Monday, 17 January 2011

The former policeman who spent seven years undercover among environmental activists has denied being an agent provocateur, saying that his superiors knew exactly what he was doing at all times and approved his activities.
Mark Kennedy, a Metropolitan police officer who infiltrated green and anarchist groups under the alias Mark Stone and fled to America after his cover was blown, said he fears for his safety following threats from activists. The 41-year-old said he believed that his former police superiors were looking for him too.
"I can't sleep. I have lost weight and am constantly on edge. I barricade the door with chairs at night. I am in genuine fear for my life," said Kennedy, who sold his story to the Mail on Sunday. "People like to think of things in terms of black and white. But the world of undercover policing is grey and murky. There is some bad stuff going on. Really bad stuff."
However, Kennedy said that throughout his time spent undercover he was in constant touch with police handlers and never tried to push fellow protesters into taking action: "I had a cover officer whom I spoke to numerous times a day. He was the first person I spoke to in the morning and the last person I spoke to at night. I didn't sneeze without a superior officer knowing about it. My BlackBerry had a tracking device. My cover officer joked that he knew when I went to the loo."
He said he felt he had been "hung out to dry" since being exposed.
Kennedy's activities were at the centre of the decision last week by prosecutors to abandon the trial of six activists accused of conspiring to break into Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fired power station in Nottinghamshire.
The former officer said that he made undercover audio recordings of the activists which threw doubt on prosecutors' claims they had conspired to commit aggravated trespass, but that his police superiors chose not to pass these on.
He said: "The truth of the matter is that the tapes clearly show that the six defendants who were due to go on trial had not joined any conspiracy. The tapes I made meant that the police couldn't prove their case. I have no idea why the police withheld these tapes."
The Independent Police Complaints Commission is to investigate the collapsed case. Twenty other environmental activists previously found guilty in connection with the same protest at Ratcliffe-on-Soar plan to challenge their convictions.
There have been calls for a wider investigation into the way police infiltrate such groups. Kennedy said that he knew personally of 15 other officers hidden within green groups during his time undercover from 2003 to 2009. He said: "Some got busted, others left. I was the longest-serving operative. At the time I left in 2009, there were at least four other operatives. I never did anything to jeopardise the work or lives of my fellow officers and I will not start now."
Kennedy, who separated from his wife in 2000, said his children, a girl aged 10 and a boy of 12, have been left devastated by recent events.
One of the most controversial aspects of his story is that he conducted at least two sexual relationships with fellow activists while living as Mark Stone. This, he conceded, should not have happened: "I am the first one to hold up my hands and say, yes, that was wrong. I crossed the line."
The relationships symbolised the impossible position in which he felt he had been placed, Kennedy added, admitting that the longer he spent with the activists the more he began to sympathise with their causes.
He said: "I fell deeply in love with the second woman. I was embedded into a group of people for nearly a decade. They became my friends. They supported me and they loved me. All I can do now is tell the truth. I don't think the police are the good guys and the activists are bad or vice versa. Both sides did good things and bad things. I am speaking out as I hope the police can learn from the mistakes they made."
"I was at the heart of a very sensitive operation. I was told my work was the benchmark for other undercover officers. My superior officer told me on more than one occasion, particularly during the G8 protests in Scotland in 2005, that information I was providing was going directly to Tony Blair's desk."
He continued: "As the years went on, I did get a sort of Stockholm syndrome. But I never lost sight of my work. I texted and informed on a daily basis. But I began to like the people I was with. I formed lasting friendships."
He criticised what he said was a lack of psychological support from his employers, saying he had considered killing himself in recent months: "I was supposed to get psychological counselling every three months. I would go two years without seeing the shrink. Initially meetings were regular. Then it became a farce. The office was so greedy for intelligence that they didn't set up the meetings. They went by the wayside. I'm sure that's the same for other undercover officers too." He said he resigned from the police last year.
Kennedy, who joined the City of London police aged 21 before moving to the Met, said that in 2006 he was beaten up by uniformed fellow police near Drax power station in North Yorkshire after trying to protect a female activist being struck with batons.
"I tried to stand between her and him. I didn't do anything aggressive. That's when I got jumped on by five officers who kicked and beat me. They had batons and pummelled my head. They punched me. One officer repeatedly stamped on my back."
Kennedy also told how he had created a credible identity when infiltrating groups, which included claiming a background in drug smuggling. He had formerly worked in the Met's drug squad.
He said: "I was an avid rock climber and I had been to Pakistan so I created a story about being involved in the importation of drugs. I knew the London drug scene well so I purported to be a courier. That is how I justified having money."
Peter Walker @'The Guardian'

Undercover police officer accused Icelandic police of 'brutality'

ioerror Jacob Appelbaum

Customs in Canada was three minutes in total. They were quite nice and I'm happy to be back in Toronto.

Sunday, 16 January 2011

Etta James treated for leukaemia

US blues legend Etta James has been diagnosed with dementia and is undergoing treatment for leukaemia.

The 72-year-old's health problems came to light in court documents filed by her husband, Artis Mills, who is seeking control of her finances.
Mr Mills claims the singer, known for her hit ballad At Last, has become too sick to manage her own money.
A doctor has also stated the star needs help with eating, dressing and cannot sign her own name.
Mr Mills is seeking a court order for control of more than $1 million (£630,000).
He is also challenging the power of attorney James gave to sons Donto James and Sametto James, and Donto's wife Christy, in February 2008.
Donto wrote in his court declaration he does not object to money being released for his mother's medical care.
But he requests it to be overseen by a third party "to avoid present and future family conflict and discrepancies".
James has been out of the public eye since January last year when she was admitted to hospital after suffering from various ailments, including a blood infection.
She became ill while in a detox clinic for treatment to an addiction to painkillers and other medicines.
James is the winner of four Grammy awards and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.
In the 2008 film Cadillac Records she was portrayed on screen by the singer Beyonce Knowles.
@'BBC'

Smoking 'causes damage in minutes', US experts claim

As opium prices soar and allies focus on Taliban, Afghan drug war stumbles

Fine Gael's data 'took just seconds to steal'

MACRO DUBPLATES VOLUME TWO - Jay Z and The Wailers

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Iain Sinclair: The Raging Peloton

Lord Mandelson of Foy in the county of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the county of Durham, single shareholder in the late lamented Millennium Dome on Bugsby’s Marshes, talked confidentially to an unseen interrogator who appeared to be crouching on the floor of his chauffeured limousine as he drifted across London; and who remained, within earshot of an eavesdropped soliloquy, while the real PM perched in his office, alone with his compulsively agitated gizmos, grape-peelers, yoghurt spoon-removers, young men who read newspapers for him and blunt Irish fixers chewing on unrequired advice. Dripping with froideur, an imperious Mandelson nailed the upstart coalitionists for their absurd sense of entitlement. Hannah Rothschild’s vanity promo, unaccountably offered to the great unwashed by BBC4’s Storyville strand, sold itself on privileged (and clinically controlled) access to the ultimate political voice of the era, the oracle of tie-straightening and pantomimed sincerity. And how fascinating it was, after the fastidious documentation of eyebrow lifting, the heart-rending sighs over the shortcomings of colleagues and patrons, to be granted an unposed snapshot of the child behind the man, Mandelson’s short-trousered induction into political life. Boy Peter on a Hovis bicycle! That was the madeleine moment in an interminable chronicle of not-saying, arcane rituals of grazing and trouser-changing unmatched since Roberto Rossellini made The Taking by Power by Louis XIV for French television.
Triggered by an archive clip of his maternal grandfather, Herbert Morrison, another ennobled socialist cabinet minister, Mandelson launched into a memoir of cycling around Hendon, committee room to polling station, bearing leaflets, carrying messages as proudly as the freshly baked loaves in Ridley Scott’s celebrated commercial, shot in 1973, on the picturesque slopes of Shaftesbury. Carl Barlow, the youth who featured in the advertisement, underscored by the slow movement of Dvorak’s Symphony No 9, arranged for brass, went on to become a fireman in East Ham. And, presumably, to find himself caught up in the aggravations of the Thatcher period, the climate of economic belt-tightening and union-bashing. Lord Tebbit’s helpful remarks, delivered to a sea of grey heads, at Blackpool in 1981, in the aftermath of the Handsworth and Brixton riots, will have carried a special charge for Barlow. ‘On yer bike!’...

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@'London Review of Books'

Stuxnet worm used against Iran was tested in Israel

Swiss whistleblower Rudolf Elmer plans to hand over offshore banking secrets of the rich and famous to WikiLeaks

Rudolf Elmer in Mauritius: “Well-known pillars of society will hold investment portfolios and may include houses, trading companies, artwork, yachts, jewellery, horses, and so on.” Photograph: Rene Soobaroyen for the Guardian The offshore bank account details of 2,000 "high net worth individuals" and corporations – detailing massive potential tax evasion – will be handed over to the WikiLeaks organisation in London tomorrow by the most important and boldest whistleblower in Swiss banking history, Rudolf Elmer, two days before he goes on trial in his native Switzerland.
British and American individuals and companies are among the offshore clients whose details will be contained on CDs presented to WikiLeaks at the Frontline Club in London. Those involved include, Elmer tells the Observer, "approximately 40 politicians".
Elmer, who after his press conference will return to Switzerland from exile in Mauritius to face trial, is a former chief operating officer in the Cayman Islands and employee of the powerful Julius Baer bank, which accuses him of stealing the information.
He is also – at a time when the activities of banks are a matter of public concern – one of a small band of employees and executives seeking to blow the whistle on what they see as unprofessional, immoral and even potentially criminal activity by powerful international financial institutions.
Along with the City of London and Wall Street, Switzerland is a fortress of banking and financial services, but famously secretive and expert in the concealment of wealth from all over the world for tax evasion and other extra-legal purposes.
Elmer says he is releasing the information "in order to educate society". The list includes "high net worth individuals", multinational conglomerates and financial institutions – hedge funds". They are said to be "using secrecy as a screen to hide behind in order to avoid paying tax". They come from the US, Britain, Germany, Austria and Asia – "from all over".
Clients include "business people, politicians, people who have made their living in the arts and multinational conglomerates – from both sides of the Atlantic". Elmer says: "Well-known pillars of society will hold investment portfolios and may include houses, trading companies, artwork, yachts, jewellery, horses, and so on."
"What I am objecting to is not one particular bank, but a system of structures," he told the Observer. "I have worked for major banks other than Julius Baer, and the one thing on which I am absolutely clear is that the banks know, and the big boys know, that money is being secreted away for tax-evasion purposes, and other things such as money-laundering – although these cases involve tax evasion."
Elmer was held in custody for 30 days in 2005, and is charged with breaking Swiss bank secrecy laws, forging documents and sending threatening messages to two officials at Julius Baer.
Elmer says: "I agree with privacy in banking for the person in the street, and legitimate activity, but in these instances privacy is being abused so that big people can get big banking organisations to service them. The normal, hard-working taxpayer is being abused also.
"Once you become part of senior management," he says, "and gain international experience, as I did, then you are part of the inner circle – and things become much clearer. You are part of the plot. You know what the real products and service are, and why they are so expensive. It should be no surprise that the main product is secrecy … Crimes are committed and lies spread in order to protect this secrecy."
The names on the CDs will not be made public, just as a much shorter list of 15 clients that Elmer handed to WikiLeaks in 2008 has remained hitherto undisclosed by the organisation headed by Julian Assange, currently on bail over alleged sex offences in Sweden, and under investigation in the US for the dissemination of thousands of state department documents.
Elmer has been hounded by the Swiss authorities and media since electing to become a whistleblower, and his health and career have suffered.
"My understanding is that my client's attempts to get the banks to act over various complaints he made came to nothing internally," says Elmer's lawyer, Jack Blum, one of America's leading experts in tracking offshore money. "Neither would the Swiss courts act on his complaints. That's why he went to WikiLeaks."
That first crop of documents was scrutinised by the Guardian newspaper in 2009, which found "details of numerous trusts in which wealthy people have placed capital. This allows them lawfully to avoid paying tax on profits, because legally it belongs to the trust … The trust itself pays no tax, as a Cayman resident", although "the trustees can distribute money to the trust's beneficiaries".
Now, Blum says, "Elmer is being tried for violating Swiss banking secrecy law even though the data is from the Cayman Islands. This is bold extraterritorial nonsense. Swiss secrecy law should apply to Swiss banks in Switzerland, not a Swiss subsidiary in the Cayman Islands."
Julius Baer has denied all wrongdoing, and rejects Elmer's allegations. It has said that Elmer "altered" documents in order to "create a distorted fact pattern".
The bank issued a statement on Friday saying: "The aim of [Elmer's] activities was, and is, to discredit Julius Baer as well as clients in the eyes of the public. With this goal in mind, Mr Elmer spread baseless accusations and passed on unlawfully acquired, respectively retained, documents to the media, and later also to WikiLeaks. To back up his campaign, he also used falsified documents."
The bank also accuses Elmer of threatening colleagues.
Ed Vulliamy @'The Guardian'

Venezuela anger at 'mocking' Colombia soap opera

What happens when an entire country legalizes drug use?

(Armando Franca/AP Photo) In this Nov. 10, 2010 picture, a drug addict who identified himself as "Joao," held used needles to exchange for new ones in Lisbon's Casal Ventoso district. Street teams of Portugal's Institute for Drugs and Drug Addiction exchange used needles for new ones and try to direct drug addicts to treatment centers. Joao, who's 37 years old, has been consuming drugs for 22 years. Portugal decriminalized the use of all drugs in a groundbreaking law in 2000.

In the end, there was no way to ignore the problem, and no way for politicians to spin it, either. Young people across Portugal were injecting themselves with heroin. HIV and Hepatitis C infection rates were soaring. And Casal Ventoso, a neighborhood in Lisbon, had become a dark symbol of this small nation’s immense drug problem. Junkies openly injected themselves in the street, dirty syringes piled up in the gutters, alleyways reeked of garbage and human waste, and no one seemed to care.

“Welcome to Lisbon’s drugs supermarket,” a police officer said to a visitor in 2001, surveying the daily depravity with a shrug. But João Goulão, Portugal’s drug czar, admits now that the police officer was probably understating it. “Casal Ventoso,” Goulão said recently, “was the biggest supermarket of drugs in Europe.”

Faced with both a public health crisis and a public relations disaster, Portugal’s elected officials took a bold step. They decided to decriminalize the possession of all illicit drugs — from marijuana to heroin — but continue to impose criminal sanctions on distribution and trafficking. The goal: easing the burden on the nation’s criminal justice system and improving the people’s overall health by treating addiction as an illness, not a crime.

As the sweeping reforms went into effect nine years ago, some in Portugal prepared themselves for the worst. They worried that the country would become a junkie nirvana, that many neighborhoods would soon resemble Casal Ventoso, and that tourists would come to Portugal for one reason only: to get high. “We promise sun, beaches, and any drug you like,” complained one fearful politician at the time...