13 doctors demand inquest into weapons expert Dr David Kelly’s death

He could not have died from loss of blood, say the experts

Daily Mail |  Jul 12, 2009

By Glen Owen and Miles Goslett

The death of Government scientist David Kelly returned to haunt Labour today as a group of doctors announced that they were mounting a legal challenge to overturn the finding of suicide.

Dr Kelly’s body was found six years ago this week in woods close to his Oxfordshire home, shortly after he was exposed as the source of a BBC news report questioning the grounds for war in Iraq.

Unusually, no coroner’s inquest was held into his death.

The only official verdict has come from the Hutton Inquiry, commissioned by Tony Blair, which concluded that Dr Kelly, 59, died from loss of blood after cutting his wrist with a blunt gardening knife.

Critics regarded the report as a ‘whitewash’, and Mr Blair remains acutely sensitive to the accusation that he has ‘blood on his hands’ over the scientist’s death.

But now a team of 13 specialist doctors has compiled a detailed medical dossier that rejects the Hutton conclusion on the grounds that a cut to the ulnar artery, which is small and difficult to access, could not have caused death.

It will be used by their lawyers to demand a formal inquest and the release of Dr Kelly’s autopsy report, which has never been published. It will also be sent to Sir John Chilcot’s forthcoming inquiry into the Iraq War.

The 12-page opinion, a copy of which has been seen by The Mail on Sunday, concludes: ‘The bleeding from Dr Kelly’s ulnar artery is highly unlikely to have been so voluminous and rapid that it was the cause of death.

‘We advise the instructing solicitors to obtain the autopsy reports so that the concerns of a group of properly interested medical specialists can be answered.’

The doctors do not say how, or why, they believe Dr Kelly did die but they have worked closely with campaigning Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, who believes that the scientist was murdered by enemies he made in the course of his work as a weapons inspector.

And two of the doctors have added to the sense of persistent intrigue surrounding Dr Kelly by claiming that thousands of emails relating to the case had ‘vanished’ from their computers, in what one claimed was an act of ’state-sponsored sabotage’.

A coroner’s inquest into Dr Kelly’s death was suspended before it could begin by order of the then Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer. He used the Coroners Act to designate the Hutton Inquiry as ‘fulfilling the function of an inquest’, but as a judicial investigation it had no power to make witnesses give evidence under oath.

After taking evidence from – but not cross-examining – Dr Nicholas Hunt, the pathologist who carried out the post-mortem examination, Lord Hutton concluded that ‘the principal cause of death was bleeding from incised wounds to the left wrist’ combined with the consumption of painkillers and ’silent coronary artery disease’.

The doctors also say that the level of the painkiller co-proxamol in Dr Kelly’s blood was about one third of that required to produce death and point to Dr Hunt’s comments at the end of giving evidence to Lord Hutton.

Asked if there was anything further he would like to say on the circumstances leading to Dr Kelly’s death, he said: ‘Nothing I could say as a pathologist, no.’

After the report was published, Dr Hunt added to the doctors’ suspicions by telling Channel 4 that he thought a full coroner’s inquest should be held.

The doctors have hired solicitor Martin Day, of Leigh Day and Co, and received advice from barrister Richard Hermer, QC, both of whom have a strong track record in civil liberties actions, including winning nearly ?3million in compensation from the British Government for the family of Iraqi Baha Mousa, who died while being detained by UK troops.

They intend to use the Coroners Act to challenge Lord Falconer’s suspension of the inquest.

One of the doctors, David Halpin, told The Mail on Sunday that they had argued their case in the legal document in ‘microscopic’ detail.
He said: ‘We reject haemorrhage as the cause of death and see no contrary opinion which would stand its ground. I think it is highly likely he was assassinated.’

Mr Baker said: ‘The fact that eminent medical experts feel so strongly that the official explanation for Dr Kelly’s death cannot be sustained and are now taking legal action against the Government to secure a proper inquest demonstrates both how suspect Lord Hutton’s conclusions were and how this dark chapter cannot be closed unless Sir John Chilcott’s inquiry into the Iraq war addresses this issue.

‘A proper inquest into Dr Kelly’s death must take place.’

Among the doctors is Christopher Burns-Cox, 71, the former senior consultant physician for the Frenchay Healthcare Trust, Bristol, and current co-chairman of the NHS consultants’ association.

Mr Halpin, 69, meanwhile, is a former lecturer in anatomy at King’s College, London, and a former consultant in orthopaedic and trauma surgery at Torbay Hospital. He continued in general practice until 2005.

Mr Halpin said that he lost more than 6,000 pieces of correspondence – many relating to Dr Kelly – during his investigation, explaining that the mystery began when the ‘firewall’ on his computer, which all similar machines are fitted with as a security measure, became inactive without warning.

His emails started disappearing as though they were being sifted remotely. ‘I believe this will have been done by a state-sponsored agency and not by an amateur acting singly,’ he said.

A close associate of Mr Halpin’s who has also taken an active interest in the case confirmed to The Mail on Sunday that at around the same time he, too, fell victim to what he believes was a rogue agent, losing ’somewhere in the region of 2,000 emails’, many of which discussed Dr Kelly.

For professional reasons, the individual concerned, a civil servant, said that he could not be identified by name.

He said: ‘I have no doubt that my computer was hacked into and I also have reason to believe that both my mobile telephone and my landline have been bugged until fairly recently. It echoes on the end of the line, things like that.

‘But if I made an accusation like that in public without being able to prove it, it would compromise me and for the sake of my children I do not want to enter that territory. I cannot say any more about it at the moment.’

Mr Baker, who published a book about Dr Kelly’s death in 2007, also believes that his computer was hacked into remotely, leading to the loss of sensitive files about David Kelly from his constituency office in Lewes, East Sussex.

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And Mr Halpin added that Rowena Thursby, who helped establish the Kelly Investigation Group which has campaigned for the inquest into Dr Kelly’s death to be reopened on several occasions, has also lost scores of emails in a similar, suspicious manner.

The developments come as investigative journalist Bob Coen prepares to screen a 90-minute documentary, Anthrax War, in London on the sixth anniversary of Dr Kelly’s death, this Friday.

The film claims that Dr Kelly’s death may have been linked to the secret world of germ warfare research.

Until his death Dr Kelly was privy to some of the state’s most sensitive information and worked closely with the intelligence services of all the major industrialised countries.

Among notable claims in the film, which was made over four years, is Dr Kelly’s connection with Dr Walter Basson, whose work for the South African apartheid regime used chemical and biological weapons research destined for extrajudicial execution, and whose goals included ethnic cleansing.

The film also suggests that Dr Kelly was preparing to write a book that would have breached the Official Secrets Act.

The draft version of the doctors’ dossier – a final version, including diagrams and a copy of Dr Kelly’s death certificate, is being prepared for lawyers this week – concentrates on the ulnar artery, a blood vessel in the forearm.

The Hutton Report quoted Dr Nicholas Hunt, the forensic pathologist who examined Dr Kelly’s corpse, as seeing ‘evidence of a significant incised wound to his left wrist, in the depths of which his left artery had been completely severed…

‘The arterial injury had resulted in the loss of a significant volume of blood, as noted at the scene.’

But the doctors draw on their specialist knowledge of human anatomy to argue in detail that a wound to this artery could not have resulted in enough blood loss to cause his death.

‘This artery has the width of a matchstick in its constricted state,’ they write.

‘It is not easily felt on the little finger side of the wrist… on the contrary, the radial artery pulse is easily felt beneath the skin on the opposite side of the wrist. It is thus more difficult to cut the ulnar artery.’

They go on to argue that, according to the evidence given by Dr Hunt to Lord Hutton’s inquiry, Dr Kelly’s blood would have quickly clotted, thus stemming the flow and preventing his death.

They write: ‘Dr Hunt describes complete severance of this artery, ie transection. This means the elasticity of the artery would have caused it to retract within its sheath.

‘Contraction of the circular smooth muscle within the arterial wall would have narrowed the artery, thus reducing or stopping blood flow.

Blood clots would have formed in the wound, but also within the narrowed artery.

‘That clotting within the artery would have happened more speedily because the cutting was done with considerable trauma, thus causing more damage to the lining membrane, the intima.

Damage to the cells of the intima causes aggregation of blood platelets, thus hastening clotting within the vessel.’

The doctors cite a number of studies which they say prove for ‘all practical purposes’ that suicide using the means allegedly adopted by Dr Kelly ‘does not exist in Britain’.

Although the doctors do not believe the painkillers taken by Dr Kelly contributed to his death in any way – as argued by Lord Hutton – they have restricted the scope of their dossier to refute the reasoning he used on the question of haemorrhage.

Chinese government accused of taking babies from parents to sell on US and EU adoption markets

Chinese babies sold for adoption to US and Europe, report claims

Authorities in China are investigating reports that dozens of babies who were taken from their parents for breaching the country’s strict one-child policy were sold for adoption to families in Europe and America.

Telegraph | Jul 3, 2009

By Peter Foster in Beijing

An investigation has alleged that up to 78 babies taken into care in Guizhou province, in southern China, were sold for £1,800 each, mostly to childless couples in the US but also to families from European countries, including Sweden and Spain.

Many of the girls were genuine orphans or had been abandoned by their parents as unwanted, however, in at least three cases it is alleged the children were removed in lieu of £2,000 fines levied for breach of China’s draconian one-child policy.

The cases relate to a three-year period between 2004-2006, when the policy was being strictly enforced by the local government of Zhenyuan county in Guizhou.

The local government issued a statement saying that two senior local officials had been warned and had received “executive demerits” following a local disciplinary inquiry. The statement said the government would continue to investigate the allegations. “There will be no cover up,” the statement added.

China is a popular destination for overseas couples, particularly from the US, who want to adopt children and is generally perceived to have a well-regulated and transparent system, imposing strict requirements on applicants.

Yang Jibin, the reporter who researched the story for the Southern Weekly newspaper in Guangzhou, said he was shown a list of 80 female babies while on a visit to the Zhenyuan state orphanage, of which 78 had been adopted abroad.

He told the story of one couple, Lu and Yang, who gave up their fourth baby girl in 2003 after a visit from a birth control officer who insisted on taking the baby away, describing the girl as “abandoned baby, found and turned in by Lu” in the orphanage register.

“That was my job. I just followed the policy,” the officer was reported as saying, “They were willing to give up their baby to offset the fine” After relinquishing their child without signing any formal contracts, Lu and Yang never returned to the orphanage to visit. They added that, even if the child was now found, they would not take her back for fear of having to pay the outstanding fine.

Tang Jian, leader of Birth Control Administrative Bureau Inspection Team of Zhenyuan county apparently admitted the practice was prevalent at the time.

“It is true that some baby girls were forced be brought into the charity house and then sent abroad,” he was quoted as saying.

Other parents were less compliant when asked to give up their children. A former worker at the orphanage quoted in the report recalled one local father who tried several times to take back his daughter in 2004, even offering bribes to staff to let her go.

When this failed, he came to visit his daughter more and more often until, one day, he grabbed her, stood up and ran. “Four or five nannies surrounded him immediately and took back the baby,” the worker recalled.

Grand Jury Holds Inquiry on Destruction of 92 Tapes of Brutal Interrogation by CIA

NY Times | Jul 3, 2009

By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON — Current and former top Central Intelligence Agency officers have appeared before a federal grand jury in Virginia as part of an 18-month investigation into the agency’s destruction of 92 videotapes depicting the brutal interrogations of two Qaeda detainees.

The witnesses recently called by the special prosecutor, former government officials said, include the agency’s top officer in London and Porter J. Goss, who was C.I.A. director when the tapes were destroyed in November 2005.

The grand jury testimony of C.I.A. officers is further evidence that, despite President Obama’s pledge not to punish agency operatives for their role in the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects, the shadow of the controversial program still looms over the agency’s daily operations.

The court appearances are tied to a criminal investigation led by John L. Durham, whom the Justice Department appointed in January 2008 to investigate the destruction of the tapes. The tapes had shown C.I.A. officers using harsh interrogation methods, including waterboarding, on two detainees, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

Mr. Durham has shrouded his investigation in a level of secrecy rare even by the normally tight-lipped standards of special prosecutors, and after 18 months it is still difficult to assess either the direction or the targets of his investigation.

Current and former intelligence officials say the tapes were ordered destroyed by Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the head of the C.I.A.’s clandestine branch. Mr. Rodriguez had worried that the tapes might be leaked and put undercover operatives in legal and physical jeopardy.

One top C.I.A. officer who recently appeared before Mr. Durham’s grand jury is the agency’s station chief in London, who had worked with Mr. Rodriguez when he led the agency’s Counterterrorism Center and who eventually became his chief of staff at the clandestine branch.

Because she remains undercover, The New York Times is not publishing her name. She is said by former agency officers to have helped carry out Mr. Rodriguez’s order to destroy the tapes.

The tapes had been kept in a safe at the C.I.A. station in Thailand, the country where the interrogations took place.

Mr. Goss, whom President George W. Bush removed from the C.I.A in May 2006, is said by several former C.I.A. officials to have opposed the destruction of the tapes.

Mr. Rodriguez has not yet testified before the grand jury, two former C.I.A. officers said.

In a court filing last year, Mr. Durham indicated he planned to wrap up interviews for the investigation by late February, but Obama administration officials have indicated more recently that Mr. Durham could continue his work through the summer. One reason for the pace of the investigation, officials said, is that the grand jury convenes only once a month to hear testimony.

The current and former government officials interviewed for this article all spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing details of a continuing criminal investigation.

Besides the question of who at the C.I.A. and White House might have authorized the destruction of the tapes, Mr. Durham is investigating the legal guidance Mr. Rodriguez received before giving the order. One issue is whether the agency might have broken the law by destroying tapes that could have been introduced as evidence in federal trials.

Mr. Rodriguez told colleagues at the time that two lawyers inside the agency’s clandestine branch, Steven Hermes and Robert Eatinger, had advised him that there was no legal impediment to destroying the tapes and that he had the authority to give the order.

But the advice of the two lawyers was careful, the former officials said, and they never gave official approval for the tapes’ destruction.

The C.I.A. never disclosed the existence of the tapes to either the Sept. 11 commission or federal courts that had been hearing the cases of Qaeda suspects in American custody.

At the time the tapes were destroyed, lawyers for Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 plot, were seeking information from the Bush administration about the interrogation of Mr. Zubaydah that might have pertained to Mr. Moussaoui’s role in the 2001 attacks.

Some legal experts said Mr. Durham might have trouble building a criminal case around the role of the C.I.A. lawyers.

“It seems difficult to prove that lawyers had criminal intent,” said John Radsan, a former C.I.A. lawyer and federal prosecutor who now teaches at the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, “and they didn’t have Rodriguez’s personal interest in getting rid of the tapes.”

“Incompetence does not equal obstruction of justice,” Mr. Radsan said.

As Mr. Durham’s investigation proceeds, the Obama administration has also been forced under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to make public a number of top-secret documents related to the C.I.A. detention program.

On Thursday, the Justice Department sent a letter to a judge in New York saying that it would need until Aug. 31 to produce a copy of a 2004 report by the agency’s inspector general detailing a number of abuses at C.I.A. prisons overseas.

Tony Blair knew of secret policy on terror interrogations

Letter reveals former PM was aware of guidance to UK agents

Guardian | Jun 18, 2009

Tony Blair was aware of the existence of a secret interrogation policy which effectively led to British citizens, and others, being tortured during counter-terrorism investigations, the Guardian can reveal.

The policy, devised in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, offered guidance to MI5 and MI6 officers questioning detainees in Afghanistan whom they knew were being mistreated by the US military.

British intelligence officers were given written instructions that they could not “be seen to condone” torture and that they must not “engage in any activity yourself that involves inhumane or degrading treatment of prisoners”.

But they were also told they were not under any obligation to intervene to prevent detainees from being mistreated.

“Given that they are not within our custody or control, the law does not require you to intervene to prevent this,” the policy said.

The policy almost certainly breaches international human rights law, according to Philippe Sands QC, one of the world’s leading experts in the field, because it takes no account of Britain’s obligations to avoid complicity in torture under the UN convention against torture. Despite this, the secret policy went on to underpin British intelligence’s relationships with a number of foreign intelligence agencies which had become the UK’s allies in the “war against terror”.

The policy was set out in written instructions sent to MI5 and MI6 officers in January 2002, which told them they might consider complaining to US officials about the mistreatment of detainees “if circumstances allow”.

Blair indicated his awareness of the existence of the policy in the middle of 2004, a few weeks after publication of photographs depicting the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

It was around this time, David Miliband, the foreign secretary, told MPs on Tuesday, that the policy was changed, becoming more “comprehensive and formal”.

In a letter to the intelligence and security committee (ISC), the group of MPs and peers that provides political oversight of the UK’s security and intelligence services, on May 24 2004, Blair said that rather than considering making a complaint, “UK intelligence personnel interviewing or witnessing the interviews of detainees are instructed to report if they believe detainees are being treated in an inhumane or degrading way”.

The Guardian has learned from a reliable source that MI5 officers are now instructed that if a detainee tells them that he or she is being tortured they should never return to question that person.

It remains unclear what Blair knew of the policy’s consequences. The Guardian has repeatedly asked him what role he played in approving the policy, whether he was aware that it had led to people being tortured, and whether he made any attempt to change it.

His spokesman said: “It is completely untrue that Mr Blair has ever authorised the use of torture. He is opposed to it in all circumstances. Neither has he ever been complicit in the use of torture.

“For the record, also, Mr Blair believes that our security services do a superb job of protecting our country in difficult circumstances and that it is not surprising following the attacks of September 11 2001 that there was a heightened sense of the dangers the country faced from terrorism. None of this amounts to condoning the use of torture.”

When the Guardian pointed out to Blair that it had not suggested he had authorised the use of torture, but had asked whether he had played any role in the approval of a policy that led to people being tortured, his spokesman replied: “Tony Blair does not condone torture, has never authorised it nor colluded in it at any time.” But there is growing evidence of MI5’s collusion in the torture of British terrorism suspects in Pakistan, where officers of the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), an agency whose routine use of torture has been widely documented, were asked by MI5 to detain British citizens and put questions to them prior to an interrogation by MI5 officers.

Two high court judges say they have seen “powerful evidence” of the torture of Binyam Mohamed, the British resident who returned from Guantánamo Bay in February, before he was questioned by an MI5 officer in May 2002.

In a separate case, a court has heard that MI5 and Greater Manchester police drew up a list of questions to be put to another man, Rangzieb Ahmed, who was detained by the ISI in August 2006, despite having reason to believe that he was in danger of being tortured.

By the time Ahmed was deported to the UK after a lengthy period of unlawful detention three of his fingernails were missing.

Several other men have come forward to say they were questioned by British intelligence officers after suffering brutal torture at the hands of Pakistani agents, and there have been similar allegations of British collusion in the torture of British citizens in Egypt, Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates.

While a small number of the victims were subsequently tried and convicted in the UK, most were released without charge.

International concern about Britain’s involvement in torture has been mounting for some time. In February Martin Scheinin, a UN special rapporteur on human rights, reported that British intelligence personnel had “interviewed detainees who were held incommunicado by the Pakistani ISI in so-called safe houses, where they were being tortured”.

Scheinin added that this “can be reasonably understood as implicitly condoning torture.”

In March, after the Guardian disclosed the existence of the interrogation policy, and reported on the growing number of allegations of British collusion in torture, Gordon Brown announced that the policy was to be rewritten by the ISC.

In what was seen at Westminster as an acknowledgement that the secret policy had been open to abuse, Brown also pledged that the rewritten policy would be made public and that a former appeal court judge would monitor the intelligence agencies’ compliance with it, and report to the prime minister each year.

On Tuesday Miliband said the existing policy, as amended in 2004, would not be published.

But the discovery that Blair was aware of the secret interrogation policy appears certain to fuel the growing demand for an independent inquiry into aspects of the UK’s role in torture and rendition.

So far, those who have called for such an inquiry include the Conservative and Liberal Democrat leaders David Cameron and Nick Clegg; Ken Macdonald, a former director of public prosecutions; Lord Carlile of Berriew, the government’s independent reviewer of counter-terrorism legislation; Lord Howe, who was foreign secretary between 1983 and 1989 in the Thatcher government; and Lord Guthrie, a former chief of defence staff.

March of the killer robots

Killing machine: one of America’s unmanned Reaper hunter-killer aircraft Photo: PHILIP COBURN

The development of mechanical soldiers and remote-controlled tanks and planes is changing war for ever – but the moral consequences have often been overlooked.

Telegraph | Jun 15, 2009

By Noel Sharkey

It’s the most realistic shoot-’em-up game ever. The player has a choice of two planes: a Predator with two Hellfire missiles, or a Reaper with 14. The action takes place in the Middle East, where you can attack villages and kill the inhabitants with impunity. But don’t bother looking for it in the shops: to play this deadly game, you’ll have to travel to Creech Air Force base in the Nevada desert. That’s because the planes are real, and so are the casualties.

The first time a Predator made a kill was in Yemen, in 2002, when the CIA used it to destroy a vehicle carrying an al-Qaeda leader and five of his associates. The fleet now stands at around 200 craft, which have flown more than 400,000 combat hours. The company that makes them, General Atomics, can’t keep up with the demand. The bigger, badder version – the Reaper hunter-killer – is also flying off the shelves. There are now around 30 in active service, with the first kill taking place in the mountains of Afghanistan in October 2007.

In every field of warfare, mechanical soldiers are fighting alongside – or instead of – human beings. Apart from unmanned combat air vehicles such as Predators, the skies above Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are filled with drones carrying out surveillance operations. On the ground are between 6,000 and 12,000 robots, up from a mere 150 in 2004. Their role is mostly to protect our soldiers by disrupting improvised explosive devices, or to carry out surveillance of dangerous places such as caves and buildings.

Our image of such robots owes a great deal to films – most notably The Terminator or Transformers, both of which have sequels out this month. But the actual models being used are more like miniature tanks, similar to the contraptions seen on the television series Robot Wars. The most popular is the PackBot made by the US company iRobot, which is normally used for bomb disposal. As the company started out making robotic vacuum cleaners known as Roombas, the 18kg PackBot is sometimes jokingly referred to as the “Roomba of doom” or “Doomba” – much to the displeasure of the firm’s management, who would clearly hope to keep the two brands separate.

Recently, iRobot joined forces with Taser International to mount the allegedly non-lethal weapons on the “bots”. But that pales in comparison with the ordnance that comes with the Talon, a larger device made by Foster-Miller, a US subsidiary of the British firm QinetiQ. It comes with chemical, gas, temperature and radiation sensors and can be mounted with a choice of grenade launcher, machine gun, incendiary weapon or 50-calibre rifle. Its bigger brother, the MAARS robot, ups the stakes with a tanklike turret.

Despite planned cutbacks in spending on conventional weapons, the Obama administration is increasing its budget for robotics: in 2010, the US Air Force will be given $2.13 billion for unmanned technology, including $489.24 million to procure 24 heavily armed Reapers. The US Army plans to spend $2.13 billion on unmanned vehicle technology, including 36 more Predators, while the Navy and Marine Corps will spend $1.05 billion, part of which will go on armed MQ-8B helicopters.

Of course, when the military describes such systems as “unmanned”, it is stretching the truth very slightly. At the moment, all the armed robots in the Middle East are remote-controlled by humans – there is a “man in the loop” to control them and to decide when and whether to apply lethal force.

But that makes very little difference to villagers in Waziristan, where there have been repeated Predator strikes since 2006, many of them controlled from Creech Air Force Base, thousands of miles away. According to reports coming out of Pakistan, these have killed 14 al-Qaeda leaders and more than 600 civilians.

Such widespread collateral damage suggests that the human remote-controllers are not doing a very good job of restraining their robotic servants. In fact, the role of the “man in the loop” is becoming vanishingly small, and will disappear. “Our decision power [as controllers] is really only to give a veto,” argues Peter Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC. “And, if we are honest with ourselves, it is a veto power we are often unable or unwilling to exercise because we only have a half-second to react.”

As Dyke Weatherington, deputy director of the Pentagon’s Unmanned Aerial Systems Task Force, points out: “There’s really no way that a system that is remotely controlled can effectively operate in an offensive or defensive air combat environment. The requirement of that is a fully autonomous system.”

Sure enough, plans are well under way to develop robots that can locate and destroy targets without human intervention. There are already a number of autonomous ground vehicles, such as the seven-ton “Crusher” developed by DARPA, the US military’s research agency. BAE Systems, a British defence contractor, recently reported that it had “completed a flying trial which, for the first time, demonstrated the co-ordinated control of multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles autonomously completing a series of tasks”. The Israelis are already fielding autonomous radar-killer drones known as Harpy and Harop, and the South Koreans use lethal autonomous systems to defend their border with the North.

Many in the military are enthusiastic about such developments. “They don’t get hungry. They’re not afraid. They don’t forget their orders,” says Dr Gordon Johnson, of the Pentagon’s Joint Forces Command. “Will they do a better job than humans? Yes.”

Dr Johnson insists that “there are no legal prohibitions against robots making life-and-death decisions”, adding: “The US military will have these kinds of robots. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when.”

The problem, however, is that no autonomous robots or artificial intelligence systems have the necessary capabilities to discriminate between combatants and innocents. Compared with the robots in the Terminator films, they suffer from artificial stupidity. Allowing them to make decisions about who to kill falls foul of the fundamental ethical precepts of the laws of war set up to protect civilians, the sick and wounded, the mentally ill and captives. We are already overreaching the technology and stretching the laws of war.

“Unless we end war, end capitalism and end science, the use of robots will only grow,” says Peter Singer. “We are building and using machines with more and more autonomy because they are viewed by militaries as useful for war, and viewed by companies as profitable business.” Spending on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles is expected to exceed tens of billions of dollars over the next 10 years, and more than 40 countries – including Russia and China – now have their own programmes.

Amid this robotic arms race, there is a sliver of hope. Professor Ron Arkin, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, believes that humans do not have the time to make rational ethical decisions in the modern battlefield. “There appears to be little alternative,” he says, “to the use of more dispassionate autonomous decision-making machinery.” He has funding from the US Army for research on how to programme ethical rules into robots to stop them causing excessive collateral damage. But this does not get around the problem of how to discriminate between innocents and combatants – and Arkin admits that the technology to fully support his system may not be available for 25 years.

The problem is that it is not just a matter of developing adequate sensors. In complex wars, complex human reasoning is often needed to decide when it is appropriate to kill. Robots do not feel anger or seek revenge – but they also don’t have sympathy, empathy, remorse or shame. Nor can they be held accountable for their actions. In subcontracting our wars to our robotic creations, we are abdicating moral responsibility, too.

China faces dark memory of Tiananmen

The government will likely mark the sensitive date  with deafening silence

AFP | May 31, 2009

By Robert J. Saiget

BEIJING (AFP) — Authorities in China are bracing for the 20th anniversary of the deadly June 4 crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, a pivotal moment that still haunts the nation.

The way the government will likely mark the sensitive date on Thursday — with deafening silence — shows it is keenly aware of the emotional scars that remain after the army ended six weeks of peaceful rallies in central Beijing.

China’s Communist leaders have made any discussion of the brutal quelling of the student-led demonstrations — in which hundreds, maybe thousands, were killed — taboo, but dissidents say the public could yet hold them accountable.

“People remember this date because they want the Communist Party to take responsibility for the crimes it committed,” said 53-year-old Qi Zhiyong, who lost a leg after being shot by troops near Tiananmen Square.

“It reminds them the party will resort to unbridled violence whenever it feels threatened.”

In a bid not to rankle the wary authorities, the main public commemoration planned for Thursday will probably be silent.

Activist groups have called on citizens simply to wear white — the traditional colour of mourning — to honour those killed in the mayhem that erupted when tanks and troops rolled in to crush the protests.

The year 1989 was a disastrous one for communism across the globe and in China the ruling party found itself in a struggle with democracy activists who challenged its authoritarian rule over the world’s most populous nation.

The Tiananmen movement began in mid-April, when public grief over the death of former party leader and popular reformer Hu Yaobang gradually morphed into bold calls from students for political reform and steps to combat corruption.

Young students started to occupy Tiananmen Square, the symbolic centre of political power in China. A sense of euphoria saturated the plaza as they took part in rallies no one would have thought possible just weeks earlier.

“There were banners everywhere. This was the first unauthorised political demonstration in the (history of the) People’s Republic of China,” recalled one of the student leaders, Wang Dan.

Calls for democracy and freedom filled the square, thousands went on hunger strike, and one charismatic activist, Wu’er Kaixi, brazenly challenged Premier Li Peng during a meeting broadcast live on state television.

Indeed, the whole world was watching, as news crews from around the globe gathered in Beijing to cover the historic visit by then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, only to stumble upon an event that would be far more significant.

In the corridors of power, the protests drove a wedge between hardline leaders led by Premier Li and moderates headed by Communist Party general secretary Zhao Ziyang.

The hardliners won, with patriarch Deng Xiaoping, China’s most powerful man, tilting the balance in their favour. Zhao was removed from his post as party leader and spent 16 years under house arrest until his death in 2005.

The student movement was declared a “counterrevolutionary rebellion”, and soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army descended on the capital, crushing the democratic dreams of an entire generation.

The number of people killed in the night of June 3-4 remains a mystery. China’s official death toll is 241, including 36 students. Dissidents say thousands may have died.

The crackdown set off a wave of condemnation across the globe, and for several years China was treated as a near-pariah, as Western governments offered asylum to student leaders fleeing into exile.

The international community has long since welcomed China back into the fold, and Beijing’s communist leaders have cemented their hold on power, transforming the country into the world’s number three economy.

But they have shown no willingness to change their position that the protests threatened Communist Party rule and had to be quelled in order to maintain economic reforms.

“Facts have proven that the socialist road with Chinese characteristics that we pursue is in the fundamental interests of our people,” foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told journalists in May.

But, undeterred, victims of the crackdown have called for renewed international pressure on Beijing to reverse the official verdict on the quelling, saying failure to stand up to a rising China tacitly abets the repression.

“So far, the international community… has adopted a policy of appeasement towards the Chinese government,” said Ding Zilin, 72, whose teenage son was shot dead by the army.

Bao Tong — a former aide to Zhao who was jailed for seven years following the crackdown — said the world has failed to push China to be more open about the events of Tiananmen because of Beijing’s increasing global clout.

“Not wanting to offend China means they cannot help China, cannot help China’s people attain their own rights, and cannot help the world community gain a reliable, stable, peaceful member,” Bao told AFP recently.

“This is not a good thing,” he added.

Bao has since been ordered to sit out the anniversary at a resort more than 1,000 kilometres (625 miles) from Beijing — evidence that the authorities in the capital are not yet ready to reopen the Tiananmen wounds.

Mother of Tasered man wants Poland to probe son’s death

Robert Dziekanski tasered by the RCMP at Vancouver Airport (complete video by Paul Pritchard)

Toroto Star | May 31, 2009

VANCOUVER–The mother of a Polish man who died at Vancouver’s airport after being jolted by an RCMP Taser wants charges laid against those responsible.

Zofia Cisowski is asking Poland to re-open its investigation into Robert Dziekanski’s death.

Poland suspended its investigation last year because it said it wasn’t getting information or evidence from Canadian authorities.

Cisowski has hired lawyers in Canada and Poland to convince Polish prosecutors to investigate the death with the potential of charging those responsible and bringing them to trial.

Bystander video released after Dziekanski’s death showed the four Mounties confronting the man, jolting him with a Taser and then Dziekanski dying on the floor of the airport.

Crown prosecutors announced last December that the officers wouldn’t be charged, saying they acted with reasonable force in the circumstances.

Cisowski’s Canadian lawyer, Bill Sundhu, says the objective is to ensure that there’s accountability and justice done in what they believe was a wrongful death at the hands of the RCMP.

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Related

Taser Death by RCMP – commentary by filmer

Paul Pritchard, the man who took the incriminating video of the RCMP tasering a man to death, speaks about his observations of the killing.

RCMP lies on Dziekanski taser death – pt1

Mom Wants Justice After Son was Tasered to Death by Police

Since 2001, more than 350 people in the United States have been killed by Tasers

BET.com | May 29, 2009

Robert Mitchell, 16, died last month after being Tasered by police

A Michigan mother is outraged over the death of her 16-year-old son, and she’s taking the Warren County Police force and the city of Warren to court.

Robert Mitchell died last month after being Tasered by police. He was riding with his cousin, Chris Davis, along Detroit’s 8 Mile Road, which was immortalized in Eminem’s 2002 film, when the cops pulled up behind them and turned on their flashing lights.  The car was being pulled over for having expired plates.

Before the car could stop, Mitchell jumped out and started running. Davis said that he told his cousin not to run.

“He was real scared, he was petrified,” Davis told CNN. “He hopped out the car and started running.”

Mitchell wasn’t wanted for any crime.  In fact, he had no criminal record.  But what he did have was a learning disability, and his mother believes he ran because he was afraid of police.

CNN reports that officers chased Mitchell for nearly two blocks before ending his life with one 50,000-volt shot of electricity.  Police say he was “resisting arrest.”

Mitchell’s mother calls the Tasering “murder.”

“Shooting a kid with a Taser is not an accident,” Renea Mitchell told CNN. “Tasers don’t have they own brain. The trigger can not move unless somebody pull it….it’s murder…I’m mad…they killed my kid.”

Since 2001, more than 350 people in the United States have been killed by Tasers, according Amnesty International.

An investigation by the police internal affairs department says the use of the Taser was justified, and the officers involved are back at work.

Mitchell’s family is now suing the Warren Police Department and the city of Warren.

Mitchell is the third young Black male to die after being shocked with a Taser by police in 2009 alone.

Government Experiments on U.S. Soldiers: Shocking Claims Come to Light in New Court Case

They say government scientists messed with their minds. Now, veterans who were the subject of top-secret experiments want answers.

Mother Jones | May 23, 2009

By Bruce Falconer

Their stories are a staple of conspiracy culture: broken men, suffering hallucinations and near-total amnesia, who say they are victims of secret government mind-control experiments. Think Liev Schreiber in The Manchurian Candidate or Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory. Journalists are a favorite target for the paranoid delusions of this population. So is Gordon Erspamer—and the San Francisco lawyer’s latest case isn’t helping him to fend off the tinfoil-hat crowd. He has filed suit against the CIA and the US Army on behalf of the Vietnam Veterans of America and six former American soldiers who claim they are the real thing: survivors of classified government tests conducted at the Army’s Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland between 1950 and 1975. “I get a lot of calls,” he says. “There are a lot of crazy people out there who think that somebody from Mars is controlling their behavior via radio waves.” But when it comes to Edgewood, “I’m finding that more and more of those stories are true!”

That government scientists conducted human experiments at Edgewood is not in question. “The program involved testing of nerve agents, nerve agent antidotes, psychochemicals, and irritants,” according to a 1994 General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office) report (PDF). At least 7,800 US servicemen served “as laboratory rats or guinea pigs” at Edgewood, alleges Erspamer’s complaint, filed in January in a federal district court in California. The Department of Veterans Affairs has reported that military scientists tested hundreds of chemical and biological substances on them, including VX, tabun, soman, sarin, cyanide, LSD, PCP, and World War I-era blister agents like phosgene and mustard. The full scope of the tests, however, may never be known. As a CIA official explained to the GAO, referring to the agency’s infamous MKULTRA mind-control experiments, “The names of those involved in the tests are not available because names were not recorded or the records were subsequently destroyed.” Besides, said the official, some of the tests involving LSD and other psychochemical drugs “were administered to an undetermined number of people without their knowledge.”

Erspamer’s plaintiffs claim that, although they volunteered for the Edgewood program, they were never adequately informed of the potential risks and continue to suffer debilitating health effects as a result of the experiments. They hope to force the CIA and the Army to admit wrongdoing, inform them of the specific substances they were exposed to, and provide access to subsidized health care to treat their Edgewood-related ailments. Despite what they describe as decades of suffering resulting from their Edgewood experiences, the former soldiers are not seeking monetary damages; a 1950 Supreme Court decision, the Feres case, precludes military personnel from suing the federal government for personal injuries sustained in the line of duty. The CIA’s decision to use military personnel as test subjects followed the court’s decision and is an issue Erspamer plans to raise at trial. “Suddenly, they stopped using civilian subjects and said, ‘Oh, we can get these military guys for free,’” he says. “The government could do whatever it wanted to them without liability. We want to bring that to the attention of the public, because I don’t think most people understand that.” (Asked about Erspamer’s suit, CIA spokeswoman Marie Harf would say only that the agency’s human testing program has “been thoroughly investigated, and the CIA fully cooperated with each of the investigations.”)

Erspamer’s involvement in the case is deeply personal. His father was a government scientist during Operation Crossroads, a series of nuclear tests conducted at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in the summer of 1946; he was present aboard a research vessel for the “Baker” test, during which a 21-kiloton thermonuclear bomb was detonated 90 feet below water. The blast resulted in massive radioactive contamination. Erspamer’s father and the rest of the ship’s crew, he says, all died in middle age from radiogenic diseases. Erspamer makes his living in the field of energy litigation, but has twice before argued class action suits for veterans—one for soldiers who, like his father, were exposed to radiation during nuclear tests (a case he ultimately lost in a 1992 appellate decision) and more recently one on behalf of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans denied treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. The case is on appeal in California’s 9th Circuit. “Nobody out there is doing these types of cases,” he says. “It’s really sad because the veterans are left holding the bag, and it’s not a very pretty bag.”

One of those vets is Frank Rochelle. Unlike those of other test veterans, portions of his heavily redacted medical records have survived, providing a rare, if incomplete, account of his experiences. In 1968, while posted at Virginia’s Fort Lee as a 20-year-old Army draftee, he saw a notice calling for volunteers for the Edgewood program. Among the promised incentives were relief from guard duty, the freedom to wear civilian clothes, three-day weekends, and, upon completion, a medal of commendation—all for participation in experiments that, according to the notice, would help the military test a new generation of equipment, clothing, and gas masks. Upon his arrival at the testing facility in Maryland, he says he was asked to sign a series of documents, including a release form and a secrecy agreement. The tests would be risk free, he says he was told, and any drugs given would not exceed normal dosage. Over the next two months, however, he was subjected to three rounds of experiments that, Rochelle says, left him permanently damaged. His medical records indicate that he was exposed to nonlethal incapacitating agents like DHMP and glycolate, both of which act as sedatives that produce hallucinations. In the latter case, Rochelle says he was taken into a gas chamber and strapped to a chair by two men in white lab coats, who affixed a mask to his face and told him to breathe normally. He quickly lost consciousness. According to Erspamer’s complaint, “Over the next two to three days, Frank was hallucinating and high: he thought he was three feet tall, saw animals on the walls, thought he was being pursued by a 6-foot-tall white rabbit, heard people calling his name, thought that all his freckles were bugs under his skin, and used a razor to try to cut these bugs out. No one from the clinical staff intervened on his behalf…”

Medical records indicate that Rochelle went through a third round of testing, but he has no memory of it. For years he’s been having nightmares about the Edgewood tests and now suffers from anxiety, memory loss, sleep apnea, tinnitus, and loss of vision, all of which he claims are direct results of the experiments. Still, he didn’t inform his doctor of the tests until 2006, believing that he was still bound by the oath of secrecy he swore in 1968. (The government finally released human test subjects to speak to their physicians about the tests in June 2006, under the condition that they not “discuss anything that relates to operational information that might reveal chemical or biological warfare vulnerabilities or capabilities.”)

Rochelle’s story is similar to those of Erspamer’s other plaintiffs, all of whom claim to be suffering debilitating health effects stemming from the experiments. Of course, substantiating these claims is a challenge, given that most of the medical records were destroyed upon completion of the program. Rochelle’s records remain intact, but for “others we have less information,” says Erspamer. “We spent a great deal of time on that topic, and we are confident that the plaintiffs are who they say they are, were where they said they were, and got what they said they got,” in terms of exposure to experimental chemicals. “Who bears the burden on that issue when the defendants destroyed the evidence?” Erspamer asks. “They’ve put all that stuff through the shredder.”

Compensation for injuries sustained during human testing of chemical and biological agents is not unprecedented. Last year, more than 350 servicemen who served as test subjects at Porton Down, a secret military research facility where the British government conducted its own series of mind-control experiments, were granted nearly $6 million in compensation in an out-of-court settlement with the UK’s Ministry of Defence. Likewise, in 2004, the Canadian government began offering $18,000 payments to eligible veterans of experiments at its testing facilities. Nevertheless, says Erspamer, “No American soldiers have ever been compensated.” The CIA and the Army “just hope they’re all gonna die off, and they will unless somebody does something.”

After suicide of 7-year-old, agency finds serious shortcomings in monitoring of foster children on psychotropic drugs

Review finds shortfalls in monitoring of foster children on psychiatric drugs

13.19 percent, are taking one or more psychotropic medications

St. Petersburg Times | May 29, 2009

By Kris Hundley

Spurred by the shocking suicide of a 7-year-old on psychiatric drugs, the agency in charge of Florida’s foster children has discovered serious shortcomings in its monitoring of kids on such powerful prescriptions.

After reviewing its files, the Department of Children and Families determined it had undercounted the number of foster kids on such medications as Risperdal and Adderall, overlooking hundreds of cases.

It also has failed to meet its legal requirement that such prescriptions be given only after parental consent or court order.

On Thursday, DCF said a review of the files of more than 20,000 children currently in the state’s foster care showed 2,669, or 13.19 percent, are taking one or more psychotropic medications.

That compares with about 4 or 5 percent of children in the general population who are on such prescriptions.

Of those foster children taking drugs, DCF discovered 16 percent had no proof either a parent or judge had signed off on the prescription, as required by a 2005 Florida law.

“That is unacceptable,” said DCF Secretary George Sheldon. “We’re going to bring every single case of a foster child on drugs into compliance with the law.”

Concerns about pediatric use of antipsychotic and antidepressants such as Adderall and Risperdal have been growing along with increased warnings of such side effects as suicide, diabetes and weight gain. Few of the drugs have been tested or approved by the FDA for children, though physicians can prescribe them for this age group.

Robin Rosenberg, a Tampa lawyer and deputy director of Florida’s Children First, said advocacy groups like hers have been fighting for oversight of psychotropic drugs for years. “We’re not as far along as we should have been if the state had followed up on serious concerns starting in the late 1990s,” she said. “It’s a shame we’re in this place today.”

Sheldon, who was named to the top job at DCF in October, left no doubt that he had been deeply affected by Gabriel Myers, the 7-year-old who hanged himself on a shower hose in South Florida in mid April. The boy was in his third foster home and on Vyvanse, a medication for ADHD, as well as Symbyax, a combination antipsychotic and antidepressant.

Though his caseworker repeatedly said Gabriel’s mother had agreed to the medications, that was not true. The boy’s psychotropic medications also had not been entered in the state’s tracking system.

To correct ongoing problems, Sheldon set a deadline of June 5 for action on cases without consent. This could include scheduling new doctors’ appointments, gaining informed consent from parents or expediting a judge’s review of the prescription.

Sheldon said he also was going to focus on the cases of 73 children under age 6 found to be on psychotropic drugs.

“I want a sense of urgency, but I also want to get it right,” he said. “I want to move forward, but I think it’s important for the agency to apologize for misinformation it may have put out in the past.”

Flaws in DCF’s record-keeping became clear in the immediate aftermath of Gabriel’s death. An initial review of the state’s database showed only 1,950 kids on psychotropic prescriptions. After a thorough review of individual records, however, that number grew by more than 700.

Preliminary data released in mid May also showed some questionable dates on judicial consent. Though it’s not inconceivable a judge might sign an order on a Saturday or Sunday, early returns showed weekend consent orders on 129 occasions.

The final database, including information on types of drugs and diagnoses, was not available Thursday. Sheldon said a summary of the drug data would be posted on the DCF Web site and updated weekly.

“I’ve got a lot more confidence in these numbers than I had two weeks ago,” he said. “But any database is only as good as the quality of the information being put into it.”

One ongoing area of concern, Sheldon said, is the validity of any consent given by parents whose kids are in the state’s custody.

“A parent whose child is taken into our care is going to sign virtually anything and that’s not informed consent,” he said. “My preference is that the biological parent have a dialogue with the psychiatrist.”

Now that DCF has a handle on the number of foster children on psychotropic drugs, Sheldon said the department can begin to address the bigger issue of the efficacy of such drugs.

He has asked an independent panel investigating Gabriel Myers’ death to make recommendations on improving DCF’s oversight of these medications. Sheldon said a second-party review of all such prescriptions might be necessary; currently, only prescriptions for kids under age 6 require such review.

DCF has set up a page on its Web site that tracks the progress of the panel investigation into the boy’s suicide. The page includes a photo of the smiling boy.

“We have his face on the screen watching us to see how well we learned from his life and death,” Sheldon said. “We cannot let him down.”