The US Army says that the military may have to be used against domestic unrest.

A report by the US Army War College said that "widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis" - meaning that Pentagon resources and troops would be used against civil unrest such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson discussed a worst-case scenario of a declaration of martial law as he argued for the Wall Street bailout in September. Mr Paulson is a former CEO of investment and securities company Goldman Sachs.

(Source: Phoenix Business Journal)

 

A New Zealand police informant sent photos of a naked teenage girl to police, and took photos of an underage girl when she was sleeping.

Rob Gilchrist spied on activist groups for more than 10 years, sending information to the Special Investigation Group (SIG).

In 2005 he sent an email to police containing naked photographs of a female teenage activist, sent with the subject line "needs a shave".

There is no evidence that the police objected to the email. They continued paying him $600 per week for another 3 years.

His computer also had naked photos of 16 year old activist, which look to have been taken while she was sleeping.

(Source: scoop.co.nz)

 

Defence Department personnel have stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from taxpayer-funded credit cards.

The Defence Department has issued 58,000 Defence Travel Cards - nearly two for every three of its 88,000 employees. The cards can be used to withdraw cash from ATMs.

There have been 220 reported cases of fraud or misuse of the card since they were mandated for all domestic business travel in July 2005.

The Department said that the cards have been used for reasons including "servicing personal debt and gambling habits."

(Source: news.com.au)

 

Blackwater Worldwide security guards used machine guns and grenade launchers against unarmed Iraqi civilians, some of whom had their hands up, US prosecutors said on Monday in announcing manslaughter indictments against five guards.

A sixth guard for the US contractor admitted in a plea deal to killing at least one Iraqi in the 2007 shooting in Baghdad's Nisoor Square.

Seventeen Iraqis were killed in the assault

Blackwater is contracted by the US government to protect State Department personnel in Iraq.

The shooting unfolded in a crowded square, where civilians were going about their lives, running errands. The heavily armed Blackwater convoy sought to shut down the intersection following a car bombing elsewhere in the city.

Witnesses said the contractors opened fire unprovoked.

"At least 34 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including women and children, were killed or injured without justification or provocation by these Blackwater security guards," national security prosecutor Pat Rowan said.

Though the case was assigned to US District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina in Washington, the guards surrendered in Utah. They want the case moved there, where they would presumably find jurors more likely to be conservative and to support the Iraq war.

In November the U.S. State Department prepared to issue a multimillion-dollar fine to Blackwater for shipping hundreds of automatic firearms to Iraq without the necessary permits. Some of the weapons were believed to have ended up on the country's black market.

The shooting strained relations between the US and Baghdad. The Iraqi government wanted Blackwater expelled from the country. It also sought the right to prosecute the men in Iraqi courts. They have been unsuccessful in both aims.

(Source: The Age, Wikipedia)

 

Students at a prestigious Sydney private school created a Facebook group dedicated to anti-semitism.

The Jew Parking Appreciation Group was created and administered by students at Scots College.

It was connected to another network administered by Scots College students with postings that allegedly included Holocaust denial.

One of the four "officers" heading that site is a student at Kambala School for Girls, a private school run by the Anglican Church in the wealthy suburb of Rose Bay.

(Source: The Age)

 

The federal government is pressing ahead with trials of its plan to censor internet access, despite children's welfare groups opposing the plan, and many internet service providers refusing to take part.

The Government plans to introduce a two-tiered censorship system of filtering from the ISPs' end. The first tier would be compulsory for all Australians and would block all illegal material, as determined by a blacklist of 10,000 sites.

The second tier, which is optional, would filter out content deemed inappropriate for children, such as pornography. Experts say this second tier will have the most marked effect on network performance because every piece of traffic handled by the ISP will need to be analysed.

Holly Doel-Mackaway, adviser with Save the Children, the largest independent children's rights agency in the world, said educating kids and parents was the way to empower young people to be safe internet users.

She said the filter scheme was "fundamentally flawed" because it failed to tackle the problem at the source and would inadvertently block legitimate resources.

Furthermore there was no evidence to suggest that children were stumbling across child pornography when browsing the web. Doel-Mackaway believes the millions of dollars earmarked to implement the filters would be far better spent on teaching children how to use the internet safely and on law enforcement.

"Children are exposed to the abusive behaviours of adults often and we need to be preventing the causes of violence against children in the community, rather than blocking it from people's view," she said.

Doel-Mackaway noted the claims by the internet industry that the filters would be easily bypassed, would not block content found on peer-to-peer networks and chat rooms and would be in danger of being broadened to include legitimate content.

"The constant change of cyberspace means that a filter is going to be able to be circumvented and it's going to throw up false positives - many innocent websites, maybe even our own, will be blacklisted because we reference a lot of our work that we do with children in fighting commercial sexual exploitation."

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has accused critics of his filtering policy of supporting child pornography.

Laboratory test results released in June by the Australian Communications and Media Authority found available filters frequently let through content that should be blocked, incorrectly block harmless content and slow network speeds by up to 87 per cent.

Telstra and Internode have said they will not take part in trials scheduled for Christmas. iiNet says it will take part only to prove to the Government that its plan would not work, while Optus will test a heavily cut-down filtering model.

(Source: The Age)