Americans Sour on Trade

WSJ

The American public, already skeptical of free trade, is becoming increasingly hostile to it.

Across the country, politicians are responding accordingly, and that is clouding prospects for congressional approval of pending free-trade pacts with South Korea and Colombia. It is also prompting concern among U.S. businesses reliant on the rest of the world for growth.

In the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, more than half of those surveyed, 53%, said free-trade agreements have hurt the U.S. That is up from 46% three years ago and 32% in 1999.

Even Americans most likely to be winners from trade—upper-income, well-educated professionals, whose jobs are less likely to go overseas and whose industries are often buoyed by demand from international markets—are increasingly skeptical.

"The important change is that very well-educated and upper-income people compared to five to 10 years ago have shifted their opinion and are now expressing significant concern about the notion of...free trade," said Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster who helps conduct the Journal survey. Among those earning $75,000 or more, 50% now say free-trade pacts have hurt the U.S., up from 24% who said the same in 1999.

Worries about side effects of trade and outsourcing seem one of the few issues on which Americans of different classes, occupations and political persuasions agree. The vote in the House last week to arm the administration with more levers to pressure China to let its currency rise, and thus restrain its export machine, was bipartisan: 249 Democrats and 99 Republicans voted for it.

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October Surprise: Terror Hysteria Recycled In Election Ploy

The establishment media is giving full court press to announcements from US and European authorities that airport lobbies are being targeted for terror attacks in a recycled version of the laughable 2007 incident in which two retards set fire to a jeep outside Glasgow airport, a non-event that authorities hyped beyond all recognition amidst a similar wave of hysteria to that which we’re witnessing now.

The October surprise has arrived, and it’s a contrived and cynical ploy to frighten Americans into putting their trust back in the government by waving the familiar boogeyman of the outside threat.

“Among the possible targets in the suspected European terror plot are pre-security areas in at least five major European airports, a law enforcement official told ABC News. Authorities believe terror teams are preparing to mount a commando like attack featuring small units and small firearms modeled after the Mumbai attack two years ago.”

Constant references to the Mumbai attack, transport hubs, airport lobbies and other “soft target” chatter provide a reasonably clear indication as to who is really behind the ceaseless intensity of terror fearmongering we’ve been subjected to over the last week.

Since it ultimately emerged that the mastermind behind the Mumbai massacre was CIA agent David Headley, warnings from the same intelligence agencies about similar attacks being planned should be treated as a direct threat. Throughout the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, the Central Intelligence Agency played a key role in Operation Gladio, a program of false flag terror attacks on soft targets that were designed to demonize political opposition and “force the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security,” according to the testimony of Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra.

In 2000, an Italian Senate investigation found that the 1980 Bologna train bombing, which killed 85 people, was carried out by “men inside Italian state institutions and … men linked to the structures of United States intelligence.”

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U.S. military is secretly diverting aerial drones and weaponry to Pakistan

WSJ

WASHINGTON—The U.S. military is secretly diverting aerial drones and weaponry from the Afghan battlefront to significantly expand the CIA's campaign against militants in their Pakistani havens.

The shift in strategic focus reflects the U.S. view that, with Pakistan's military unable or unwilling to do the job, more U.S. force against terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan is now needed to turn around the struggling Afghan war effort across the border.

In recent months, the military has loaned Predator and Reaper drones to the Central Intelligence Agency to give the agency more firepower to target and bombard militants on the Afghan border.

The additional drones helped the CIA escalate the number of strikes in Pakistan in September. The agency averaged five strikes a week in September, up from an average of two to three per week. The Pentagon and CIA have ramped up their purchases of drones, but they aren't being built fast enough to meet the rapid rise in demand.

The escalated campaign in September was aimed, in part, at disrupting a suspected terrorist plot to strike in Western Europe. U.S. officials said Friday their working assumption is that Osama bin Laden and other senior al Qaeda operatives are part of the suspected terror plot—or plots—believed to target the U.K., France or Germany. They said they are still working to understand the contours of the scheme.

U.S. officials say a successful terrorist strike against the West emanating from Pakistan could force the U.S. to take unilateral military action—an outcome all parties are eager to avoid.

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Fraud Factories: Rep. Alan Grayson Explains the Foreclosure Fraud Crisis

Computer worm attacking Iran's nuclear facilities 'includes Biblical link to Israel'

Israel has been linked to a complex worm currently attacking computers in Iran, which experts claim may have been designed to target the country's nuclear facilities.

The Stuxnet worm, supposedly aimed at slowing Iran's desire to create a nuclear arsenal, appears to include a reference to a Biblical story in which Jews pre-empt a Persian plot to destroy them.

The New York Times reports a file inside the Stuxnet code is named 'Myrtus' - a reference to the Hebrew word Esther, the same name as the Old Testament book in which the story appears.

Suspicion over the origin of the computer worm, which appears to have been created to disrupt Tehran's nuclear programme, has fallen on both Israel and the U.S in recent days.

Iran said this week that Stuxnet is continuing to mutate and wreaking havoc on computerised industrial equipment.

The AFP news agency claims the worm has been designed to attack systems commonly used to manage water supplies, oil rigs, power plants and other industrial facilities.

No one has yet claimed credit for the virus though, with the U.S. denying responsibility.

TShai Blitzblau, the head of the computer warfare laboratory at Maglan, an Israeli company specialising in information security, also told the New York Times he was 'convinced that Israel had nothing to do with Stuxnet'.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1316747/Stuxnet-worm-attacking-Irans-nuclear-facilities-includes-Biblical-link-Israel.html#ixzz119qzxCb3

US apologizes for infecting Guatemalans with STDs in the 1940s

CNN

Washington -- The United States apologized Friday for a 1946-1948 research study that purposely infected people in Guatemala with sexually transmitted diseases.

A statement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius called the action "reprehensible."

"We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices," the joint statement said. "The conduct exhibited during the study does not represent the values of the United States, or our commitment to human dignity and great respect for the people of Guatemala."

Clinton called Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom on Thursday night to inform him, said Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela.

"They were obviously concerned about this information. They were saddened by it," Valenzuela said in a telephone news conference Friday.

Guatemalan officials took into account that the experiments occurred more than 60 years ago, Valenzuela said.

The study came to light recently when Wellesley College researcher Susan Reverby found the archived but unpublished notes from the project.

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Airstrikes strain U.S.-Pakistan ties

ISLAMABAD - U.S. officials pressed their Pakistani counterparts Thursday to reopen a vital supply route for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, as relations deteriorated after the fourth strike by coalition helicopters in a week killed three members of Pakistan's border force.

Pakistan closed the crossing to protest the strikes on its side of the border, leaving U.S. officials to use meetings and phone calls to try to soothe relations and get the route reopened. Both sides indicated that they might be able to resolve the dispute with a joint investigation.

But the border closing, and the exceptional series of strikes by piloted aircraft as opposed to drones, signaled a general increase in tensions between Pakistan and the United States, already uncomfortable allies that are pursuing competing interests in the Afghan war.

In a further escalation, at least 27 tankers carrying fuel for NATO troops in Afghanistan were attacked late Thursday in southern Pakistan. The attack took place on the edge of Shikarpur in Sindh Province. No one was believed to have been killed or wounded in the attack.

Demonstration of leverage

The border closing was a clear demonstration of the leverage Pakistan holds over the U.S. war effort. It coincided with a previously scheduled visit by the CIA director, Leon Panetta, who met Thursday with the Pakistani military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, part of a stream of U.S. officials who have come to alternately cajole and coerce Pakistani cooperation.

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Authorities Plan To Trawl Phone Calls And E Mails For Signs Of “Resentment Toward Government”

Do you resent the government for enforcing Obamacare or raising your taxes? Write about it in an email or talk about it on the phone and you could be placed under surveillance as a potential terrorist, if frightening new technology being shopped to law enforcement agencies is implemented.

Forget pre-crime and get ready for face-crime, Big Brother is set to unleash a new wave of shockingly invasive and Orwellian technology on the American people if a recent symposium in Hamburg New York is anything to go by. Federal agencies, police departments and others were all in attendance to see a demonstration of a system that trawls phone conversations, emails and instant messages to detect “resentment toward government,” alerting authorities to potential “terrorists” who are then placed under surveillance.

The technology was demonstrated to law enforcement officials, mental health professionals, and military representatives at a recent International First Responder-Military Symposium held at Hilbert College.

“A Swiss professor working with a Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist who heads the Mind Machine Project there outlined how this program operates through computerized scanning of phone calls and electronic messages sent through e-mail and social networking mechanisms,” reports the Buffalo News.

The system works by detecting “resentment in conversations through measurements in decibels and other voice biometrics,” more specifically the emotional spikes that characterize “hatred and deep resentment toward government.”

“As for written transmissions scrutinized by the computer program, it can detect the same patterns of fixation on specified subjects,” states the report.

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Whitney Says U.S. States May Need Federal Bailout

The U.S. government will face pressure to bail out struggling states in the next 12 months, said Meredith Whitney, the banking analyst who correctly predicted Citigroup Inc.’s dividend cut in 2008.

While saying a bailout might not be politically viable, Whitney joined investor Warren Buffett in raising alarm bells about the potential for widespread defaults in the $2.8 trillion municipal bond market. She said state and local issuers have taken on too much debt and that the gap between public spending and revenue is unsustainable.

“People will think the federal government will bail these states out,” Whitney, 40, the founder of Meredith Whitney Advisory Group Inc., said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop.” “It’s going to be an incredibly divisive issue.”

Whitney’s comments coincide with her release of a report rating the financial health of the 15 largest U.S. states measured by gross domestic product, according to Fortune magazine. The report, which Whitney said took two years to complete and hasn’t been released publicly, ranks California’s finances the worst, with New Jersey, Illinois and Ohio tied for second-worst.

The longest recession since the Great Depression has left states facing budget gaps of $72 billion next fiscal year, according to a July report by the National Conference on State Legislatures. State pension funds face deficits of more than $1 trillion, according to the Pew Center on the States. The amount of municipal debt outstanding has increased about 90 percent in the last decade, according to Federal Reserve data.

Buffett and Bailouts

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Pentagon Losing Control of Bombs to China’s Monopoly

A senior manager at a company that churns out metals routinely used in U.S. smart bombs pauses in mid-sentence when his phone rings: a Wall Street stockbroker looking for information. He makes a note to have an assistant call back -- someone who is fluent in English, not just Chinese.

“It’s a seller’s market now,” says Bai Baosheng, 43, puffing a cigarette in his office in Baotou, China, where his company sells bags of powder containing a metallic element known as neodymium, vital in tiny magnets that direct the fins of bombs dropped by U.S. Air Force jets in Afghanistan.

A generation after Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping made mastering neodymium and 16 other elements known as rare earths a priority, China dominates the market, with far-reaching effects ranging from global trade friction to U.S. job losses and threats to national security.

The U.S. handed its main economic rival power to dictate access to these building blocks of modern weapons by ceding control of prices and supply, according to dozens of interviews with industry executives, congressional leaders and policy experts. China in July reduced rare-earth export quotas for the rest of the year by 72 percent, sending prices up more than sixfold for some elements.

Military officials are only now conducting an inventory of where and how U.S. suppliers use the obscure but essential substances -- including those that silence the whoosh of Boeing Co. helicopter blades, direct Raytheon Co. missiles and target guns in General Dynamics Corp. tanks.

Warning Signs

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New Poll: Pakistanis Hate the Drones, Back Suicide Attacks on U.S. Troops

The CIA can kill militants all day long. If the drone war in Pakistan drives the local people into al Qaeda’s arms, it’ll be failure. A new poll of the Pakistani tribal areas, released this morning, suggests that could easily wind up happening. Chalk one up for drone skeptics like counterinsurgent emeritus David Kilcullen and ex-CIA Director Michael Hayden.

Only 16 percent of respondents to a new poll sponsored by the drone-watchers at the New America Foundation say that the drone strikes “accurately target militants.” Three times that number say they “largely kill civilians.”

CIA director Leon Panetta, by contrast, has staunchly defended the drone program as meticulously targeting terrorists. In a war that depends heavily on perceptions, it’s a big discrepancy.

There’s more bad news for Panetta and his boss in the White House. A plurality of respondents in the tribal areas say that the U.S. is primarily responsible for violence in the region. Nearly 90 percent want the U.S. to stop pursuing militants in their backyard and nearly 60 percent are fine with suicide bombings directed at the Americans. That comes as NATO accelerates incursions into Pakistan. Just this morning, it announced that a pursuit of insurgents in Afghanistan’s Paktiya Province led to a U.S. helicopter shooting at the militants from Pakistani airspace. Enraged Pakistani officials responded by shutting down a critical NATO supply line into Afghanistan.

Whatever NATO says, very few in the tribal regions are inclined to believe the U.S. is in Afghanistan and occasionally in Pakistan to fight terrorism. They think the U.S. is waging “larger war on Islam or… an effort to secure oil and minerals in the region.”

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/09/new-poll-pakistanis-hate-the-drones-back-suicide-attacks-on-u-s-troops/#ixzz114sGnsqg

'U.S., Mossad played roles in 9/11 event'

Following the Iranian president's doubts on the 9/11 event, a top military adviser to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution says the CIA and Mossad were involved in the attacks.

"The US and the Zionists developed the strategy of the September 11 attacks in an effort to counter the Islamic vigilance and to control energy resources in the Middle East," IRNA quoted Brigadier General Yahya Rahim-Safavi as saying on Saturday.

He further added that al-Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden did not possess the essential intelligence capacity anywhere near the level of CIA, Pentagon and the FBI in order to conduct the surprise attacks against sensitive centers in the United States on September 11.

According to General Rahim-Safavi, heads of Israel's Mossad and the US played roles in the event.

"The September 11 attacks in the US and the shameful act of Qur'an burning by the US and Zionist regime (Israel) were in line with Islamophobia efforts by enemies of Islam who have fears over the spread of Islam and the Islamic vigilance," he further explained.

The Iranian commander also pointed out that the US and certain Western countries invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, a move that proved security is not sustainable in the world.

Moreover, General Rahim-Safavi pointed to the high potentials of Muslim countries and predicted that the Muslim world with its unique features and capabilities will turn into a premier and important power center of the world in the near future.

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Europe's austerity anger grows

"Workers are on the streets today with a clear message to Europe's leaders," said John Monks, head of the European Trade Union Confederation. "There is a great danger that workers are going to pay the price for the reckless speculation that took place in financial markets. You have to reschedule these debts so that they are not a huge burden and cause Europe to plunge down into recession," he said, reflecting growing bitterness among ordinary people that they are bearing the brunt of austerity while bondholders have been shielded from losses.

Spain's car industry was entirely paralysed with the exception of the Mercedes plant in Vitoria, and transport stoppages caused severe disruption. Ignacio Fernandez Toxo, head of the country's CCOO trade union, said premier Jose Luis Zapatero was committing "political suicide" by carrying out harsh cuts while unemployment hovers at 20pc, or 41pc for youths.

Austerity fatigue is surfacing across a large arc of Eastern and Southern Europe, raising concerns that electorates may start to rebel. The Fidesz government in Hungary has already sent the EU and the International Monetary Fund packing, opting for "economic nationalism". Even the police joined demonstrations last week in Romania, hurling their kit at the presidential palace to protest public sector wage cuts of 25pc.

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Iran, China and the Gwadar Port

by Dr. Stuart Jeanne Bramhall | StuartBramhall.com

The Gwadar Port in Balochistan (one of Pakistan’s tribal regions) has been headline news in Pakistan, India and China this month. Interesting that I can’t find one mention of it in the western media – not even in on-line publications. Since many Pakistani commentators trace the US shift in military focus from Iraq to Afghanistan to the completion of the Chinese-built deep water port in 2005. I myself never heard of the Gwadar Port until I came across an obscure Pakistani blog by Khalid Baig. I was so concerned about its content that I assisted his translator in polishing the English and republished it on OpEdNews.  See http://www.opednews.com/populum/print_friendly.php?p=Talibanization-The-Whole-by-Khalid-Baig-100901-169.html

In fact the only US article I can find about the Gwadar Port is a May, 10 2010 Forbes article (see http://www.forbes.com/global/2010/0510/companies-pakistan-oil-gas-balochistan-china-pak-corridor.html). It explains how the province of Balochistan is well endowed with oil, gas, copper, zinc, gold, coal and a deepwater port at Gwadar the Chinese built for Pakistan in 2005. And how Balochistan also happens to be China’s link to its sizeable investments in Iranian gas and oil.

China’s stated goal in building the deep water port was to capture the transit trade (via the old ’silk road’) of fossil fuels and minerals of landlocked countries like Afghanistan, as well as encouraging the transhipment of resources bound for other countries reliant on central Asian resources. China has invested well over $15 billion in Balochistan projects, including an oil refinery and zinc and copper mines, in addition to the Gwadar Port and its connecting highways.

Iran and China: Our Two Favorite Countries

The Forbes article doesn’t mention that Balochistan will also be a connecting hub for the Iran-Pakistan-India oil pipeline, which is looked to take the place of the planned Turmanistan-Afghanisan-Pakistan-India pipeline (the one the US supported).

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Feds Radiating Americans At Internal Checkpoints

Also see: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0929/Feds-radiating-Americans-Mobile-X-ray-vans-hit-US-streets

Federal authorities do not concern themselves about the flood of illegal immigrants and drugs crossing the border every day, they’re more worried about radiating American truck drivers at internal checkpoints with mobile scanners that shoot dangerous x-rays through both vehicles and passengers.

As we reported last month, the federal government has acquired hundreds of backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that they are now using to randomly scan vehicles, passengers and homes in complete violation of the 4th amendment and with wanton disregard for any health consequences.

An example of their expanding use was reported by WSBTV yesterday, after federal agents from several agencies, including Homeland Security, the Department of Transportation, and the TSA, set up an internal checkpoint on Interstate 20 just west of Atlanta and detained truck drivers for half an hour or more at a “state-owned inspection station” while they were scanned with a bomb detection device.

Officials admitted there was no specific threat that justified the checkpoint, and although it was labeled a “counter-terror operation,” the scans were also being conducted in the name of “safety”.

Watch the video here.

Backscatter x-ray vision devices mounted on trucks are already being deployed inside the United States to scan passing individuals and vehicles in complete violation of the Fourth Amendment. Similar to naked airport body scanners, the devices fire x-rays outwards which are then absorbed by dense objects or the human body. Frequent exposure to low doses of radiation can cause cancer and birth defects, according to a report by the Inter-Agency Committee on Radiation Safety.

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War-crimes probe of Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs reveals grisly allegations

When Army investigators tried to interrogate Staff Sgt. Calvin R. Gibbs in May about the suspected murders of three Afghan civilians, he declined to answer questions. But as he was being fingerprinted, Gibbs lifted up his pant leg to reveal a tattoo.

Engraved on his left calf was a picture of a crossed pair of pistols, framed by six skulls. The tattoo was "his way of keeping count of the kills he had," according to a report filed by a special agent for the Army's Criminal Investigations Command. Three of the skulls, colored in red, represented kills in Iraq, Gibbs told the agent; the others, in blue, were from Afghanistan.

Gibbs said he acted in self-defense each time, but Army officials came to a different conclusion. They have charged him with conspiring with other soldiers from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division to murder three unarmed Afghans, allegedly for sport, and dismembering and photographing the corpses.

The war-crimes investigation is the gravest to confront the Army in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. In echoes of the Abu Ghraib scandal that unfolded from Iraq in 2004, the Army is scrambling to locate dozens of digital photographs that soldiers allegedly took of one another posing alongside the corpses of their victims. Military officials worry disclosure of the images could inflame public opinion against the war, both at home and abroad.

In addition to Gibbs, 25, the Army has charged four other soldiers with involvement in the killings, which occurred between January and May in Kandahar province. So far, the Army has released limited information about the case, although a pretrial hearing for one of the accused soldiers began this week at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., home of the Stryker Brigade.

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An alarmed Iran asks for outside help to stop rampaging Stuxnet malworm

Tehran this week secretly appealed to a number of computer security experts in West and East Europe with offers of handsome fees for consultations on ways to exorcize the Stuxnet worm spreading havoc through the computer networks and administrative software of its most important industrial complexes and military command centers. debkafile's intelligence and Iranian sources report Iran turned for outside help after local computer experts failed to remove the destructive virus.   

None of the foreign experts has so far come forward because Tehran refuses to provide precise information on the sensitive centers and systems under attack and give the visiting specialists the locations where they would need to work. They were not told whether they would be called on to work outside Tehran or given access to affected sites to study how they function and how the malworm managed to disable them. Iran also refuses to give out data on the changes its engineers have made to imported SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems, mostly from Germany.
The impression debkafile sources gained Wednesday, Sept. 29 from talking to European computer experts approached for aid was that the Iranians are getting desperate. Not only have their own attempts to defeat the invading worm failed, but they made matters worse: The malworm became more aggressive and returned to the attack on parts of the systems damaged in the initial attack.

One expert said: "The Iranians have been forced to realize that they would be better off not 'irritating' the invader because it hits back with a bigger punch."

Looking beyond Iran's predicament, he wondered whether the people responsible for planting Stuxnet in Iran - and apparently continuing to offload information from its sensitive systems - have the technology for stopping its rampage.

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Obama: ‘The Generals Made Me Do It!’

All Washington is atwitter: the grand old man of the Court Historians, Bob Woodward, has come out with yet another “book” – i.e. another long-winded press release on behalf of the Powers That Be – explaining, “reporting,” and rationalizing the war policies of the current regime. Oh, glory be! Drop everything and run to the nearest bookstore – or just go online and download the excerpts at the Washington Post‘s incredibly cumbersome web site, loaded down with so many ads, pop-ups, and pop-outs that one imagines his next book will be out before your computer stops grinding.

Chapter One ought to have been titled “The Generals Made Me Do It.” Poor President Obama: he’s the most powerful man on earth, and yet he can’t get past his own generals. When he asked them for “options” in Afghanistan, they came up with what was essentially a single option: 40,000 more troops and a counterinsurgency that would last until Hell (or Afghanistan) froze over. The President was “frustrated,” and even “impatient” – “I need a plan, a plan, my kingdom for a plan that will get me out of this box!” Okay, so that’s not a direct quote, but you get the idea.

Lacking such a plan, Obama drew up a document resembling a “contract,” which stated the terms and conditions under which he’d go along with the escalation of the war. Key to this was the much-vaunted 2011 “withdrawal” date, i.e. the date we would supposedly start “downsizing” our footprint and begin the “training” phase that would get us the heck out of there, and get Obama out of the hot water he’s increasingly in with his Democratic base. What’s interesting, here, is that our commander-in-chief automatically took one option – a negotiated settlement with the Taliban, followed by withdrawal – off the table. It is not even mentioned as a possibility, however distant. This is not surprising, given the Washington consensus, which is that the Empire never stops expanding, but only pauses once in a while to catch its breath.

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Project Gulf Impact crew poisoned in 'Nazi America'

Each of the filmmaker crew members that have been in the U.S, war zone trenches since May, documenting the Gulf operation crime against humanity, are poisoned. Alex Thomas of The Intel Hub reports on an exclusive interview with film director of Project Gulf Impact, Matt Smith about his condition in the Youtube video below. They discuss the similarities between the Nazi holocaust in Germany and the one underway in the U.S.

Quoting Smith who was interviewed by Intel Hub radio show host, Shepard Ambellas, Thomas writes:

“Everyone down here knows what's going on and the media black out is like calling the oil spill an oil spill when it is a flood. This media blackout is so deep, it’s like the Gestapo, its seriously feels like we are in some sort of Nazi State with the media. The media control is horrifying. It is so horrifying because it is getting WORSE."

Smith says that it feels like a different country down along the Gulf Coast.

He explains that the sick people in the south have no money or health insurance and cannot afford health care.

It has been reported to the Examiner that many South Louisianans do not even have gas money to drive to New Orleans only a couple of hours away.

Smith said that the crew wore respirators the day they fell ill. The respirators did not prevent them from becoming poisoned. He and everyone on the boat are poisoned. They all required hospitalization. Three of them are in the hospital.

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Blair 'knew of torture allegations in 2002'

Lawyers claim secret Government documents show Tony Blair knew as early as January 2002 of allegations of torture involving UK nationals held in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. 

A letter from the Foreign Office to the Prime Minister's Office, publicly revealed for the first time today, carries handwritten comments that appear to come from Mr Blair, say solicitors acting for former Guantanamo detainees. 

The US detention centre for terror suspects in Cuba was opened on January 11 2002, just days before the letter was sent on January 18. 

Six detainees, including Bisher Al Rawi and Binyam Mohammed, are suing the Government over its alleged complicity in their ill treatment. 

The letter came to light following a High Court judge's order last July that any documents held by Government departments and the security services on the issue should be disclosed for the legal proceedings, unless disclosure endangered national security.

 The letter is entitled "UK Nationals Held in Afghanistan and Guantanamo" and has one whole paragraph redacted. 

It was sent by the Foreign Office in response to a request from Downing Street for "a round-up of the latest position". It included a chart listing detainees who might be British. 

The person to whom the letter is addressed is blanked out in the released copy, but lawyers for the former detainees say a hand-written comment at the bottom of the letter appears to come from Mr Blair.

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