Iraq releases 400 detainees
AFP Thursday January 26, 9:33 PM

Iraq has released more than 400 detainees being held in Iraqi and US-run prisons, including five women, in a move which could help abducted US reported Jill Carroll.
In rebel violence on Thursday, Iraq's Industry Minister Osama al-Najafi survived a roadside bomb attack but his three bodgyards were killed.

The US military confirmed that 419 detainees were released Thursday, of whom five were women. Another four women are still detained in Iraqi prisons.

"We have released 419 detainees today including five women," a spokesman for the US detention facilities in Iraq told AFP.

A justice ministry official earlier said a total of 424 detainees were to be freed from Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib jail and other prisons following a review of their cases by a joint Iraqi-US board.

Pan-Arab television station Al-Jazeera said last week that the kidnappers of 28-year-old Carroll had threatened to kill her unless all female detainees held by US forces in Iraq were set free.

Carroll was abducted on January 7 in Baghdad, one of the nearly 250 foreigners seized in Iraq since the March 2003 US-led invasion, in a recent surge in hostage-takings in the violence-wracked country.

While Iraqi and US officials have denied that the releases have anything to do with Carroll's case, there is hope the move might help her regardless.

"Let me assert that there is no connection between the release and kidnapping of the US reporter. The release was finalised after a review by the Iraqi-US board," the US spokesman said.

The detainees were held without charge or trial, the spokesman said.

"When they were detained we had enough evidence to indicate that they were an imminent threat to the security of Iraq and were detained as per the UN Security Council regulations. But there was no trial for a specific crime," the spokesman added.

Meanwhile, the industry minister Najafi escaped with his life after his convoy was hit by a roadside bomb as he was travelling to the northern city of Mosul.

"The first car of his convoy hit an improvised explosive device and the three bodyguards died who were in the car died," an official at the minister's office said. Another bodyguard was wounded.

This was the sixth incident concerning Najafi, a Sunni, the official said.

The recent spike in hostage-taking of foreigners since late November has embarrassed the government.

"Government services are doing all they can to free people kidnapped and detained," Minister for National Security Abdul Karim al-Anizi said during a meeting Wednesday with President Jalal Talabani, according to his office.

US and Iraqi forces are searching for two German engineers, Rene Braunlich and Thomas Nilzchke, the most recent kidnap victims, seized at gunpoint on Tuesday by men posing as Iraqi soldiers outside an oil refinery in Baiji, northern Iraq.

A delegation of Kenyan Muslims is planning to visit Iraq to plead for the release of two Kenyan telecommunications engineers who were abducted last week after their bodyguards were gunned down in Baghdad.

Fate of four Western peace activists seized in November was also uncertain, while the status of a Jordanian hostage is unknown after a videotape from his captors set a new deadline to execute him.

The spate of hostage-taking, which could be politically or simply financially motivated, comes as political parties jockey for position ahead of official talks on forming a broad-based government to rule the country for the next four years.

Washington hopes the new government to be set up in the wake of the December 15 election will include representatives of the Sunni Arab minority, a move it is hoped will undermine the insurgency.

However, Sunni representatives insist that moves towards greater federalism should be put on a back-burner as a price of their joining the new government.

"It (federalism) can be postponed to the next assembly," Sunni leader Salah al-Mutlak said in an interview with AFP.

The Sunnis, dominant under ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, fear that a federal Iraq filled with autonomous zones might rob them of the country's vast oil wealth which is concentrated in the mainly Shiite south and the Kurdish north.

The United Nations also said it was keen to bridge differences over Iraq's post-Saddam constitution.

"We have the experience to bridge the differences and it can be useful," UN representative in Iraq Ashraf Qazi said, adding that a number of political parties, intellectuals and others had called upon the UN to play a constructive role in the new Iraq.

A US soldier was killed and another wounded Wednesday by a roadside bomb south of Baghdad, the US military said, taking the toll of US casualties in Iraq since the 2003 invasion up to 2,240 according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.

In the northern city Kirkuk, gunmen shot dead two people.
Comment: When the latest batch of "terrorists" were released, a US spokesman admitted that the prisoners were held without charge and never given a fair trial. He then claimed that the US had enough evidence to indicate that the prisoners were all threats to Iraq. So, if they really had any evidence of criminal wrongdoing at all, wouldn't US officials have pushed for fair trials? If freedom and democracy really are so important to Bush and the gang, and the evidence existed, the prisoners would have been accused of a crime and trials would have been held. It makes us wonder how many other "dangerous terrorist suspects" imprisoned by the US are really just innocent victims of the Bush regime. Perhaps we are all simply being conditioned to accept the idea that mass arrests and detention without charge or trial are "necessary evils" to keep us all "safe". Perhaps we are being prepared for the threat that the Pentagon claims is even bigger than terrorism: Mother Nature!

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Flashback: Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us
Mark Townsend and Paul Harris in New York The Observer Sunday February 22, 2004

· Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war
· Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years
· Threat to the world is greater than terrorism

Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.
'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'

The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.

The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.

An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately', they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.

Last week the Bush administration came under heavy fire from a large body of respected scientists who claimed that it cherry-picked science to suit its policy agenda and suppressed studies that it did not like. Jeremy Symons, a former whistleblower at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said that suppression of the report for four months was a further example of the White House trying to bury the threat of climate change.

Senior climatologists, however, believe that their verdicts could prove the catalyst in forcing Bush to accept climate change as a real and happening phenomenon. They also hope it will convince the United States to sign up to global treaties to reduce the rate of climatic change.

A group of eminent UK scientists recently visited the White House to voice their fears over global warming, part of an intensifying drive to get the US to treat the issue seriously. Sources have told The Observer that American officials appeared extremely sensitive about the issue when faced with complaints that America's public stance appeared increasingly out of touch.

One even alleged that the White House had written to complain about some of the comments attributed to Professor Sir David King, Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser, after he branded the President's position on the issue as indefensible.

Among those scientists present at the White House talks were Professor John Schellnhuber, former chief environmental adviser to the German government and head of the UK's leading group of climate scientists at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He said that the Pentagon's internal fears should prove the 'tipping point' in persuading Bush to accept climatic change.

Sir John Houghton, former chief executive of the Meteorological Office - and the first senior figure to liken the threat of climate change to that of terrorism - said: 'If the Pentagon is sending out that sort of message, then this is an important document indeed.'

Bob Watson, chief scientist for the World Bank and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, added that the Pentagon's dire warnings could no longer be ignored.

'Can Bush ignore the Pentagon? It's going be hard to blow off this sort of document. Its hugely embarrassing. After all, Bush's single highest priority is national defence. The Pentagon is no wacko, liberal group, generally speaking it is conservative. If climate change is a threat to national security and the economy, then he has to act. There are two groups the Bush Administration tend to listen to, the oil lobby and the Pentagon,' added Watson.

'You've got a President who says global warming is a hoax, and across the Potomac river you've got a Pentagon preparing for climate wars. It's pretty scary when Bush starts to ignore his own government on this issue,' said Rob Gueterbock of Greenpeace.

Already, according to Randall and Schwartz, the planet is carrying a higher population than it can sustain. By 2020 'catastrophic' shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war. They warn that 8,200 years ago climatic conditions brought widespread crop failure, famine, disease and mass migration of populations that could soon be repeated.

Randall told The Observer that the potential ramifications of rapid climate change would create global chaos. 'This is depressing stuff,' he said. 'It is a national security threat that is unique because there is no enemy to point your guns at and we have no control over the threat.'

Randall added that it was already possibly too late to prevent a disaster happening. 'We don't know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years,' he said.

'The consequences for some nations of the climate change are unbelievable. It seems obvious that cutting the use of fossil fuels would be worthwhile.'

So dramatic are the report's scenarios, Watson said, that they may prove vital in the US elections. Democratic frontrunner John Kerry is known to accept climate change as a real problem. Scientists disillusioned with Bush's stance are threatening to make sure Kerry uses the Pentagon report in his campaign.

The fact that Marshall is behind its scathing findings will aid Kerry's cause. Marshall, 82, is a Pentagon legend who heads a secretive think-tank dedicated to weighing risks to national security called the Office of Net Assessment. Dubbed 'Yoda' by Pentagon insiders who respect his vast experience, he is credited with being behind the Department of Defence's push on ballistic-missile defence.

Symons, who left the EPA in protest at political interference, said that the suppression of the report was a further instance of the White House trying to bury evidence of climate change. 'It is yet another example of why this government should stop burying its head in the sand on this issue.'

Symons said the Bush administration's close links to high-powered energy and oil companies was vital in understanding why climate change was received sceptically in the Oval Office. 'This administration is ignoring the evidence in order to placate a handful of large energy and oil companies,' he added.
Comment: We do not doubt that this information has been known by a select few for many years. The Bush administration, as the above article states, has deliberately buried and ridiculed any evidence that serious earth changes were on the cards. The question then is, why now? And more importantly, what will be their "rescue plan" for their citizens...

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Flashback: Key findings of the Pentagon
The Observer Sunday February 22, 2004

· Future wars will be fought over the issue of survival rather than religion, ideology or national honour.

· By 2007 violent storms smash coastal barriers rendering large parts of the Netherlands uninhabitable. Cities like The Hague are abandoned. In California the delta island levees in the Sacramento river area are breached, disrupting the aqueduct system transporting water from north to south.

· Between 2010 and 2020 Europe is hardest hit by climatic change with an average annual temperature drop of 6F. Climate in Britain becomes colder and drier as weather patterns begin to resemble Siberia.
· Deaths from war and famine run into the millions until the planet's population is reduced by such an extent the Earth can cope.

· Riots and internal conflict tear apart India, South Africa and Indonesia.

· Access to water becomes a major battleground. The Nile, Danube and Amazon are all mentioned as being high risk.

· A 'significant drop' in the planet's ability to sustain its present population will become apparent over the next 20 years.

· Rich areas like the US and Europe would become 'virtual fortresses' to prevent millions of migrants from entering after being forced from land drowned by sea-level rise or no longer able to grow crops. Waves of boatpeople pose significant problems.

· Nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable. Japan, South Korea, and Germany develop nuclear-weapons capabilities, as do Iran, Egypt and North Korea. Israel, China, India and Pakistan also are poised to use the bomb.

· By 2010 the US and Europe will experience a third more days with peak temperatures above 90F. Climate becomes an 'economic nuisance' as storms, droughts and hot spells create havoc for farmers.

· More than 400m people in subtropical regions at grave risk.

· Europe will face huge internal struggles as it copes with massive numbers of migrants washing up on its shores. Immigrants from Scandinavia seek warmer climes to the south. Southern Europe is beleaguered by refugees from hard-hit countries in Africa.

· Mega-droughts affect the world's major breadbaskets, including America's Midwest, where strong winds bring soil loss.

· China's huge population and food demand make it particularly vulnerable. Bangladesh becomes nearly uninhabitable because of a rising sea level, which contaminates the inland water supplies.
Comment: It seems the Pentagon's predictions might be a little bit off. Europe doesn't have to wait until 2010 or 2020 for the cold weather to arrive - it's here today! But that's just a fluke, right?

According to news sources, Andrew Marshall is behind the Pentagon report. Below is an interview with him conducted last year by Wired news.

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Flashback: The Marshall Plan
By Douglas McGray Wired.com February 2003

For 40 years, the man Pentagon insiders call Yoda has foreseen the future of war - from battlefield bots rolling off radar-proof ships to GIs popping performance pills. And that was before the war on terror.
Andrew Marshall, the Pentagon's 81-year-old futurist-in-chief, fiddles with his security badge, squints, looks away, smiles, and finally speaks in a voice that sounds like Gene Hackman trying not to wake anybody. Known as Yoda in defense circles, Marshall doesn't need to shout to be heard. Named director of the Office of Net Assessment by Richard Nixon and reappointed by every president since, the DOD's most elusive official has become one of its most influential. Today, Marshall - along with his star protégés Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz - is drafting President Bush's plan to upgrade the military. Supporters believe the force he envisions will be faster and more lethal; critics say it relies on unproven technology. As US troops gathered overseas, Marshall sat for a rare interview.

WIRED: Until recently, defense planners talked about a "revolution in military affairs." Now the buzzword is "transformation." Why the change?

MARSHALL: Transformation is more of an imperative: We've got to transform the force. I personally don't like the term. It tends to push people in the direction of changing the whole force. You need to be thinking about changing some small part of the force more radically, as a way of exploring what new technologies can really do for you.

What is the next radical change the US will reveal on the battlefield?

"One future intelligence problem: knowing what drugs the other guys are on." One that's still under way is the emergence of a variety of precision weapons, and also coupling them with sensors. Another is the ability to coordinate the activities of separate elements of the forces to a level that has never been possible before. That's promising, but less far along than precision weapons. A third is robotic devices: unmanned vehicles, of which the UAVs are the furthest along, but also similar kinds of devices undersea, and smaller devices that might change urban warfare by being able to crawl through buildings.

Are there revolutionary developments that don't involve combat?

There are ways of psychologically influencing the leadership of another state. I don't mean information warfare, but some demonstration of awesome effects, like being able to set off impressive explosions in the sky. Like, let us show you what we could do to you. Just visually impressing the person.

Did 9/11 change your mind about anything?

Not much. It was obvious that we were wide open to attack.

Has anything happened that surprised you?

The rapidity of the collapse of the Soviet Union surprised me. I thought they were in trouble, but the rapidity and completeness of the withdrawal were really striking.

Is there a precedent for one country staying on top through a series of military revolutions? Or does one country always leapfrog another?

Through most of the 19th century, the British Navy exhibited that kind of thing. But it was quite interesting the way they did it. They tended to let other countries, mainly France, do the early experiments and come out with new kinds of ships. If something looked like a good idea, they could come in and quickly overtake the innovator. They seemed to do that as a way of capitalizing on their advantage and saving resources.

Isn't the United States in a similar position now?

That's probably the case. But some of the countries that would be candidates to make innovations aren't doing it. The Japanese and West Europeans aren't really making big changes. The Swedes are an interesting case. For 200 years their basic problem was the possibility of a large-scale land invasion by the Russians. They've decided that that has gone away. If anything could happen, it would happen across the Baltic. So they're rethinking, given modern technology, how to create a defense largely on sea frontiers. It's possible that they will make some innovations that we'll pick up and capitalize on.

For instance?

They've designed three new naval vessels. One is an air-independent submarine [running on fuel cells rather than nuclear power, which allows it to travel almost silently and remain submerged for extended periods]. They have a surface ship that's a bit more conventional. And then a radically new naval vessel called the Visby, which has practically no metal in it other than the engine. It's constructed to be very stealthy.

You're known for following technology outside the traditional realm of national security. Pharmaceuticals, for instance.

People who are connected with neural pharmacology tell me that new classes of drugs will be available relatively shortly, certainly within the decade. These drugs are just like natural chemicals inside people, only with behavior-modifying and performance-enhancing characteristics. One of the people I talk to jokes that a future intelligence problem is going to be knowing what drugs the other guys are on.

In an era of terrorism and peacekeeping, are Cold War ideas based on striking a big enemy from afar and defending against missile attack still relevant?

Yes, if we want to stay in the business of long-range power projection. And if we play the role of intervening in messy disputes, some of this weaponry is still useful, as it was in Afghanistan. However, we need ground forces to go in and keep the peace.

Does new technology ultimately make us more or less vulnerable?

A friend of mine, Yale economist Martin Shubik, says an important way to think about the world is to draw a curve of the number of people 10 determined men can kill before they are put down themselves, and how that has varied over time. His claim is that it wasn't very many for a long time, and now it's going up. In that sense, it's not just the US. All the world is getting less safe.
Comment: And finally, speaking of potential natural disasters in our future, Halliburton just got a nice contract from the Department of Homeland Security for detaining people during - you guessed it! - a natural disaster:

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KBR awarded Homeland Security contract worth up to $385M
By Katherine Hunt MarketWatch January 24, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO -- KBR, the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton Co., said Tuesday it has been awarded a contingency contract from the Department of Homeland Security to supports its Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in the event of an emergency. The maximum total value of the contract is $385 million and consists of a 1-year base period with four 1-year options. KBR held the previous ICE contract from 2000 through 2005.

The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to expand existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs, KBR said.

The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster, the company said.

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Whistleblowers' Stomach-Churning Story Reveals Halliburton Cesspool
By Charlie Cray GNN Tue, 24 Jan 2006 22:36:23 -0800

Serving dirty water to the troops, Cheney's old company is under fire again

Dick Cheney keeps using the “support our troops” line every time he needs a distraction. So he should be asked what he thinks about the new revelations that his favorite company exposed U.S. troops operating in Iraq to water that was “roughly 2x the normal contamination of untreated water from the Euphrates River.”
How did that happen?

According to two former Halliburton employees turned whistleblowers who testified Tuesday, it's because KBR was "apparently taking the waste water from the water treatment process, which should have been dumped back in the [Euphrates] river" (from which it was originally extracted – less than a mile downstream from a raw sewage outlet) and using it as the "non-potable water supply."

This means that thanks to Halliburton/KBR thousands of troops and contract employees stationed at the Ar Ramadi base in Iraq have been using a contaminated bilge for bathing, showering, shaving, laundry and cleaning.

According to one of the whistleblowers who first told this amazing story to Halliburton Watch, the troops have also ignored advisories and used this septic sluice to brush their teeth and make coffee.

So what's a little dirty water, you ask? After all, most of us have experienced a little gastrointestinal misery while vacationing in certain parts of the world. But for the troops this is already no vacation, and the risk of contamination is exactly why companies like Halliburton get paid a lot of money to operate giant reverse-osmosis filters—so that this kind of problem doesn't have to happen.

Because when it does, it has the potential to be a major setback. As the U.S. Army Field Manual states, "Thoughout military history, the vast majority of casualties in war have been from disease and nonbattle injury. This loss of manpower can be drastically reduced by ensuring that soldiers have adequate supplies of water."

The Association of Military Surgeons found that 9 percent of soldiers evacuated in 2003 suffered from problems of the digestive system, but it's not clear what, if any, waterborne diseases are the result of Halliburton's reckless actions.

"I don't know how bad the problem might be, how many troops may have been exposed to untreated water, and how many might have gotten sick as a result" says Ben Carter, one of the two whistleblowers, who has twenty years of experience working as a water purification expert. "I can't know, because Halliburton apparently has no records and refuses to acknowledge there might be a problem."

According to the other, Ken May, Halliburton's "disregard for essential health, safety and security measures, time card fraud, fraudulent documentation and overbilling – not to mention the constant barrage of daily threats and retaliatory behavior from our leadership (after coming forward, the two were no allowed to go into hardened shelters during the likely times of insurgent attacks, such as dusk) – made life at Ar Ramadi nearly unbearable."

The company declined to appear at the hearing, and yet doesn't seem to be able to get its story straight. While denying there is even a problem, it met with Carter three times, to try to find out what documents were in his posession. The whistleblowers say there's a 21-page internal investigation out there somewhere that hasn't yet been released.

Do you think Rumsfeld or Cheney can get it?

GNN contributer Charlie Cray is director of the Center for Corporate Policy and a collaborator with Halliburton Watch.

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NSA Accused of Psychologically Abusing Whistleblowers
By Sherrie Gossett CNSNews.com Staff Writer January 25, 2006

(The following is the first of a two-part series on the National Security Agency's alleged abuse of employee whistleblowers. Part 2 will be published Thursday, Jan. 26, 2006)

(CNSNews.com) - Five current and former National Security Agency (NSA) employees have told Cybercast News Service that the agency frequently retaliates against whistleblowers by falsely labeling them "delusional," "paranoid" or "psychotic."

The intimidation tactics are allegedly used to protect powerful superiors who might be incriminated by damaging information, the whistleblowers say. They also point to a climate of fear that now pervades the agency. Critics warn that because some employees blew the whistle on alleged foreign espionage and criminal activity, the "psychiatric abuse" and subsequent firings are undermining national security.

A spokesman for the NSA declined to comment about the allegations contained in this report.

The accusations of "Soviet-era tactics" are being made by former NSA intelligence analysts and action officers Russell D. Tice, Diane T. Ring, Thomas G. Reinbold, and a former employee who spoke on condition of anonymity. The allegations have been corroborated by a current NSA officer, who also insisted on anonymity, agreeing only to be referenced as "Agent X."
Tice, a former NSA intelligence analyst and action officer, first drew media attention in 2004 after the Pentagon investigated possible retaliation by the NSA against him.

The controversy began in early 2001, when Tice reported that a co-worker at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) appeared to be engaged in espionage for China.

"I saw all the classic signs," said Tice, who identified the alleged spy to Cybercast News Service. The person's identity is not being published in this article for national security reasons.

When Tice transferred to the NSA in November 2002 he reported his concerns again, criticizing the FBI, which he labels "the Federal Buffoons and Imbeciles," for the agency's alleged incompetence. One of his emails was forwarded to NSA Security, which prompted the NSA, according to Tice, to order that he undergo a psychiatric evaluation. The NSA psychologist labeled him "paranoid" and "psychotic," Tice told Cybercast News Service.

That assessment, which Tice said was made by NSA forensic psychologist Dr. John Michael Schmidt, led to his security clearance being revoked and his firing.

All five whistleblowers name NSA psychologists as central players in what they allege is an ongoing abuse of authority by the NSA's Office of the General Counsel, the NSA Inspector General, the NSA internal security office and psychologists employed by the agency.

Tice's media profile quickly rose again on Jan. 10, when ABC News reported that he had been a source for the December New York Times article about a secret NSA surveillance program that was used to monitor the electronic communications of Americans suspected of contacts with terrorists.

Some leading Democrats charge that President Bush broke the law when he signed the secret order in 2002 authorizing the program, because he bypassed the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance (FISA) court. The White House contends that the president has sufficient constitutional authority to order such intelligence-gathering, as well as additional powers granted by Congress three days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Tice furnished Cybercast News Service with documents that appear to contradict the NSA's conclusion in his case. The news service verified the contents of the documents with the authors.

A letter dated Nov. 7, 2004, from clinical psychologist Dr. Evelyn Feleppa Adamo indicates that she found "no evidence" of the signs of the alleged mental disorders in Tice. On Oct. 15, 2004, licensed psychologist and family friend Dr. Sandra G. Rosswork wrote a letter indicating that she had never observed any abnormal behavior by Tice and that he was "a solid, responsible, dependable and good natured person" who was "well-liked."

A letter from Employee Assistance Service (EAS) clinical psychologist Dr. William D. Charmak notes that Tice suffered "feelings of humiliation and despair" after losing his security clearance, but did not appear to manifest paranoid symptoms. Charmak did not return a telephone call seeking comment.

An earlier confidential psychological/psychiatric report from an NSA psychologist that Tice knows only as Dr. Bache was dated July 2, 2002 and indicated that "on test results there were no indications of any outstanding difficulties." The report acknowledged that Tice had a "somewhat rigid approach to situations." The NSA declined comment on the findings of any of their psychologists.

In endorsement letters written around the time Tice's security clearance was revoked, five retired NSA and intelligence officials who worked with Tice described him as "enthusiastic," "congenial," "an engaging associate," and a "scholar of high intellectual rigor." Tice was described as possessing "sound judgment," and being well suited to the "most demanding and sensitive intelligence operations." The letters praised him for his "unparalleled professionalism" and "uncommon commitment."

"This nonsense has to stop. It's like Soviet-era torture," said Tice. "These people are vicious and sadistic. They're destroying the lives of good people, and defrauding the public of good analysts and linguists"

For a long time those who had endured the alleged abuse "were too afraid or ashamed to come forward," Tice added.

Pre-9/11 warning

Among those coming forward is a former NSA linguist who worked with the NSA for almost three decades. The former employee spoke on condition of anonymity as he is currently employed by another federal agency. He is referred in this article simply as "J."

"J" is a "hyperpolyglot" or a person who is fluent in an unusually high number of languages. Former colleagues described him as a brilliant man possessing critical skills that were "amazing."

"I believe the abuse is very widespread," said J. "The targeted person suddenly is described as 'not being a team player,' as 'disgruntled,' and then they're accused of all sorts of bizarre things. Soon they're sent to the psych people."

J first ran afoul of the process when his superiors disagreed with a report he and other agency linguists filed on Sept. 11, 1993. Their study of Arabic language messages and the flow of money out of Saudi Arabia to terrorist entities in other countries led them to conclude that Saudi extremists were plotting to attack America. "You could see, this was the pure rhetoric of Osama bin Laden and his group, the exact same group, and we had an early indication," J said.

"All of us in the group had this view of a burgeoning threat, and suddenly we were all trotted off to the office of security. Then came the call to report for a battery of psychological tests," said J.

J told Cybercast News Service that he was again summoned to undergo psychiatric evaluation after warning NSA that security measures should be taken to protect against the possibility that terrorists might try to fly airplanes into buildings.

As an example of what might happen, J said terrorists might try to fly a plane from the nearby Tipton air field in Ft. Meade, Md., into an NSA high-rise building. J said NSA officials described him as "obsessed" with the idea of a "kamikaze" threat due to the time he had spent in Japan. The month was May 2001, four months before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S.

A similar scenario ensued every time J's analysis countered conventional wisdom, provided a dissenting opinion or made someone feel that their job was being threatened. J said he soon developed an irregular heartbeat due to the stress of not knowing when he next would be called for another psychiatric test.

"I believe it was retaliation, but how do you prove that?" J said. He spent the last 10 years of his career at the NSA with no promotion or raise. During that time, another linguist with critical skills left out of disgust with what was happening, J added.

"Who was going to listen to us?" asked J. "Who could do anything anyway?

"I'm still afraid they're going to screw my life over," he said. "They have long tentacles. I never even owned a computer because I know what they can do. Every keystroke can be picked up."

Agent X and the 'underground network'

Agent X, a current NSA officer, confirmed the allegations and told Cybercast News Service that psychiatric abuse as a form of retaliation was "commonplace" at the agency.

"A lot of people who work there are going through the same thing. People live in fear here. They run it like some kind of Gestapo," Agent X said.

Those targeted are "yelled at, badgered and abused," X added. "These are really good people, who start to be labeled crazy, but they're telling the truth."

Agent X also alleged that the NSA plants false evidence in personnel files as part of the intimidation campaign.

The agency also maintains a "dirt database" of inconsequential but potentially embarrassing information on employees, gathered during routine clearance investigations, said Tice. The information is kept as a means of leverage, he alleged.

Agent X said that an "underground network" has developed to discuss these issues. "It's like the Nazis have taken over."

Cybercast News Service contacted the NSA on Jan. 17 about the allegations contained in this article, involving the security department, the NSA inspector general, the Office of the General Counsel and staff psychologists such as Schmidt.

Two days later, Don Weber, senior NSA media advisor responded. "At this time I have no information to provide; however, if that changes I will email you soonest. Thanks for the query," Weber stated.

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Pentagon Spied on Houston Anti-Halliburton Activists
Houston Post Chronicle Jan 24, 2006

A Houston-based anti-Halliburton group was spied on by a top-secret Pentagon counter-intelligence agency in 2004, according to a report in Newsweek magazine.

The peaceful protest, organized by Houston Global Awareness on June 29, 2004, was attended by approximately ten local peace activists.

The protest involved handing out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to employees of giant military contractor Halliburton to draw attention to allegations that the company over-charged for military food contracts in Iraq.

A report in Newsweek this week reveals that the Pentagon's Counter Intelligence Field Activity (CIFA) filed a report on the Houston protest, which took place outside Halliburton's headquarters in Houston, Texas.

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Bush says takes threats from bin Laden seriously
By Caren Bohan Reuters Wednesday, January 25, 2006; 6:08 PM

FORT MEADE, Maryland - President George W. Bush said on Wednesday he took Osama bin Laden's threats of another attack seriously and invoked the al Qaeda leader's recent audiotape to defend a domestic eavesdropping program.
"I understand there are some in America who say, 'Well this can't be true, there aren't still people willing to attack.' All I would ask them to do is listen to the words of Osama bin Laden and take him seriously," Bush said at the National Security Agency.

"When he says he's going to hurt the American people again or try to, he means it. I take it seriously and the people of NSA take it seriously and most of the American people take it seriously as well," Bush said.

Democrats have criticized Bush for authorizing the warrantless monitoring of international telephone calls and e-mail messages of people in the United States suspected of aiding al Qaeda.

Critics say the program, conducted by the NSA, violates the U.S. Constitution and the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which makes it illegal to spy on U.S. citizens in the United States without the approval of a special secret court.

Bin Laden in an audiotape that aired last week warned that al Qaeda was preparing attacks in the United States but was open to a conditional truce with Americans.

"Just last week ... we heard from Osama bin Laden," Bush said. "The terrorists will do everything they can to strike us. I am going to continue to do everything I can within my legal authority to stop them."

Top Senate Democrats sent a letter to Bush on Wednesday asking he outline, by February 1, any changes in current law he would propose to improve surveillance of suspected terrorists.

"We are ... gravely concerned that sometime in 2001, in apparent violation of federal law, you authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans in the United States without court approval," said the letter, signed by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and others.

The senators noted that in a speech in 2004, Bush said, "When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so." They quoted Bush saying, "A wiretap requires a court order."

Democrats have noted that in special cases the NSA is allowed to conduct domestic surveillance but has to obtain a warrant within 72 hours.

Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives also pressured Republicans on Wednesday to submit Bush's domestic eavesdropping program to the scrutiny of Congress' intelligence oversight committees.

'FAR-FETCHED'

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, said the administration's argument it needed to bypass the warrant process in order to go after al Qaeda was "far-fetched."

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, plans hearings on the NSA program on February 6.

Bush told reporters he would continue to authorize the eavesdropping program.

"The American people expect me to protect their lives and their civil liberties and that's exactly what we're doing with this program," he said.

Touring the NSA in Fort Meade, Bush visited a room with a large screen highlighting statistics about cyberspace, including one saying over 592 billion instant messages were sent daily. That was projected to grow to 1.38 trillion by 2007.

The NSA is one of the most secretive of the U.S. spy agencies. Founded in 1952, it uses high-tech equipment such as satellites and bugs to pick up foreign electronic signals such as telephone calls and computer messages.
Comment: That Osama is one handy fellow to have around you're the US president and you happen to be in a bit of hot water.

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The Real Story of John Walker Lindh
By Frank Lindh AlterNet January 24, 2006

After years of almost total silence on his son's arrest and imprisonment, Frank Lindh sets the record straight about the 'American Taliban.'

Editor's Note: The public has heard little about John Walker Lindh since the media frenzy over his capture in the winter of 2001. On January 19, John's father Frank Lindh delivered an address at The Commonwealth Club of California. Lindh explained that he and his family have avoided the press for nearly four years; he now wants the public to understand the truth about his son, who he says didn't stand a chance of getting a fair trial in the emotional days following 9/11. Immediately characterized as a "terrorist" by the press and politicians, Lindh faced a jury in Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Pentagon. The trial date scheduled by the judge was the anniversary of 9/11. Initially facing 11 criminal counts -- most relating to terrorism -- the only charge that John Lindh was found guilty of was violating economic sanctions by supporting the Taliban government, for which the 20-year-old was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The following is excerpted from Frank Lindh's speech.
I believe the case of John Lindh is an important story and worthy of this audience's attention. In simple terms, this is the story of a decent and honorable young man, embarked on a spiritual quest, who became the focus of the grief and anger of an entire nation over an event in which he had no part. I refer to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. The reason I think this story is important is because our system broke down in the case of John Lindh. My goals today are first, just to tell you the story of John Lindh. Second, to ask you to reflect, based on the fact of John's case, on the importance and the fragility of the rights we enjoy under our Constitution. And my third point is to suggest that the so-called war on terrorism lacks a hearts and minds component.

I want to begin by asking you to call to mind the September 11th terrorist attacks and the shock and horror they engendered in the hearts of everyone. On that awful day, a band of terrorists, who claimed Islam as their cause, hijacked four airplanes and flew three of them full of passengers into occupied buildings without warning -- the World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. They crashed the fourth airplane, also filled with passengers, into a field in Pennsylvania. Three thousand innocent Americans lost their lives that day.

But for those attacks, John's activities, which I will describe, would have been treated with indifference, or perhaps curiosity here in the United States. But, viewed through the prism of the September 11th attacks, those very same activities caused this young man to be vilified as a traitor and a terrorist.

Childhood

John was born in February 1981 in Washington, D.C., during a time when I was working for the federal government. He's the second of my three children. John was the kind of kid that any parent would want. From the time he was a baby, he was very centered, peaceful and content. Later, after he converted to Islam, I told John that I thought he had always been a Muslim, and he simply had to find it for himself.

I'm a practicing Catholic myself, and we raised John as a Catholic. He attended Sunday school along with his brother in Washington. In 1991, when John was 10 years old, we moved from the D.C. area to the Bay Area. At age 12, John saw the movie "Malcolm X" by Spike Lee and became deeply interested in Islam. He later wrote in his autobiographical statement for the court, "I had first become interested in Islam during 1993, after becoming aware of the Hajj, in which thousands of Muslims all over the world gather at Mecca, a holy site in Saudi Arabia. I learned that all Muslims are required to make this religious journey at least once in their life. I was very moved by the image of thousands of people praying together. Perfectly equal and perfectly humble. I began to read all that I could about Islam."

When he was 16, John formally converted to Islam at a mosque in Mill Valley in Marin County where we live. An elder at the Mill Valley mosque testified in John's case and wrote a statement for the court in which he said that in all of his experience in knowing Americans who had converted to Islam, "no one has come close to John in the embodiment of piety and of the true noble Islamic character." By the time he was 17, John was ready to embark on a course of studies overseas and he went to Yemen to study Arabic.

Travels in the Middle East

His first trip to Yemen lasted from July of 1998 to May of 1999, and then his visa expired, so he came home for a few months. Then, in February of 2000, just before his 19th birthday, John returned to Yemen to continue his study of classical Arabic and Islam at a school in Sanaa, Yemen. Again, he had visa trouble, so in November of 2000, John made a decision to go to Pakistan and to continue his Islamic study, memorizing the Koran. It's the goal of every scholarly Muslim to memorize the entire Koran verbatim, and John's goal was to become both fluent in Arabic and to memorize the Koran so that he could then go on and become a Muslim scholar. His goal was to attend the Islamic university at Medina in Saudi Arabia or a comparable world-class Islamic university.

It is November of 2000 when John goes to Pakistan with my blessing. In late April of 2001, John wrote to me and his mother to say that he wanted to go up to the mountains of Pakistan to get away from the heat. That made sense. John never tolerated the heat in Washington, D.C. What he didn't tell us, what we didn't learn until later was that John was going over the mountains, into Afghanistan, intent on volunteering for military service in the army of Afghanistan.

Civil war in Afghanistan

The Soviet Union, as you know, invaded Afghanistan in 1979. They imposed a communist puppet government upon the country. From the time of that invasion, right up through 2001, Afghanistan was engulfed in constant war. After the Soviets withdrew, the country descended into a civil war among the factions -- many of whom had been funded by the United States in the war against the Soviets, and the consequent civil was resulted in terrible devastation in the country.

Afghanistan had by far the largest refugee population in the world. Many of these refugees lived in terrible conditions in refugee camps in Pakistan, across the border. Eventually, the Taliban, which rose up out of those refugee camps, managed to consolidate power over most of the country. So by the year 2001, they had consolidated power over all except the Northeastern region of the country, which was still controlled by the Russian-backed Northern Alliance, a group of warlords.

America's allegiance with the anti-Russian factions in Afghanistan extended not only through the presidency of Carter, Reagan and the first President Bush, but also to the current Bush administration. In the spring of 2001, roughly at the same time John went to Afghanistan, Secretary of State Colin Powell personally announced a grant of $43 million to the Taliban government for opium eradication, which the New York Times then refers to as "a first cautious step towards reducing the isolation of the Taliban incoming by the new Bush administration." Secretary of State Powell released a press release in which he said "we will continue to look for ways to provide more assistance to the Afghans." This is the context in which John goes to Afghanistan.

When he did go into Afghanistan, John received infantry training at a government-run military training camp. But the training camp was funded by Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Laden really had two operations going on. One was to finance the Afghan army operations -- these training camps for infantry. But he also, as we all know now, had a terrorist organization under way, a highly secretive terrorist organization that we call al Qaeda.

Twice in the course of his training there, John actually saw Osama bin Laden and met him on one occasion. He came away from those encounters very skeptical about bin Laden because John recognized instantly that bin Laden was not an authentic Islamic scholar based on what John himself knows. In the course of John's subsequent criminal cases, attorneys hired a professor named Rohan Gunaratna. He is the world's leading authority on al Qaeda and author of the book "Inside al Qaeda."

Gunaratna has been employed by the U.N., but also by the government of the United States as an expert in al Qaeda, and he interviewed John extensively. After all these interviews, he made this following conclusion: "Those who, like Mr. Lindh, merely fought the Northern Alliance, cannot be deemed terrorists. Their motivation was to serve and to protect suffering Muslims in Afghanistan, not to kill civilians."

U.S. in Afghanistan post-9/11

After the September 11th attacks, the United States goes to war with Afghanistan. There's a period of one month in which the United States attempts to negotiate the extradition of bin Laden and his terrorist group. Those negotiations failed, and so, in October, almost a month later, the United States begins an invasion.

I wanted to introduce an important player in these events. It's a notorious Northern Alliance warlord named Abdul Rashid Dostum. Dostum had served as an officer in the Soviet-backed communist puppet government in Afghanistan. The New Yorker magazine last year said he was "perhaps Afghanistan's most notorious war lord," and he's viewed by most human rights organizations as among the worst war criminals in the country. Throughout the 1990s as well as during the U.S. invasion of 2001, Dostum was involved in numerous documented cases of torture and murder of prisoners of war. He dominates the area of North Central Afghanistan around the city of Masari Sharif.

In the period in late 2001, Taliban forces in Northern Afghanistan were overrun by the Northern Alliance forces after an aerial bombing by the United States. The American strategy was to use Northern Alliance troops as a proxy rather than commit American troops to the ground. This may have been a sound military strategy; however, it appears that the American generals who planned this invasion made no provision for the handling of the prisoners of war.

What happened as a consequence was the murder of thousands of Taliban prisoners by the Northern Alliance during the period of November and December of 2001, the same time when John's case comes to our attention. These war crimes have been documented by Physicians for Human Rights and in the mainstream media here in the United States, including a cover story in Newsweek magazine.

Capture in Afghanistan

Let us return now to the story of John. In early September, before the 11th, John arrived at the frontline in Tahar. The two armies there -- the Taliban army and the Northern Alliance army, were locked in an old-fashioned stalemate. John arrived, he was issued the standard rifle and two hand grenades and performed sentry duty there at the front. He never fired his weapons. After the American bombing campaign began in October, the line broke. Again, no American troops are here in Tahar, it's all Northern Alliance troops, but the American bombing happens.

The frontline breaks, the Taliban soldiers retreat to the capital of Tahar -- Kunduz. It's a confused retreat. Many of them are killed. If they're captured by the Northern Alliance, they're killed. There's a chilling series of pictures in the New York Times of a prisoner as he's taken, castrated and then killed. This is what John faced. He was very desperate and near dead by the time he got to Kunduz.

Then there's a deal made by General Dostum for safe passage of these prisoners from Kunduz to a city in the west called Herat, near the border of Iran. John is one of the 400 that are part of this deal with Dostum. They make this deal, and a large amount of money is given to Dostum in return for the safe passage. The only condition Dostum imposes is that the soldiers must give up their weapons before he'll allow them to pass through. So they give up the weapons and then immediately Dostum breaks the deal. He diverts the prisoners from their path into his fortress -- a place called Kuala Jungi. It's an old 15th- or 16th-century walled fortress near Mazari Sharif. And there all hell broke loose.

The next morning, John was brought out along with these other prisoners, with their hands tied behind their backs for interrogation. There are no American troops present here, but there are two American CIA agents, and they're doing the interrogation of the prisoners as they're brought out of the basement. Their arms are tied behind their backs at the elbow, and they are being very brutally abused by Dostum's troops. All of them are afraid that they are going to be killed by Gen. Dostum given his reputation.

John is struck in the back of the head with a rifle butt by one of the Northern Alliance troops as he's brought out of the basement just moments before some video was taken of John being interrogated by the two U.S. agents. They threatened John with death. John remained silent (Lindh believed the two agents were working for Dostum.) His only goal was to get to Herat so that he could get back to Pakistan.

Moments after this video is shot, the last of the remaining 400 or 500 prisoners, as they're brought out of the basement, jumped Dostum's guards, seized their weapons, and a melee broke out. Dostum's troops panic and begin to shoot down all the prisoners in the yard, most of them, like John with their hands and arms tied behind their backs. Dozens and dozens of these Taliban prisoners are killed on the spot. John gets up and starts to run. He is shot immediately in the thigh.

He lay on the ground there for 12 hours, pretending to be dead while the carnage continued around him. That night, some of the survivors managed to get back down into the basement of the building where they had been taken when they first were brought to the fortress. They went in among the dead and found the wounded and brought them down into the basement. John was one of them.

In the days that followed, there was a deliberate effort by Dostum, supported by the United States Special Forces, to simply exterminate all of the Taliban prisoners in the fortress. By the end of that week, most of them were dead. John and a group of them were still holed up. They were unarmed, they were wounded, and they were in the basement of the fortress. They dropped hand grenades down, they poured burning oil down. At one point, they attempted to drop a 1,000-pound bomb on the building, but it was misdirected and actually killed some of Dostum's troops, so they stopped with the bombing, but they continued to try to exterminate these prisoners.

There was a British journalist there named Luke Harding, and he wrote at the time that "Dostum's Northern Alliance and his British and American allies had only one plan: to kill all those in the compound." On Friday, the 30th of November, after six days, they flooded the basement with water from an irrigation stream and that killed many of the remaining soldiers down there in the basement. As Luke Harding wrote, "For those who had died, it had been a cold, terrifying, and squalid extinction." Harding wrote, "We had expected slaughter, but I was unprepared for its hellish scale."

Media storm

John was discovered among the 86 survivors of this massacre in the basement of the building, and he instantly became an international sensation. He was quickly dubbed the "American Taliban" in Newsweek magazine which initially broke the story. The coverage from the beginning was overwhelmingly negative and prejudicial, and falsely linked John with terrorism. After the prisoners emerged from the basement of the fortress, they were taken to Sheberghen -- a town nearby -- for medical treatment. They were all starving, they had nothing to eat the entire week. They were suffering from exposure, and pretty much all of them were wounded, including John.

John had the AK-47 bullet in his thigh and numerous shrapnel wounds. He was very near death when he arrived at Sheberghen. As he's lifted onto a gurney by attending medics, a CNN cameraman named Robert Pelton began to film John. The tape shows John saying to Pelton, "Look, you don't have my permission to film me. If you're concerned about my welfare, don't film me." The ethical thing to do at that point would have been to turn off the camera. But Robert Pelton did not do the ethical thing. He kept the camera running and the microphone on as John was interviewed.

The sensation that resulted from the CNN interview is difficult to describe. I think you probably all have seen it. The interesting thing about the CNN interview, from my perspective, is that it was completely exculpatory. He was injected with morphine, and of course then begins to talk, and he forgets about turning off the camera. He tells his story and it's completely exculpatory. He says everything that I've told you -- "I was in the Taliban army, I met bin Laden," and then all the terrible events around this massacre, but the effect in the United States at that time, given the post-9/11 mood, was just terrible. The effect of this video seemed to confirm people's suspicions that John was a terrorist.

It wasn't just the television media that caused this prejudice, it was the print media as well. Newsweek magazine published a terrible cover story saying that John had supported the 9/11 attacks. The tabloid media was on to the case as well. The National Enquirer, which appeared at grocery store checkout lines throughout the country, featured a cover story with John's picture saying "America's traitor tells all." But even worse than this coverage by the tabloids, I believe, was the treatment that John received in the mainstream media including the New York Times.

On Tuesday, the 11th of December 2001, the Times published a front page article above the fold featuring a very compelling photograph of the funeral of Mike Spann, the CIA agent who had been killed at Kuala Jungi at the uprising. The theme of the entire story was that John had fought against his country and had caused the death of Mike Spann.

Interestingly, directly alongside of this incredible damaging article on page 1 of the New York Times, there appeared a leading article that same day about the widespread killing of the Taliban prisoners by General Dostum and the Northern Alliance. The byline of the article was Sheberghen, the very place where John had been taken and filmed by the CNN crew. But the New York Times overlooked the fact that this was the context in which John had been found, that John was the fortunate survivor of a mass killing of prisoners by the Northern Alliance.

Mistreatment by the military

Upon his capture, John was quickly transferred from Dostum's custody to the custody of the U.S. military. I would have thought at that point that John was in safe hands, and John himself thought the same thing because he said so in a brief letter that he dictated to the Red Cross who visited him that first day. But an order, emanating directly from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, instructed the U.S. military to "take the gloves off" in the questioning of John Lindh.

Rumsfeld's order is documented in a letter that was provided to John's lawyers by the prosecutors, and it also has been reported as a front-page story in the L.A. Times. I do not want to dwell here on the military's mistreatment of my son, but I will say categorically that he was treated in a way that is shameful to our nation and its ideals. John's bullet wound was left festering and untreated; he was blindfolded and bound hand and foot with tight plastic strips that caused severe pain. He was stripped naked and duct-taped and, in this condition, blindfolded, bound naked to a stretcher and then left in the cold in an unheated metal shipping container on the desert floor in Afghanistan.

After one initial visit, the Red Cross was denied any further access to John. The letters I wrote to John through the Red Cross were never delivered to him. All of this conduct was in violation of the Geneva Conventions of war. It was beyond what any civilized nation should tolerate. Yet, despite the fact that the torture and abuse of John Lindh was fully disclosed in the press, there was no outcry here in the United States, so strong was the emotion at that time against this young man.

What I find most troubling about this treatment, however, was that it was completely gratuitous and unnecessary. John Lindh did not need to be tortured in order to tell American forces what he knew, where he had been and what he had seen. He was glad to be rescued, he had nothing to hide. I cannot fathom why the military would have felt it necessary to humiliate him in this way.

Prejudicial commentary

I would venture to say that never before in the history of this country has any criminal defendant been subject to anything approaching the kind of prejudicial statements made by officials in John's case. Interestingly, though, in the very beginning, when John was first captured, President Bush had a sympathetic response. He said, "I don't know what we're going to do with the poor fellow" in an interview with Barbara Walters. And he referred to him by name, he said, "John." Sen. John McCain had sympathetic words, and Sen. Orrin Hatch also said that he thought that John was on a spiritual quest. But after the CNN interview was aired, the whole mood shifted.

It was both parties, Republicans and Democrats. All of these statements were broadcast and covered in the national media and came into everyone's home in the country. In an Oval Office interview on December 21st, President Bush said, "Obviously Walker is unique in that he is the first American al Qaeda fighter we have captured."

John had never even heard of al Qaeda.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, in a nationally televised interview on "Meet the Press," calls John a "traitor." Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld says, "John Lindh was captured by U.S. forces with an AK-47 in his hands." Imagine the prejudice to John from such a false and inflammatory statement. Secretary of State Colin Powell, the same Colin Powell who had sent the money to Afghanistan in April says, "John Walker Lindh has brought shame upon his family." Former President George Herbert Walker Bush says this: "He's just despicable. I thought of a unique penalty: Make him leave his hair the way it is and his face as dirty as it is, and let him go wandering around this country and see what kind of sympathy he would get." This was on Good Morning America, December 19th.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, said that John was a "terrorist" who belonged to "an organization that took American lives and came against the American Constitution." Sen. McCain says, "I'd like to take him to Ground Zero, and show him Ground Zero and see how he feels after that." Rudy Giuliani was the person of the year in Time magazine, and what does he do with that bully pulpit? He says, "When you commit treason against the United States of America, particularly at time when the U.S. is in peril of a further attack, I believe the death penalty is the appropriate remedy to consider."

But the most prejudicial commentary of all came from Attorney General Ashcroft. He held two nationally televised press conferences in John's case. I have a copy of the New York Times, the page 1 article on the first of those conferences. This was on the 15th of February. Mind you, John is still overseas, still hasn't even had a chance to visit with his lawyer. He says, "We cannot overlook attacks on America when they come from United States citizens." This is announcing the criminal complaint against John. He's the leading prosecutor in the United States. The same day he says, "We may never know why he turned his back on our country and its values, but we cannot ignore that he did. Youth is not absolution for treachery, and personal self-discovery is not an excuse to take up arms against one's country."

In the second of these conferences, announcing the indictment, the attorney general says, "The reasons for his choices may never be fully known to us, but the fact of those choices is clear. Americans who love their country do not dedicate themselves to killing Americans." As any lawyer would know, it is a breach of professional ethics for a prosecutor to make prejudicial comments about a criminal defendant who is awaiting trial.

Criminal case

Then we get to the criminal case which the Boston Globe refers to as a "collapsed terror case." Initially, the government charged John with 11 criminal counts, most of terrorism-related charges such as supporting al Qaeda. In the end, the government dropped all of the terrorism-related charges in a plea bargain. The one charge that John pleaded guilty to was providing assistance to the Taliban government in violation of the economic sanctions that President Clinton had imposed.

I think it's clear that the government really had to stretch to find any criminal statute that John's conduct had actually violated. But for that one offense, and because he carried a weapon in the commission of the offense, John has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison, and he's serving that sentence now in Southern California.

On the basis of the inherent unfairness, and also the fact that John has been a model prisoner from the beginning, John's lawyers have filed a petition with President Bush asking that John's sentence be commuted, and that petition is currently pending with the president.

Comment: We aren't going to hold our breath on this one...

Conclusions

Quickly, I have three conclusions that I have based on the facts of John's case. First, the rights we enjoy as citizens under the Constitution at times of war and national crisis, and they can be undermined by politicians and the media. Recall that every one of the government officials who I quoted took an oath of loyalty to the Constitution when they were sworn into office. And yet look how quick they were to disregard the Constitution in order to make rhetorical points about John Lindh.

As I tell law students when I speak with them about John's case, the Constitution of the United States does not live in a vault at the National Archives, the Constitution lives in our hearts, and it's up to us as people to maintain the values embedded in the Constitution. We cannot trust the politicians and the media to do the job for us. I think I have to say, too, that it was only the intervention of a courageous legal team, headed by Jim Brosnahan, that literally saved my son's life. I cannot even contemplate what might have happened if these lawyers had not stepped up to defend John.

I think it's clear that the United States really made a mistake in treating Taliban footsoldiers and the Afghan army as if they were al Qaeda terrorists. This was unjust in the eyes of the whole world, but especially among Muslims. And finally, I hope you will indulge me when I say that the mistreatment and the imprisonment of John Lindh was and is a human rights violation. It was based purely on an emotional response to the 9/11 attacks, and not on an objective assessment of John's case.
Comment:

"...[T]he mistreatment and the imprisonment of John Lindh was... based purely on an emotional response to the 9/11 attacks, and not on an objective assessment of John's case."

That statement sums up the Bush administration's handling of the entire War on Terror pretty nicely, doesn't it?

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TSA and FBI Ordered to Pay $200,000 to Settle "No Fly" Lawsuit
1/24/2006 ACLU.org

SAN FRANCISCO -- The federal government today agreed to pay $200,000 in attorneys' fees to the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California to end a Freedom of Information and Privacy Act lawsuit that succeeded in making public, for the first time, hundreds of records about the government's secret "no fly" list used to screen airline passengers after September 11, 2001.

"This case helped shed light on the existence and creation of the 'no fly' list and other secret transportation watch lists, raising serious questions about its effectiveness and value," said Thomas R. Burke, a cooperating attorney with Davis Wright Tremaine LLP in San Francisco.

The ACLU lawsuit was filed in April 2003 on behalf of itself and two Bay Area anti-war activists, Rebecca Gordon and Jan Adams, who were told by airline agents at San Francisco International Airport that their names appeared on a FBI no-fly list.

The Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation agreed to pay the ACLU, who along with Rebecca Gordon and Janet Adams, sued when the government refused to make public information about its secret "no fly" watch list. The settlement was approved today by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer of the Northern District of California in San Francisco.

"As thousands of innocent travelers continue to be mistakenly linked to a name on the government's 'no fly' list, the public should be able to understand and meaningfully deliberate on whether the secret lists make us safer or are just a waste of government resources," added Burke.
Frustrated by the government's stonewalling, Judge Breyer, in a June 15, 2004 order, criticized the federal government for its "frivolous claims of exemption," ordering the TSA and FBI to produce some 300 pages of previously withheld records detailing how the "no fly" list was created and implemented.

The records revealed that the government watch list was implemented long before any coordinated policy was in place. The documents reflected, among other things, confusion, inter-agency squabbling and the admission that the criteria in placing names on the list are "necessarily subjective" and "not hard and fast rules."

"We brought the lawsuit because we believe the public has a right to know about the 'no fly' list and other government watch lists," said Jan Adams. "And we succeeded in doing so by making public hundreds of pages of documents that not only confirmed the existence of the 'no fly' list, but exposed many of the serious problems with the secret list. Only by informed public debate can we make our government accountable and our country safer."

As a result of the lawsuit, the public learned how many individuals were on the "no fly" list. As of September 11, 2001, only 16 individuals were identified as being banned from air travel; the following day, more than 400 were listed, and by December 2001 there were 594 names. As of December 2002, there were 1,000 names on the list, according to the records the government was ordered to release. The "no fly" list is now believed to include tens of thousands of names, according to the ACLU. In November of 2005, the TSA indicated that 30,000 people in the last year alone had contacted the agency because their names had been mistakenly matched to a name on the federal government's watch lists.

The settlement was reached only days after the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the National Security Agency seeking to stop a secret electronic surveillance program that allows the NSA to monitor and collect e-mails and phone calls from innocent Americans without court approval. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a group of prominent journalists, scholars, attorneys and national nonprofit organizations who frequently communicate by phone and e-mail with people in the Middle East. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Michigan, seeks a court order declaring that the spying is illegal and ordering its immediate and permanent halt. More information is available online at www.aclu.org/nsaspying

The ACLU has also filed Freedom of Information Act requests in 20 states on behalf of more than 150 organizations and individuals seeking information about FBI spying. In response, the government has released documents that reveal FBI monitoring and infiltration by the FBI and local law enforcement, targeting political, environmental, anti-war and faith-based groups. All the documents received to date are available online at www.aclu.org/spyfiles

A complete set of the TSA and FBI documents in today's case are available online at www.aclunc.org

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Censorship at the Border
ACLU.com

The ACLU has filed a lawsuit challenging a provision of the Patriot Act that is being used to deny visas to foreign scholars whose political views the government disfavors. The lawsuit charges that the provision, known as the "ideological exclusion" provision, is being used to prevent United States citizens and residents from hearing speech that is protected by the First Amendment.
The ACLU lawsuit was filed on behalf of the American Academy of Religion, the American Association of University Professors and PEN American Center, and also names as a plaintiff Professor Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss intellectual who is widely regarded as a leading scholar of the Muslim world. The government revoked Professor Ramadan's visa under the ideological exclusion provision in 2004, preventing him from assuming a tenured teaching position at the University of Notre Dame.

In March 2005, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request to learn more about the government's use of the Patriot Act ideological exclusion provision and about the practice of ideological exclusion more generally - a practice that has led to the recent exclusions of Dora María Telléz, a Nicaraguan scholar who had been offered a position at Harvard University, as well as numerous scholars from Cuba. The ACLU filed a lawsuit in November 2005 to enforce this Freedom of Information Act request.

A History of Ideological Exclusions

During the Cold War, the U.S. government abused the immigration laws in order to exclude prominent artists and intellectuals. None of these individuals represented any danger to national security. They were excluded simply because the U.S. government wanted to prevent U.S. citizens and residents from meeting with them and hearing their ideas.

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Top U.S. General Acknowledges Army is 'Stretched'
By NICK WADHAMS Associated Press January 26, 2006

DIWANIYAH, Iraq - The top U.S. general in Iraq acknowledged Thursday that American forces in this country are "stretched," but he said he will only recommend withdrawals based on operational needs.

Gen. George Casey told reporters he had discussed the issue with Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker on Wednesday and that the Army chief of staff believes he can still sustain the mission in Iraq.

"The forces are stretched ... and I don't think there's any question of that," Casey said.
"But the Army has been for the last several years going through a modernization strategy that will produce more units and more ready units."

He reiterated he would only recommend reductions in the more than 130,000-strong U.S. military presence in Iraq based on the situation on the ground.

On Tuesday, The Associated Press reported that an unreleased study conducted for the Pentagon said the Army was being overextended because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and may not be able to retain and recruit enough troops to defeat the insurgency in Iraq.

A day later, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld disputed that, asserting that "the force is not broken."

Casey spoke after attending a ceremony in which Polish troops transferred leadership of the south-central region of Iraq to Iraqi forces, the first such handover since the war began in 2003. He rejected the idea that early troop withdrawals came because of strain on the military.

"That's not true, and the recommendation to begin the reduction of forces came from me based on our strategy here in Iraq," Casey said. "I made my decision based on operational reasons and I'll continue to do that. As I've said all along, I will ask for what I need to accomplish this mission."
Comment: Rummy said "the force is not broken". Well, that may be true - but he did not say that the Army wasn't stretched. Let's face it: all this talk of a "leaner and meaner" military means absolutely nothing. These statements are coming from some of the same people who brought you other hits such as, "Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, and he intends to use them" and "Absence of evidence isn't necessarily evidence of absence". If the US administration continues its push for war with all the "evildoers", its military must expand - and right now, no one wants to sign up...

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Bush offered Blair chance to pull out of Iraq
(Filed: 24/01/2006) UK Telegraph

President George W Bush has revealed he offered Tony Blair the chance not go to war in Iraq, but the Prime Minister turned it down.

Mr Bush said he made the offer amid concerns about the stability of the Labour Government in the months before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

"He [Blair] was worried about his Government and so was I, and I told him one time, 'I don't want your Government to fall, and if you're worried about it just go ahead and pull out of the coalition so you save your Government'," said Mr Bush.

"And he said to me, 'I have made my commitment on behalf of the great country of Britain and I'm not changing my mind'.

"He said, 'I'm not interested in politics, what I'm interested in is doing the right thing.'
The President was responding to a question he was asked following a speech at Kansas State University.

Asked whether he had ever discussed Mr Blair's image as a White House "yes-man", Mr Bush said he was aware of the criticism but that he "strongly disagreed" with it.

"I have heard the criticism and it's just simply not the case," he said. "I admire him a lot. He's an independent thinker.

"I'm sure that his relationship with me causes him problems at home. Sometimes I can be a little allergic for people overseas.

"I'm very aware of the political difficulties he faces. When we make hard decisions like we've made it creates angst ... That's why I admire Tony. He is a person of great courage."

Mr Bush also said that the pair tried to speak once a week, but did have strong disagreements on some issues despite their close contact.
Comment: We had a really good laugh at Bush's alleged comment that:

"He [Blair] was worried about his Government and so was I, and I told him one time, 'I don't want your Government to fall, and if you're worried about it just go ahead and pull out of the coalition so you save your Government'," said Mr Bush. "And he said to me, 'I have made my commitment on behalf of the great country of Britain and I'm not changing my mind'. "He [Blair] said, 'I'm not interested in politics, what I'm interested in is doing the right thing.'

We can exclusively reveal the rest of that specific conversation, which continued as follows: "You know George [Blair said], we have to save the world, those evil terrorists want to kill us all, and we have to make the world safe for mankind. At this point George began to cry and told Tony that he loved him.

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White House 'stonewalling Katrina response inquiry'
Julian Borger in Washington Thursday January 26, 2006 The Guardian

US senators yesterday accused President Bush of stonewalling a congressional inquiry into the government response last year to Hurricane Katrina, despite earlier promises to cooperate.

The senators said the White House had failed to make key officials available to the inquiry or turn over documents on internal government communications in the days before and immediately after the storm hit New Orleans and the Gulf coast on August 29.

One document leaked this week showed the White House situation room was warned the same day that Katrina would "likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching". On September 1, however, President Bush told reporters: "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
A few days later, he also promised to cooperate with a "thorough" congressional investigation into the relief debacle that followed the storm, in which tens of thousands of New Orleans residents were left stranded for days in the flooded city.

Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat senator involved in the inquiry, due to report in March, accused the administration of breaking that promise. "There has been a near-total lack of cooperation that has made it impossible, in my opinion, for us to do the thorough investigation that we have a responsibility to do," he said.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said yesterday 120 administration officials had been made available for the inquiry but that in some cases conversations between top officials had to remain classified for the presidency to function properly. "That's the bottom line here," Mr McClellan said.

The Bush administration has refused to hand over email correspondence about the storm and has prevented officials involved in the government reaction from appearing before the Senate. Those officials include the White House chief of staff, Andrew Card, and his deputy, Joe Hagin, Frances Fragos Townsend, the president's adviser on homeland security, and his deputy, Ken Rapuano.

Some senior Republicans are also dissatisfied. Senator Susan Collins said the administration had been telling other government officials outside the president's staff not to testify about communications with the White House about the storm.

Michael Brown, the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told the inquiry on Monday he had been told not to comment on his conversations with top White House officials.

"I completely disagree with that practice," Senator Collins, chairwoman of the Senate homeland security and governmental affairs committee, told the New York Times. "If our response to an event that was predicted, known and trackable was so bad, think what it would be to an unexpected terrorist attack."

The White House has also withdrawn its support for a bipartisan congressional proposal to create an agency to help New Orleans residents who had no insurance. The administration said it objected on principle and argued funds should be channelled through community development programmes already in the budget.

After the storm

Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf coast on August 29

Sept 15 "Congress is preparing an investigation, and I will work with members of both parties to make sure this effort is thorough."
George Bush

January 24 "There has been a lack of cooperation that has made it impossible for us to do the thorough investigation that we have a responsibility to do."
Senator Joseph Lieberman

Jan 24 "The White House and the administration are cooperating with the House and Senate. But we have also maintained the president's ability to get advice and have conversations with advisers that remain confidential."
White House spokesman
Comment: It does get old, doesn't it, this constant replaying of the same old tapes, the claim that the investigation will be thorough made by the president and broadcast across the States by the administration's mouthpieces in the corporate media, followed by the predictable stonewalling and claims of presidential confidentiality that have to be respected.

It's always the same scenario. And it works every time!

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U.S. still tops spammer list
www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-26 13:54:04

BEIJING, Jan. 26 -- UK antivirus company Sophos has released its ranking of spammers for the fourth quarter of 2005, with the United States still topping the list.

Dubbed the "dirty dozen", Sophos' list of 12 countries in the period from October to December 2005 has United States in first position with 24.5 percent. The latest figures mark the first time that U.S. accounts for less than one quarter of all spam relayed.

The U.S. is closely followed by China, with 22.3 percent, according to Sophos. South Korea comes in third with 9.7 percent.
Ron O'Brien, senior security analyst with the Lynnfield-based Sophos, said: "Officials in the United States have cracked down considerably on spammers, by giving-out harsh sentences to those convicted - that's good news for organizations and consumers. Unfortunately, email users around the world are still being bombarded by un-solicited messages."

Prominent among other findings, Sophos found the level of non-English language spam continuing to increase. A majority of spam is being relayed by "zombie computers" -- which are responsible for relaying over 60 percent of the world's spam -hijacked by Trojan horses, worms and viruses.

There is also considerable increase in "pump-and-dump" stock spam, which is geared to artificially inflate stock prices before spammers sell shares at higher profit.

As a safety measure, Sophos has advised computer users to keep their anti-virus software up-to-date, use a properly configured firewall, and install the latest operating system security patch.

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Fla. Auto Crash Kills 7 Siblings
By RON WORD Associated Press January 26, 2006

LAKE BUTLER, Fla. - A car full of siblings headed home was crushed between a truck and a stopped school bus, killing the seven adopted children just two miles from where they lived.
Investigators were trying to understand why the driver of a truck hit the car from behind, pushing it in to the bus that was carrying nine students.

Everyone in the car was killed Wednesday, including the 15-year-old girl who was driving illegally. Tina Mann told CNN that her niece, who had a learner's permit, had dropped off another child and was taking her siblings home "to get ready to go to church."

"Even though she was an underage driver, it's my understanding she did not cause the accident," Mann told CNN. "The same thing would have happened had there been an adult in the car with her. We'd just have one more death in the family."

The victims in the car were identified by authorities as 15-year-old driver Nicki Mann; Elizabeth Mann, 15; Johnny Mann, 13; Heaven Mann, 3; Ashley Kenn, 13; Miranda Finn, who was either 8- or 9-years-old; and Anthony Lamb, who was almost 2 years old.

Five of the students onboard the bus were taken to University of Florida's Shands Hospital in Gainesville. Three were in serious condition and two were in fair condition, hospital officials said Wednesday night.

The other four were taken to area hospitals. It was believed that they were treated and released, said Lt. Mike Burroughs of the Florida Highway Patrol.

"It was horrible. People were screaming, children were wandering around, two were laying (in) the middle of the road," said Joy Clemins, who lives near the crash site. "It is like they were walking around in a dream."

The bus driver, Lillie Mae Perry, was transferred to a Gainesville hospital where she was in stable condition, hospital officials said.

Grief counselors were scheduled to be on hand Thursday to help students deal with the tragedy, said Union County School Superintendent Carlton Faulk. Lake Butler is about 60 miles southwest of Jacksonville in rural northern Florida.

"In a small county you get to know the kids," he said. "A lot of the administrators and myself actually taught the parents of some of these kids. It's a very close knit community."

Alvin Wilkerson, 31, the truck driver, suffered minor injuries. Burroughs said charges against Wilkerson were pending an investigation.

"We want to know why he didn't see a big, large school bus," Burroughs said.

He said authorities were looking into whether Wilkerson was possibly talking on his cell phone, if he was tired or if there was a mechanical failure of the truck.

Burroughs said a sample of Wilkerson's blood-alcohol level has also been collected.

The National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash.

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Palestinian PM to quit after poll
Thursday, 26 January 2006, 11:52 GMT

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei has announced his resignation, saying Hamas must form the next government following the parliamentary elections.

It comes as the militant Islamic group appeared to be heading for a shock win.

With counting still under way, officials from the ruling Fatah party said Hamas had won a majority. Official results are due at 1900 (1700 GMT).

Israel, the US and the EU consider Hamas a terrorist group and have said they do not want to deal with it.
Mr Qurei has gone to see Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to hand in his formal resignation.

Hamas says it will ask Fatah to join a coalition, but Fatah officials say they will not sit in government with Hamas.

Hours before official results were due to be released, Fatah officials privately admitted that Hamas had won.

Hamas claimed it had won at least 70 seats in the 132-member parliament, while EU election observer Richard Howitt told the BBC he had been informed that Hamas could have won up to 80 seats.

The BBC's Jon Leyne in Jerusalem says there is no doubt that the Hamas showing has transformed the Palestinian political arena.

For decades, Fatah - the party founded by the late Yasser Arafat - has totally dominated electoral politics, but that time is over, he says.

Hamas is also now a major power and it will enter parliament still committed to its armed confrontation with Israel, our correspondent adds.

No talks

With victory looming, senior Hamas official Ismail Haniya said the group would discuss political partnership with Fatah.

"This issue is going to be one of our priorities in the near future," the Associated Press news agency quoted him as saying.

But senior Fatah official Jibril Rajoub told Reuters: "Fatah rejects participating in a government formed by Hamas.

"Hamas has to take up its responsibilities. Fatah will act as a responsible opposition."

Another Hamas official, Mushir al-Masri, warned that Hamas would not hold peace talks with Israel.

"Negotiations with Israel is not on our agenda," he said.

"Recognising Israel is not on the agenda either now."

The likelihood of a resounding victory for Hamas - which is committed to the destruction of Israel - sent shockwaves though the Jewish state.

Speaking on election night, acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel could not deal with a Palestinian Authority which included Hamas.

"Israel can't accept a situation in which Hamas, in its present form as a terror group calling for the destruction of Israel, will be part of the Palestinian Authority without disarming," Mr Olmert's office reported him as saying.

"I won't hold negotiations with a government that does not stick to its most basic obligation of fighting terror."

The outcome of the Palestinian election is the biggest challenge facing Mr Olmert since he took over from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who remains in a coma following a massive stroke on 4 January.

Call to disarm

Mr Haniya called for the US to "respect ... the will of the Palestinian people and the result of the ballot," AFP news agency reported.

Washington has not yet commented on the emerging results, but US President George W Bush warned on Wednesday he could not sanction a government led by Hamas in its present form.

"A political party, in order to be viable, is one that professes peace, in my judgment, in order that it will keep the peace," Mr Bush told the Wall Street Journal.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said the Palestinian elections were "an important step toward the achievement of a Palestinian state," UN spokeswoman Marie Okabe said.

But the UN chief warned that "any group that wishes to participate in the democratic process should ultimately disarm because to carry weapons and participate in a democratic process and sit in parliament - there is a fundamental contradiction".

The European Union - the biggest provider of aid to the Palestinian Authority - said it would work with any Palestinian government which renounced violence.

"We are happy to work with any government if that government is prepared to work by peaceful means," said European External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner.

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Top Israeli security officials hold meeting after apparent Hamas victory
04:41:28 EST Jan 26, 2006

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz and top security officials convened Thursday to discuss the apparent Hamas victory in the Palestinian parliamentary election.

Later Thursday, Israel's acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, was to discuss the election results with senior cabinet ministers and security officials.

Olmert has said Israel would not deal with a Hamas-led government, but Israeli officials declined further comment on the outcome of the vote.

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Israel orders barrier built faster
Wednesday 25 January 2006, 22:00 Makka Time, 19:00 GMT

Israel's acting prime minister has ordered faster construction of the West Bank separation barrier after chairing his first government-level discussion of the project.

The decision, which followed hints by Ehud Olmert that he could set Israel's borders unilaterally should he win general elections on 28 March and should peace talks remain stalled, drew censure from Palestinians who consider the barrier a land grab.
Roughly half of the 600km (370 mile) network of fences and concrete barricades has been built, some on occupied land where Palestinians seek statehood. Several parts of the project have been held up by Palestinian appeals to Israel's Supreme Court.

Israel calls the barrier a bulwark against Palestinian bombers. A senior official said that Olmert, who assumed power after Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, suffered a stroke on 4 January, reiterated the incumbent's orders to step up construction.

An official said: "He made it very clear that the fence has to be completed as quickly as possible."

The prime minister's office said in a statement that Olmert recommended rerouting the barrier northeast of Jerusalem so as to enclose a Jewish settlement, Ramot, within the city limits while excluding the nearby Palestinian village of Bait Iksa.

Land grab

Such moves have stoked Palestinian suspicions that Israel wants the barrier to cement a permanent hold on areas of the West Bank, which it occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

Also captured in the conflict was Arab East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed as its capital in a move not recognised abroad.

In July 2004 the International Criminal Court of Justice ruled that the wall was illegal and Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, said Israel should abide by the ruling.

Palestinians want East Jerusalem as capital of a future state.

Palestinians angry

Saeb Erikat, the Palestinian negotiator, said Olmert, whom opinion polls predict will easily win election at the head of the centrist Kadima party, was jeopardising hopes of reviving efforts to end more than five years of fighting.

"This is very worrying," Erikat said. "We had hoped that Mr Olmert would pursue the path of negotiation rather than dictation."

Olmert backed Israel's unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip last year, a move Sharon said aimed to break a diplomatic deadlock and restart talks on a US-led road map to a peaceful Palestinian state in the coastal territory and the West Bank.

On Wednesday, in his first policy speech as interim prime minister, Olmert reaffirmed Israel's commitment to the road map but hinted that he could order more unilateral steps should the Palestinians fail to disarm militants as mandated by the plan.

"The most dramatic and important step we face is shaping the permanent borders of the state of Israel," Olmert said.

"We would prefer an agreement. If our expected partners in the negotiations in the framework of the road map do not uphold their commitments, we will preserve the Israeli interest at all costs."

Israel has not met its requirement under the road map to stop expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Sharon said Israel would keep settlement blocs under a peace accord with the Palestinians, a plan endorsed by George Bush, the US president.
Comment: In spite of international law and UN resolutions, Israel continues to do what it wants, where it wants, when it wants. They are what George Bush wants to be.

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Fight inside as battle fades
Wed, Jan. 25, 2006

Jesus Bocanegra left Iraq more than a year ago, but the war never left him.

The 24-year-old cavalry scout spent a year in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown, beating down doors, raiding homes, searching for the enemy.

When his tour was up in 2004, Bocanegra returned home to South Texas. He began to have head-splitting flashbacks, paralyzing panic attacks and painfully vivid nightmares.

He enrolled at the local community college, eager to transition into civilian life. He dropped out after two months. He spent a couple of months as a produce inspector but had to quit, irritable and unable to concentrate.

A door would shut, he'd jump. A stranger would approach, he'd panic.

"When I was in Iraq, if a stranger walked up to me, he was either going to blow up himself or throw a bomb at me," he says. That, he believes, explains his hyper-alertness and why he prefers to be at home in his "bunker," his cocoon.

In the combat zone, his mind and heart raced. Back home, people seem more preoccupied with washing their cars than some war half a world away.

The Department of Veterans Affairs deemed Bocanegra completely disabled upon diagnosing his post-traumatic stress disorder.

He fears life will never be the same. Not all soldiers end up on the front lines, but for those who do, the ones who witness the horrific reality of war, how can life ever be the same? Especially those from Iraq, where there is no real safe zone and the constant threat is from bombers who think nothing of taking their own lives.

Americans return with bodies intact but scarred minds and hearts.

Across the country, VA hospitals and clinics -- already facing budget crunches and backlogs -- report increases in veterans suffering PTSD. Ironically, many are Vietnam vets only now seeking help, but the VA is hardly prepared for the aftermath of Iraq and Afghanistan.

A recent New England Journal of Medicine study found that 17 percent of soldiers who returned from Iraq suffered PTSD, a 2 percent increase from that reported by Vietnam veterans.

The tangled web of bureaucracy and overstretched staffs at home only delays the help they need. For some, it comes too late. Capt. Michael Pelkey, an Iraq veteran from Spring, Texas, was diagnosed with PTSD in 2004. A week later, he killed himself with a shot to the chest.

Long after the war is but a memory, Pelkey's widow will still be describing him to the son he barely met, and Bocanegra and thousands of other former soldiers will still be struggling with the consequences of war. That goes for the ones who are back home, trying to piece their lives back together, and the ones still at the front, numb to the realities of war.

Today, Bocanegra feels abandoned. He sees a psychiatrist for about 10 minutes every three months. He takes one pill for anxiety and another for depression.

The doctor, he says, "just tells me, 'Take your medication.'"

After nearly five years in the military, he feels like someone else's problem now. If he needs an eye exam or a dental visit, he must drive four hours to San Antonio to the nearest VA hospital.

Supporting our troops means more than sticking a yellow-ribbon decal on our cars, a standing ovation at the airport or an American flag flying on Veterans Day. We can talk of patriotism, but until we demand that our soldiers get the treatment they need, our words are empty. Thousands of them and their families have been torn apart by war, while the rest of us sacrificed nothing.

"Stay the course" or "Pull out now," few of our leaders are concerned about making sure these soldiers have the health care they need once they return.

Congress must calculate the total cost of this war, which includes caring for Bocanegra and other vets long after the last gunshot or explosion. If not, they will continue to feel as if they're begging for handouts, and our leaders will have failed them.

Today, Bocanegra can still hear children's screams and see the fear in the faces of the women he sighted down the barrel of his weapon.

"You see these horrible things in war. You just killed people," he says. "A lot of my friends that came back say they would have preferred to die out there."
From: Political Ponerology: A Science on The Nature of Evil adjusted for Political Purposes by Andrew M. Lobaczewski, Ph.D. Soon to be published by Red Pill Press

Subordinating a normal person to psychologically abnormal individuals has a deforming effect on his personality: it engenders trauma and neurosis. This is accomplished in a manner which generally evades sufficient conscious controls. [Wolves in Sheep's Clothing] Such a situation then deprives the person of his natural rights to practice his own mental hygiene, develop a sufficiently autonomous personality, and utilize his common sense. In the light of natural law, it thus constitutes a kind of illegality which can appear in any social scale although it is not mentioned in any code of law. […]

With this understanding, we begin to get an even better idea of how psychopaths can conspire and actually pull it off: in a society where evil is not studied or understood, they easily “rise to the top” and proceed to condition normal people to accept their dominance, to accept their lies without question.

What would happen if a state of affairs ensued which conferred internal peace, corresponding order, and relative prosperity within the nation? The overwhelming majority of the country’s population -being normal - would make skillful use of all the emerging possibilities, taking advantage of their superior qualifications to fight for an ever-increasing scope of activities. Thanks to their higher numbers, there would be a higher birth rate of their kind, and their power would increase. This majority would be joined by some sons from the privileged class who did not inherit the psychopathic genes. The pathocracy’s dominance would weaken steadily, finally leading to a situation wherein the society of normal people take back the power. To the pathocrats, this is a known and nightmarish vision. Thus, the biological, psychological, moral, and economic destruction of this majority of normal people is a “biological” necessity to the pathocrats. Many means serve this end, starting with concentration camps and including warfare with an obstinate, well-armed foe who will devastate and debilitate the human power thrown at him, namely the very power jeopardizing pathocrats rule. Once safely dead, the soldiers will thereupon be decreed heroes to be revered, useful for raising a new generation faithful to the pathocracy.

Here we see the Iraq war in a startling new light!

Any war waged by a pathocratic nation has two fronts, the internal and the external. The internal front is more important for the leaders and the governing elite, and the internal threat is the deciding factor where unleashing war is concerned. In pondering whether to start a war against the pathocratic country, one must therefore give primary consideration to the fact that one can be used as an executioner of the common people whose increasing power represents incipient jeopardy for the pathocracy. After all, pathocrats give short shrift to blood and suffering of people they consider to be not quite conspecific. […]

Do other world leaders recognise this fact? Is that why those that do now have psychopathic leaders are standing back and trying not to rock the boat?

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British soldiers take MoD to court over 'medical negligence'
By Kim Sengupta 25 January 2006 UK Independent

The mental scars suffered by those who have experienced the horrors of the Iraq conflict have been exposed in a series of medical studies and legal actions.

The first piece of major research charting the psychological impact of the conflict is expected to show that thousands of members of Britain's armed forces have returned with problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The relentless bombings and shootings, as well as the intrinsic doubts of being involved in this particular war, have, say medical specialists, made Iraq the most troubling combat theatre for soldiers since the Second World War.

In the first of such litigation, 15 British soldiers who recently served in Iraq are suing the Ministry of Defence over alleged medical negligence. The widow of one serviceman who committed suicide after returning from Iraq is expected to bring a separate legal action.

US forces, who have faced - and continue to face - greater violence than British troops, report a higher level of trauma. More than one-fifth of US troops returning from Iraq may suffer from PTSD, according to a recent report. One of its authors, Carl Castro of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, said: "There are a significant number of soldiers who require help."

US forces in the field in Iraq now regularly have members from the mental health unit, "mindsweepers", in forward base. In the US, ecstasy tablets (MDMA) are being used to help treat flashbacks and recurring nightmares. The US Food and Drug Administration authorised the drug for Iraq veterans after successful initial research at a facility in South Carolina.

Stress caused by the conflict has also been used in legal defence. In Britain, Andrew Wragg, a former SAS trooper who killed his 10-year-old terminally ill son, was cleared last month of murder and convicted of manslaughter. Lewes Crown Court in Sussex heard he was suffering from temporary abnormality of mind caused by his experience in Iraq.

The Territorial Army has 60 members receiving psychological help. Half of those who requested help are reservists and not entitled to army facilities.

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Please, Help Me!
by NguyenKhaPhamThanhChuong LewRockwell.com

After a short holiday in Sydney to visit my family, I drove back to Melbourne with sadness. This is not because of anyone or anything except me.

Given the current war in which Australia is now involved, and the sluggish public opinion on the pro-war rhetoric concerning Iran, I asked myself what I am going to do? Am I going to condemn the US Government, or Australian Government? Or should I criticize the US citizens or/and Australian citizens? Or should I blame both of them? Is that the right thing to do? Yes, perhaps, although I know that Government is, after all, a product of its people. But is criticism effective to stop the atrocities being committed? I do not know.

I look at myself, and I admit that I, myself, failed miserably in my self-imposed duty of passing my war-experience on to my nieces and nephews. There is something wrong with the people who lived through and experienced war, like me. I could pass on many things to my neighbors, and to my next generation, but not war. Their pro-war argument is possible because many of us, who lived through war, continue to support war, and even participate in the next war. Thus, according to them, there must be something positive; something righteous about going to war, and the "enemy" must be a devil, "sub-human."
I told my nieces and nephews that war is evil, and I explained to them that war does not bring any good thing, but brings destruction to not only property, and lives, but also most crucially destroys our humanity.

I told them during the war I watched TV and listened to radio news focusing on "our loss, our destruction" by the enemy. This nurtured my hatred, and the news that focused on our "enemy’s loss and destruction" not only soothed my anger, it also filled my collective pride and vented my aggression. I kept this "process" within myself in silence with satisfaction at first. People around me seemed to be like me, we exchanged our agreement with a sparking glance and a smile. Over time, I started to laugh out with joy at the positive news with images of enemy corpses; and I banged the door or kicked any thing around me with anger when I listened to our casualties. Then I went around the neighborhood to relay the story with full mixed agitation of joy and hatred. I asked my relatives how stupid I was?

They listened with respect, but did not understand. They said that was alright, it was war, and it should be so. I was angry, frustrated with myself. I am incompetent.

How can I now explain to them that what I swallowed through official news as "reality" was a process of dehumanization?

This process was to dehumanize the "enemy." It demonized the enemy to a lowest, ugliest figure of devil that must be destroyed at all cost. Because they were no longer human, they could not and should not be treated as equal to us. Thus we, the good ones, had an exceptional right to use any way to make them suffer before we destroy them.

How can I explain to my next generation that I myself was dehumanized in the first place by that very process in order not only to see other human beings as demons, but also to hate and be ready to murder other human beings (not only combatants but also women and children) with joy, and with pride? Worst of all, which we thought we did as a favor to our human kind?

Please help me my friends, who lived through war, who experienced war around the world. Please tell me the way in which I can pass on this horrible experience to others. Please also tell me, explain to me why many of us still, as my friend observes, keep "quiet and cower."

Please tell me, explain to me why many of you, who experienced war, still even support and participate in war.

I ask for your help because I have now recovered from dehumanization, and I refuse to be re-dehumanized again. That is not good enough. I want to pass this experience to people, to my nieces and my nephews. I tried, but I have failed. Please help me.

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Britain announces 3,300 new troops for Afghanistan
Reuters Thu Jan 26, 2006 07:42 AM ET

LONDON - Britain announced 3,300 new troops for Afghanistan on Thursday, saying that would bring its total there to 5,700 after it takes over command of a NATO mission there in May.
"We aim for these deployments to be fully operational by July this year," Secretary of Defense John Reid told parliament.

The new troops include a "Provincial Reconstruction Team" for Helmand province in the south.

They are in addition to about 1,000 extra troops that Britain has promised for the headquarters in Kabul when it takes over NATO's Afghan peacekeeping mission, and about 1,000 in place already in the north.

Engineers will also be sent to help build a base, and Reid said the total British force in Afghanistan would peak at about 5,700 and then stabilize at about 4,700.

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We're all in this together, US security chief tells France
PARIS, Jan 24, 2006 (AFP)

PARIS, Jan 24, 2006 (AFP) - US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff warned Tuesday that Europe and the United States must stay focused on fighting terrorism, as fresh controversy erupted over the CIA's activities in Europe.

"We should not allow ourselves to be distracted from the need to identify, prevent and protect against terrorist acts of violence," he told reporters in Paris, during a two-day visit to discuss US-French anti-terrorism cooperation.

"We are all in this together, in the sense that all the countries in Western Europe are, I think, in the zone of being targeted by Al-Qaeda and other sympathetic terrorist groups," he said.
Chertoff was speaking after an interim report to
the Council of Europe, a rights body, said European governments must have been aware that the United States was using their territory to transport or detain terrorist suspects as part of its policy of "rendition".

He refused to comment directly on the report's allegations, reaffirming only that the United States acted in accordance with the law and with respect for the sovereignty of host countries.

Asked whether he feared that European efforts to investigate the allegations could damage US-European anti-terrorism collaboration, Chertoff replied: "I certainly hope it doesn't affect cooperation."

Chertoff also sought to play down divergences between the United States and Europe over the methods used to pursue the "war on terror".

"I think there is less of a difference than you would think," he said.

"There are obviously some historical and cultural differences in the way individual countries approach the challenge of dealing with terror -- but our fundamental values are remarkably aligned."

"All the countries I have dealt with have the same goals: security, freedom and civil rights," Chertoff told reporters.

The US official -- who described the working relationship between French and US security services as "excellent" -- met on Tuesday with members of France's DST domestic intelligence service, and with the head of the National Defence General Secretariat, Francis Delon.

On Wednesday, Chertoff was due to hold talks with Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who sponsored a tough new anti-terrorism law adopted by the French parliament last month.
Comment: Right. "Let's not get distracted from our difficult work of torturing anyone we want, when we want, and out of the public's eye by liberal European whining about rendition!"

And what about freedom and civil rights? The pathocrat can mouth the words as long as he is using them to accomplish the opposite. Notice how security is slipped into the phrase, as if it is quite natural to associate security with freedom, as if the neo-con vision of security doesn't undermine freedom and civil rights.

These are the subtle, and not so subtle, ways of the manipulation of language used to reverse the meaning of words. By repeating these phrase over and over again, a permanent association will be created in people's minds in the same way that a US citizen can fill in the following "red, white, and..." without a hesitation. Or, how about "Law and ..."?

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Cheney, Rumsfeld could be called to testify in secret prisons probe: Official
04:52:47 EST Jan 26, 2006

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - A European Parliament investigation into alleged CIA secret prisons could call top U.S. officials, including Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to testify, an official said Thursday.

"Very senior people" would be asked to answer the allegations of human rights violations on EU territory, said Sarah Ludford, vice-president of a an investigation into the alleged prisons being conducted by the European Parliament.

"I don't see why we should not invite Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney," Ludford said. "I'm sure they would be very welcome and they would be heard with great interest, or (U.S. Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice perhaps, why not?"

But Ludford, a British Liberal Democrat party member, acknowledged that the parliament had no legal power to subpoena them.
"I would not be over-optimistic, but I don't think it's completely off the planet to think that they might come to see us," she said.

The parliament committee held its first meeting Thursday, electing Portuguese Conservative Carlos Coelho as its president and three vice-chairs, including Ludford.

"I hope that we will be inviting very senior people from governments, from non-governmental organizations and people who have knowledge of the intelligence community," said Ludford. "If they are seen not to co-operate, then I think we can draw conclusions."

Coelho refused to be drawn on specific names he would favour, but said the committee as a whole would decide who to ask to attend the meetings, after which a report will be drafted and presented to EU governments. Some of these governments, it is claimed, are complicit in allowing the U.S. secret agency to set up detention camps on their territory.

The committee's work is to last for four months, Coelho said.

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Saddam to sue Bush and Blair
Jan. 25 (UPI)

AMMAN, Jordan -- Defence lawyers for Saddam Hussein Wednesday distributed copies of a lawsuit against President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair for destroying Iraq.

The suit accuses Bush and Blair of committing war crimes by using weapons of mass destruction and internationally-banned weapons including enriched uranium and phosphoric and cluster bombs against unarmed Iraqi civilians, notably in Baghdad, Fallujah, Ramadi, al-Kaem and Anbar.
The Amman-based legal team had said Sunday that the ousted president intended to start legal action against the two leaders of the Iraq war in the International Criminal Court in the Hague, but the text of the suit was made available Wednesday.

The suit also accuses the U.S. president and British prime minister of torturing Iraqi prisoners, destroying Iraq's cultural heritage with the aim of eliminating an ancient civilization, and inciting internal strife.

Bush and Blair were also accused of polluting Iraq's air, waters and environment.

The lawsuit demanded that Bush and Blair appear before court to answer the charges filed against them and requested the harshest punishment in line with Dutch legislation and the rules of international and humanitarian laws.

It also requested compensation for all material and moral damage inflicted on the Iraqi people.

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Bitter row over 'positive' colonialism law near end
AFP Jan 26, 2006

PARIS - A bitter row over a French law that recognises the "positive role" of colonialism appeared to be close to resolution Thursday after President Jacques Chirac asked for the controversial clause to be struck off the statute books.
The president accepted advice from a parliamentary committee to resort to a rarely used constitutional procedure in order to remove the offending article — which appears in a government bill passed a year ago providing financial compensation to repatriated colonials.

The clause is to be referred to the country's constitutional council — a nine-member body that decides on the constitutionality of laws — on the grounds that it is outside the competence of the legislature.

Article Four of law 2005-158 states that "scholastic programmes recognise in particular the positive role of the French overseas presence, especially in north Africa, and accord to history and to the sacrifices of army soldiers from these territories the eminent place that they deserve."

At Chirac's request, the constitutional council is expected to rule that school texts are fixed by government regulation not by law, and that the clause is therefore unsustainable.

The device provides the government with a get-out from a highly embarrassing episode, which further damaged relations with the country's black and Arab populations just as the country was reeling from last November's rioting in high-immigration suburbs.

The clause was introduced as a private amendment to the wider law by a right-wing member of Chirac's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), and it went unnoticed for several months until a petition circulating on the Internet began to draw the media's attention.

Academics said the article was a flagrant intrusion by politicians into the realm of historical debate, while left-wingers accused the government of trying to lay down an official version of the colonial past that ignored its huge human cost.

Opposition drew to a head shortly after last year's riots when Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy was forced to cancel a trip to France's territories in the Caribbean because of a threat of anti-government demonstrations — even though he made clear he personally had little truck with the law.

Virtually the whole political class expressed satisfaction Thursday with the apparent resolution of the impasse. Veteran Affairs Minister Hamlaoui Mekachera, who drafted the overall law, said Chirac's intervention was a "solution of wisdom and conciliation."

For Christiane Taubira, a black legislator from French Guyana, the decision was one of "lucidity, wisdom and courage which will finally bring an element of reconciliation and allow us to cool down the debate."

The Algerian government, which vehemently opposed the law, also expressed satisfaction, with a spokesman for the ruling coalition partner the National Democratic Rally (RND) saying its abandonment could open the way to a long-awaited treaty of friendship between the countries.

But some historians remain concerned about the on-going temptation among French politicians to make legislative pronouncements on historical events, and are campaigning for three other laws to be repealed.

These are a 2001 law recognising the Turkish massacres of Armenians in 1915 as genocide; a law from the same year recognising slavery as a crime against humanity; and a 1990 law which makes it a criminal offence to deny certain defined crimes against humanity.

"We have to abrogate all these so-called laws of memory. Even if they are well-intentioned, they end up trying to impose a particular vision of history," said Paris-based historian Jean-Jacques Becker, a specialist in World War I.

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Boos from left greet Barroso in French assembly
PARIS, Jan 24, 2006 (AFP)

PARIS, Jan 24, 2006 (AFP) - European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso drew boos from left-wing members of France's National Assembly Tuesday when he delivered a keynote speech on the future of the EU.

Barroso was barracked by Communist party deputies demanding that he withdraw the so-called Bolkestein directive opening up the EU services market which is due to be debated at the European parliament next month.

To one outburst the commission president -- a former centre-right prime minister of Portugal -- responded off-the-cuff: "It's not by attacking business that you are going to create jobs and growth!"
In the first ever address to the French parliament by a commission president, Barroso said he believed public opinion would come round to the EU constitution which was rejected in a French referendum last May.

"I am convinced that public support for the modernisation of institutions which is laid out in the constitutional treaty will come in time, when the conditions are right and confidence is restored," he said in flawless French.

Addressing the situation in France, he said he had read in newspapers that the country was afflicted by "a certain melancholy, even a malaise."

"I wonder if the land of Moliere is not giving way to the temptation of the 'Malade Imaginaire (Imaginary Invalid)'," he said in reference to one of the French playwrights's most celebrated works.

"It seems to me on the contrary that France has every reason to be confident," he said citing "amazing global success stories like Airbus and Ariane."

"The choice of opening up to the world is a winning choice for France and Europe. In the face of globalisation only the European dimension can make the difference and allow us to control the process," he said to applause from centre-right supporters of the government.

But Jean-Marc Ayrault, president of the socialist group in the Assembly, said that "The union has broken down. There are no projects, no dynamic, no perspective" and he called on Barroso to "rediscover the inspiration and vision of Jacques Delors," a French socialist predecessor in the job.

And for the centrist Union for French Democracy (UDF) Francois Sauvadet said that the commission president had "his share of responsibility" in the EU's current impasse.
Comment: Let's look at three phrase's used by Barroso and see what they really mean.

"Modernisation of institutions".

In neoliberal, business-speak, "modernisation" is the codeword for dismantling what they call the "Welfare state". It means a frontal attack on the rights won by working people through sweat and blood over hundreds of years. What are the first things to go in the neoliberal sweeping away of the dusty past? Health care, education, and social services. Modernisation is what they call a return to the past.

"Opening up to the world".

Who doesn't want to be "open to the world"? What a wonderful thing to be open to people from other parts of the world, to their cultures, to a real exchange of ideas. That is what you would expect a phrase such as "opening up to the world" to mean. Of course, you'd be wrong. In the neoliberal playbook, it means allowing capital to be invested where it wants with no control by local government. That is, national laws and regulations are subservient to the needs of capital to expolit people and resources.

In Canada, when the neoliberal onslaught was being cooked up, you heard lots about the necessity of "leveling the playing field. That meant that Canada's health system provided an unfaira advanage to Canadian business against the US. Look at teh state of Canada's health care system today. It has been ripped apart very carefully in order to meet the expectations of the doomsayers in order to rpepare for the privatisation of "health care services". That means the wealthy get their own doctors and clinics if they can afford them.

"Allow us to control the process".

Here Barroso is appealing to some European pride, telling the governing elite that they can control the process of "modernisation" and "opening to the world" themselves. Pumping up people's self-esteem in this way works. People want to believe that somehow a good idea will be successful just because it is a good idea. If that were true, would Windows, with its bloatware, constant security issues, viri, and spyware be the dominant operating system?

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The Bluffer’s Guide to… the Bolkestein directive on services
Graham Copp April 2005

Preying on your apathy and sunny personalities, free-market lunatics embedded in Brussels are trying to sneak through reforms of the services sector that would effectively steamroller national regulatory systems out of existence.
What’s all this about the Bolkestein directive on services? Why the big hoo-ha about a piece of Euro-legislation?

The directive on services, as boring as it may sound, could have a profound impact on public services and on working conditions across the EU. The European TUC has said it ‘could speed up deregulation, seriously erode workers’ rights and protection, and damage the supply of essential services to European citizens’. Derek Simpson, general secretary of Amicus, said: ‘UK health and safety standards are hard won, and this directive threatens to dilute those high standards and compromise British workers and public safety without any redress to UK law or regulatory bodies.’

Frits Bolkestein was the Dutch free-marketeer, who, as Europe’s internal market commissioner, launched the directive. He’s off the scene since the appointment of a new European Commission late last year, but his replacement, Charlie McCreevy, is just as much of a neo-liberal. One Irish Labour MEP said his appointment as the republic’s commissioner was ‘a kick in the arse for the working class’.

Ouch. Okay, so the directive’s important. But what does it do exactly?

Well, it’s supposed to ensure a single market in services. The commission wants to sweep away in one go systems of national and industry regulation. It argues that different regulations are a barrier for service providers moving from one country to another. To make that easier it wants to implement several changes.

So under the directive service providers can move around. What’s the problem with that?

The directive sets up what it calls ‘freedom of establishment’. This means that if a company or individual is able to provide a service in one EU country, they should be able to provide it easily in any other country in the union. So, after filling in one form, it should be possible for a dentist, vet, or any individual or company that provides a service, to set up anywhere in the EU. The danger here is that there is no uniformity of standards in Europe, so standards in public services could decline. Then there’s the country of origin principle…

The country of origin principle?

Yeah. This is an EU rule that means if a product is OK to produce in one member country, it’s OK to sell anywhere around the EU. The European Commission wants to apply this idea to services.

That would mean that if a company were established in one country in the union it could provide a service in a second EU country according to the laws of the first country. So any company in any services industry (be it health, building, advertising or whatever) that was set up in one of the EU’s less regulated economies – perhaps in one of the new eastern European member states – could also set up in the UK; and the laws that would govern wages, standards, contracts, etc, for that business in Britain would be those of the eastern European country, for example, not the UK.

You’re kidding me. Someone’s got to see sense, haven’t they?

Well, there’s a change in the air, but it’s more to do with political machinations than seeing sense. The directive is very unpopular in France, where the left and even parts of the right see it as a danger to their social welfare. A big part of France’s left also wants to campaign for a ‘no’ vote in the EU constitution referendum. The commission is, of course, desperate to ensure a ‘yes’ vote. So, all of a sudden, it is bending over backwards to say it’ll change the directive. McCreevy said: ‘As drafted, it simply was not going to fly.’

So everything’s OK, then?

Not quite. First off, the commission can’t amend the directive at the moment, and the right in the European Parliament, the largest group, says it wants the directive to go through un-amended. The commission could withdraw the directive, but has so far refused to do so. And as the French referendum will be on 29 May and the directive won’t be considered in the European Parliament until June, the original incentive to back down won’t exist by then.

Some of the most important governments, in particular Germany, have said that they would be happy with exceptions from the country of origin principle for a few areas such as health. But that would still leave freedom of establishment, and the country of origin principle would probably still apply to most industries.

Graham Copp is head of research at the think-tank the Centre for a Social Europe.

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U.S. To India: Shun Iran Or Lose Nuclear Help
AP Jan 25, 2006

Nuclear Deal Used As Leverage To Block Support In U.N.

A landmark nuclear deal between India and the United States will "die" in Washington if New Delhi supports Iran at the upcoming meeting of the U.N. atomic watchdog agency, the U.S. ambassador said Wednesday.

A week before the International Atomic Energy Agency meets to discuss Iran's nuclear program, U.S. Ambassador David Mulford said that if India does not vote to refer Tehran to the U.N. Security Council, it would be "devastating" to the deal currently before the U.S. Congress.

"I think the Congress will simply stop considering the matter," Mulford told the Press Trust of India news agency.

The deal, seen as a cornerstone of the emerging alliance between India and the United States, "will die in the Congress," he said.

The U.S. Embassy confirmed that Mulford was accurately quoted, and spokesman David Kennedy said: "The Ambassador just wanted to give his honest opinion on how he thought the U.S. congress would react to such a scenario."

Mulford's frank comments were the first time a senior U.S. official has made a direct link between India's stance on the Iran issue and the nuclear deal.

After Mulford's comments, India reiterated that the two issues should remain separate.

"We categorically reject any attempt to link (Iran) to the proposed Indo-U.S. agreement on civil nuclear energy cooperation, which stands on its own merits," Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said in a statement.

"The position that India will take on this issue at the IAEA will be based on India's own independent judgment."

Under the deal, Washington is to share civilian nuclear technology and supply nuclear fuel to India in return for New Delhi separating its civilian and military nuclear programs and allowing international inspections of its atomic facilities.

The separation is necessary because the United States has only agreed to recognize India as having a civilian nuclear program - not as a legitimate nuclear weapons state.

The deal was signed in July when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Washington, and marked a major policy shift for the United States, which imposed sanctions on India in 1998 after it conducted nuclear tests. The restrictions have been lifted.

IAEA referral of Iran to the Security Council could lead to economic and political sanctions against Tehran, which the United States and European powers fear could use its nuclear program to develop weapons. Tehran insists its program is for generating electricity.

European countries believe they have enough votes at the IAEA, which will hold an emergency board session on Feb. 2, to haul Iran before the Security Council. But they are seeking support from Russia, China and key developing nations, such as India.

New Delhi voted in September with the U.S. and European powers on an earlier IAEA resolution that could have led to Iran's referral to the council.

But the Indian government faced fierce domestic criticism over the move from its left-wing political allies, who accused it of selling out a longtime ally to curry favor with Washington. New Delhi has, in recent weeks, appeared hesitant to repeat the vote, instead urging negotiations with Tehran.

India, which has few domestic sources of fuel, also plans to build a 1,750-mile gas pipeline from Iran through Pakistan, a project that has raised concerns in Washington.

"We have made it known to (India) that we would very much like India's support because India has arrived on the world stage and is a very important player in the world," Mulford said.
Comment: Nothing like a little blackmail between friends, eh?

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US Orders Syria To Do the Impossible
01/26/06 By Paul Craig Roberts

Is there a person anywhere in the world who still thinks there is an ounce of sanity in the Bush administration? If so, let that person read John Bolton’s orders to Syria in the January 24 online edition of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Bolton is Bush’s unconfirmed ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton, a neoconservative warmonger, has managed to get the UN Security Council on January 23 to instruct Syria to disband and disarm the Lebanese militias. Bolton says, "I hope in Damascus they read it very carefully and then comply."

How is Syria to meet this demand?

Last year Syria complied with US demands to withdraw its troops from Lebanon. As Syria has no military presence in Lebanon, it could not disarm a local police force, much less the Shia militias that defeated the Israeli army and drove it out of Lebanon and that have representatives in the Lebanese parliament.
After three years and unimaginable expense, the superpower American military has proved that it cannot disarm the recently formed Iraqi militias. Yet, the idiot Bolton thinks puny Syria can disarm the Lebanese militias that defeated the brutal Israeli army!

Syria was never in Lebanon as a conqueror or invader, as the US is in Iraq and Israel is in the West Bank and Golan Heights. Syria was invited into Lebanon by the Lebanese government for peace-keeping purposes, adding the weight of its military to indigenous militias in order to create stability where US, Palestinian and Israeli bungling had brought disorder and massive bloodshed.

Until they were withdrawn, the Syrian troops were a counterweight to the Shia militias. Now that the Shia crescent is spreading from Iran through Iraq to Lebanon, the stupid neoconservatives are confronted with the error of their ways. The Bush administration was trying to set Syria up for US attack by demanding that they withdraw from Lebanon. The neocons thought Syria would refuse and thereby become a target for demonization and invasion.

Alas, the Syrians departed. And now the problem is how to turn back the Shia advance, which is increasing in power inside Lebanon as well through the Hizbullah and Amal movements. Bolton’s solution is a ridiculous attempt to turn Syria into a neocon proxy and to set it at war with the militias. Otherwise, Bolton intends to damn Syria for "noncompliance" and again threaten Syria with US invasion.

It will be interesting to see who Syria fears most, the militias that triumphed over Israeli military might or the US forces that have been defeated in Iraq.

Dr. Roberts [send him mail] is Chairman of the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former contributing editor for National Review, and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

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U.S. pressures Peru on free trade deal
www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-26 11:10:13

LIMA, Jan. 25 (Xinhuanet) -- The United States said on Wednesday it would not renew a favorable tariff pact with Peru, unless the country ratifies a free trade pact agreed on between the two sides in December.

"It is politically impossible to renew the Andean Trade Preference and Drug Eradication Agreement (ATPDEA) unless the Free Trade Agreement, negotiated in 2005 by the U.S. and Peru, is passed by the congresses of both countries by the end of this year," said James Curtis Struble, U.S. ambassador to Peru.
ATPDEA allows Andean countries to sell their products to the United States with a zero tariff. Under the deal, Peru managed to have scored an export volume of 17 billion U.S. dollars to the United States.

The governments of the United States and Peru have asked their respective congresses to ratify the agreement so that the deal can be signed in April -- after the general elections in the Andean country and before election campaigns begin in the United States.

The U.S. decision to deliver the free trade agreement to Congress shows the will of the current government in "pushing this agreement forward and achieving its approval in the shortest possible period of time," he said.

Peru, Colombia and Ecuador began free trade talks with the United States in May 2004. Peru is the only country that has signed a provisional agreement with Washington so far.

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US diplomat: Chávez is meddling in other countries' affairs
ElUniversal.com 25/01/2006

US ambassador to Peru James Curtis Struble Wednesday said Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez "is meddling a lot in other countries' affairs."

"He should let presidents take care of their countries, and the best thing for the region is Chávez taking care of managing his country," Curtis said when asked about recent diplomatic tensions between Venezuela and Peru.

Tensions emerged following Chávez' public expression of support for Peruvian nationalist presidential candidate Ollanta Humala and criticisms against Peruvian conservative presidential hopeful Lourdes Flores.
Curtis added that Chávez "feels resentment against all the countries that want to make their own decisions regarding their future, particularly political choices," Efe reported.

"While South America has an interest in improving its ties, most leaders have chosen an integration different from Chávez' proposal," he asserted.

"Venezuela is a concern for the United States because it is a member of the community of the Americas, where all have signed the Democratic Charter, except for Cuba."

"We want to strengthen democracies, rather than witness the return of authoritarianism to this continent."

Meanwhile, Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo stated: "Verbal conflicts with Chávez are over."

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Sizing Up Hugo Chávez
Fred Rosen January 25, 2006

[...] But in the foreground of all this, Chávez has redefined citizenship in Venezuela. The wealthy and middle classes have long excluded the poor majority from any genuine sense of participation in civic life. The poor, who have been the maids, gardeners and delivery boys, but never the fellow-citizens of the privileged, now feel the country belongs to them. That’s why the opposition is so fierce. There is no gainsaying this accomplishment.
With Caracas hosting the annual World Social Forum and Washington pondering the pronounced regional tilt to the left, it may be time for a clear-eyed look at the most radical protagonist of that leftward tilt, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. There is no easy characterization of Chávez, but it is clear that he has become one of Latin America’s most astute, self-confident and, for now, influential political leaders, intent on changing the Hemispheric balance of power, significantly improving the lot of the region’s poor majority, and happily—at times with a twinkle in his eye —engendering hopes and fears from South America to Washington and beyond.

Chávez’s recent trip to Brazil demonstrates his political savvy. This past Jan. 19, at his initiative, he and his Argentine and Brazilian counterparts, Néstor Kirchner and Lula da Silva, met in Brasilia to discuss the construction of a 4,500-mile South American pipeline that would carry Venezuela’s natural gas to the region’s Southern Cone.

The project is emblematic of Chávez’s recent initiatives in two ways: It represents a drive toward greater Latin American economic integration and independence, and a faith in public investment as a means to stimulate regional growth and development. Both these elements of Chavista policy—regional integration and public investment—if successful, will redistribute global income to poorer countries and poorer people, reversing more than two decades of widening income inequality throughout the Americas.

Chávez has called for a “socialism for the 21st century.” Loosely speaking, this “socialism” includes projects like the regional pipeline, plus domestic initiatives like land reform; state takeovers of closed production sites; and a set of new institutions called “missions”—organizations that work alongside, or bypass, established state institutions to foster greater security, inclusion and access to services among low-income Venezuelans. There is a mission that provides food security via the establishment of bimonthly discounted open-air markets; another promotes social and economic inclusion through a variety of educational programs, including basic literacy classes and high- school education for adults; another promotes economic inclusion through the creation of jobs and job training; and another provides health services via the establishment of primary-care clinics and ambulatory services in poor, previously underserved areas. This last, called Mission Barrio Adentro, employs more than 12,000 Cuban doctors, who have come to Venezuela as a part of a barter deal in which 50,000 barrels of oil per day are shipped to Cuba.

Yet in many respects, Chávez’s governance has been problematic. There are complaints from all sides that public administration in Venezuela remains pretty uneven. A widespread current complaint centers on a belated effort to bypass a key highway bridge linking Caracas with its metropolitan airport and the Caribbean coast. The 50-year-old bridge, which traverses a deep canyon, has been deemed unsafe by government engineers because of the soil erosion under and around its pillars. The problem was first diagnosed some two decades ago, but it has now become critical and the bridge has been closed to traffic with no immediate alternative in place.

Efficiency and routine infrastructural maintenance are not among the strong points of the Chávez government. Some observers blame this on the rapid change in the composition of the “political class,” people who take an active role in the affairs of state, which has meant that people with little or no experience have entered government, creating a certain degree of confusion and inefficiency. Others blame it on the undeniable presence in Chávez’s government of Venezuela’s pervasive culture of corruption, linked by some to the disproportionate presence in government of former military officers—people with no social commitments, but whose support is necessary to Chávez’s continuation in power.

While Chávez has vowed to fight government corruption, the recomposition of the political class is the basis of his governance. Since he took office in 1999, his government has actively encouraged the formation grassroots social movements, many of which now play important roles in local politics and provide personnel for national campaigns like the missions. Most of these groups are fiercely loyal to Chávez, rather than to any particular political party or program.

As president, Chávez has developed a remarkably strong rapport with poor and marginalized Venezuelans. In his long weekly televised chats with Venezuelans, he carefully explains current events in ways that include people who have previously been left out of political debates. He urges his viewers to involve themselves in their communities, to pressure his own government to fulfill its promises and achieve its “revolutionary” goals. The talks, frequently folksy and personal, often angry and inflammatory, create an apparent dialogue between the president and the people, and many of the historically excluded feel included in citizenship for the first time in their lives.

There is a danger, of course, that this dialogue can become one between a caudillo (strongman) and his followers. Since his first election in 1998, Chávez has played by the democratic rulebook, but there are some genuine concerns about caudillo -type rule. The Chávez-promoted 1999 Constitution, which was approved overwhelmingly by popular vote, extends the presidential term from five to six years, and also allows for re-election, meaning that Chávez will very likely remain in office (counting his two pre-Constitutional years) for a minimum of 14 years. There is now talk among his followers of a constitutional amendment that would allow for subsequent re-election. Length of service does not constitute authoritarian rule, but Chávez’s critics have complained about the potential such a long term in office has for abuse.

In addition, while freedom of information is protected under the new Constitution, a clause saying that the press must publish "truthful information" has led to fears of government censorship and intimidation. Over the seven years of Chávez’s governance, there has been no overt censorship, but Chávez has harshly criticized opposition journalists, and some have charged him with pressuring their employers to silence them. In December 2004, the National Assembly passed legislation increasing penalties for the defamation and “contempt” of public officials. The press and electronic media remain free and, for the most part, vigorously anti-Chávez. Nonetheless these “contempt” provisions are vague enough to be worrisome.

But in the foreground of all this, Chávez has redefined citizenship in Venezuela. The wealthy and middle classes have long excluded the poor majority from any genuine sense of participation in civic life. The poor, who have been the maids, gardeners and delivery boys, but never the fellow-citizens of the privileged, now feel the country belongs to them. That’s why the opposition is so fierce. There is no gainsaying this accomplishment.

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How US lost billions in Wild West gamble to rebuild Iraq
January 26, 2006 From Tim Reid in Washington The London Times

AN AUDIT of US reconstruction spending in Iraq has uncovered spectacular misuse of tens of millions of dollars in cash, including bundles of money stashed in filing cabinets, a US soldier who gambled away thousands and stacks of newly minted notes distributed without receipts.

The audit, released yesterday by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, describes a country in the months after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein awash with dollars, and a Wild West atmosphere where even multimillion-dollar contracts were paid for in cash.
The findings come after a report last year by the inspector general which stated that nearly $9 billion (£5 billion) of Iraq’s oil revenue disbursed by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which governed Iraq until mid-2004, cannot be accounted for.

The huge sums in cash were paid out with little or no supervision, and often without any paperwork, yesterday’s audit found. The report found problems with nearly 2,000 contracts worth $88.1 million.

In one case, a US soldier gambled away more than $40,000 while accompanying the Iraqi Olympic boxing team to the Philippines. In others, “one contracting officer kept approximately $2 million in cash in a safe in his office bathroom”, the report says, “while a paying agent kept approximately $678,000 in cash in an unlocked footlocker”.

The lack of supervision had tragic consequences. A contract for $662,800 to refurbish the Hilla General Hospital was paid in full by a US official, even though the work was not finished. Instead of replacing a central lift, as demanded in the contract, workers only tinkered with the existing mechanism. Three months later the lift crashed, killing three Iraqis.

Cash was stolen during insurgent raids but never reported, the audit found. In another case, a contractor was paid $108,140 to refurbish completely the Hilla Olympic swimming pool. The contractor simply polished some of the pumps and piping to make it look as if new hardware had been installed. The pool has never reopened.

More than 160 vehicles worth about $3.3 million could not be traced because there was no proper documentation. Another project, a $473,000 contract to install an internet service in Ramadi, was cancelled because officials could not oversee it. But the contractor had already been paid.

A separate congressional inquiry has uncovered the sums of cash airlifted into Iraq after the invasion. Desperate for money, and with no banking system to receive wire transfers, the CPA, led by Paul Bremer, received UN approval to fund reconstruction with $37 billion of seized Iraqi oil proceeds, most of it held in the US Federal Reserve in New York.

Soon, large quantities of cash began arriving in Baghdad, shipped in on C17 cargo planes. The cash arrived on pallets loaded with shrink-wrapped bundles of crisp $100 bills. The parcels, which soon became known as “bricks”, were handed out “like candy”, one Democrat congressman said.

In all, $12 billion in cash, weighing 363 tonnes, was flown into Iraq. On December 12, 2003, one single flight to Iraq contained $1.5 billion in cash, the largest single Federal Reserve payout in US history, according to Henry Waxman, the Democrat congressman who is investigated the funding.

The US has so far spent $226 billion on the Iraq war. The CPA was allocated $38 billion in US and Iraqi funds, and spent $19.7 billion of UN-administered Iraqi oil money.

FRITTERED AWAY

$108,140 paid to contractor to refurbish Olympic swimming pool in Hilla. Work never done

$662,800 paid to repair Hilla hospital. Much of work never done, including renewing central lift. Three people later died when lift crashed

$40,000 gambled away by US soldier assigned as assistant to Iraqi Olympic boxing team on trip to Philippines

$2 million locked in a the bathroom safe of a US official

$678,000 stashed away in an unlocked foot locker

$473,000 paid for internet installation in Ramadi. Work never done

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GM net loss $4.8 billion, much worse than expected
Reuters January 26, 2006

DETROIT - General Motors Corp. posted a fourth-quarter net loss of $4.8 billion on Thursday, much worse than Wall Street had expected, amid high costs, shrinking market share and sluggish sales of sport utility vehicles.

It was the fifth straight quarterly loss for the world's largest automaker and brought its losses for all of 2005 to $8.6 billion.
"The numbers are much worse than I thought they would be, especially given how Ford beat the estimates earlier this week," Argus Research analyst Kevin Tynan said.

On Monday, Ford Motor Co. reported a surprising 19 percent rise in fourth-quarter earnings.

GM shares dropped 80 cents, or 3.35 percent, to $23.05 in early trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The company's 8.375 percent bonds due in 2033 were quoted at 72.5 cents on the dollar, down 0.5 cent, according to MarketAxess.

The earnings report came a day after news that billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian had raised his stake in GM to 9.9 percent. Kerkorian has called for sweeping changes at the auto giant, and a key adviser has suggested he might be prepared to organize a fight for control of the GM board.

GM's fourth-quarter loss amounted to $8.45 a share, compared with a year-earlier loss of $99 million, or 18 cents a share.

Excluding one-time items, the company posted a loss of $1.2 billion, or $2.09 a share. On that basis, analysts' average forecast was a loss of 12 cents a share, according to Reuters Estimates.

One-time items reduced earnings by $3.6 billion, or $6.36 a share. They included a restructuring charge of $1.3 billion at GM's North American operations, and a preliminary after-tax charge of $2.3 billion related to a benefit guarantee with the

Analysts were expecting charges after GM in October announced plans to slash 30,000 jobs and shutter 12 facilities, but no one knew how large the charges would be.

Fourth-quarter revenue fell to $51.2 billion from $51.4 billion a year earlier.

"It was a year in which two significant fundamental weaknesses in our North American operations were fully exposed -- our huge legacy cost burden and our inability to adjust structural costs in line with falling revenue," Chief Executive Rick Wagoner said in a statement.

GM earlier this month said it expects to cut North American structural costs by $6 billion by the end of 2006.

GM said its automotive operations lost $1.5 billion in the fourth quarter, driven by large losses in North America, where it has been losing market share to foreign rivals such as Toyota Motor Corp.

General Motors Acceptance Corp., the company's finance unit, posted net income of $614 million, down from $683 million a year earlier.

The automaker plans to sell a controlling stake in its finance arm in order to restore the unit's investment-grade ratings. Both GM and GMAC have said talks with potential partners are "ongoing."

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Vegas Condos Go Cold
By SONJA STEPTOE/LOS ANGELES Time Magazine Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2006

Now that several high rollers in the Las Vegas condo-hotel game, with properties linked to the likes of Michael Jordan and Ivana Trump, are either folding or selling their holdings, a growing number of players are losing their taste for big bets on high-rise residential real estate development.
Over the past two years, as high-rise fever spread across town, prices for the luxury apartments ballooned, fetching as much as $500 to $1,000 a square foot—or up to $1.5 million for a one-bedroom— at the peak. Buyers, mostly interested in flipping them for quick profits, eagerly anted up five-figure down payments, while developers planned more than 70 luxury towers holding a total of about 43,000 units on or near the Strip and downtown. But the intense competition for the city's limited supply of contractors sent construction costs skyrocketing 30% last year, just as lending policies tightened, interest rates climbed and sales started to slow.

Currently, just 18 projects are under way, and nervous developers have called off three high-profile projects over the past seven months. A number of others, including one backed by a group including George Clooney, are being either revised or postponed. Experts now forecast that only a quarter to half of the seven dozen originally proposed projects will ever be built. Brian Gordon, a principal at Applied Analysis, a real estate research firm, says the developers with experience building luxury high-rises, whose properties are located on or near the Strip and carry a strong and recognizable brand name— such as Donald Trump, Hard Rock and MGM Grand— are the ones playing winning hands in Vegas now.

Back east, the luxury condo markets that have had similarly explosive growth in Miami and New York, where high-end apartments can command from $2,000 to $4,000 a square foot, haven’t slumped yet. Still, experts say the abrupt reversal of fortune in the desert, where the mainstream residential real estate and hotel markets are still quite healthy, shows just how quickly the odds can change in even the most affluent markets if runaway speculation and overzealous development take hold.

“It’s another case of irrational exuberance,” says John Restrepo, head of a Las Vegas real estate and economic consulting firm. “There is a market for high-rise condo hotels here; but it’s not as deep as people thought it was. The days of the two guys from the East Coast or Canada coming into town and promoting a condo development with a website and a dream are over.”
Comment:

Still, experts say the abrupt reversal of fortune in the desert, where the mainstream residential real estate and hotel markets are still quite healthy, shows just how quickly the odds can change in even the most affluent markets if runaway speculation and overzealous development take hold.

Runaway speculation and overzealous development... Sounds a lot like the real estate market in general in the US, doesn't it?

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Dow and Monsanto ordered to pay damages over Agent Orange
AFP Thursday January 26, 4:28 PM

A South Korean court has ordered two US firms who manufactured Agent Orange to compensate thousands of South Korean Vietnam War veterans and their families.
Dow Chemical and Monsanto were ordered to pay compensation to 6,800 people in the first ruling in favor of sufferers from the effects of the defoliant used by US forces during the war, court officials said.

"The plaintiffs will get compensation varying from six million won (6,200 dollars) to 46 million won each," Seoul High Court senior judge Choi Byung-Deok told AFP.

Another official said that the total amount of damages and the proportion to be paid by each firm was unclear.

"It is hard to sum up the total amount in compensation because the damages vary case by case among the plaintiffs," the official said.

Three separate damages suits were filed against the two US firms on behalf of some 20,615 South Korean war veterans and their families. Two were upheld by the court while one case was dismissed.

South Korea sent some 300,000 troops to fight alongside the United States and southern Vietnamese forces during the 1965-1973 war.

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Indonesian man dies of bird flu
www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-26 19:52:05

JAKARTA, Jan. 26 (Xinhuanet) -- Local test results have shown that an Indonesian man died of the avian influenza after being treated at a hospital here, a spokesman from the hospital said Thursday.

The latest death could bring total bird flu fatalities to 15 in the country if confirmed by the World Health Organization-sanctioned laboratory in Hong Kong.
Mohamad Jasinto, 22, a resident in South Jakarta, died after being treated for six days at the Sulianti Saroso Hospital for developing bird flu symptoms, hospital spokesman Dr. Ilham Patu told Xinhua over telephone.

"The man was a market vendor who admitted that his work place was located near poultry shops. There is a poultry farming in his neighborhood too," he said.

The hospital, which is specialized in infectious disease, has sent the blood sample to the Hong Kong laboratory for confirmation, he added.

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Epidemic of crippling disease spreads in Reunion
AFP Jan 26, 2006

SAINT-DENIS-DE-LA REUNION - An epidemic of a crippling and incurable mosquito-borne disease has continued to spread throughout the Indian Ocean island of Réunion, with thousands of new cases reported, a health official said Thursday.

Only in the last week more than 5,600 new cases were reported, taking the total number of people infected by "chikungunya" to 22,167 on the French-ruled island since the beginning of the epidemic last March, said Gilles Brucker, director of a government health-monitoring institute.
"We should expect that the number of cases will pass 30,000," Brucker said.

Chikungunya is Swahili for "that which bends up" and refers to the stooped posture of those afflicted by the non-fatal disease for which there is no known vaccine or cure.

The disease is "very painful, very crippling for certain persons" and could be "potentially serious for weak and vulnerable patients," Brucker said.

In several death certificates issued since the beginning of the month, the disease was "mentioned as a possible cause of the death," he added.

Local authorities have decided to postpone for one week students' return to high schools and colleges, initially planned for next Monday after the main summer holiday, in order to decontaminate schools.

Mayors throughout the island should decide later on Thursday if the return of primary school students should also be adjourned.

Authorities on the volcanic island east of Madagascar, a French overseas department with a population of 760,000 and a popular holiday destination, have earmarked EUR 600,000 euros to fight the outbreak, including special mosquito-eradication brigades.

Top health ministry official Didier Houssain, accompanying Brucker, called for measures to be stepped up against mosquitoes, particularly by eliminating some 250 unauthorised garbage dumps on the island and installing modern incinerators.

The number of "commandos" tasked to intervene in the field will be increased from 11 to 20, and a special free telephone number for tourists introduced.

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Two Large Lakes Discovered Under Antarctic Ice
LiveScience.com Wed Jan 25, 10:00 PM ET

Antarctica has at least 145 small lakes buried under its ice and one large one called Vostok. Now scientists have found the second and third largest known bodies of subsurface liquid water there.

Exotic ecosystems frozen in time may thrive in the lakes, untouched for 35 million years, scientists said.
Vostok has a surface area of 5,400 square miles. One of the newfound lakes measures 770 square miles in size, or roughly the size of Rhode Island. The other is about 620 square miles.

Both sit under more than 2 miles of ice and are about a half-mile deep based on observed differences in gravity.

"Over the lakes, the pull of gravity is much weaker, so we know there must be a big hole down there," said Robin Bell, a geophysicist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

The largest of the two is named 90ºE for its location. The other is called Sovetskaya Lake.

The discoveries will be detailed in the February issue of the journal Geophysical Review Letters.

Bell and Michael Studinger combined data from ice-penetrating radar, gravity surveys, satellite images, laser altimetry and records of a Soviet Antarctic Expedition that unknowingly traversed the lakes in 1958-1959.

The shorelines of the lakes appeared in satellite images as perturbations in the surface. Also, the ice basically floats on the lakes and has slight depressions visible in radar images.

The combination of heat from below and a thick layer of insulating ice above keeps the water temperature at the top of both lakes at a balmy 28.4 degrees Fahrenheit, the researchers say, despite outdoor temperatures that can drop to –112 in winter.

The lakes are bounded by faults, Bell said, and the evidence suggests there is circulation and that they receive flows of nutrients that could support unique ecosystems.

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Germany's oaks 'could die out'
Luke Harding in Berlin Thursday January 26, 2006 The Guardian

Germany's once magnificent forests are feeling the effects of climate change, with one in every two oak trees officially sick, researchers said yesterday. A report says the state of the nation's forests has improved marginally since last year but that oaks are dying off at an alarming rate.

One in two of all Germany's oak trees is thinning. In Baden-Württemberg three-quarters of the oaks are showing damage. The phenomenon of Waldsterben, or forest death, is nothing new, but the latest annual report by Germany's agriculture ministry is likely to raise fears that pollution and climate change are taking a heavy toll. "The forest has recovered a bit [since 2004]. But there is still no clear recognisable trend," said Peter Paziorek, the junior agriculture minister.
Yesterday environmental campaigners urged the German government to do more to cut CO2 emissions. German trees were in bad shape, they said, because of freak weather in 2002 and 2003, and because of air pollution; over the past 30 years they had suffered badly because of climate change. "It isn't getting any better," said Rüdiger Rosenthal, of Germany's Friends of the Earth. "The worst affected trees are oaks. They can live for up to 1,000 years. This makes them vulnerable."

The trees are not equally affected: beech has recovered from the scorching summer of two years ago, and most pine trees are still healthy, the report says. But overall, nearly a third of all German forests are damaged. Mr Rosenthal said: "Over the next two decades the oak could die out completely."

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Astronomers find Earth lookalike
Ian Sample Thursday January 26, 2006 The Guardian

Twenty thousand light years away, in the constellation of Sagittarius near the centre of the Milky Way, a frigid rock is orbiting a small star. Although the distant world is probably too cold ever to support life, scientists believe it is the most Earth-like planet to be discovered beyond our solar system.

Known to astronomers as OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, the planet, described in Nature today, is five times as dense as Earth and orbits its sun at three times the distance Earth is from our own star, leaving surface temperatures at a frosty -220C.
The discovery was hailed by scientists not so much as a potential home from home, but as a success for a new planet-hunting technique called gravitational microlensing.

The method uses a network of telescopes to watch for changes in light from distant stars. If a planet moves between a star and a telescope on Earth, its gravity bends the light and magnifies it.

Michael Turner of the US National Science Foundation, said: "The team has discovered the most Earth-like planet yet."

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Ark's Quantum Quirks
SOTT January 26, 2006

Ark

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