NEW RINF FORUMS ONLINE

Class War | The 7 August issue of the New Statesman has a lengthy piece by Stephan Armstrong on “The New Spies”. 
Amongst an analysis of the private security industry targeting protesters at events like the Kent climate camp, Armstrong makes the curious claim that Class War was run by the security services in the 1990s. [...]

guardian.co.uk | Two environmental activists who glued themselves to the front doors of a bank in London today have been arrested for a breach of the peace, police said.
A group of four protesters calling themselves Rising Tide held a banner outside the Royal Bank of Scotland reading: “RBS - cashing in on coal” and handed out [...]

A protester tried to set himself alight outside the Chinese embassy in Ankara on Friday as Chinese Muslims denounced human rights violations in China ahead of the opening of the Olympic Games.
About 300 people, mostly Uighur refugees from China’s Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang, were seen gathered amid tight security outside the embassy to denounce the Olympic [...]

By Mark Davis | CIVIL rights advocates have seized on Federal Government plans for legal bans on torture to argue for tighter controls on the use of tasers by police.
The Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, said yesterday the Government was taking steps to ratify the optional protocol to the United Nations convention against torture, which would allow [...]

By Ritsuko Ando in New York | A MAN with a black hood pours water on the face of a prisoner in an orange jumpsuit strapped to a table: no, it’s not Guantanamo Bay naval base, but New York’s Coney Island amusement park.

The scene using robotic dolls is an installation built by artist Steve Powers [...]

By Glyn Moody | I’ve been against DNA databases for years, but I’ve always felt that the generic arguments I’ve been using were a little pallid, shall we say. And now, in what amounts to almost a throwaway comment, the wonderful Reg gives me what I’ve been looking for:
Although police are keen to bang the [...]

Via Bruce Schneier |  According to a recent court ruling, we are all subject to the provisions of the DMCA, but the government is not:
he Court of Federal Claims that first heard the case threw it out, and the new Appellate ruling upholds that decision. The reasoning behind the decisions focuses on the US government’s sovereign immunity, [...]

By Patty Donovan | According to documents released on Thursday, July 17, 2008, undercover state troopers in Maryland infiltrated at least three groups peacefully protesting the death penalty and advocating peace. These troopers illegally sent reports of the activities of these groups to U.S. intelligence and military agencies. The Maryland chapter of the ACLU was [...]

Saudi Arabia prisons to replace Guantanamo bay
Pakistan Daily 
Saudi Arabia is to build five modern prisons in the kingdom to replace US Guantanamo detention facility, a new report has revealed.
Jordanian daily quoted unnamed sources as saying that US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Saudi officials are cooperating to construct the prisons which are to replace Guantanamo [...]

A Guantanamo detainee on Wednesday urged a human rights panel that investigates abuse cases in the Americas to review his accusations that he was tortured in the US “war on terror” prison.
Djamel Ameziane, an Algerian who has been held at the US naval base in Cuba for six years as an “enemy combatant” without charge, [...]

The case against the lone suspect in the 2001 anthrax case, who killed himself last week, has been blasted by his lawyer as based on nothing but “innuendo and a staggering lack of real evidence”. 
By Guillaume Simard-Morissette 
Justice Department officials claim that Bruce Ivins, 62, a US government bio-weapons scientist, posted envelopes containing anthrax spores to [...]

Indo-Asian News Service | Pakistan has accused the US of backing militancy within the country, saying this goes against the grain of the Washington-led global war against terror.
 
Quoting “impeccable official sources”, The News reported on Tuesday that “strong evidence and circumstantial evidence of American acquiescence to terrorism inside Pakistan” was outlined by President Pervez Musharraf, [...]

BEIJING - A charter airplane carrying the White House press corps was detained for nearly three hours Friday at Beijing’s international airport not long after President Bush arrived to attend the Olympic Games.
The flight crew of the Northwest Airlines 747 had been expecting to park at a VIP terminal, but after landing was instead directed [...]

What do Obama and McCain have in common? The same big donors, who will expect to have their way no matter who wins 
Remember the total, hideous, inexcusable absence of oversight that has been the great hallmark of George Bush’s America for almost eight years now? Well, now we’re getting to see that same regulatory [...]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - America’s alcohol prohibition lasted 13 years, filled the country’s prisons, inspired contempt for the law among millions, bred corruption and produced Al Capone. What it did not do was keep Americans from drinking.
 
America’s marijuana prohibition drew into its 72nd year this month. It has created a huge underground industry catering to users, [...]