English Defence League leader forced to deny praising Norway killer Anders Breivik

independent.co.uk | Apr 12, 2012

EDL leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon has been forced to deny supporting mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik after he was quoted praising the man who killed 77 people in a Norwegian newspaper.

In an interview conducted in his home town of Luton, Mr Yaxley-Lennon called Breivik “smart” and said the murders he carried out would have been easier to justify if they had been perpetrated against Muslims.

“The [Breivik’s] blogs are full of facts. You can not yell at people because they tell the truth. You may find the truth hurts, but it is still the truth. I read the blogs themselves – they contain facts about Islam.”

In the interview with the Dagbladet newspaper, Mr Yaxley-Lennon, who also goes by the name “Tommy Robinson”, added: “Yes, it would been easier to justify it [if the crime were committed against Muslims], but he would only have been swept aside as the one that killed Muslims because he did not like Islam. Whether you like it or not, that guy was pretty smart…What he did is despicable, but he managed to make people curious.”

Today, Mr Yaxley-Lennon was forced to insist that he did not condone the killings. He acknowledged the quotes given to the Norwegian paper but told The Independent: “they were not in support of Breivik. I was saying that it is bad we are all playing out what he wants us to. Everything that is happening, he thought about. He has planned all of this; it is disturbing to give him what he wants.

“What I said was if it was Muslims, he would have been swept aside as a Muslim-hater. The man is a monster, he took kids away from their families. But the blogs are the truth.”

The anti-Islam group whose marches have been marked by violence and numerous arrests, has been at pains to distance itself from Breivik ever since he mentioned it in the largely racist writings he used to justify his actions.

There were reports that Breivik attended EDL marches in the UK before carrying out the murders, although these were denied by Mr Yaxley-Lennon.

Hotline Renews Hope For Victims Of Police Torture

“Finally, society realized that there really is a problem with this,” says rights lawyer Ilnur Sharapov, shown here answering the torture hotline in the offices of Agora in central Moscow.

rferl.org | Apr 12, 2012

By Tom Balmforth

MOSCOW — Yelena Isaulova says she’s lucky to be alive.

Two police officers in the southern Russian town of Pyatigorsk took the then-46-year-old mother of two into custody, where she says they repeatedly beat her head, arms, and legs while she was handcuffed.

Isaulova adds that her “glassy-eyed” captors would have tortured her to death if a third police officer had not intervened.

“My skin was scraped off, my hands were all bruised and beaten, and so were my wrists because they hung me up by my handcuffs,” she says. “Then they drove me to the nearby river and said, ‘We’ll smash your head in, plant drugs on you, and throw you in the river and you’ll float away and no one will ever come looking for you.'”

Six years have passed since that day, but there has been no investigation. Isaulova says her appeals have simply been ignored.

Nationwide Anger

Isaulova’s horrific story might never have come to light were it not for a new nationwide hotline based in Moscow that logs cases of alleged police torture and provides legal support for victims.

Isaulova is among scores of Russian citizens who, in the space of three weeks, have appealed to the Agora human rights organization, recounting tales of police abuse — some of them nearly a decade old. Many who are now calling the hotline say they had previously feared filing official complaints or were ignored when they did.

But that feeling of helplessness appears to be changing in the wake of the nationwide anger that erupted over the brutal murder in police custody of 52-year-old Sergei Nazarov in Kazan last month.

Since then, dozens of victims who have kept their grief, anger, and shame quiet for years have been inspired to go public and seek support from organizations like Agora.

Ilnur Sharapov of Agora says police torture has always been prevalent but that the public’s passivity finally reached the breaking point when Nazarov was tortured to death after allegedly being sodomized with a bottle.

“This case was simply so cruel and awful,” Sharapov says. “There was a boil that had long been growing and growing and finally it burst. Finally, society realized that there really is a problem with this.”

Calls Pouring In

Sharapov, an ethnic Tatar lawyer who mans the phone in Agora’s small three-person office in Moscow’s upscale Chistie Prudy district, says he has personally logged 88 concrete cases of police torture. He says he has taken calls day and night from 31 Russian regions — stretching from Sakhalin on the Pacific coast to Krasnodar on the Black Sea to Murmansk in the Arctic Circle.

In a sign of the success of the hotline, Sharapov says four regional law enforcement bodies — in Sverdlovsk, Kurgansk, Moscow, and Krasnodar — requested that relevant information be sent to them.

A Moscow police spokesperson said investigators were “studying the statements” of those who have called the Agora hotline.

Additionally, on April 4, Agora handed 107 cases of alleged police torture to Investigative Committee chief Aleksandr Bastrykin.

If Sharapov establishes that a claim is valid, he requests that victims send him documents and other evidence. If he has time, he gives brief legal consultation himself and then forwards the documents to Agora’s regional lawyers, who take the case from there.

Trends Of Abuse

If Agora has no local lawyers in a particular region, they dispatch a legal team on a temporary basis.

This was the case in Sverdlovsk Oblast in the Urals region, where Agora logged 13 accusations of police abuse, according to Dmitry Kolbasin, another Agora employee. The organization is sending a team of four lawyers to the regional capital, Yekaterinburg, to consult with alleged victims on a walk-in basis.

Sharapov says trends are already emerging that illustrate why police abuse is so prevalent.

Russian police officers are required to meet monthly quotas of arrests and detentions, a practice that critics say results in officers forcibly extracting confessions based on trumped-up charges.

“The majority of the people who have come forward said that they were tortured so that they confessed to crimes they did not commit,” Sharapov says.

Local media and social networks are rife with such cases.

Read More

New bill could allow federal government to prevent Americans who owe back taxes from leaving the country

Owe the IRS? You’re Not Going Anywhere

“to reauthorize Federal-aid highway and highway safety construction programs, and for other purposes.”

FOXBusiness | Apr 5, 2012

By Diane Macedo

A new bill making its way through Congress could allow the federal government to prevent Americans who owe back taxes from leaving the country.

The provision is part of Senate Bill 1813, which was introduced by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) in November and passed by the Senate on March 14 “to reauthorize Federal-aid highway and highway safety construction programs, and for other purposes.”

Those “other purposes” have come to include a little-known amendment recently introduced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that would allow the State Department to revoke, deny or limit passports for anyone the Internal Revenue Service certifies as having “a seriously delinquent tax debt in an amount in excess of $50,000.”

While the provision does make exceptions if the debt “is being paid in a timely manner” or “in emergency circumstances or for humanitarian reasons,” it doesn’t require that a person be charged with tax evasion before having their passport revoked — only that the IRS has filed a notice of lien or levy against them.

Constitutional Attorney Angel Reyes says that’s a violation of due process and is unconstitutional.

Tax Debt? Feds Want Your Passport

IRS Debtor’s Prison Closer to Becoming a Reality

Congress Debates Imprisoning Taxpayers Who Owe the IRS Within Our Borders

“It takes away your right to enter or exit the country based upon a non-judicial IRS determination that you owe taxes,” Reyes told FOX Business. “It’s a scary thought that our congressional representatives want to give the IRS the power to detain US citizens over taxes, which could very well be in dispute.”

Financial Adviser Clark Hodges says the measure is especially concerning given the high number of taxpayers it could affect.

“There are so many people that fall into that situation, and I think that’s too invasive. Especially coming out of a bad economy there are a lot of people behind on a lot of things,” he told Fox Business.

Still, the “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act” or “MAP-21″ passed the Senate in a vote of 74-22, and is now headed for the GOP-controlled house where it’s expected to meet stronger opposition.

Boxer’s office declined to comment on the passport provision when contacted by Fox Business, but the Senator vowed last week to do everything in her power to get the bill across the finish line.

“Thousands of businesses are at stake, and eventually we are talking about nearly three million jobs at stake,” she said in a statement. “There are many people on both sides of the aisle in the Senate who want to get our bill, MAP-21, passed into law, and I am going to do everything I can to keep the pressure on the Republican House to do just that.”

Niels Lesniewski, Editor of CQ SenateWatch, says legally the provision has precedent on its side.

“Existing law says that passports may not be reviewed for applicants owing child support in excess of $2,500. So I think supporters would say: ‘You can’t get a passport if you don’t pay child support, but you can get a passport if you don’t pay taxes?” he said.

As for the MAP-21’s prospects of passing the House, Lesniewski says it’s hard to tell if it will withstand Republican opposition, but he believes the passport provision has a good chance at becoming law for one reason: money.

“This provision is expected to raise almost $750 million in the 10-year window that they do the budget,” he said. “I think it will get passed eventually, and not necessarily as part of the transportation bill, but it seems like relatively low hanging fruit.”

Senator Reid’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

FDA calls on drug companies to curb antibiotics in food supply

CBS | Apr 11, 2012

(CBS/AP) Citing concerns over potentially deadly strains of drug-resistant bacteria, the Food and Drug Administration called on pharmaceutical companies Wednesday to help limit the use of antibiotics given to farm animals.

It’s a decades-old practice, in which antibiotics are mixed with animal feed to help livestock, pigs and chickens put on weight and stay healthy in crowded barns. Scientists have warned that this routine use leads to the growth of antibiotic-resistant germs that can be passed to humans.

The FDA has struggled for decades with how to tackle the problem because the powerful agriculture industry says the drugs are a key part of modern meat production.

Under the new FDA guidelines, the agency recommends antibiotics be used “judiciously,” or only when necessary to keep animals healthy. The agency also wants to require a veterinarian to prescribe the drugs. Currently livestock antibiotics can be purchased by farmers over-the-counter.

“Now you have a veterinarian who will be consulting and providing advice to these producers, and we feel that is an important element to assure that they are in fact using these drugs appropriately,” said William Flynn, a deputy director in FDA’s veterinary medicine center.

The draft recommendations by the FDA are not binding, and the agency is asking for drug manufacturers’ cooperation to put the limits in place. Drug companies would need to adjust the labeling of their antibiotics to remove “production uses,” which include increased weight gain and accelerated growth. Those production uses help farmers save money by reducing feed costs. The FDA hopes drugmakers will phase out that language within three years.

US urges voluntary cuts in farm antibiotics

The FDA’s voluntary approach was met with skepticism by some public health advocates, who said they do not trust the drug industry to restrict its own products.

“This is not an issue where trust should be the measure,” said Richard Wood, Chair of the Keep Antibiotics Working coalition, in a statement. “This is an issue where the measure is whether or not the FDA has fulfilled its authority of protecting public health.”

But a formal ban would have required individual hearings for each drug which could take decades, FDA officials said.

“The process we would have to go through is a formal hearing process, product-by-product that is extremely cumbersome,” said Mike Taylor, FDA Commissioner for foods. “There’s no point in going through those legalistic proceedings when companies are willing to make this shift voluntarily.”

Taylor said the FDA has consulted closely with animal drugmakers, and expects them to support the measures.

The debate over antibiotics has long pitted the benefits for producing safe, low-cost meat against the risk of contributing to dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria that can infect humans. In its guidelines Wednesday, the FDA said the benefits for meat production do not warrant overuse of the drugs.

“FDA believes that using medically important antimicrobial drugs to increase production in food-producing animals is not a judicious use,” the agency states.

The rollout from FDA comes at an unusual time in the agency’s attempts to curb antibiotic use in animals. Last month a federal court judge ordered the agency to take action on its own 35-year-old rule that would have banned non-medical use of two popular antibiotics, penicillin and tetracycline, in farm animals, CBS News reported.

CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reported the controversy dates back to 1977 when the FDA determined the practice of fattening up animals with antibiotics could lead to resistant bacteria in humans. The FDA however never took action, which lead to several lawsuits.

Four public safety groups sued the agency to act on the regulation, winning the case handed down in the U.S. District Court of Southern New York on March 22. The agency was given 60 days to appeal the decision.

The waning effectiveness of antibiotics has been a global health concern for several decades as more deadly forms of malaria and staph infections present, attracting the attention of the World Health Organization, the Institute of Medicine and other health groups. World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan recently warned if the trend continues, “Things as common as strep throat or a child’s scratched knee could once again kill.”

Experts say overuse of antibiotics in both animals and humans has contributed to the problem. Both medical societies and government agencies have launched educational programs designed to educate physicians on appropriate prescribing of antibiotics.

Spanish Company Will “Count” American Votes Overseas In November

westernjournalism.com | Apr 10, 2012

By Doug Book

When the Spanish online voting company SKYTL bought the largest vote processing corporation in the United States, it also acquired the means of manufacturing the outcome of the 2012 election. For SOE, the Tampa based corporation purchased by SKYTL in January, supplies the election software which records, counts, and reports the votes of Americans in 26 states–900 total jurisdictions–across the nation.

As the largest election results reporting company in the US, SOE provides reports right down to the precinct level. But before going anywhere else, those election returns are routed to individual, company servers where the people who run them “…get ‘first look’ at results and the ability to immediately and privately examine vote details throughout the USA.”   In short, “this redirects results …to a centralized privately held server which is not just for Ohio, but national; not just USA-based, but global.”

And although the votes will be cast in hometown, American precincts on Election Day, with the Barcelona-based SKYTL taking charge of the process, they will be routed and counted overseas.

SKYTL itself is a leader in internet voting technology and in 2010 was involved in modernizing election systems for the midterm election in 14 American states.

But although SKYTL’s self-proclaimed reputation for security had won the company the Congressionally approved task of handling internet voting for American citizens and members of the military overseas, upon opening the system for use in the District of Columbia, the University of Michigan fight song “The Victors” was suddenly heard after the casting of each ballot. The system had been hacked by U of M computer teachers and students in response to a challenge by SKYTL that anyone who wished to do so, might try!

Nevertheless, in spite of warnings by experts across the nation, American soldiers overseas will once again vote via the internet in 2012. And because SKYTL will control the method of voting and—thanks to the purchase of SOE–the method of counting the votes as well, there “…will be no ballots, no physical evidence, no way for the public to authenticate who actually cast the votes…or the count.”

The American advocacy group Project Vote has concluded that SKYTL’s internet voting system is vulnerable to attack from the outside AND the inside, a situation which could result in “…an election that does not accurately reflect the will of the voters…” Talk about having a flair for understatement!

It has also been claimed that SKYTL CEO Pere Valles is a socialist who donated heavily to the 2008 Obama campaign and lived in Chicago during Obama’s time as Illinois State Senator. Unfortunately, given what is known about the character of Barack Obama, such rumors must be taken as serious threats to the integrity of the 2012 vote and the legitimate outcome of the election.

Though much has been written about the threat of nationwide voting by illegals in November, it is still true that most election fraud is an “inside” job. And there now exists a purely electronic voting service which uses no physical ballots to which an electronic count can be matched should questions arise. Add to this the fact that the same company will have “first count” on all votes made in 14 US states and hundreds of jurisdictions in 12 others, and the stage is set for election fraud on a scale unimaginable just a decade ago.

Perhaps Obama had reason for supreme confidence when he said “after my election” rather than “in case of” to Russian President Medvedev a week ago.

The Right Stuff: what the NASA astronauts say about global warming

wattsupwiththat.com | Apr 10, 2012

by Anthony Watts