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Germany agrees to pass passenger data to FBI
20/12/2007 00:00

Germany gives legislative consent for German and US counter-terrorism agents to create databases of who travels on what airliner as a way to catch attackers.

20th December 2007

The legislation, passed last month in the Bundestag lower house, won approval Thursday from the upper chamber, the Bundesrat.

Under a European Union agreement with the United States that took effect in July, booking data for all US-bound flights from Europe is sent to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation when the flight takes off.

Berlin has now given its blessing to this. The United States is authorized to hold the data about Europeans for up to 15 years.

Germany's own federal police were authorized under the new law to receive and store data about incoming passengers. The airlines must disclose the name, birthplace, birthdate, nationality and other information about passengers.

Germany says this will not only help to profile terrorists on the move, but also improve checks against illegal immigration.
http://tinyurl.com/2am4qt

LAKOTA
Mitaku Oyasin: We Are All Related
MEDIA ADVISORY
Immediate Release: 19 December 2007

Media Contacts:
Naomi Archer, Communications Liaison (828) 230-1404 lakotafree [at] gmail.com

Freedom! Lakota Sioux Indians Declare Sovereign Nation Status

Threaten Land Liens, Contested Real Estate Over Five State Area in U.S. West

Lakota Satisfies Treaty Council Mandate of 33 Years, Drafted by 97 Indigenous Nations

Dakota Territory Reverts back to Lakota Control According to U.S., International Law


Washington D.C. – Lakota Sioux Indian representatives declared sovereign nation status today in Washington D.C. following Monday’s withdrawal from all previously signed treaties with the United States Government. The withdrawal, hand delivered to Daniel Turner, Deputy Director of Public Liaison at the State Department, immediately and irrevocably ends all agreements between the Lakota Sioux Nation of Indians and the United States Government outlined in the 1851 and 1868 Treaties at Fort Laramie Wyoming.

“This is an historic day for our Lakota people,” declared Russell Means, Itacan of Lakota. “United States colonial rule is at its end!”

“Today is a historic day and our forefathers speak through us. Our Forefathers made the treaties in good faith with the sacred Canupa and with the knowledge of the Great Spirit,” shared Garry Rowland from Wounded Knee. “They never honored the treaties, that’s the reason we are here today.”

The four member Lakota delegation traveled to Washington D.C. culminating years of internal discussion among treaty representatives of the various Lakota communities. Delegation members included well known activist and actor Russell Means, Women of All Red Nations (WARN) founder Phyllis Young, Oglala Lakota Strong Heart Society leader Duane Martin Sr., and Garry Rowland, Leader Chief Big Foot Riders. Means, Rowland, Martin Sr. were all members of the 1973 Wounded Knee takeover.

“In order to stop the continuous taking of our resources – people, land, water and children- we have no choice but to claim our own destiny,” said Phyllis Young, a former Indigenous representative to the United Nations and representative from Standing Rock.

Property ownership in the five state area of Lakota now takes center stage. Parts of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana have been illegally homesteaded for years despite knowledge of Lakota as predecessor sovereign [historic owner]. Lakota representatives say if the United States does not enter into immediate diplomatic negotiations, liens will be filed on real estate transactions in the five state region, clouding title over literally thousands of square miles of land and property.

Young added, “The actions of Lakota are not intended to embarrass the United States but to simply save the lives of our people”.

Following Monday’s withdrawal at the State Department, the four Lakota Itacan representatives have been meeting with foreign embassy officials in order to hasten their official return to the Family of Nations.

Lakota’s efforts are gaining traction as Bolivia, home to Indigenous President Evo Morales, shared they are “very, very interested in the Lakota case” while Venezuela received the Lakota delegation with “respect and solidarity.”

“Our meetings have been fruitful and we hope to work with these countries for better relations,” explained Garry Rowland. “As a nation, we have equal status within the national community.”

Education, energy and justice now take top priority in emerging Lakota. “Cultural immersion education is crucial as a next step to protect our language, culture and sovereignty,” said Means. “Energy independence using solar, wind, geothermal, and sugar beets enables Lakota to protect our freedom and provide electricity and heating to our people.”

The Lakota reservations are among the most impoverished areas in North America, a shameful legacy of broken treaties and apartheid policies. Lakota has the highest death rate in the United States and Lakota men have the lowest life expectancy of any nation on earth, excluding AIDS, at approximately 44 years. Lakota infant mortality rate is five times the United States average and teen suicide rates 150% more than national average . 97% of Lakota people live below the poverty line and unemployment hovers near 85%.

“After 150 years of colonial enforcement, when you back people into a corner there is only one alternative,” emphasized Duane Martin Sr. “The only alternative is to bring freedom into its existence by taking it back to the love of freedom, to our lifeway.”

We are the freedom loving Lakota from the Sioux Indian reservations of Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana who have suffered from cultural and physical genocide in the colonial apartheid system we have been forced to live under. We are in Washington DC to withdraw from the constitutionally mandated treaties to become a free and independent country. We are alerting the Family of Nations we have now reassumed our freedom and independence with the backing of Natural, International, and United States law. For more information, please visit our new website at www.lakotafreedom.com.
http://tinyurl.com/22r68g

Asteroid on track for possible Mars hit
December 21, 2007
By John Johnson Jr.

Researchers say the object, about 160 feet across, has an unusually good chance of plowing into the planet Jan. 30.
Talk about your cosmic pileups.

An asteroid similar to the one that flattened forests in Siberia in 1908 could plow into Mars next month, scientists said Thursday.

Researchers attached to NASA's Near-Earth Object Program, who sometimes jokingly call themselves the Solar System Defense Team, have been tracking the asteroid since its discovery in late November.

The scientists, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, put the chances that it will hit the Red Planet on Jan. 30 at about 1 in 75.

A 1-in-75 shot is "wildly unusual," said Steve Chesley, an astronomer with the Near-Earth Object office, which routinely tracks about 5,000 objects in Earth's neighborhood.

"We're used to dealing with odds like one-in-a-million," Chesley said. "Something with a one-in-a-hundred chance makes us sit up straight in our chairs."

The asteroid, designated 2007 WD5, is about 160 feet across, which puts it in the range of the space rock that exploded over Siberia. That explosion, the largest impact event in recent history, felled 80 million trees over 830 square miles.

The Tunguska object broke up in midair, but the Martian atmosphere is so thin that an asteroid would probably plummet to the surface, digging a crater half a mile wide, Chesley said.

The impact would probably send dust high into the atmosphere, scientists said. Depending on where the asteroid hit, such a plume might be visible through telescopes on Earth, Chesley said.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is mapping the planet, would have a front-row seat. And NASA's two JPL-built rovers, Opportunity and Spirit, might be able to take pictures from the ground.

Because scientists have never observed an asteroid impact -- the closest thing being the 1994 collision of comet Shoemaker-Levy with Jupiter -- such a collision on Mars would produce a "scientific bonanza," Chesley said.

The asteroid is now behind the moon, he said, so it will be almost two weeks before observers can plot its course more accurately.

The possibility of an impact has the Solar System Defense Team excited.

"Normally, we're rooting against the asteroid," when it has Earth in its cross hairs, Chesley said. "This time we're rooting for the asteroid to hit."
http://tinyurl.com/2nls9a

Judge defers ruling on Guantanamo tapes inquiry
Sat Dec 22, 7:52 AM ET
by Roland Lloyd Parry

A US judge has deferred ruling on demands by inmates at Guantanamo Bay for a court inquiry into the CIA's destruction of videotapes showing harsh interrogations of terror suspects.

Federal District Court Judge Henry Kennedy held a hearing Friday on whether the spy agency violated his 2005 order to preserve any possible evidence of detainee mistreatment at the US prison camp in Cuba.

The scandal came to light earlier this month when Central Intelligence Agency chief Michael Hayden informed staff that in 2005 the agency had destroyed tapes showing the interrogations of two Al-Qaeda suspects.

Defense lawyer David Remes had asked the court to call an inquiry into the affair, as the tapes reportedly show the suspects undergoing waterboarding, a process of simulated drowning that is widely considered torture.

But government lawyers -- who denied the tapes contained scenes of torture of suspects at Guantanamo -- said this should wait until the Justice Department concluded its own investigation into the matter.

The judge said he would consider the demand for a court inquiry, without saying when he would issue his ruling.

At one point in court, the judge appeared to back the government's view that the Justice Department be allowed to investigate the matter first, asking: "Why should the court not permit the Department of Justice to do just that?"

Remes said the government could not be trusted. "Plainly, the government wants only foxes guarding the henhouse," he said in his motion, according to US media reports.

"Where there is smoke there is fire. We have a smoking gun, as it were, with respect to the government's destruction of potentially relevant evidence," he said.

"The revelation of the CIA's destruction (of the tapes) raises serious questions about whether the government has complied with the court's order ... and its more general obligations" to preserve evidence, he said.

Remes raised concerns about how the government has handled evidence in the case of one of his clients.

But government attorneys said the two detainees on the tapes were not held at Guantanamo when the videos were made.

"It is inconceivable that the destroyed tapes could have been about abuse, mistreatment or torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay," said Justice Department lawyer Joseph "Jody" Hunt, representing the White House.

He told the court the tapes were made in 2002, and that neither of the two men shown "was at Guantanamo Bay during the taping of these videos." He did not comment on why the tapes were destroyed.

In 2005, judge Kennedy had ordered the preservation of "any evidence of torture, mistreatment and abuse of detainees" who were at Guantanamo Bay at the time of the order in June 2005.

The tapes affair has put the administration of US President George W. Bush on the defensive yet again over its treatment of "war on terror" detainees.

Bush has refused to comment on the destruction of the tapes, saying he will await the results of inquiries, but has repeatedly insisted that the US does not use torture.

He has also said he did not recall learning about the existence of the recordings until Hayden briefed him two weeks ago.

Defense lawyer Hunt said Friday that if the Washington court opened its own inquiry it would "compromise" the Justice Department's investigations, adding: "It would be unwise."

Meanwhile, a review by former members of the commission that investigated the September 11 attacks, reported in the New York Times Saturday, raised more questions about the CIA's credibility in the tape affair.

A review of correspondence between the 9/11 commission and the CIA revealed that despite repeated requests for information about interrogation of Al-Qaeda operatives, the panel was never notified about the tapes, the paper said.

The former commission members accused the CIA of obstructing its work by withholding the interrogation tapes, and suggested further investigation was needed to determine if the agency acted illegally.
http://tinyurl.com/23wgy7