonomous” machines would “provide close-in [surveillance] information, in addition to killing intended targets,” the Colonel noted. And they’d not only take out foes in urban canyons — the self-guided munitions would “operat[e] within buildings,” too.
Perhaps, like birds and bees, these tiny machines could maneuver by sensing “air flow.” Maybe they could be led to targets by smell, sound, or ” electrosensing.” For sure, they would flap their wings in order to stay aloft. And, naturally, they’d all have “morphing airframes.”
The military has all kinds of research efforts underway to try to bring the animal and robot worlds together — everything from slithering snake-bots to mechanical pack mules to dragonfly drones. But Col. Kloeppel’s ideas are some of the most radical I’ve seen, so far. Other long, long-term goals he and the Lab have in mind include “psycho-cultural situational awareness,” “ubiquitous swarming sensors & shooters,” and “dominant offensive cyber engagement.”
Sightings of Elvis robotic-looking insects — combined with reports that the Pentagon is working on cyborg insects — is prompting people to speculate that the government has perhaps already deployed this super-cool technology. As the Washington Post reports in an article that truly made my day:
“I heard someone say, ‘Oh my god, look at those,’ ” the college senior from New York recalled. “I look up and I’m like, ‘What the hell is that?’ They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects.”
Out in the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them, too.
“I’d never seen anything like it in my life,” the Washington lawyer said. “They were large for dragonflies. I thought, ‘Is that mechanical, or is that alive?’ “
That is just one of the questions hovering over a handful of similar sightings at political events in Washington and New York. Some suspect the insectlike drones are high-tech surveillance tools, perhaps deployed by the Department of Homeland Security.
Of course, as the article notes, no agency admits to actually deploying Elvis insect bugs, but hey, why would they?
Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden’s son has applied for a visa to the United Kingdom where he intends to live with his British wife, the Daily Mail reported.
Omar Bin Laden, 26, and his wife Jane Felix-Browne, 52, say they have been interviewed at the British Embassy in Cairo. The embassy has declined to comment on the issue.
The British woman, who changed her name to Zaina Al Sabah Bin Laden after her marriage to Omar, has been married six times and has three sons and five grandchildren, according to the tabloid.
If the couple’s application is accepted, they will move to Jane’s $1.1 million home in Cheshire, near Manchester.
The Daily mail quoted her as saying: “The embassy staff are all very friendly and they are doing all the checks. It could take a while for the visa to come through but there’s no reason in law why Omar and I should not be able to live in the U.K. together.”
The son of the world’s most wanted terrorist has divorced his first wife, the mother of his two-year-old son, and is currently waiting for confirmation of the divorce to come through from Saudi Arabia, so that he can prove the British woman is his only spouse.
“We have been told there will not be a problem as long as we can provide the original documents from his divorce from his first wife. And that should be done in a week,” Mrs Bin Laden said.
A British marriage visa would allow Omar to live in the country for two years, after which he would be able to apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain.
The couple say they are “peace activists”, and are organizing a horse ride from Cairo to Morocco.
Omar Bin Laden told the Mail on Sunday: “Associates of my father forced the cancellation of the Dakar Rally [across north-west Africa], but they won’t stop me from riding. We want people to join us on the trek – Jews, Arabs, Christians, Muslims, it doesn’t matter where people are from.”
