Forgotten Australians apology doesn't quell compensation demands

MARK COLVIN: The Prime Minister has delivered an emotional apology to the half a million Australians who suffered abuse at the hands of their carers in institutions, orphanages and foster care.

The formal apology recognises the deprivation, pain and exploitation experienced by half a million Australians sent into state care and thousands of child migrants from Britain and Malta.

Kevin Rudd read the apology to hundreds of survivors who had gathered in the Great Hall at Parliament House. Then it was formally moved in the Federal Parliament.

The Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull supported the motion, weeping as he described the appalling treatment suffered by many children.

From Canberra, Alexandra Kirk reports.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: Even before they heard the word they've waited so long for, the tears started flowing. They came from all over the country, the pain etched on many of their faces.

KEVIN RUDD: We come together today to deal with an ugly chapter in our nation's history. And we come together today to offer our nation's apology; to say to you, the 'forgotten Australians', and those who were sent to our shores as children without their consent, that we are sorry.

Sorry that as children you were taken from your families and placed in institutions where so often you were abused. Sorry for the physical suffering, the emotional starvation and the cold absence of love, of tenderness, of care.

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From: Tears flow as nation hears apology

Many tears were shed today as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered the historic apology to the hundreds of thousands of Forgotten Australians.

Almost 1,000 men and women travelled from around Australia to hear Mr Rudd and Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull apologise for the abuse, neglect and suffering they endured in foster care and orphanages between the 1920s and 1970s.

Mr Rudd also extended the nation's remorse to the 7,000 child migrants, most of whom travelled to Australia from the UK under the mistaken belief that their parents had died.

Addressing the crowd who gathered in Parliament House's Great Hall, he says the apology should mark a turning point in the nation's history to ensure it is never repeated.

Mr Rudd says it is important to acknowledge "great evil has been done".

Mary Smith says she is glad she made the effort to come from Western Australia to hear the apology.

"It made me cry. I said it wasn't going to make me cry but it did," she said.

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Tension builds as Greece enters protest season

From: Tension on labour and prison fronts in Greece

Tension is building up on both labour and prison front in Greece, with 3000 prisoners refusing food across the country, and workers from different sectors staging marches and occupations

A week before the official start of the “unrest season”, the 30 days between the anniversary of the 1973 Polytechnic Uprising (November 17), the anniversary of the assassination of Alexandros Grigoropoulos and the start of the 2008 December Uprising (December 6) and the trial of Girgoropoulos murderers (December 15), things are looking tense in Greece.

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From: Rehearsal of repression in Athens

The Socialist government has launched a rehearsal of repression in preparation for the anniversary of the November 17 1973 and the December 2008 Uprising. In the last few days two people have been arrested and most central Universities in Athens have been sealed.

The rehearsal of repression in scope of the next thirty days including the anniversary of the 1973 and 2008 uprisings as well as the trial of Alexandros Grigoropoulos' assassins came when on the 11th of November many students found their universities sealed on the pretext of the swine flu outbreak. The biopolitical farce was soon exposed by officials announcing that "the is measure expected to last until the 17 of November". The rectorial authorities have admitted to have held council with the Minister of Public Order, but insisted the deal was that there would be reduced police forces in the city of Athens during the anniversary's typically tense protest march.

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From: A spectre is haunting the city: December!

Tomorrow, November 17th, marks the 36th anniversary of the anti-dictatorial student uprising of November 1973. Adding to what would already be an explosive situation, the anniversary is only days away from December 6th, marking a year from the assassination of Alexis, and less than a month from December 15th, when his killer cops Korkoneas and Saraliotis, are to stand trial.

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Smoke and Mirrors

American Blackout

The man who "recently brought the mighty CIA to its knees"

From: CIA's "Great Pretense" Exposed in State-Secrets Fraud Case by Bill Conroy

Judge Can Make History Right by Keeping Pleadings in Ex-DEA agent Richard Horn's Lawsuit on the Books

Former DEA agent Richard Horn, with the help of his attorney, former federal prosecutor Brian Leighton, recently brought the mighty CIA to its knees.

For some 15 years, Horn waged a legal battle in federal court against a former CIA official whom Horn alleged had illegally eavesdropped on him as part of a CIA- and State Department-backed effort to thwart DEA's anti-narcotics mission in Burma in the early 1990s.

The CIA's efforts to undermine Horn's work in Burma in getting that nation's government to stem the flow of heroin to the United States should come as no surprise to those who are familiar with the “Agency's” history. It seems the CIA, over the decades, has often found itself in the corner of narco-traffickers and thugs who support the Agency's covert objectives in areas deemed critical to U.S. special interests – whether that be in Southeast Asia, Central Asia or Latin America.

That's the big pretense of the drug war practiced as dark art by the CIA.

However, earlier this month, government attorneys representing the interests of the CIA agreed to cut a deal with Horn — which calls for the government to shell out some $3 million to Horn to cement a settlement. In exchange, the CIA hopes to put pressure on the judge in the case to erase from the court record several opinions he rendered that accuse CIA officials of committing a fraud on his court and which also opened the door for sanctions to be sought against the culpable current and former CIA employees.

So, it seems that the CIA has made a calculation in the Horn case that its big pretense cannot long endure if the big truth is allowed to remain in the court record — which is the basis of the rule of law the CIA too often seeks to skirt.

For proof of that statement, we need only look at the CIA-pedigreed officials who are in the scope of the federal judge's opinions in the Horn case. Among them are former CIA Director George Tenet and recently retired Acting CIA General Counsel John Rizzo.

Both Tenet and Rizzo played key roles as part of the Bush Administration in attempting (with the help of Justice Department attorneys like John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury) to set up a legal framework, marked by deceptive legal reasoning, to justify the CIA's use of torture (i.e., waterboarding). Both also were part of the Agency's leadership during the era of “intelligence lapses” that helped pave the way for 9/11 and the ill-fated Iraq War.

And now, as part of the Horn case filed in a Washington D.C. federal court, we find a U.S. District judge, former FISA court member Royce Lamberth, opening the door for sanctions to be brought (as a result of the fraud, or lie, perpetrated on the court) against Tenet and Rizzo — as well as several other current and former CIA officials, among whom is Robert Eatinger, the current Acting Deputy General Counsel for Operations in the CIA's Office of General Counsel (OGC).

If Lamberth's judicial opinions in the Horn case are allowed to remain in the court record — to be recalled and cited going forward by other lawyers, judges and academics — then untold damage could be done to the reputation of the CIA and its leadership. Those judicial opinions memorializing the CIA's fraud on the court also would serve as a permanent reminder of the occasionally dubious credibility of the Agency's pronouncements invoking national security and the state-secrets privilege.

Judge Lamberth has yet to rule on the proposed Horn settlement, and independently on whether he will vacate his prior opinions in the case — and thereby erase from the court record any hint of the CIA's alleged duplicity.

So, in order to preserve for the public memory, in the event the court record is subtracted from this nation's legal memory, Narco News now offers you a glimpse behind the curtain of the big pretense as reflected in the pleadings of a cast of CIA players in the Horn case.

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British scientists testing Ukrainian 'super flu' that has killed 189 people

British scientists are examining the strain of swine flu behind a deadly Ukrainian outbreak to see if the virus has mutated.

A total of 189 people have died and more than one million have been infected in the country.

Some doctors have likened the symptoms to those seen in many of the victims of the Spanish flu which caused millions of deaths world-wide after the World War One.

An unnamed doctor in western Ukraine told of the alarming effects of the virus.

He said: 'We have carried out post mortems on two victims and found their lungs are as black as charcoal.

'They look like they have been burned. It's terrifying.'

Neighbouring Poland has called on the EU to take action, fearing the mystery virus may spread westwards.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk has written to European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and the Swedish Prime Minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, who holds the EU presidency.

The letter said: 'The character of this threat demands that rapid action be undertaken at the European Union level.'

Russia, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and Romania have already launched health checks on Ukrainians entering their territory.

Slovakia has closed two of five border crossings.

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Mind your tweets: The CIA social networking surveillance system

By Tom Burghardt, Global Research

That social networking sites and applications such as Facebook, Twitter and their competitors can facilitate communication and information sharing amongst diverse groups and individuals is by now a cliché.

It should come as no surprise then, that the secret state and the capitalist grifters whom they serve, have zeroed-in on the explosive growth of these technologies. One can be certain however, securocrats aren't tweeting their restaurant preferences or finalizing plans for after work drinks.

No, researchers on both sides of the Atlantic are busy as proverbial bees building a "total information" surveillance system, one that will, so they hope, provide police and security agencies with what they euphemistically call "actionable intelligence."

Build the Perfect Panopticon, Win Fabulous Prizes!

In this context, the whistleblowing web site Wikileaks published a remarkable document October 4 by the INDECT Consortium, the Intelligence Information System Supporting Observation, Searching and Detection for Security of Citizens in Urban Environment.

Hardly a catchy acronym, but simply put INDECT is working to put a human face on the billions of emails, text messages, tweets and blog posts that transit cyberspace every day; perhaps your face.

According to Wikileaks, INDECT's "Work package 4" is designed "to comb web blogs, chat sites, news reports, and social-networking sites in order to build up automatic dossiers on individuals, organizations and their relationships." Ponder that phrase again: "automatic dossiers."

This isn't the first time that European academics have applied their "knowledge skill sets" to keep the public "safe"--from a meaningful exercise of free speech and the right to assemble, that is.

Last year The Guardian reported that Bath University researchers' Cityware project covertly tracked "tens of thousands of Britons" through the installation of Bluetooth scanners that capture "radio signals transmitted from devices such as mobile phones, laptops and digital cameras, and using the data to follow unwitting targets without their permission."

One privacy advocate, Simon Davies, the director of Privacy International, told The Guardian: "This technology could well become the CCTV of the mobile industry. It would not take much adjustment to make this system a ubiquitous surveillance infrastructure over which we have no control."

Which of course, is precisely the point.

As researchers scramble for a windfall of cash from governments eager to fund these dubious projects, European police and security agencies aren't far behind their FBI and NSA colleagues in the spy game.

The online privacy advocates, Quintessenz, published a series of leaked documents in 2008 that described the network monitoring and data mining suites designed by Nokia Siemens, Ericsson and Verint.

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