UNPO General Secretary Condemns Nepal’s Interference in Tibetan Elections

Pressure from Beijing appears to have led Nepalese authorities to seize ballot boxes in the centre of the country during voting across the world for members of the Tibetan Parliament-in-exile.

Below is a statement issued by the Office of the General Secretary of the UNPO:

The Hague, 5 October 2010 – The news that Nepalese officials and police have removed ballots containing votes cast by Tibetans in Kathmandu must be condemned in the strongest terms, the General Secretary of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization declared today.

Reacting to this unexplained development, UNPO General Secretary Marino Busdachin stated that “the Tibetan democratic process is one of the strongest in the world refugee communities – to see it disrupted in this way damages not only Nepal’s reputation but represents a direct affront to the Tibetan refugee community in the world. As a sovereign nation, Kathmandu must not allow itself to be swayed by Beijing’s influence while the international community supports Nepalese democracy.”

The UNPO therefore calls upon the Nepalese authorities to immediately release the confiscated ballot boxes in an untampered state and to permit the counting of ballots in a free and fair manner by concerned Tibetans. Only in this way does the UNPO believe Nepal can recover its standing as one of Asia’s emerging democracies and permit Tibetans living in country to see their democratic rights observed.

While appreciating the people and Government of Nepal for hosting over 20,000 Tibetan refugees in the country, UNPO urges the Nepalese Government to implement the recommendations from UN Treaty Bodies concerning the situation of refugees in the country, including by approving the registration of the Tibetan refugee welfare office in Kathmandu.

~ UNPO ~

Postales by Federico Aubele

The debut single from ESL Music's Federico Aubele heralds the arrival of someone special. Discovered and Produced by Thievery Corporation the Argentine soul of Aubele will move you.

RT and PressTV Declared Enemies Of The Main Stream Media - Truth Is Hurting The Main Stream

RussiaToday--October 06, 2010--The Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors - the organization overseeing U.S. media directed at foreign audiences - says his organization needs to fight its enemies. And among those are Iran's Press TV, China's CCTV and RT. Political commentator Peter Lavelle says the chairman's statement puts him beyond real journalism

Copyright Russia Today 2010

13 Years Later, DIA Still Processing FOIA Document Request By The Black Vault

From US Intelligence Report: Iran with Capability to Strike US by 2014 by John Greenewald, Jr.

The document, labeled a Military Intelligence Digest with a SECRET security marking, states that, “An ICBM with a Non-Rotating Earth (NRE) range of 10,000 kilometers would provide the Iranians with missile coverage of Alaska but would not allow them to target CONUS [Continental United States], owing to rotational effects of the Earth.”  The report goes on to state that, “Iran might have the capability to develop and produce an ICBM that can strike the United States in the next 10 to 15 years.”

The release of this report was due to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by The Black Vault internet archive (http://www.theblackvault.com), a website devoted to obtaining and archiving declassified government documents released via the FOIA, filed back in 1997.

It took the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) nearly 13 years for them to process the request, which only yielded three pages of material; 85% of which is completely blacked out.

~ more... ~

Caught Spying on Student, FBI Demands GPS Tracker Back

Kim Zetter reports for Wired:

A California student got a visit from the FBI this week after he found a secret GPS tracking device on his car, and a friend posted photos of it online. The post prompted wide speculation about whether the device was real, whether the young Arab-American was being targeted in a terrorism investigation and what the authorities would do.

It took just 48 hours to find out: The device was real, the student was being secretly tracked and the FBI wanted its expensive device back, the student told Wired.com in an interview Wednesday.

The answer came when half-a-dozen FBI agents and police officers appeared at Yasir Afifi's apartment complex in Santa Clara, California, on Tuesday demanding he return the device.

Afifi, a 20-year-old U.S.-born citizen, cooperated willingly and said he'd done nothing to merit attention from authorities. Comments the agents made during their visit suggested he'd been under FBI surveillance for three to six months.

An FBI spokesman wouldn't acknowledge that the device belonged to the agency or that agents appeared at Afifi's house.

“I can't really tell you much about it, because it's still an ongoing investigation,” said spokesman Pete Lee, who works in the agency's San Francisco headquarters.

Afifi, the son of an Islamic-American community leader who died a year ago in Egypt, is one of only a few people known to have found a government-tracking device on their vehicle.

His discovery comes in the wake of a recent ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals saying it's legal for law enforcement to secretly place a tracking device on a suspect's car without getting a warrant, even if the car is parked in a private driveway.

Brian Alseth from the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington state contacted Afifi after seeing pictures of the tracking device posted online and told him the ACLU had been waiting for a case like this to challenge the ruling.

~ more... ~