The report, to be presented to the UN crime commission meeting in Vienna, calls for the protection of victims, particularly women and children, and for the systematic prosecution of offenders. "Traffickers are evil brokers of oppressed people whom they deliver in the hands of exploiters," Mr Costa said. "They capitalise on weak law enforcement and poor international co-operation. I am disappointed by the low rates of convictions for the perpetrators of human trafficking."

Germany, Greece and France are among about a dozen countries identified as having a "high" incidence of acting as transit countries. Ten countries are named as the top destinations for trafficking victims: Belgium, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Thailand, Turkey and the US. Britain is on the "high" index of destination countries.

Human trafficking for sexual exploitation is reported more frequently than trafficking for forced labour at the global level, the report says. It calls for governments to publicise the risks to vulnerable people through information campaigns. "A main challenge is to reduce demand, whether for cheap goods manufactured in sweatshops, or for under-priced commodities produced by bonded people in farms and mines, or for services provided by sex slaves. If people are aware of the dangers of human trafficking, the chances of avoiding its consequences should be improved," Mr Costa said.

The absence of data has been a major handicap in tackling the crime of human trafficking, the report says. "Some countries of destination have great difficulty in acknowledging the level of trafficking within and across their borders," Mr Costa said. He urged governments to "try harder" in reporting abuse, saying that efforts to understand the scale of the problem have so far been inefficient and uncoordinated.

The report also acknowledges possible dangers in interpreting the available data. Some countries could appear to have a serious problem because their data are honest and accurate, while others "could appear in an unduly favourable light because of inadequate statistics", Mr Costa said. But he said it was "difficult to name a country that is not affected in some way."

The blunt-spoken Jackson, who is black, acknowledged his comments might be seen as racially offensive because virtually all of the former St. Thomas residents were African-American. He told a white reporter, "If you said this, they would say you were racist."
He went on to say, "I don't care what color they are, if they are devastating a community, they shouldn't be allowed to return."

His comments drew a sharp response from housing advocates in New Orleans who have accused Jackson's agency, the U.S. Department of Urban Development, of giving public housing residents short shrift as it replaces traditional public developments such as St. Thomas with planned, mixed-income communities.

"I find that very disappointing," Lucia Blacksher, general counsel for the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Center, said. "When people say things like we only want the best people who don't do drugs or commit crimes, there is an implication that many of people in public housing are in fact criminals who don't work. That simply is not true. It is an unnecessary stereotype and an alarming stereotype to be voiced by secretary of HUD."

Jackson also had some tough words for black leaders he said are stoking racial fires in the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina.

"I'm a little disturbed that even today they want to bring a racial component into the hurricane. This isn't about racism, this is about people suffering," said Jackson, pointing to the large number of Vietnamese fishers along the Gulf Coast whose livelihoods were ruined by the storm. "It's important (to remember) that everybody suffered in this disaster, not just black people. It bothers me tremendously when I see the so-called leadership in the black community, the liberal community zeroing in (on) how much more difficult it was for African-Americans than it was for white Americans, Hispanic-Americans and Asian-Americans."

Jackson's comments may presage a renewed, get-tough policy when it comes to public housing in post-hurricane New Orleans.

Jackson recently oversaw a shakeup of the Housing Authority of New Orleans, which is in receivership and controlled by his agency. He replaced the receiver and the board chairman with two officials from agency headquarters in Washington, D.C.

HANO spokesman Adonis Expose also confirmed Monday that the agency is considering a long-rumored policy change that would require all public housing residents in New Orleans to have a job or be in a job-training program.

Eight months after Hurricane Katrina, the future of the 10 public housing complexes in New Orleans remains an open question. Times have never been tougher for low-income people as a shortage of rental housing after Hurricane Katrina has seen rents to historic levels.

While HUD has re-opened some complexes, such as Iberville, most of the others remain closed and surrounded by protective fencing. Eager to return, former residents have marched in protest to force the government to open more, but HUD has so far refused.

Asked about it Monday, Jackson said that complexes that suffered severe damage will likely be torn down and redeveloped. Although, he said it will be up to the mayor, whoever it is after the May 20 runoff, to make the key decisions on rebuilding.

"We will rebuild, if that's what the mayor wants," Jackson said. "Do we rebuild the same way? Probably not."

Echoing Bush administration statements in recent months, Jackson said that despite the need for affordable housing, New Orleans' infrastructure remains too fragile to re-open the public housing complexes.

"Most of public housing developments are in areas where electricity has not been turned on, schools are not open, there are no grocery stores and we have a serious mold and lead problem in some of those buildings," Jackson said. "If tomorrow, all those factors came together, we would open them up. We're willing to do that ... (But the former residents) already lived in pretty much sub-standard conditions, I'm not going to condone further sub-standard conditions. I think that is inhumane and wrong."

Housing advocates say that HUD could help drive the repopulation of New Orleans by opening apartments, some of which received only minor damage in the hurricane. If complexes were open, the subsequent boost in population, they say, would prompt businesses and schools to reopen as well.

But those critics say that HUD has no interest in reopening the complexes, only redeveloping much as was done with St. Thomas. Their fear, they say, is that redevelopment of public housing does not always work to the benefit of public housing residents who can end up getting squeezed out by higher rents of the new housing that is built.

"I think they are getting ready to demolish public housing," said Laura Tuggle, an attorney with New Orleans Legal Assistance. "One of the hardest parts of redevelopment is having to relocate residents of public housing. That job was done for them."

Before Katrina, many former St. Thomas residents were on the waiting list for low-rent apartments at River Gardens. They had been screened to make sure they had jobs and didn't have criminal records.

After the storm, HANO installed its own employees in some of the vacant apartments. Expose, the HANO spokesman, said it was so they would have some place to stay while they worked to make other public housing available around the city.

Fair housing groups have filed administrative complaints to force HANO to open more spaces in River Gardens to former St. Thomas residents or other low-income public housing residents. They took issue with Jackson's estimate that a fifth of River Garden's apartments have gone to those people and estimated that it could be as low as 10 percent.

They say that they have grave concerns if the development ends up being the face of public housing in New Orleans.

"If the model is River Gardens, it has failed miserably," said James Perry, executive director of the New Orleans Fair Housing Council.

When Peres had launched this latest war -- 'Grapes of Wrath' was its malign name -- we were treated to the usual nonsense about a war on 'terror', a war against 'international terror', about Israel 'not sitting idly by'. Terrorists, terrorists, terrorists; the same brainwashing that had so affected the Israeli soldiers who invaded Lebanon 14 years earlier. The Israelis firing the shells into Qana were probably schoolboys in 1982. But they still believed the same fantasies. On the very first day of the bombardment, the Israelis fired a missile at the 'Hezbollah terrorist headquarters' in Beirut. But they missed the Hezbollah's offices and the rocket beheaded a little girl in a neighbouring apartment. Then they fired at a car carrying a 'terrorist' to Beirut. But there was no 'terrorist'. Their missile killed the driver -- a young woman -- as she stopped to buy a sandwich at a shop opposite the Jiye power station.

Then just five days before the Qana massacre, another Israeli Apache helicopter pilot fired a missile into an ambulance south of Tyre. It was carrying 'terrorists', the Israelis announced. But it was not. The vehicle was packed with families fleeing their shelled village, obeying the instructions to leave which they had heard over the Israeli-run militia radio station. Two women and four young children were killed in the ambulance. I would later identify and meet every survivor. None was a member of Hezbollah. [...] But the Israelis went on claiming that 'terrorists' were in the car. They never apologised.

(Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon, p. 672)

The Hezbollah had by [the evening of April 16] fired exactly 120 Katyusha rockets over the border. Israelis along the border spent nights in shelters. By contrast, Israel was firing 3,000 shells a day into Lebanon while its air force were launching 200 missile raids every 24 hours and 400,000 Lebanese civilians were straming up the roads to Beirut, often under fire from two Israeli gunboats that cruised the shoreline, firing at vehicles on the coastal highway -- because, of course, the 'terrorists' were using the roads.

(Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon, p. 673)

I spoke to hundreds of UN troops about the story of the mysterious videotape. Did it exist? And if so, why had it not surfaced? Why hadn't the UN publicised it? Then I learned that the film existed, but that it had been given to General van Kappen and that the soldier had been instructed never to give it to anyone. I heard, too, that the UN's final report on the massacre would be kept secret under what was described as American pressure on the UN Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros Ghali.

(Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon, p. 681)

Then two days [after the mass funeral of the massacre victims at Qana], I was sitting at home in Beirut when my mobile phone rang. A voice gave me a map reference and added: '1300 hours.' I ran to the front room where I kept my files on southern Lebanon, tearing open the large-scale map of the region. The reference was to a crossroads near Qana. I have never driven so fast to southern Lebanon. And at 1300 hours, I saw in the rear-view mirror a UN jeep, pulling up behind me.

A soldier in battledress and blue beret walked up to me, shook hands and said: "I copied the tape before the UN took it. The plane is there. I have made a personal decision. I have two young children, the same age as the ones I carried dead in my arms at Qana. This is for them." And from his battledress blouse he pulled a video-cassette and threw it on the passenger seat of my car. It was, I think in retrospect, the most dramatic individual personal act I have ever seen a soldier take. The mighty powers may try to cover up, but the little people can still sometimes win.

I drove at speed back to Beirut and slammed the cassette into my recorder. Zooming into the smoke over Qana, the amateur cameraman caught the explosion of shells above the camp. From the distance the film was taken, it was still possible to make out the individual shellbursts. Norwegian troops can be seen close to the camera. Then one of them looks into the sky and the camera pans up. There is a buzzing sound and into focus comes the 'drone', trailing smoke from its engines, flying low over the base. As it moves, the sound of explosions can still be heard and a UN radio in the background can be heard. On it, Commandant Smyth is passing on the message that "Fijibatt headquarters is under fire". The camera zooms again and there is the conference room, burning like a torch. So it was all true.

I made stills of the crucial pictures. The UN had no idea I had the film. Nor had the Israelis. But if The Independent printed all the details -- with photos from the tape -- then the UN would be forced to publish its report. There could be no denying these images. [...] At the same time, and at no profit, we arranged to distribute copies of the tape to every television station which requested it -- British, American, French, Arab, and Israeli, all of whom showed the sequence of the 'drone' over Qana during the shelling. The UN, mainly on the basis of the film -- of which they had, of course, all along had a copy -- concluded that the slaughter was unlikely to have been caused by an error, a gentle way of saying it was deliberate. The Israelis, confronted with the film by van Kappen, then changed their story. "In their eagerness to cooperate with the United Nations," they said, they had given wrong information to the major-general. There was indeed a 'drone' over Qana, they said, but it was not photographing the camp. It was on 'another mission'. The Israelis did not say what this 'other mission' was. They also said that the pilotless aircraft with its live-time television cameras only arrived after the shelling had ended -- a claim the videotape clearly shows to be untrue.

What followed was predictable. The UN was accused by some Israeli lobby groups in the United States of 'anti-Semitism'. American reporters at the press conference held to publish the UN report asked hostile, almost insulting questions of UN officials, often implying racist motives behind the report's conclusions. A New York daily told its readers that the UN had been insensitive to ask the Dutch general to write the report because Holland had allowed its Jewish population to be sent to Auschwitz in the Second World War. Once more, the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis were being employed to protect Israel's misdeeds.

(Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon, p. 682-683)

The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, the more they want. - Ehud Barak

If the measure is approved by Congress, the nation's spy chief would be ordered to consider a plan for revoking the pensions of intelligence agency employees who make unauthorized disclosures. It also would permit security forces at the National Security Agency and the CIA to make warrantless arrests outside the gates of their top-secret campuses.

The new proposals, which have received little public attention, dovetail with an ongoing Bush administration crackdown on unauthorized leaks.



Last week, the CIA fired an employee accused of leaking classified information. Meanwhile, the government is testing the limits of its punishment powers in the courts, where it is prosecuting two pro-Israel lobbyists for receiving defense secrets.

Separately, a special prosecutor triggered a debate about First Amendment protections after he jailed a New York Times reporter last year until she agreed to testify in his investigation into the unmasking of CIA officer Valerie Plame. Lawyers for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr., the former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney accused of perjury in the Plame case, are seeking reporters' notes and other records in connection with his defense.

Critics described the potential penalties outlined in the measure as "draconian."

"In a moment when the intelligence community should be looking forward toward what it does best, the arrest powers represent a step back toward the Nixon-era abuses," said Jason Vest, an investigator with the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group.

The plan by Congress to target the pensions of intelligence agency employees would harm the overall spy effort, according to critics. Some, including former senior intelligence officials, warned that it would create an overly repressive environment within the agencies that could inhibit officers from speaking up, even internally, and discourage risk-taking.

The proposal to penalize leakers with loss of pension will do nothing "but keep good people from going to work in the [intelligence community] agencies," according to a senior intelligence official, who was quoted anonymously yesterday in a letter to the House Intelligence Committee from the Project on Government Oversight.

But a spokesman for the committee, Jamal Ware, said that stronger measures are necessary because "we have a serious problem with illegal leaks."

The pensions provision is a "first step" in a renewed effort to quash leaks, because current efforts have "not been an effective deterrent," according to a report by the House Intelligence panel. But it is unclear how such a penalty might be applied.

At least one retired intelligence officer, now working for the government as a private contractor, said that such a provision could apply to people like him.

The retired officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he recently received a call from an intelligence agency official "reminding" him that, as a private contractor, he was required to adhere to the same secrecy rules that apply to employees.

But he doubts that threatening pensions would stop leaks.

"All it's going to do is make people more sneaky," he said.

The measure also directs Congress to conduct a study of possible new sanctions against those who receive leaks of classified information, including journalists.

Steven Aftergood, a government secrecy expert with the Federation of American Scientists, said that such sanctions would represent a significant departure by the government, which usually targets only the person who leaks information, not the recipient.

"That is not the prevailing understanding under the law," he said. "If it were, [Washington Post reporter] Bob Woodward would not be a wealthy, best-selling author. He would be serving a life sentence."

At the request of National Intelligence Director John D. Negroponte, the legislation would allow agency security forces at the NSA and CIA to make arrests outside the grounds of those agencies. Ware said the measure is "just clarifying the authority" of agency security officers "to arrest individuals."

It would apparently overrule a written opinion by the Maryland attorney general's office, which stated that the NSA's police powers are limited to the agency's grounds and to streets within a 500-foot perimeter of its Fort Meade campus.

The June 2005 opinion concluded that, under Maryland law, NSA officers "may make a citizen's arrest" and would have no immunity from liability for their actions if they are outside their jurisdiction. It notes that NSA officers can only carry firearms within that jurisdiction. The bill would allow them to carry guns.

Critics of the new arrest provision said it would create the potential for abuses.

Loch Johnson, a top Senate aide on the Church Committee, which investigated CIA abuses in the 1970s, called it a "worrisome" expansion of power.

"That's why we have the FBI and other law enforcement officials," he said. "I don't know that this needs to be an intelligence officer's function. I wouldn't think it should be."

Aftergood termed the proposal "shocking" and said "it raises the specter of a secret police force that is unaccountable and operates outside of the normal law enforcement parameters."

He said it would allow CIA and NSA security officers to arrest someone for drunken driving or tax evasion.

"If the committee thinks we need more police on the street, let them legislate that. But don't turn the CIA and NSA into auxiliary police forces," he said.

Asked about concerns raised by watchdog groups that the measure would greatly expand the police powers of the CIA and NSA, Intelligence Committee spokesman Ware said: "I don't know it to be true; I don't know it to be untrue."

Vest, of the Project on Government Oversight, said that even if the arrest powers were not used beyond the agencies' grounds, he is concerned about a "slippery slope" toward wider arrests in the future. He raised concerns about the potential for abuses, noting that Nixon-era programs known as Resistance and Merrimac, which investigated domestic political groups, were carried out by the CIA's Office of Security.

CIA spokesman Tom Crispell said he could not comment on pending legislation. NSA spokesman Don Weber also declined to comment on the measure.

But Weber emphasized that the NSA security force "is not a part of the national intelligence mission; they are here to protect assets, including NSA employees."

At a book signing on Friday at Columbia University, a number of journalists told me they worried that Bush, Rove and Cheney, if they thought they were going to lose the House in November and face serious investigations into their crimes and deceits, would do something treasonous, like launching a war against Iran, or perhaps allowing another major terrorist attack against a U.S. target, so that they could then clamp down further on domestic freedom and ramp up jingoistic support among their wavering base.

The time for vacillating, cowering Democrats is over. The only way to defeat this threat is to warn about it and resist it openly now.

Democrats also need to stop waffling about voter security and vote fraud. It is essential that all voting machines in November have paper records, and that an army of activists begin now preparing to block Republican efforts to confuse and intimidate progressive voters to keep them from even getting to the polls.

Italians and other people in nations around the globe have shown the way, standing up to fraud and intimidation to insist on honest elections, and throwing out charlatans.

November 2006 will be America's turn.

Will the American people be up to the task?

Three state representatives in Illinois--Rep. Karen A. Yarbrough (217-782-8120), Rep. Sara Feigenholtz (217)- 782-8062), and Rep. Eddie Washington (217-558-1012)-- have struck the first blow in defense of liberty, and have shown us all the way. They were quickly followed over the weekend by California Assemblyman Paul Koretz (310-285-5490), who introduced a bill calling for impeachment of both Bush and Cheney.

In addition, the measure would:

- Freeze junkets paid for by private interests, but only until after the November elections.

- Place no new restrictions on lawmakers and aides who leave Capitol Hill to become lobbyists.

- Leave enforcement of the rules in the hands of a House ethics committee that is paralyzed by partisan tensions.

Ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff landed in legal trouble for wooing members of Congress with lavish trips, expensive meals and sports and entertainment tickets, and by luring top aides to the lobbying world to try to influence their former bosses.

The House bill, like the Senate version approved last month, relies heavily on disclosure to police ties between lobbyists and policymakers. It would require lobbyists to file reports quarterly, rather than semiannually as they do now.

Kevin Madden, spokesman for House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the bill would make the ties between lobbyists and lawmakers more transparent and "rebuild the trust between Congress and the American public."

The House bill is "sleight of hand from a Congress that is more concerned with facing the voters than with facing the problem," said Gary Kalman of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a government watchdog organization. Added Chellie Pingree, president of Common Cause: "They are maintaining the status quo and calling it reform."

Julian Zelizer, a congressional historian at Boston University, said major rule changes usually come only when a scandal hits peak intensity. Congress, he said, is "still clearly hesitating to do anything."

The revised plan finished Friday dropped requirements that lobbyists specify which lawmakers and aides they have contacted; disclose their sponsorship of lavish parties for lawmakers at political conventions; and report their fundraising for candidates for federal office.

The fight comes in an election year when members of Congress are under pressure to show they're getting federal spending under control, especially members' hometown and home-state spending. Senate floor debate was scheduled to begin today.

"This is more evidence of the dysfunctional nature of the Republican majority in the Senate," says Pat Toomey, president of the conservative Club for Growth. "The leadership is right this time, but the question is will they be able to hold enough of the rank-and-file members to do the right thing."

The committee that approved the increases is headed by Mississippi Republican Thad Cochran, who has battled to ensure his state gets its fair share of Katrina relief funds. His spokeswoman, Jenny Manley, says the Bush administration "does not have the sole authority to say what needs remain in the Gulf Coast. Members of Congress have more direct accountability to their constituents and know well what needs remain."

Bush sought $92.2 billion to pay ongoing costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and hurricane relief along the Gulf Coast. The House approved $91.9 billion in March, but the Senate Appropriations Committee added about $14 billion to the measure in early April by inserting numerous items, including money for disasters back to 1999.

"The Senate committee's add-ons were astonishingly higher than the president's request," says Scott Milburn of the White House Office of Management and Budget. "That has caused serious concern."

"We would like to get it back down closer to the original request of $92 billion," says Bill Hoagland, a budget analyst for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.

Senators have added projects large and small because they know money for wars and hurricane relief will run low and have to be replenished - which makes this a must-pass bill.

Among the projects:

- $700 million to relocate a freight railroad line from a section of Mississippi's Gulf Coast that developers want for casinos.

- $600 million for highways in states from Alabama to Alaska affected by natural disasters, some as long as seven years ago.

- $23 million for flood control in Sacramento and Hawaii.

- $20 million to help New England shellfishers recover from last year's toxic red tide.

- $15 million to help promote the sale of Gulf Coast seafood.

"Anything that isn't nailed down, they pick up and take home to their districts," says Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense, one of several budget watchdog groups opposing the measure.

If the Senate approves the additional money, House Republicans will try to erase it during negotiations to produce a compromise bill. "We passed a clean bill, and we want to keep it as close to the president's request as possible," says House Appropriations Committee spokesman John Scofield.

White House opposition has emboldened Senate critics, led by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who charge that the war and hurricane funding bill has attracted "pork barrel" projects. The cost will get added to the federal budget deficit, estimated by the White House budget office at $423 billion this year. That's up from $318 billion in 2005.

Gregg, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, was the only senator to oppose the bill in the Appropriations Committee. He says the measure "has ballooned out of control." To pay for more border security, he plans to propose cuts elsewhere in the bill.

The largest new item is a $4 billion bailout of farmers affected in part by Katrina - but far more by high gas prices, and by droughts, floods, fires and mudslides as far away as Hawaii. The bailout includes a 30% increase in federal payments to the affected farmers and ranchers. Similar bailouts were passed in 2003 and 2004.

"This is an emergency," says Matt Mackowiak, spokesman for Sen. Conrad Burns (news, bio, voting record), R-Mont. "Hurricane Katrina has devastated farmers and ranchers, particularly in the Midwest." Hoagland, Frist's budget and agriculture expert, says the farm aid is "not needed."

Critics say droughts and floods and pests are part of the risks of farming. "When the Atkins Diet became a rage and people stopped eating carbohydrates, we didn't do something to protect pizza parlors," Ellis says.

Senators also were generous to governors from Gulf Coast states that asked for more money. They increased a special Katrina housing fund by $1.2 billion, largely to give Mississippi money to move families out of temporary trailers and into special new houses called "Katrina cottages."

They sought to reserve $4.2 billion in housing aid for exclusive use by Louisiana by adding another $1 billion for use by Louisiana's neighbors.

The committee included nearly $900 million, much of it for Texas, as compensation for the costs of educating thousands of Katrina evacuees.

"They're extorting extra funding under the theory that (Bush) will never veto it," says Brian Riedl, a budget expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation. Bush has yet to cast his first veto.