24 October 2009
The goal of all 149 sub-projects was mind and behavior control. Some of them involved botanical. Some of them involved psychosurgery and electrical stimulation of the brain. 9 of the sub-projects involved hypnosis. Some of the sub-projects involved things like voodoo. One of them involved circumcision to create anxiety and then manipulate the anxiety. Almost anything you could think of and things you wouldn't think of were funded and studied. Maybe more one of the more well known studies, and one of the more notorious is the work that was done by Ewen Cameron in Canada. Cameron was the President of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the World Psychiatric Association. In his work at the Allen Memorial Institute in Montreal he had a theory that sounds unique but actually exists in "Brave New World Revisited" and even goes back to the Ancient Greeks -- his notion was that you could completely erase personality by regressing an individual back to an infantile state - process he called de-patterning. Then you could program that individual with a new personality - a process he called psychic driving. In order to destroy the original personality, Cameron put his subjects to sleep for up to two months, injected them with LSD, mescaline and other psychoactive chemicals, and essentially engaged in a form of regression therapy. Age regression may be a hypnotic phenomenon, but in this sense regression was an actual regression. This was the attempt to manipulate people back to a state of infantilism. These were people who came to him who were depressed ... this was the local psychiatric institute. This is where you went when you needed help. One of the people who came to him, I don't have a slide of her, but I have done some TV shows with her, was the wife of a Member of the Canadian Parliament, Val Orlikow was her name. She is dead now. Val had just had a baby and she was suffering from post-partum depression. This meant she didn't feel she was able to care for her baby, or for herself, and in general she was feeling unequal to the task of wifehood and motherhood, and her husband suggested maybe she could benefit from some psychiatric care, and she thought that was a good idea. They made the mistake of winding up going to Ewen Cameron and Cameron destroyed her life. She along with 10 or 11 other people ultimately sued the Canadian government and the CIA because the CIA contributed funding to Cameron's experiments. SIXTY MINUTES did a show on this that I show from time to time. One of the people went there because he was feeling badly, and he went through the same kind of process, and they later discovered he had a minor skin disease and a single shot of cortisone would have cured it. His life was ruined, and as he put it, "Where do I go for help? I don't trust any psychologists, or psychiatrists or therapists any more after what they did to me, and I know I need their help, but I am programmed to not trust them, so where do I go for relief?"
http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/radio/ckln06.htm
Repost: http://ce399.typepad.com/weblog/
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Faith Leaders Condemn Holocaust Comparisons
Deacon Greg Kandra/BeliefNetOctober 23, 2009
This piece of news strikes me as sane and sensible -- and long overdue: Religious leaders are urging their colleagues and politicians to keep comparisons to Nazism and the Holocaust out of American public policy debates.
The Interfaith Alliance responded to a recent onslaught of references to Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust, particularly as an analogy to the current discussion on health care reform.
"There is no place in civil debate for the use of these types of metaphors," 15 religious leaders said in an open letter, released Wednesday (Oct. 21).
"Perpetrators of such language harm rather than help both the integrity of the democratic process and the credibility of religious commentary." ...
http://blog.beliefnet.com/deaconsbench/2009/10/faith-leaders-condemn-holocaust-comparisons.html
Ku Klux Klan: A Violent History
No Far Right British politician looking to soften his movement's image would relish being associated with the Ku Klux Klan.
By Tom Leonard/Telegraph
23 Oct 2009
A Ku Klux Klan rally in Illinois Photo: GETTY
The organisation – founded by ex-Confederate soldiers following the American Civil War – has long been far more ruthless and violent than any white supremacist group in the UK.
Started in 1865 as a secret society (taking its name by combing kyklos, the Greek word for circle, with clan) that attacked Unionists and blacks, it was already facing extinction by the 1870s.
However, the Klan ethic enjoyed a resurgence in the inter-war years as whites reacted angrily to the migration of black Americans into the city as well as the arming of black troops in the First World War.
At its peak in the mid-1920s, the Klan boasted an estimated six million members, only to dwindle to nothing within a few years as outrage spread over its violence.
When the Civil Rights movement took off in the South in the 1950s, various independent Klan groups started up to resist it. Klansmen bombed activists' homes and black churches, beat up blacks and white opponents and killed them.
A series of Klan murders in the 1960s, including the killing of the three civil rights volunteers commemorated in the film Mississippi Burning, were only cleared up over the past few years as loyalty to – and fear of - the Klan dwindled among white Southerners and all-white juries.
The violence continued into the 1980s – four elderly black women were shot but not killed in Tennessee in 1980 by Klansmen who had just taken part in an initiation rally. A year later, Michael Donald, a young black man in Mobile, Alabama, was the victim of a random lynching by two Klansmen. In 1997, one of them – Henry Hayes - became the first Klan member to be put to death for a Klan murder in the state since 1913.
However, after civil liberties organisations successfully started hitting the Klan in the wallet with multi-million dollar civil lawsuits, the movement split into myriad small groups while curtailing its criminal activities.
Today, there are estimated to be almost 180 chapters, together boasting no more than 8,000 members. Two-thirds are still in the southern states.
The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, founded by David Duke, remains the largest, while others include Imperial Klans of America and the Bayou Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
It is widely seen as a movement in decline, with white supremacists more attracted by neo-Nazi groups.
Last year, a jury in Kentucky forced the Imperial Klans of America to pay out $2.5 million after finding that some of its members had savagely beaten up a 16-year-old at a state fair.
Sporadic Klan-related violence continues. In November last year, Raymond Foster, the leader of a group called the Sons of Dixie, was charged with murdering a woman after a row during an initiation rite in Louisiana.
Confederate flags and six Klan robes were found at the backwoods campsite where she was killed.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6419739/Ku-Klux-Klan-a-violent-history.html
By Tom Leonard/Telegraph
23 Oct 2009
A Ku Klux Klan rally in Illinois Photo: GETTY The organisation – founded by ex-Confederate soldiers following the American Civil War – has long been far more ruthless and violent than any white supremacist group in the UK.
Started in 1865 as a secret society (taking its name by combing kyklos, the Greek word for circle, with clan) that attacked Unionists and blacks, it was already facing extinction by the 1870s.
However, the Klan ethic enjoyed a resurgence in the inter-war years as whites reacted angrily to the migration of black Americans into the city as well as the arming of black troops in the First World War.
At its peak in the mid-1920s, the Klan boasted an estimated six million members, only to dwindle to nothing within a few years as outrage spread over its violence.
When the Civil Rights movement took off in the South in the 1950s, various independent Klan groups started up to resist it. Klansmen bombed activists' homes and black churches, beat up blacks and white opponents and killed them.
A series of Klan murders in the 1960s, including the killing of the three civil rights volunteers commemorated in the film Mississippi Burning, were only cleared up over the past few years as loyalty to – and fear of - the Klan dwindled among white Southerners and all-white juries.
The violence continued into the 1980s – four elderly black women were shot but not killed in Tennessee in 1980 by Klansmen who had just taken part in an initiation rally. A year later, Michael Donald, a young black man in Mobile, Alabama, was the victim of a random lynching by two Klansmen. In 1997, one of them – Henry Hayes - became the first Klan member to be put to death for a Klan murder in the state since 1913.
However, after civil liberties organisations successfully started hitting the Klan in the wallet with multi-million dollar civil lawsuits, the movement split into myriad small groups while curtailing its criminal activities.
Today, there are estimated to be almost 180 chapters, together boasting no more than 8,000 members. Two-thirds are still in the southern states.
The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, founded by David Duke, remains the largest, while others include Imperial Klans of America and the Bayou Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
It is widely seen as a movement in decline, with white supremacists more attracted by neo-Nazi groups.
Last year, a jury in Kentucky forced the Imperial Klans of America to pay out $2.5 million after finding that some of its members had savagely beaten up a 16-year-old at a state fair.
Sporadic Klan-related violence continues. In November last year, Raymond Foster, the leader of a group called the Sons of Dixie, was charged with murdering a woman after a row during an initiation rite in Louisiana.
Confederate flags and six Klan robes were found at the backwoods campsite where she was killed.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6419739/Ku-Klux-Klan-a-violent-history.html
Friday, October 23, 2009
Democrats Return Fire On Black Panthers Case
By Mary Jacoby
www.mainjustice.com
October 5, 2009
Democratic members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights are accusing the agency’s conservative majority of acting in an “improperly partisan” manner in challenging the Obama Justice Department’s handling of the New Black Panther Party case.
The dispute stems from a May decision by the DOJ to dismiss most of a government voter intimidation case filed in the waning days of the Bush administration against members of the militant black-power group, two of whom were videotaped outside a Philadelphia polling place last November in quasi-military garb.
The controversy – which has been fanned by conservative bloggers and commentators and Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill – has become a significant distraction for Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department and contributed to a delay in confirming Civil Rights Division nominee Tom Perez.
The two Democrats on the eight-member Civil Rights Commission weighed in publicly for the first time last week, sending this letter to Holder outlining their objections.
On Sept 11., the commission voted to devote most of its 2009 annual report to an examination of the Black Panther case, to the exclusion of other civil rights matters, the letter said. Democratic commissioner Michael Yaki walked out of that meeting in protest and did not vote, according to the letter and interviews with commission members.
Yaki and the other Democrat on the commission, Arlan D. Melendez, said in their Oct. 1 letter to Holder that they find the agency’s decision to elevate the matter “deeply troubling.” They added that commission majority does “not have our support.”
“If our colleagues were truly interested in whether our federal government is adequately tackling allegations of voter intimidation, we would support a serious comprehensive review of how all such complaints have been handled by the Department over the past decade,” the Democratic commission members wrote.
Independent commission member Todd Gaziano, director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said in an interview, “To suggest that there is some partisan motive is … laughable.”
But the Democratic members of the agency say Gaziano is a leader of the move to elevate the issue. They said in their letter to Holder that the Heritage Foundation official proposed expanding the commission’s investigation and nominated himself to a special subcommittee of the commission that will assume control of the investigation from career commission staff. The Democrats say they are boycotting this special subcommittee probe.
The Democrats also noted that Hans Von Spakovsky, a former Civil Rights Division official who was accused by Democrats of helping politicize the division during the Bush administration, formerly served as a consultant to Gaziano on the commission and now works with him at the Heritage Foundation. Von Spakovsky has been critical of the Black Panther case dismissal, writing in the National Review Online that “liberal and partisan” staff at the DOJ undermine the credibility of an internal ethics investigation now underway by the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, the letter said. ...
FULL STORY
http://www.mainjustice.com/2009/10/05/democrats-return-conservative-fire-on-black-panthers-case/
www.mainjustice.com
October 5, 2009
Democratic members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights are accusing the agency’s conservative majority of acting in an “improperly partisan” manner in challenging the Obama Justice Department’s handling of the New Black Panther Party case.
The dispute stems from a May decision by the DOJ to dismiss most of a government voter intimidation case filed in the waning days of the Bush administration against members of the militant black-power group, two of whom were videotaped outside a Philadelphia polling place last November in quasi-military garb.
The controversy – which has been fanned by conservative bloggers and commentators and Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill – has become a significant distraction for Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department and contributed to a delay in confirming Civil Rights Division nominee Tom Perez.
The two Democrats on the eight-member Civil Rights Commission weighed in publicly for the first time last week, sending this letter to Holder outlining their objections.
On Sept 11., the commission voted to devote most of its 2009 annual report to an examination of the Black Panther case, to the exclusion of other civil rights matters, the letter said. Democratic commissioner Michael Yaki walked out of that meeting in protest and did not vote, according to the letter and interviews with commission members.
Yaki and the other Democrat on the commission, Arlan D. Melendez, said in their Oct. 1 letter to Holder that they find the agency’s decision to elevate the matter “deeply troubling.” They added that commission majority does “not have our support.”
“If our colleagues were truly interested in whether our federal government is adequately tackling allegations of voter intimidation, we would support a serious comprehensive review of how all such complaints have been handled by the Department over the past decade,” the Democratic commission members wrote.
Independent commission member Todd Gaziano, director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said in an interview, “To suggest that there is some partisan motive is … laughable.”
But the Democratic members of the agency say Gaziano is a leader of the move to elevate the issue. They said in their letter to Holder that the Heritage Foundation official proposed expanding the commission’s investigation and nominated himself to a special subcommittee of the commission that will assume control of the investigation from career commission staff. The Democrats say they are boycotting this special subcommittee probe.
The Democrats also noted that Hans Von Spakovsky, a former Civil Rights Division official who was accused by Democrats of helping politicize the division during the Bush administration, formerly served as a consultant to Gaziano on the commission and now works with him at the Heritage Foundation. Von Spakovsky has been critical of the Black Panther case dismissal, writing in the National Review Online that “liberal and partisan” staff at the DOJ undermine the credibility of an internal ethics investigation now underway by the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, the letter said. ...
FULL STORY
http://www.mainjustice.com/2009/10/05/democrats-return-conservative-fire-on-black-panthers-case/
Where have Bill Allen's Sins been Hiding?
Also See: "THE MAN WHO MADE SARAH PALIN"
Former Veco Oil exec Bill Allen
Cliff Groh
Alaska Dispatch
Sep 29, 2009 .
It seems like that there's a long line of people who now want to call Bill Allen a dangerous sleazeball.
Former Sen. Ted Stevens called the longtime VECO CEO a liar at the senator's trial last fall, and Stevens's lawyers painted the tycoon as both brain-addled and determined to shade his testimony to protect his family from prosecution and his fortune from forfeiture. Former Speaker of the House Pete Kott's new lawyer cites evidence that Allen repeatedly had sex with underage girls, sometimes bringing them across state lines for purposes of prostitution. And as waves of embarrassing revelations about government misconduct increasingly wash over the federal investigation into Alaska public corruption, it seems possible that federal officials will point the finger at Allen and his duplicity as the reason prosecution cases have gone awry.
But why is it only now that these people who used to be so close to Bill Allen denounce him as a devil? Why is it that the scales are only now falling from their eyes so that the once-influential magnate stands as the worst person in the world?
Ted Stevens went repeatedly on "boot camp" vacations with Allen, and the last of those just-the-two-of-them get-togethers was five years after Allen suffered his brain injury in a motorcycle accident in 2001. One of Stevens's adult daughters testified in her father's own defense that she found "creepy" the way Allen used the Senator's home in Girdwood. FBI tapes captured how Kott spent many hours with Allen drinking and saying crude and outrageous things in the famous "Animal House" of Suite 604 in Juneau's Baranof Hotel. Kott actually lived at Allen's house for a while, and seemed to consider the multimillionaire businessman a surrogate father.
The Alaska Republican Party relied on Allen to be the party's fundraising powerhouse, and even got out of his way to let the VECO chieftain be the man to see in financing GOP campaigns on the Last Frontier. And federal prosecutors and investigators spent many hundreds of hours with Allen over a period of more than two years before the collapse of the Ted Stevens case over prosecutorial misconduct caused them to start to edge away from their key witness.
A lot of people who now want to distance themselves from Bill Allen had plenty of opportunities over the years to see up close how bad he was -- a man who cut corners as a matter of course, a man whose well-documented active and varied sex life reportedly crossed the line into the illegal over and over.
There are a lot of people in Alaska and Washington, D.C. who need to ask themselves "How did Bill Allen get to be so popular with so many of the powerful for so long? And who let him get that way?"
Witnesses in criminal trials often have warts, but Bill Allen's warts are uglier than most.
The dominant feeling of jurors in criminal trials often is a sense of shock that there could be people who really lived the way the lay witnesses in criminal cases often do. As I told one friend, those witnesses frequently do not resemble the folks at his table at Rotary meetings. One extreme example came when I was a prosecutor: I had one witness in a sexual abuse of a minor case who some years previously had been drinking with two men in a house when one man shot the other to death. She just kept drinking with the killer-in the same room with the dead man's body-for hours until the authorities showed up.
So as a former prosecutor of sex-crime cases I've seen some pretty bad stuff, and I'm also used to witnesses with dents and scratches on them.
Having said all that, the new Motion to Dismiss filed by Kott's new attorney alleges that the federal government apparently sat on -- and even discouraged the Anchorage Police Department from pursuing -- evidence of some unusually sordid crimes committed by Bill Allen. The allegations are gross -- maybe even beyond gross. They include allegations that while in his 60s, the oil services magnate had sex with as many as five underage girls. He allegedly even went to the mother of a 15-year-old girl and asked if he could date her daughter; the mother allegedly agreed and Allen supposedly then began taking care of the mother financially on a long-term basis.
Two points about these allegations, all of which Allen apparently denies: The first is that the charges make him look so evil and depraved that even their airing will tend to hurt him in the eyes of future judges and jurors. This is not good news for a man facing sentencing next month before the same judge who is reading all these allegations in Kott's new pleading.
The other point is a question that is probably in the minds of a number of defense attorneys whose clients face prosecution heavily based on Bill Allen's testimony: When did the federal government first talk about underage sex with Bill Allen, and who brought up the subject?
This story started out looking like it was all-American and particularly all-Alaskan, but now it has elements of a Russian novel as well as multiple Greek tragedies.
Cliff Groh has reported on Alaska's political corruption scandal and covered Ted Stevens' trial at his blog, alaskacorruption.blogspot.com, where this story first appeared. Groh is a lifelong Alaskan and attorney with a private practice in Anchorage. Groh worked as a prosecutor for the Alaska Department of Law, and he has conducted jury trials in Anchorage, Unalaska, St. Paul, Sitka and Sand Point. He has also served as the Special Assistant to the Commissioner of Revenue, where he worked successfully for the revision of oil taxes enacted in 1989 that raised taxes on the Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk fields. He was the principal legislative staff member when the Permanent Fund Dividend was created. He is conducting research for a book on public corruption in Alaska.
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/blogs/tundra-talk/2174-where-have-bill-allens-sins-been-hiding
Former Veco Oil exec Bill AllenCliff Groh
Alaska Dispatch
Sep 29, 2009 .
It seems like that there's a long line of people who now want to call Bill Allen a dangerous sleazeball.
Former Sen. Ted Stevens called the longtime VECO CEO a liar at the senator's trial last fall, and Stevens's lawyers painted the tycoon as both brain-addled and determined to shade his testimony to protect his family from prosecution and his fortune from forfeiture. Former Speaker of the House Pete Kott's new lawyer cites evidence that Allen repeatedly had sex with underage girls, sometimes bringing them across state lines for purposes of prostitution. And as waves of embarrassing revelations about government misconduct increasingly wash over the federal investigation into Alaska public corruption, it seems possible that federal officials will point the finger at Allen and his duplicity as the reason prosecution cases have gone awry.
But why is it only now that these people who used to be so close to Bill Allen denounce him as a devil? Why is it that the scales are only now falling from their eyes so that the once-influential magnate stands as the worst person in the world?
Ted Stevens went repeatedly on "boot camp" vacations with Allen, and the last of those just-the-two-of-them get-togethers was five years after Allen suffered his brain injury in a motorcycle accident in 2001. One of Stevens's adult daughters testified in her father's own defense that she found "creepy" the way Allen used the Senator's home in Girdwood. FBI tapes captured how Kott spent many hours with Allen drinking and saying crude and outrageous things in the famous "Animal House" of Suite 604 in Juneau's Baranof Hotel. Kott actually lived at Allen's house for a while, and seemed to consider the multimillionaire businessman a surrogate father.
The Alaska Republican Party relied on Allen to be the party's fundraising powerhouse, and even got out of his way to let the VECO chieftain be the man to see in financing GOP campaigns on the Last Frontier. And federal prosecutors and investigators spent many hundreds of hours with Allen over a period of more than two years before the collapse of the Ted Stevens case over prosecutorial misconduct caused them to start to edge away from their key witness.
A lot of people who now want to distance themselves from Bill Allen had plenty of opportunities over the years to see up close how bad he was -- a man who cut corners as a matter of course, a man whose well-documented active and varied sex life reportedly crossed the line into the illegal over and over.
There are a lot of people in Alaska and Washington, D.C. who need to ask themselves "How did Bill Allen get to be so popular with so many of the powerful for so long? And who let him get that way?"
Witnesses in criminal trials often have warts, but Bill Allen's warts are uglier than most.
The dominant feeling of jurors in criminal trials often is a sense of shock that there could be people who really lived the way the lay witnesses in criminal cases often do. As I told one friend, those witnesses frequently do not resemble the folks at his table at Rotary meetings. One extreme example came when I was a prosecutor: I had one witness in a sexual abuse of a minor case who some years previously had been drinking with two men in a house when one man shot the other to death. She just kept drinking with the killer-in the same room with the dead man's body-for hours until the authorities showed up.
So as a former prosecutor of sex-crime cases I've seen some pretty bad stuff, and I'm also used to witnesses with dents and scratches on them.
Having said all that, the new Motion to Dismiss filed by Kott's new attorney alleges that the federal government apparently sat on -- and even discouraged the Anchorage Police Department from pursuing -- evidence of some unusually sordid crimes committed by Bill Allen. The allegations are gross -- maybe even beyond gross. They include allegations that while in his 60s, the oil services magnate had sex with as many as five underage girls. He allegedly even went to the mother of a 15-year-old girl and asked if he could date her daughter; the mother allegedly agreed and Allen supposedly then began taking care of the mother financially on a long-term basis.
Two points about these allegations, all of which Allen apparently denies: The first is that the charges make him look so evil and depraved that even their airing will tend to hurt him in the eyes of future judges and jurors. This is not good news for a man facing sentencing next month before the same judge who is reading all these allegations in Kott's new pleading.
The other point is a question that is probably in the minds of a number of defense attorneys whose clients face prosecution heavily based on Bill Allen's testimony: When did the federal government first talk about underage sex with Bill Allen, and who brought up the subject?
This story started out looking like it was all-American and particularly all-Alaskan, but now it has elements of a Russian novel as well as multiple Greek tragedies.
Cliff Groh has reported on Alaska's political corruption scandal and covered Ted Stevens' trial at his blog, alaskacorruption.blogspot.com, where this story first appeared. Groh is a lifelong Alaskan and attorney with a private practice in Anchorage. Groh worked as a prosecutor for the Alaska Department of Law, and he has conducted jury trials in Anchorage, Unalaska, St. Paul, Sitka and Sand Point. He has also served as the Special Assistant to the Commissioner of Revenue, where he worked successfully for the revision of oil taxes enacted in 1989 that raised taxes on the Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk fields. He was the principal legislative staff member when the Permanent Fund Dividend was created. He is conducting research for a book on public corruption in Alaska.
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/blogs/tundra-talk/2174-where-have-bill-allens-sins-been-hiding
Thursday, October 22, 2009
UK: Outrage at Government Plan for Secret Inquests
Ministers vow to press ahead with controversial proposal despite Lords defeat
By Robert Verkaik
Independent
22 October 2009
The inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, shot in error by police at Stockwell Tube station, could have been held in secret under the new rules
Plans to introduce secret inquiries into controversial deaths from which the public and bereaved families could be banned are to be pushed through the House of Commons by the Government.
Last night ministers suffered a humiliating defeat for the proposals in the House of Lords, but insisted that they were "clear" that "harmful material" must not be made public, and would reintroduce the measures in the Commons.
The new powers would allow them to turn inquests like that of Jean Charles de Menezes or those involving the deaths of British soldiers into secret hearings.
------
Related articles
• Robert Verkaik: Bereaved families have a right to know truth
• Leading article: Resist these attempts to make justice secret
------
Civil rights campaigners, peers and MPs attacked the Government for trying to sneak through an "abuse of power" which struck at the heart of Britain's ancient inquest system.
Baroness Miller, the Liberal Democrats' home affairs spokeswoman in the Lords, whose party tabled an amendment which succeeded in removing the secret inquiry clause, said that the Government had suffered a "self-inflicted" defeat.
She said: "Inquiries are a thing of the state and inquests are the thing of citizens. The Government could have come up with the correct conditions to guard against secrecy without setting up a parallel inquest system. It's not a good argument to say, 'But if you knew what we knew you wouldn't object.'"
The measure, buried in the Coroners and Justice Bill, gives the Lord Chancellor, currently Jack Straw, absolute discretion to order a secret inquiry in place of a public inquest. It could mean that inquests that might expose the negligence of government or a public body or embarrass ministers or foreign allies could be censored.
It comes less than six months after Mr Straw dropped proposals to hold sensitive inquests behind closed doors without juries from the Bill following widespread opposition. But the new plan has been quietly added to the Bill, in the shape of a provision allowing for an inquest to be suspended and a secret inquiry held in its place.
Liberty, the human rights group, said the illiberal powers would prevent bereaved families from discovering the truth about the death of a loved one.
Liberty's director of policy, Isabella Sankey, said: "It beggars belief that this rotten policy has been resurrected. It is thoroughly perverse for a Government that has spent over a decade lecturing the public about victims' rights to attempt to exclude bereaved families from open justice. When will New Labour's obsession with secret courts and parallel legal systems end? There is no accountability without transparency."
Deborah Coles, of the charity Inquest, said she was dismayed that the Government wanted to end the right to public inquests for all deaths: "This is yet another attempt to shroud in secrecy the details and actions of the most serious conduct of state agents."
The Government says that the change is aimed at allowing inquests to go ahead when sensitive information needs to be considered by the inquiry. Ministers point to the case of a 24-year-old Londoner, Azelle Rodney, shot dead by police in 2005. More than four years after he was killed, his family is still waiting for an inquest to establish the exact circumstances of his death. The case has raised concerns about the accountability of armed police and has fuelled accusations of a cover-up of a shoot-to-kill policy.
Mr Rodney was in a car with two other men what was stopped by armed police who had been tailing their vehicle. An officer fired eight shots into the side of the car at Mr Rodney, who was in the back. Six bullets hit him in the face, head, neck and chest. Police maintain that his behaviour made the officer believe he was about to fire a weapon.
The other two men were jailed after admitting possessing guns in the car. There is no evidence that Mr Rodney was holding a gun when he was shot.
The Rodney family has been told that an inquest into his death cannot go ahead because it would lead to the release of sensitive information about police operations. In 2007 the coroner presiding over a pre-hearing into the killing said police editing of information made under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 – which covers information obtained from covert surveillance devices such as telephone taps and bugs – meant it was not possible to hold a meaningful inquest.
Last night the Government pledged to overturn the Liberal Democrat amendment. A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said it was important that an inquiry into any death should be able to hear all the evidence, even if it meant that part of the hearing should be closed to the public. She said to do otherwise would be a breach of a family's human rights. She added: "But it is also important that evidence is not allowed to harm police operations or the national interest."
She said: "Liberty's complaints are really about the terms of the Inquiries Act, which has been on the statute book since 2005. We have tabled some minor amendments in this Bill to give better effect to the policy, but those amendments do not lead to the lack of transparency and accountability that Liberty sets out."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/outrage-at-government-plan-for-secret-inquests-1806867.html
By Robert Verkaik
Independent
22 October 2009
The inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, shot in error by police at Stockwell Tube station, could have been held in secret under the new rulesPlans to introduce secret inquiries into controversial deaths from which the public and bereaved families could be banned are to be pushed through the House of Commons by the Government.
Last night ministers suffered a humiliating defeat for the proposals in the House of Lords, but insisted that they were "clear" that "harmful material" must not be made public, and would reintroduce the measures in the Commons.
The new powers would allow them to turn inquests like that of Jean Charles de Menezes or those involving the deaths of British soldiers into secret hearings.
------
Related articles
• Robert Verkaik: Bereaved families have a right to know truth
• Leading article: Resist these attempts to make justice secret
------
Civil rights campaigners, peers and MPs attacked the Government for trying to sneak through an "abuse of power" which struck at the heart of Britain's ancient inquest system.
Baroness Miller, the Liberal Democrats' home affairs spokeswoman in the Lords, whose party tabled an amendment which succeeded in removing the secret inquiry clause, said that the Government had suffered a "self-inflicted" defeat.
She said: "Inquiries are a thing of the state and inquests are the thing of citizens. The Government could have come up with the correct conditions to guard against secrecy without setting up a parallel inquest system. It's not a good argument to say, 'But if you knew what we knew you wouldn't object.'"
The measure, buried in the Coroners and Justice Bill, gives the Lord Chancellor, currently Jack Straw, absolute discretion to order a secret inquiry in place of a public inquest. It could mean that inquests that might expose the negligence of government or a public body or embarrass ministers or foreign allies could be censored.
It comes less than six months after Mr Straw dropped proposals to hold sensitive inquests behind closed doors without juries from the Bill following widespread opposition. But the new plan has been quietly added to the Bill, in the shape of a provision allowing for an inquest to be suspended and a secret inquiry held in its place.
Liberty, the human rights group, said the illiberal powers would prevent bereaved families from discovering the truth about the death of a loved one.
Liberty's director of policy, Isabella Sankey, said: "It beggars belief that this rotten policy has been resurrected. It is thoroughly perverse for a Government that has spent over a decade lecturing the public about victims' rights to attempt to exclude bereaved families from open justice. When will New Labour's obsession with secret courts and parallel legal systems end? There is no accountability without transparency."
Deborah Coles, of the charity Inquest, said she was dismayed that the Government wanted to end the right to public inquests for all deaths: "This is yet another attempt to shroud in secrecy the details and actions of the most serious conduct of state agents."
The Government says that the change is aimed at allowing inquests to go ahead when sensitive information needs to be considered by the inquiry. Ministers point to the case of a 24-year-old Londoner, Azelle Rodney, shot dead by police in 2005. More than four years after he was killed, his family is still waiting for an inquest to establish the exact circumstances of his death. The case has raised concerns about the accountability of armed police and has fuelled accusations of a cover-up of a shoot-to-kill policy.
Mr Rodney was in a car with two other men what was stopped by armed police who had been tailing their vehicle. An officer fired eight shots into the side of the car at Mr Rodney, who was in the back. Six bullets hit him in the face, head, neck and chest. Police maintain that his behaviour made the officer believe he was about to fire a weapon.
The other two men were jailed after admitting possessing guns in the car. There is no evidence that Mr Rodney was holding a gun when he was shot.
The Rodney family has been told that an inquest into his death cannot go ahead because it would lead to the release of sensitive information about police operations. In 2007 the coroner presiding over a pre-hearing into the killing said police editing of information made under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 – which covers information obtained from covert surveillance devices such as telephone taps and bugs – meant it was not possible to hold a meaningful inquest.
Last night the Government pledged to overturn the Liberal Democrat amendment. A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said it was important that an inquiry into any death should be able to hear all the evidence, even if it meant that part of the hearing should be closed to the public. She said to do otherwise would be a breach of a family's human rights. She added: "But it is also important that evidence is not allowed to harm police operations or the national interest."
She said: "Liberty's complaints are really about the terms of the Inquiries Act, which has been on the statute book since 2005. We have tabled some minor amendments in this Bill to give better effect to the policy, but those amendments do not lead to the lack of transparency and accountability that Liberty sets out."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/outrage-at-government-plan-for-secret-inquests-1806867.html
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
UK: Football Association Chief and the Heir to Mussolini
"The FA were very surprised to find that Triesman had FA president Prince William on his right and Gianfranco Fini, the fascist sympathising heir to Benito Mussolini on his left in the front row of UEFA's VIP area in the Stadio Olimpico - especially as Fini had not been included in the original seating plan for the prime seats. ... "
Surprise: Triesman had FA president Prince William on his right and Gianfranco Fini (not pictured), the fascist sympathising heir to Mussolini on his left in Rome
Story
Surprise: Triesman had FA president Prince William on his right and Gianfranco Fini (not pictured), the fascist sympathising heir to Mussolini on his left in Rome
Story
Corruption Behind the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize
by Thierry Meyssan/voltairenet.org
While the Nobel Peace Prize award has led to a chorus of praise from the Atlantic alliance leaders, it has also raised skepticism around the world. Rather than discuss the reasons that might after the fact justify this surprising choice, Thierry Meyssan exposes the corruption of the Nobel Committee and the ties between its chairman, Thorbjørn Jagland, and Obama’s associates.
-----------------
19 October 2009
Madeleine Albright and Thorbjørn Jagland, during a meeting at NATO headquarters
"This morning, after listening to the news, my daughter came and told me:" Daddy, you won the Nobel Peace Prize” [1]. This is the touching story that the United States President told complacent reporters to attest that he had never wanted this distinction and was most surprised. Without any further inquiry, newspapers ran front pages on the "humility" of the most powerful man in the world.
Indeed, it is hard to say what is the most surprising: the awarding of such a prestigious distinction to Barack Obama, the grotesque staging that went with it, or the method used to bribe the jury and divert the prize from its original purpose.
First, let us recall that, according to the Nobel Committee rules, nominations are to be submitted by institutions (national parliaments and political academies) and by qualified persons, mainly judges and former recipients. In theory, a nomination may be submitted without the candidate having been notified. However, when the jury makes its decision, it establishes a direct link with the grantee to ensure that he is informed an hour before the press conference. This would be the first time in its history that the Nobel Committee failed to this courtesy. According to the Committee spokesman, he did not dare to wake the United States President in the middle of the night. Perhaps did he not know that counselors take turns at the White House to receive emergency calls and wake the president if necessary? Moreover, the Nobel Committee had at least informed the journalist Gerhard Helsok who announced the news a day earlier on the Norwegian channel TV2.
The lovely scene of the little girl announcing the Nobel Prize to her daddy does not allay the discomfort caused by this distinction. According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the prize should be awarded to "the person who [during the previous year] shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
In the founder’s spirit, the purpose was to support militant action and not to issue a certificate of good intentions to a head of state. The winners having sometimes flouted international law after receiving the prize, the Nobel Committee decided four years ago not to reward a particular act, but only to honor persons having dedicated their lives to peace. Thus, Barack Obama was the most deserving of all peace activists in 2008 and did not commit any major infringement of international law in 2009. Without even mentioning those still held at Guantanamo and Bagram, or Afghans and Iraqis facing a foreign occupation, what do Hondurans crushed by a military dictatorship have to say about this, or Pakistanis, whose country has become the new target of the Empire?
Now to the heart of the matter that White House public relation officials and Anglo-Saxon media want to hide from the public: the despicable relationship between Barack Obama and the Nobel Committee.
In 2006, the European Command (i.e. the regional command of U.S. troops whose authority then covered both Europe and most of Africa) solicited Barack Obama, a Senator of Kenyan origin, to participate in a secret inter-agency (CIA-NED-USAID-NSA). The goal was to use his status as a parliamentarian to conduct a tour of Africa that would allow both to defend the interests of pharmaceutical companies (against off-patent productions) and to counter Chinese influence in Kenya and Sudan [2]. We shall only examine the Kenyan episode here.
The destabilization of Kenya
Barack Obama and his family, accompanied by a press officer (Robert Gibbs) and a political and military advisor (Mark Lippert), arrived in Nairobi on a special plane chartered by Congress. Their plane was followed by a second one, chartered by the U.S. Army and carrying a team of specialists in psychological warfare led by the supposedly retired General J. Scott Gration. Kenya was then experiencing a booming economy. Since the beginning of the presidency of Mwai Kibaki, the growth rate had increased from 3.9 to 7.1% of GDP and poverty had declined from 56 to 46%. These exceptional results were achieved by reducing economic ties with post-colonial Anglo-Saxon partners and replacing them with more equitable agreements with China. To put an end to the Kenyan miracle, Washington and London decided to topple President Kibaki and impose a devoted opportunist: Raila Odinga [3]. To that effect, the National Endowment for Democracy oversaw the creation of a new political party, the Orange Democratic Movement, and plotted a "color revolution" in the forthcoming parliamentary elections of December 2007.
Senator Barack Obama campaigning for his "cousin" Raila Odinga. Senator Obama was greeted like a native son and his journey was hyper-publicized. He interfered in local politics and participated in Raila Odinga meetings. He called for a "democratic revolution" and his "companion", General Gration, gave Odinga one million dollars in cash. These actions destabilized the country and raised official protests from Nairobi to Washington.
Following this tour, Obama and Gen. Gration reported to General James Jones (then head of the European Command and NATO Supreme Commander) in Stuttgart before returning to the United States.
The operation continued. Madeleine Albright, as NDI President (the branch of the National Endowment for Democracy [4] that specializes in handling left-wing parties) travelled to Nairobi, where she oversaw the organization of the Orange Movement. Then John McCain, as chairman of the IRI (the branch of the National Endowment for Democracy that specializes in handling right-wing parties) complemented the opposition coalition in dealing with small right-wing organizations [5].
During the parliamentary elections of December 2007, a survey funded by USAID announces the victory of Odinga. On election day, John McCain announced that President Kibaki rigged the election in favor of his party and that in fact the opposition led by Odinga had won. The NSA, in conjunction with local phone operators, sent anonymous text messages to the population. In areas populated by the Luo (Odinga’s ethnic group), they read "Dear Kenyans, the Kikuyu have stolen our children’s future... We must treat them in the only way that they understand... with violence." In areas populated by Kikuyu, they read: "The blood of any innocent Kikuyu will be paid. We will slaughter them right to the heart of the capital. For Justice, establish a list of Luos that you know. We will send you the phone numbers to call with such information." Within days, this peaceful country sank into sectarian violence. The riots caused over 1 000 deaths and 300 000 displaced. 500 000 jobs were lost.
Madeleine Albright came back. She offered to mediate between President Kibaki and the opposition trying to overthrow him. With finesse, she stepped aside and placed in the spotlight the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights. The board of this respected NGO was newly chaired by the former Prime Minister of Norway, Thorbjørn Jagland.
Breaking with the Center’s traditional impartiality, he sent two mediators on site, whose expenses were entirely footed by Madeleine Albright’s NDI (that is to say ultimately out of the U.S. Department of State’s budget): another former Norwegian Prime Minister, Kjell Magne Bondevik, and former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan (the Ghanaian is very much on the scene in Scandinavian states since he married the niece of Raoul Wallenberg). Compelled to accept the compromises forced on him in order to restore civil peace, President Kibaki agreed to create a prime minister post and to entrust it to Raila Odinga, who immediately began reducing trade with China.
Small gifts between friends
The Kenyan operation stopped then but the lives of the protagonists went on. Thorbjørn Jagland negotiated an agreement between the National Endowment for Democracy and the Oslo Center, which was formalized in September 2008. An attached foundation was created in Minneapolis that allows the CIA to indirectly subsidize the Norwegian NGO. It acts on behalf of Washington in Morocco and especially in Somalia [6].
Obama was elected President of the United States. Odinga declared several days of national holiday in Kenya to celebrate the outcome of the election in the United States. General Jones became a national security adviser. He appointed Mark Lippert as Chief of Staff and General Gration as Deputy. During the presidential transition in the U.S., the President of the Oslo Center, Thorbjørn Jagland, was elected chairman of the Nobel Committee, despite the risk that such a crafty politician would pose to the institution [7]. The nomination of Barack Obama for the Nobel Peace prize was filed no later than January 31, 2009 (regulatory deadline [8]), twelve days after he took office in the White House.
Lively debates took place as the Committee was still unable to agree on a name in early September, as outlined in the usual timetable [9]. On September 29, Thorbjørn Jagland was elected Secretary General of the Council of Europe following a behind-the-scenes agreement between Washington and Moscow [10]. This called for a favor in return. Although membership of the Nobel Committee is incompatible with a major executive political position, Jagland did not resign. He argued that the law strictly prohibits the combination with a ministerial office but says nothing about the Council of Europe. He then returned to Oslo on October 2. The same day, the Committee appointed President Obama for the 2009 Peace prize.
In its official statement, the committee stated quite seriously: “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population. For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world’s leading spokesman.” [11].
For its part, the lucky winner declared: “I am both surprised and deeply humbled by the decision of the Nobel Committee (...) I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century.” In other words, this “humble" man believes that he embodies "all nations". This does not bode well for peace.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article162559.html
While the Nobel Peace Prize award has led to a chorus of praise from the Atlantic alliance leaders, it has also raised skepticism around the world. Rather than discuss the reasons that might after the fact justify this surprising choice, Thierry Meyssan exposes the corruption of the Nobel Committee and the ties between its chairman, Thorbjørn Jagland, and Obama’s associates.
-----------------
19 October 2009
Madeleine Albright and Thorbjørn Jagland, during a meeting at NATO headquarters "This morning, after listening to the news, my daughter came and told me:" Daddy, you won the Nobel Peace Prize” [1]. This is the touching story that the United States President told complacent reporters to attest that he had never wanted this distinction and was most surprised. Without any further inquiry, newspapers ran front pages on the "humility" of the most powerful man in the world.
Indeed, it is hard to say what is the most surprising: the awarding of such a prestigious distinction to Barack Obama, the grotesque staging that went with it, or the method used to bribe the jury and divert the prize from its original purpose.
First, let us recall that, according to the Nobel Committee rules, nominations are to be submitted by institutions (national parliaments and political academies) and by qualified persons, mainly judges and former recipients. In theory, a nomination may be submitted without the candidate having been notified. However, when the jury makes its decision, it establishes a direct link with the grantee to ensure that he is informed an hour before the press conference. This would be the first time in its history that the Nobel Committee failed to this courtesy. According to the Committee spokesman, he did not dare to wake the United States President in the middle of the night. Perhaps did he not know that counselors take turns at the White House to receive emergency calls and wake the president if necessary? Moreover, the Nobel Committee had at least informed the journalist Gerhard Helsok who announced the news a day earlier on the Norwegian channel TV2.
The lovely scene of the little girl announcing the Nobel Prize to her daddy does not allay the discomfort caused by this distinction. According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the prize should be awarded to "the person who [during the previous year] shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
In the founder’s spirit, the purpose was to support militant action and not to issue a certificate of good intentions to a head of state. The winners having sometimes flouted international law after receiving the prize, the Nobel Committee decided four years ago not to reward a particular act, but only to honor persons having dedicated their lives to peace. Thus, Barack Obama was the most deserving of all peace activists in 2008 and did not commit any major infringement of international law in 2009. Without even mentioning those still held at Guantanamo and Bagram, or Afghans and Iraqis facing a foreign occupation, what do Hondurans crushed by a military dictatorship have to say about this, or Pakistanis, whose country has become the new target of the Empire?
Now to the heart of the matter that White House public relation officials and Anglo-Saxon media want to hide from the public: the despicable relationship between Barack Obama and the Nobel Committee.
In 2006, the European Command (i.e. the regional command of U.S. troops whose authority then covered both Europe and most of Africa) solicited Barack Obama, a Senator of Kenyan origin, to participate in a secret inter-agency (CIA-NED-USAID-NSA). The goal was to use his status as a parliamentarian to conduct a tour of Africa that would allow both to defend the interests of pharmaceutical companies (against off-patent productions) and to counter Chinese influence in Kenya and Sudan [2]. We shall only examine the Kenyan episode here.
The destabilization of Kenya
Barack Obama and his family, accompanied by a press officer (Robert Gibbs) and a political and military advisor (Mark Lippert), arrived in Nairobi on a special plane chartered by Congress. Their plane was followed by a second one, chartered by the U.S. Army and carrying a team of specialists in psychological warfare led by the supposedly retired General J. Scott Gration. Kenya was then experiencing a booming economy. Since the beginning of the presidency of Mwai Kibaki, the growth rate had increased from 3.9 to 7.1% of GDP and poverty had declined from 56 to 46%. These exceptional results were achieved by reducing economic ties with post-colonial Anglo-Saxon partners and replacing them with more equitable agreements with China. To put an end to the Kenyan miracle, Washington and London decided to topple President Kibaki and impose a devoted opportunist: Raila Odinga [3]. To that effect, the National Endowment for Democracy oversaw the creation of a new political party, the Orange Democratic Movement, and plotted a "color revolution" in the forthcoming parliamentary elections of December 2007.
Senator Barack Obama campaigning for his "cousin" Raila Odinga. Senator Obama was greeted like a native son and his journey was hyper-publicized. He interfered in local politics and participated in Raila Odinga meetings. He called for a "democratic revolution" and his "companion", General Gration, gave Odinga one million dollars in cash. These actions destabilized the country and raised official protests from Nairobi to Washington.
Following this tour, Obama and Gen. Gration reported to General James Jones (then head of the European Command and NATO Supreme Commander) in Stuttgart before returning to the United States.
The operation continued. Madeleine Albright, as NDI President (the branch of the National Endowment for Democracy [4] that specializes in handling left-wing parties) travelled to Nairobi, where she oversaw the organization of the Orange Movement. Then John McCain, as chairman of the IRI (the branch of the National Endowment for Democracy that specializes in handling right-wing parties) complemented the opposition coalition in dealing with small right-wing organizations [5].
During the parliamentary elections of December 2007, a survey funded by USAID announces the victory of Odinga. On election day, John McCain announced that President Kibaki rigged the election in favor of his party and that in fact the opposition led by Odinga had won. The NSA, in conjunction with local phone operators, sent anonymous text messages to the population. In areas populated by the Luo (Odinga’s ethnic group), they read "Dear Kenyans, the Kikuyu have stolen our children’s future... We must treat them in the only way that they understand... with violence." In areas populated by Kikuyu, they read: "The blood of any innocent Kikuyu will be paid. We will slaughter them right to the heart of the capital. For Justice, establish a list of Luos that you know. We will send you the phone numbers to call with such information." Within days, this peaceful country sank into sectarian violence. The riots caused over 1 000 deaths and 300 000 displaced. 500 000 jobs were lost.
Madeleine Albright came back. She offered to mediate between President Kibaki and the opposition trying to overthrow him. With finesse, she stepped aside and placed in the spotlight the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights. The board of this respected NGO was newly chaired by the former Prime Minister of Norway, Thorbjørn Jagland.
Breaking with the Center’s traditional impartiality, he sent two mediators on site, whose expenses were entirely footed by Madeleine Albright’s NDI (that is to say ultimately out of the U.S. Department of State’s budget): another former Norwegian Prime Minister, Kjell Magne Bondevik, and former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan (the Ghanaian is very much on the scene in Scandinavian states since he married the niece of Raoul Wallenberg). Compelled to accept the compromises forced on him in order to restore civil peace, President Kibaki agreed to create a prime minister post and to entrust it to Raila Odinga, who immediately began reducing trade with China.
Small gifts between friends
The Kenyan operation stopped then but the lives of the protagonists went on. Thorbjørn Jagland negotiated an agreement between the National Endowment for Democracy and the Oslo Center, which was formalized in September 2008. An attached foundation was created in Minneapolis that allows the CIA to indirectly subsidize the Norwegian NGO. It acts on behalf of Washington in Morocco and especially in Somalia [6].
Obama was elected President of the United States. Odinga declared several days of national holiday in Kenya to celebrate the outcome of the election in the United States. General Jones became a national security adviser. He appointed Mark Lippert as Chief of Staff and General Gration as Deputy. During the presidential transition in the U.S., the President of the Oslo Center, Thorbjørn Jagland, was elected chairman of the Nobel Committee, despite the risk that such a crafty politician would pose to the institution [7]. The nomination of Barack Obama for the Nobel Peace prize was filed no later than January 31, 2009 (regulatory deadline [8]), twelve days after he took office in the White House.
Lively debates took place as the Committee was still unable to agree on a name in early September, as outlined in the usual timetable [9]. On September 29, Thorbjørn Jagland was elected Secretary General of the Council of Europe following a behind-the-scenes agreement between Washington and Moscow [10]. This called for a favor in return. Although membership of the Nobel Committee is incompatible with a major executive political position, Jagland did not resign. He argued that the law strictly prohibits the combination with a ministerial office but says nothing about the Council of Europe. He then returned to Oslo on October 2. The same day, the Committee appointed President Obama for the 2009 Peace prize.
In its official statement, the committee stated quite seriously: “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population. For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world’s leading spokesman.” [11].
For its part, the lucky winner declared: “I am both surprised and deeply humbled by the decision of the Nobel Committee (...) I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century.” In other words, this “humble" man believes that he embodies "all nations". This does not bode well for peace.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article162559.html
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