Signs of the Times Printer Friendly Edition for Tue, 28 Mar 2006

IMUS: I mean, he deserves some respect, he's the president, and it was an insulting way she asked the question.

KELLY O'DONNELL (NBC News White House correspondent): Well, that was no surprise for the president, because, as I'm sure you know, Ms. Thomas, who asks a question of [White House press secretary] Scott McClellan every single day, and the tone of her questions is often much the same as she asked the president. Although, she hasn't asked Mr. Bush a question, she's not been called on in a few years. And, I'm told from folks here, in our press corps, that she was not surprised that he did, in fact, call on her because she recently made an appearance that the president liked at the Gridiron Club, which is an old prestigious Washington club.

Now word comes that “mentally ill” troops are being
sent back to Iraq. [See: Some
troops headed back to Iraq are mentally ill] This article refers to “a
little-discussed truth fraught with implications,” but the implications
discussed all have to do with the effects on the soldiers being returned, and
these soldiers’ “effectiveness in combat.” In many instances,
being returned to combat, and to a state of constant tension, will exacerbate
the soldier’s problems, the article -- correctly -- suggests.

The article indicates that the military is putting pressure on
mental health professionals treating these soldiers to minimize the extent
of their problems and to declare them fit for return to Iraq and combat. For
example, some Army doctors are reporting that they are being told to diagnose
combat-stress reaction instead of the more serious post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD). Further, the article reports that professionals treating emotionally
disturbed soldiers “are under pressure” to approve their redeployment
to Iraq. I have written about the moral issues involved in mental health treatment
of soldiers in Iraq [To
Heal or To Patch: Military Mental Health Workers in Iraq]. The issues are
similar for those treating the soldiers when they return if the professionals
play any role in deciding whether or not the soldiers should return to combat.
The mental health professionals are not in a position to make unbiased judgments
as to a soldier’s readiness to return to combat when their own status
and advancement in the military may depend upon how they exercise that judgment.

One “implication” not even mentioned in the
article is that sending “mentally ill” soldiers back into
combat puts not only the soldiers’ own mental health at risk, but endangers
Iraqis as well. What is the quality of decision-making by highly stressed soldiers,
whether they suffer from “PTSD” or only from “combat-stress
reaction”? These soldiers are armed with lethal weapons and are often
in a position to make split-second life-or-death decisions. After all, “stress” is
often used as a defense when other armed authorities, such as police, are caught
engaging in abusive or even murderous behavior. Surely the effects of stress
can only be magnified on soldiers who spend a year or more being assigned to
a country where they can never feel entirely safe.

We know from the memoirs of US soldiers in Iraq how alienated
from Iraqis they feel. Thus, Colby Buzzell, in his My War: Killing Time in
Iraq describes being “hit with the realization that I’m on the
other side of the planet far away from home, and that I’m a stranger
in a really strange land” (p. 297).

These strangers feel so alienated from Iraqis that they have
a number of names for them. As Kayla Williams tells us in Love My Rifle More
Than You: Young and Female in the US Army:

“[W]e called them hajjis, but we also called them sadiqis… or
habibis…. We called them towelheads. Ragheads. Camel jockeys. The fucking
locals. Words that didn’t see our enemy as people – as somebody’s
father or son or brother or uncle” (p. 200; emphasis in original).

Of course, it isn’t only “the enemy” that terms
like these describe, and who aren't seen as people. Ordinary Iraqis of all
stripes are characterized as the “hajjis” or “the fucking
locals.”

Not surprisingly, in such a climate of alienation combined with
pervasive never-ending danger, even mentally “healthy” soldiers
have emotional difficulties. For example, Jason Christopher Hartley, author
of the memoir Just Another Soldier: A Year on the Ground in Iraq, describes
attempting to refuse leave:

“[I]n all honesty, I did it because I didn’t want
to leave Iraq. One of the ways to cope with being in combat is to go crazy
just a tiny bit and learn to enjoy the work… I was afraid that if I
left, it would be difficult to get back into the ‘combat is fun’ way
of thinking when I returned” (p. 279).

If Hartley, by all indications a mentally healthy soldier, was
only able to survive by going a bit crazy and, in his case, cultivating a love
of combat, what happens to an emotionally disturbed soldier returned to that
crazy-making environment? Does (s)he cower in terror, perhaps shooting at stimuli
little more dangerous than his or her shadow, even if those stimuli happen
to be Iraqi civilians? Or does (s)he perhaps cultivate an even greater love
for combat, shooting at Iraqis as an expression of a game necessary to transform
the pervasive fear? Undoubtedly each of these paths is chosen by some. Either
possibility will increase the odds of adding to the massive Iraqi civilian
casualties being generated by this war of occupation, estimated at about 100,000
in September 2004 and considerably higher at this point. [See my 100,000
Iraqis Dead: Should We Believe It? and When
Promoting Truth Obscures the Truth: More on Iraqi Body Count and Iraqi Deaths and
Les Roberts: The
Iraq War: Do Iraqi Civilian Casualties Matter?]

Soldiers in Iraq routinely make split-second decisions whether
to shoot or not, such as at the innumerable checkpoints or
when on convoy.
We already know from a study published in the July 1, 2004 New England Journal
of Medicine [Combat
Duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mental Health Problems, and Barriers to Care:
see their Table 2] that 14% of Army soldiers and 28% of Marines returning from
Iraq reported “being responsible for the death of a noncombatant.” To
deploy mentally unstable soldiers [not to mention those with drug or alcohol
problems] likely will increase these horrific numbers. This policy of returning
potentially unstable soldiers to combat in Iraq is, thus, not only a serious
threat to the mental health of the soldiers, but a threat to occupied Iraqis.
This policy, already reprehensible because of the danger it poses to the long-term
mental health of the US troops, is also in its reckless disregard for Iraqi
lives yet another example of the innumerable war crimes being committed against
the Iraqi people.

Comment on this Article

That in a nutshell is Jonathan Klein's answer to the many questions and criticisms posed in this space recently by me and you concerning CNN's coverage of the ongoing war in Iraq.

To the president of CNN/US, we're "naive, highly partisan extremists," a "definite minority out on the fringe" whose tone is strident but whose criticism is insubstantial, and clearly out of step with "the vast majority of Americans who simply do not feel" the way we do.

After a lengthy negotiation with CNN publicists (see sidebar) Klein and I finally spoke over the phone last week. While he declined to comment on CNN's coverage of the start of the war, "since I didn't start working at CNN until December 2004," he was more forthcoming about his positive view of CNN's current war coverage, as well as his dismissive take on anti-war critics of the mainstream media in general, and CNN in particular.

"We're being very aggressive in covering the war at the moment," Klein began. "We have lots of people with lots of expertise on the ground in Baghdad now. Generally, I think we're doing a good job of daily reporting, and we also have the capacity to do in-depth reporting and documentaries. In fact we've aired five or six docs and specials already, including an hourlong look at WMD, two hours on how war is going, and so forth."

While praising his own, Klein was critical of his critics, saying, "It's naive for otherwise intelligent people to assume CNN has any role other than reporting the facts. They may oppose the war, but the conduct of the war is simply not up to CNN.

"Who is the 'anti-war crowd?'" Klein asked rhetorically. "Many people now oppose the war, but how many take such an extreme position vis-a-vis the mainstream media and complain about the war coverage? It's one thing to be opposed to the war, it's another to affix blame to the media. In any event, whether that is a valid point of view or not, it's certainly not shared by the majority of Americans."

As a case in point, Klein referred to questions raised about coverage of the so-called "Downing Street memo," which famously revealed the details of a meeting between President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair that concerned Bush's intent to "fix" intelligence and facts in order to justify an eventual attack on Iraq. As I had noted in a question to Klein (question 10), the bombshell memo was "ignored by mainstream media until it became too embarrassing to suppress."

To Klein, however, the coverage of the memo is a "good example" of what CNN is doing right. "The Downing Street memo was reported on CNN," he said. "Perhaps not as often as certain partisan extremists would have liked it to be but it certainly was not ignored by us or by the mainstream media in general. "It's true the memo was also widely covered by alternative media," he added. "So does it matter if it was or was not covered enough by the mainstream to satisfy a highly partisan crowd? The great thing about the new media landscape is that people can get information if they need it. Thank God there is lots of opportunity now to get more information from sources other than the mainstream."

Can CNN do a better job of reporting on the war? "Of course we could do all sorts of things better," he said. "We want to add more depth and more analysis, for example -- NPR is great at that -- and we also want more diversity, because that makes us more interesting to watch."

When challenged about the lack of diversity (question 2) among his on-air war analysts, however, Klein averred, "Our list of analysts is very good. Yes, many have worked in government in the past, but that just means they have inside knowledge. And our top terrorism analyst Peter Bergen is certainly very independent.

"Look, an enormous amount of data comes through CNN on a daily basis -- video, audio, texts, graphics, you name it -- and just keeping up with it all is a tough job," he continued. "We're committed to getting better, but to do so we have to tune out the constant din of criticism from partisans on both sides and replace it with a good calibration."

I asked Klein to comment on criticism (question 3) leveled by star CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour at her own network for its coverage of the still-missing WMD. (While serving as executive vice president of CBS News from early 1996 through 1998, he brought Amanpour to 60 Minutes as a contributor.)

"I've known her a long time, I respect her a lot, and I debriefed her on how we could cover the war better when I first took this job," Klein revealed. He refused to share any details of what he oddly termed a "private conversation" but claimed "you can already see the results on air with better coverage "

I returned to the topic of viewer dissatisfaction with that coverage, but Klein again gave no quarter.

"Look, that's who you hear from," he told me. "An extreme wing gives statements of opinion to you. But I hear from both the left and the right, and the tone of the criticism is quite similar -- and not substantial. I get the same sort of questions from extremists on both sides, and I can't get engaged in that conversation. I'm not here to please the fringes."

Does he not see any sign of mainstream media complicity in its coverage of the run-up to and current conduct of the disastrous war in Iraq?

"That's what you're disposed to see," he countered. "What I see is that we go out in a very dangerous situation and do great reporting with experienced and knowledgeable correspondents like Christian, Nic Robertson and many others

"The vast majority of Americans do not feel the way your readers do, and do not express those feelings to us," he stated flatly. "In fact the number of people watching CNN today is higher than 10 years ago. There's no mass disaffection with either CNN or the MSM. The reality is that every week 66 million American get their news from watching CNN -- more than any other news network -- so we must be satisfying their needs for information. But we can't cover everything, and we can't please every fraction of the audience all the time.

"You're talking about a highly partisan and definitely minority point of view," the CNN/US president reiterated. "It's really just a certain segment of extremists who don't see their particular point of view reflected enough. And as I said, we hear similar complaints from extreme poles of both right and left."

To Klein, at least, the situation is eminently clear: "We're putting considerable resources into the story, but somehow it's still not enough to satisfy certain people -- even though we do more than anyone else! These people are definitely on the fringe."

Comment on this Article

Christian Zionism is a theology that supports a political regime based on apartheid and discrimination - yet millions of people in the US express their support for it. How dangerous is it given the US role in the Middle East?

"Only one nation, Israel, stands between ... terrorist aggression and the complete decline of the United States as a democratic world power... If Israel falls, the United States can no longer remain a democracy. ...Arab money is being used to control and influence major U.S. Corporations, making it economically more and more difficult for the United States to stand against world terrorism."[1]

While many would not necessarily go as far as Mike Evans, it is nevertheless assumed by a large proportion of Christians in Britain and America that it is their biblical responsibility to support the State of Israel and that God's blessing on them is conditional on their blessing Israel. Dale Crowley, a Washington based religious broadcaster, describes this movement as the 'fastest growing cult in America':

'It's not composed of "crazies" so much as mainstream, middle to upper-middle class Americans. They give millions of dollars each week � to the TV evangelists who expound the fundamentals of the cult. They read Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye. They have one goal: to facilitate God's hand to waft them up to heaven free from all the trouble, from where they will watch Armageddon and the destruction of planet earth.'[2]

Christian Zionism is essentially Christian support for Zionism. Zionism is a political system based on ethnic exclusivity giving Jews preferential political rights which are denied to Palestinians. The United Nations has defined Zionism as a form of racism and apartheid. Nevertheless, in the words of Grace Halsell the essential message of the Christian Zionist is this: "every act taken by Israel is orchestrated by God, and should be condoned, supported, and even praised by the rest of us."[3]

Estimates as to the size of the movement as a whole vary considerably. While critics like Crowley claim, 'At least one out of every 10 Americans is a devotee', that is between '25 to 30 million', Christian Zionists such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell claim weekly access to 100 million sympathetic Americans.[4] What ever the true figure, all are agreed, that number that is growing in size and influence.[5] They are led by 80,000 fundamentalist pastors and clergy, their views disseminated by 1,000 local Christian radio stations as well as 100 Christian TV stations.[6] Doug Kreiger lists over 250 pro-Israeli organisations founded in the 1980s alone.[7]

The Unity Coalition for Israel, for example, which is the largest, brings together 200 different Jewish and Christian Zionist organisations including the International Christian Embassy, Christian Friends of Israel and Bridges for Peace. They claim a support base of 40 million active members.[8] These organisations make up a broad coalition which not only helps keep Sharon's racist government in power and is also, as we shall see, helping to shape the aggressive stance of US foreign policy in the Middle East today.
The rise of contemporary Christian Zionism can be traced to the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 which came to be seen as the most significant fulfilment of biblical prophecy,[9] indeed for many, 'the greatest piece of prophetic news that we have had in the 20th Century.'[10] Following the Six Day War of 1967, Billy Graham's father-in-law Nelson Bell, then editor of Christianity Today, expressed the sentiments of many American evangelicals when, in an editorial for the magazine he wrote, 'for the first time in more than 2,000 years Jerusalem is now completely in the hands of the Jews gives a student of the Bible a thrill and a renewed faith in the accuracy and validity of the Bible.'[11]

In 1976 a series of events brought Christian Zionism to the forefront of US mainstream politics. Jimmy Carter was elected as the 'born again' President drawing the support of the evangelical right. In Israel, Menachem Begin and the right wing Likud Party came to power the following year. A tripartite coalition slowly emerged between the political Right, evangelicals and the Jewish lobby. In 1978, Jimmy Carter acknowledged how his own pro-Zionist beliefs had influenced his Middle East policy.[12] In a speech, he described the State of Israel as, 'a return at last, to the biblical land from which the Jews were driven so many hundreds of years ago ... The establishment of the nation of Israel is the fulfilment of biblical prophecy and the very essence of its fulfilment.'[13] However, when Carter vacillated over the aggressive Likud settlement programme and proposed the creation of a Palestinian homeland, he alienated the pro-Israeli coalition of Jews and evangelicals who switched their support to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 elections. Reagan's election as President gave a considerable boost to the Christian Zionist cause. Don Wagner shows, 'The election of Ronald Reagan ushered in not only the most pro-Israel administration in history but gave several Christian Zionists prominent political posts. In addition to the President, those who subscribed to a futurist premillennial theology and Christian Zionism included Attorney General Ed Meese, Secretary of Defence Casper Weinberger, and Secretary of the Interior James Watt.'[14]

'White House Seminars' became a regular feature of Reagan's administration bringing bringing Christian Zionists like Jerry Falwell, Mike Evans and Hal Lindsey into direct personal contact with national and Congressional leaders. In 1982, for instance, Reagan invited Falwell to give a briefing to the National Security Council on the possibility of a nuclear war with Russia.[15] Hal Lindsey also claims Reagan invited him to speak on the subject of war with Russia to Pentagon officials.[16] In a personal conversation reported in the Washington Post two years later in April 1984, Reagan elaborated on his own personal convictions to Tom Dine, one of Israel's chief lobbyists working for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC): 'You know, I turn back to the ancient prophets in the Old Testament and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find myself wondering if - if we're the generation that is going to see that come about. I don't know if you've noted any of these prophecies lately, but believe me they certainly describe the times we're going through.'[17]

While George Bush Snr., Bill Clinton and George W. Bush do not appear to have shared the same dispensational presuppositions of either Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan, they nevertheless have maintained, however reluctantly, the strong pro-Zionist position of their predecessors.[18] This is largely due to the influence of the Zionist lobby considered by many to be the most powerful in the United States.[19] Aluf Ben, a spokesman for Shimon Peres, was quoted in the mass-circulation Tel Aviv daily Ha'aretz as claiming "60 percent of all financial help to Democrats came from Jewish sources."[20] According to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, "Most pro-Israel fund-raisers estimate that at least 60 to 90 percent of Democratic campaign funding comes from Jewish sources, which also supply perhaps 40 percent of Republican funding."[21] Perhaps this is why it is hard to find a single elected American politician willing to criticise Israel publicly.

Three Christian leaders, in particular, each given a White House platform by Reagan, have probably achieved more than any others in the last thirty years to ensure American foreign policy remains pro-Zionist. They are, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Hal Lindsey. became an avid supporter of the Zionist State. Grace Halsell describes Falwell's conversion:

'The stunning Israeli victory made a big impact not only on Falwell, but on a lot of Americans ... Remember that in 1967, the United States was mired in the Vietnam War. Many felt a sense of defeat, helplessness and discouragement. As Americans, we were made acutely aware of our own diminished authority, of no longer being able to police the world or perhaps even our own neighborhoods ... Many Americans, including Falwell, turned worshipful glances toward Israel, which they viewed as militarily strong and invincible. They gave their unstinting approval to the Israeli take-over of Arab lands because they perceived this conquest as power and righteousness ... Macho or muscular Christians such as Falwell credited Israeli General Moshe Dayan with this victory over Arab forces and termed him the Miracle Man of the Age, and the Pentagon invited him to visit Vietnam and tell us how to win that war.'[22]

In 1979, the same year Falwell founded Moral Majority, the Israeli government gave Falwell a Lear jet to assist him in his advocacy of Israel. A year later in 1980, Falwell also became the first Gentile to be awarded the Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky medal for Zionist excellence by Israel's Prime Minister, Menachem Begin. Jabotinsky was the founder of Revisionist Zionism and held that Jews had a divine mandate to occupy and settle 'on both sides of the Jordan River' and were not accountable to international law.[23] When Israel bombed Iraq's nuclear plant in 1981, Begin phoned Falwell before he called Reagan. He called to ask Falwell to 'explain to the Christian public the reasons for the bombing.'[24] During the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Falwell similarly defended Israel's actions:

'When the massacres occurred at the two Palestinian camps, Falwell just mimicked the Israeli line: "The Israelis were not involved." And even when The New York Times was giving eyewitness accounts of Israeli flares sent up to help the Phalangists go into the camp, Falwell was saying, "That's just propaganda".'[25]

In March 1985, Falwell spoke to the conservative Rabbinical Assembly in Miami and pledged to 'mobilize 70 million conservative Christians for Israel.'[26] In January 1998, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington, his first meeting was with Jerry Falwell and with The National Unity Coalition for Israel, a large gathering of more than 500 fundamentalist Christian leaders, rather than with President Clinton. According to Donald Wagner, the crowd hailed Netanyahu as 'the Ronald Reagan of Israel.' This time Falwell promised to contact 200,000 pastors and church leaders who receive his National Liberty Journal[27] and ask them to 'tell President Clinton to refrain from putting pressure on Israel' to comply with the Oslo accords.[28] In an interview with The Washington Post in 1999, Falwell described the West Bank as 'an integral part of Israel.' Pressing Israel to withdraw, he added, 'would be like asking America to give Texas to Mexico, to bring about a good relationship. It's ridiculous.'[29] In 2000, Falwell revived Moral Majority under the name People of Faith 2000, 'a movement to reclaim America as one nation under God' and which also takes a strong pro-Israeli stance.[30] Falwell has succeeded, probably better than any other American Christian leader, to ensure his followers recognise that their Christian duty to God involves providing unconditional support for the State of Israel.

While Jerry Falwell may be one of the most influential Christian Zionists, he is also a figurehead, along with Pat Robertson, for a much wider alliance of over 150 influential fundamentalist Christian leaders including Oral Roberts, Mike Evans, Tim LaHaye, Kenneth Copeland, Paul Crouch, Ed McAteer, Jim Bakker, Franklin Graham, James Dobson, Chuck Missler and Jimmy Swaggart who have all taken a pro-Zionist stance in their writings or broadcasts.[31] These Christian leaders and their organisations have regular access to over 100 million Christians, more than 100,000 pastors and combined budgets of well in excess of $300 million per annum. They form a broad and immensely powerful coalition which is both shaping and driving US foreign policy on the Middle East as well as Christian support for Israel today.

The Historical Development of Christian Zionism

If you want to explore in more detail the historical roots or the theological basis of the movement, check out the bookstore for some helpful resources.

Instead, I want to concentrate now on six aspects of the political agenda of the Christian Zionist movement and show why Christian Zionists are implacably opposed to the peace process in the Middle East. Indeed I want to show how they may be contributing to the very holocaust in the Middle East which they predict.

The Political Agenda of Christian Zionism

We are going to examine six ways in which Christian Zionist theology has been translated into political action: This outline illustrates the correlation between the movements distinctive doctrines and their political agenda.

Doctrine	Practice
Chosen People	Standing with Israel
Restorationism	Facilitating the Aliyah Programme
Eretz Israel	Supporting West Bank Settlements
Jerusalem	Lobbying for International Recognition
Temple	Funding the Rebuilding of the Temple
The Future	Opposing Peace & Hastening Armageddon

Lets consider each one at a time.

1. The Chosen People : Supporting Israeli Colonialism

The conviction that the Jewish people remain God's 'chosen people' in some way separate from the Church, is deeply rooted in Christian Zionism. A recent Christianity Today survey of evangelical opinion about Israel gives an indication of the strength of Christian Zionism in America. The survey revealed that 24% believe 'the biblical mandate for Christians is to support the State of Israel.'[32] This is expressed in a variety of ways:

1.1 Standing with Israel

Following the Six Day War in 1967, apart from the support given by the United States government, Israel has been largely isolated within the international community. Hal Lindsey laments: 'Up to the time of the 1991 Madrid Conference, the Arabs were "called upon" to "comply", "desist", "refrain" etc. four times. Israel was "demanded", "ordered", etc. to do General Assembly bidding three hundred and five times. The UN voted six hundred and five resolutions between its inception and the Gulf War. Four hundred and twenty nine of those resolutions, or, sixty-two percent of the total of the UN's resolutions were against Israel or its interests.'[33]

Citing Isaiah 40, Christian Zionists see their role to, 'comfort, Israel.' So for example, in October 2000, just days after Ariel Sharon's provocative visit to the Haram Al-Sharif, which was deliberately timed to undermine the government of Barak for negotiating with Arafat over a shared Jerusalem,[34] and sparking the second intifada, an advertisement appeared in the New York Times entitled 'Open Letter to Evangelical Christians from Jews for Jesus.' In it they called upon evangelicals to show solidarity with the State of Israel at this critical time: 'Now is the time to stand with Israel. Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, our hearts are heavy as we watch the images of violence and bloodshed in the Middle East ... Christian friends, "The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable" (Romans 11:29). So must our support for the survival of Israel in this dark hour be irrevocable. Now is the time for Christians to stand by Israel.'[35]

1.2 The Israeli Lobby on Capitol Hill

Until the 1980s, US Middle East policy was largely peripheral to the wider global threat posed by Soviet Communism. The protection of Western Europe through NATO was a higher priority. The collapse of Communism, however, created a power vacuum in the Middle East which the US has filled. Following the Gulf War to liberate Kuwait and then more recently, Afghanistan from the Taliban then Iraq from the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein, the US has significantly increased its influence in the Middle East. Many contend that US foreign policy has become skewed through the disproportionate influence of the Zionist lobby. Michael Lind, the political analyst summarises the ways in which the Israeli lobby has distorted US foreign policy: 'Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, enabled by US weapons and money, inflames anti-American attitudes in Arab and Muslim countries. The expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land makes a mockery of the US commitment to self-determination for Kosovo, East Timor and Tibet. Beyond the region, US policy on nuclear weapons proliferation is undermined by the double standard that has led it to ignore Israel's nuclear programme while condemning those of India and Pakistan.'[36]

The Christian Right came to shape US foreign policy largely through the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. His victory over Jimmy Carter gave a considerable boost to the Christian Zionist cause. His election, 'ushered in not only the most pro-Israel administration in history but gave several Christian Zionists prominent political posts.' White House seminars became a regular feature of Reagan's administration bringing leading Christian Zionists like Jerry Falwell, Mike Evans and Hal Lindsey into personal contact with national and congressional leaders. In the same year, the International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem, was founded with the purpose of coordinating 'direct political lobbying activities in cooperation with the Israeli government.'[37] Along with other organisations making up the Unity Coalition for Israel, their principal strategy is to lobby the US media and political establishment, to challenge what they term 'disinformation and propaganda' and to express 'the truth about Israel.'

The power of the pro-Israeli lobby ensures Israel continues to receive between 3-8 billion dollars annually from the US in grants, loans and subsidies and military assistance. This power can be gauged by the fact that George Bush Snr. was the last US President to criticise Israel in public. During the Gulf War, he enraged the Israeli lobby by pressurising Israel not to retaliate against Iraqi attacks and promised the Arab coalition partners that he would deal with the Palestinian issue. In September 1991, he complained that, 'there are 1,000 lobbyists up on the Hill today lobbying Congress for loan guarantees for Israel and I'm one lonely little guy down here asking Congress to delay its consideration of loan guarantees for 120 days.'[38] Lind points out that the pro-Israeli lobby was also responsible for encouraging, 'the greatest abuse of the Presidential pardon power in American history' when Bill Clinton, on his last day in office, controversially pardoned Mark Rich, the fugitive billionaire on the FBI's 'Most Wanted' list. In a New York Times article in February 2001, Clinton explained that he had done it for Israel:

'Many present and former high-ranking Israeli officials of both major political parties and leaders of Jewish communities in America and Europe urged the pardon of Mr Rich because of his contributions and services to Israeli charitable causes'[39]

The pro-Israeli lobby is also accused of involvement in the selection, appointing and firing of US government officials and appointees.[40] In 1980, the former US ambassador to Qatar, Andrew Killgore, writing in The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, gave this critique of the Israeli lobby: 'It is wrong and perverse for fanatical elements within the two and a half percent of our population who are Jewish to hold Congress hostage� America must regard the Israeli progression from penetration to direction of US foreign policy as the work of a master criminal.'[41]

Christian Zionists have also been influential in forging a closer relationship with Israel by facilitating solidarity tours to the Holy Land.

1.3 Solidarity Tours to Israel

Since 1967, following the capture of most of the important biblical sites associated with pilgrimages from Jordan and Syria, Israel has systematically exploited what has been described as a lucrative 'touristic gold mine',[42] making tourism a tool of propaganda.[43] Israel's greatest success, however, has been to enlist American evangelical leaders such as Pat Boone and Jerry Falwell as allies in promoting pro-Israeli solidarity tours. For example, Falwell's 'Friendship Tours' to Israel include not only meetings with top Israeli government and military officials but also, .....On-site tour of modern Israeli battlefields... Official visit to an Israeli defence installation... strategic military positions, plus experience first hand the battle Israel faces as a nation.[44]

Christian Zionists are not, however, content to support the State of Israel politically and financially. They are also active in persuading Jews to emigrate to Israel and fulfil their destiny.

2. Restorationism : Facilitating Aliyah from Russia and Eastern Europe

Christian Zionists are convinced that it is God's will for the Jewish people to return to Israel since it was given in perpetuity to the descendants of Abraham. With the fall of Communism in the Former Soviet Union (FSU) and Eastern Europe, Christians Zionists have become increasingly active in facilitating Jewish �migr�s to make aliyah.[45]

Since 1980, a coalition of Christian Zionist agencies has taken the initiative in encouraging Jewish people to emigrate to Israel, seeing this as the fulfilment of prophecy. Exobus was probably the first Christian Zionist agency to turn the doctrine of Restorationism into a reality and assist Jews in the former Soviet Union (FSU) to make aliyah. Founded in 1984 they have assisted over 56,000 Jewish people to emigrate to Israel in close cooperation with the Jewish Agency. Exobus is also probably the largest Christian agency facilitating aliyah, comprising 80 team members, drawn from 13 countries and operating 40 vehicles transporting approximately 1,200 Jews overland from 16 different bases in the FSU each month.[46]

Since 1991, the ICEJ has also paid for the transportation of another 40,000 immigrants, 15,000 of whom were taken to Israel on 51 ICEJ sponsored flights.[47] ICEJ Russian team members are especially active in the more remote regions of the FSU. They locate Jews, persuade them to emigrate, help them obtain documents to prove their Jewish origins, distribute humanitarian packages and pay for exit permits, passports, debt repayment, transport and accommodation.[48] Once in Israel, ICEJ assist �migr�s with their resettlement costs, providing food, clothing, blankets, kitchen and school supplies as well as medical equipment.[49] Believing the Jews remain God's chosen people and that God is bringing them back to the land, it is imperative that they claim all the land God promised their forefathers.

3. Eretz Israel : Sustaining the West Bank Settlements

For religious Zionism, Jewish and Christian, the legitimate borders of Israel are considerably larger than those presently disputed with Syria, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.

Christian involvement in the realisation of Eretz Israel includes the military justification of these enlarged borders; the political adoption of the settlement programme; and economic support for the settler movement. For example, David Allen Lewis, President of Christians United for Israel, puts the territorial claims of Israel into the wider context of the Middle East. He observes that, 'The Arabs already have 99.5 per cent of the land � this cannot be tolerated.'[50]

In response to international calls on Israel to give back the West Bank, Bridges for Peace asks the rhetorical question: 'What is so sacred about the June 4th, 1967 line?' Nothing, they argue since historically this was all part of biblical Israel and 'squarely won in defensive battles in 1967 and 1973.'[51] This conviction that the entire West Bank is integral to Israel has led many Christian Zionists to 'adopt' exclusive Jewish settlements to strengthen their claim to the land.

Adopting the Settlements

Since 1967, using various economic and tax incentives as well as appealing to biblical rhetoric, Israel has encouraged over 400,000 Jews to colonize East Jerusalem, The West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights through 190 illegal settlements.[52] Several Christian organisations have given their full support to this judaization of the Occupied Territories. The Christian Friends of Israeli Communities (CFOIC), founded by Ted Beckett in 1995, works in partnership with Christian Friends of Israel (CFI) and defines a settlement as: "A piece of land where brave, Jewish pioneers have taken up residence. In most cases it is a barren rocky hilltop set up to establish a Jewish community where none had existed for thousands of years.'[53]

So far, CFOIC claims 39 illegal Israeli settlements have been adopted by 50 churches in the USA, South Africa, Germany, Holland and the Philippines. For example, Ariel has been adopted by Faith Bible Chapel, Arvada, Colorado; Hevron by Greater Harvest, Tallahassee, Florida; Alei Zahav by Calvary Chapel, Nashville. To strengthen the settlers' claim to the land, CFOIC publish maps on their website showing the few areas of the West Bank given back to the Palestinian Authority. CFOIC lament what they describe as the 'partition' of the land as 'the reality of the "peace process" for those living in the Land G-d promised the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for ever!'[54] The reality is that Palestine is no more. The Separation Wall has cast in concrete the reality that all Palestinians can hope for are a few isolated and impoverished Bantustans similar to the Indian reservations of North America, although on the West Bank they are also denied the freedom of movement between them. Christian Zionists have not only made a clear stand in justifying Israel's illegal settlement of the West Bank. Their 'adoption' programme is also intended to be a means by which financial assistance as well as practical support for the settlers is delivered.

Funding the Settlers

Besides facilitating the emigration of Jews to Israel, several Christian Zionist agencies are active in funding illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank. During the 1991 ICEJ Feast of Tabernacles celebration, for example, representatives from 12 countries presented cheques to the Israeli Prime Minister, Yitshak Shamir, to help finance the settlements.[55] Through their 'Social Assistance Programme' ICEJ also provides financial support for projects in the Jewish settlements, including bullet proof vests to strengthen the resolve of settlers, living among what they describe as '3 million hostile Palestinians.'[56] ICEJ's 'Bulletproof Bus for Efrat' appeal is also raising $150,000 to purchase an armour plated bus to transport settlers in and out of the West Bank from Efrat settlement.[57] Bridges for Peace (BFP) has a similar scheme called 'Operation Ezra' which funds over 50 otherwise unsustainable projects such as the settlement farm, Sde Bar, near Beit Jala and the Herodian.[58] Integral to this strategy is Jerusalem and the progressive Judaizing, occupation and settlement of Arab East Jerusalem and the Old City. For Zionism there can be no compromise, since controlling Jerusalem has always been a barometer of their existence as a nation.

4. Jerusalem : Lobbying for International Recognition

At the core of Christian Zionist support for Israel's claim to the Occupied Territories lies the conviction that Jerusalem is, and must remain, the exclusive and undivided Jewish capital. Attempts to reach agreement in the wider Arab-Israeli conflict have so far stalled or stumbled over the final status of Jerusalem. Christian Zionists are strongly opposed to any proposal for joint sovereignty or the creation of a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem.

As early as February 1984, the ICEJ sent a representative, Richard Hellman, to testify before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in Washington to urge the US to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognise the city as the capital of Israel.[59] Jerry Falwell and the AIPAC lobby also spoke in favour of such a move. Senator Bob Dole later introduced legislation in the American Senate which required the US Embassy to be rebuilt in Jerusalem by 31 May 1999, and authorised $100 million for 'preliminary' spending.[60] In October 1995 he stated, 'Israel's capital is not on the table in the peace process, and moving the United States embassy to Jerusalem does nothing to prejudice the outcome of any future negotiations.'[61] Lamenting the failure of the US President to ratify the Senate decision, Dole commented: 'Jerusalem is today as it has been for three millennia the heart and soul of the Jewish people. It is also, and should remain forever, the eternal and undivided capital of the State of Israel ... The time has come ... to move beyond letters, expressions of support, and sense of the Congress resolutions. The time has come to enact legislation that will get the job done.'[62]

In 1997 the ICEJ also gave support to a full page advert placed in the New York Times entitled, 'Christians Call for a United Jerusalem.' It was signed by 10 evangelical leaders including Pat Robertson, chairman of Christian Broadcasting Network and President of the Christian Coalition; Oral Roberts, founder and chancellor of Oral Roberts University; Jerry Falwell, founder of Moral Majority; Ed McAteer, President of the Religious Roundtable; and David Allen Lewis, President of Christians United for Israel: 'We, the undersigned Christian spiritual leaders, communicating weekly to more than 100 million Christian Americans, are proud to join together in supporting the continued sovereignty of the State of Israel over the holy city of Jerusalem � we believe that Jerusalem, or any portion of it, shall not be negotiable in the peace process. Jerusalem must remain undivided as the eternal capital of the Jewish people.'[63]

Readers were invited to 'Join us in our holy mission.' 'The battle for Jerusalem has begun, and it is time for believers in Christ to support our Jewish brethren and the State of Israel. The time for unity with the Jewish people is now.'[64]

In 2002, Falwell controversially linked the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre with Israel's exclusive claim to Jerusalem. He called upon his supporters to petition the US President to 'Keep Jerusalem Free.'[65] Christian Zionists have therefore been resolute in their efforts to get the international community to recognise Jerusalem as the de facto capital of Israel. However, even more critical to a Christian Zionist reading of prophecy is the necessity for the Jewish Temple to be rebuilt.

5. The Temple : Identifying with Religious Zionism

Dispensational Christian Zionists, in particular, are convinced the Jewish Temple must be rebuilt because, based on their futurist eschatology from Daniel, the anti-Christ must desecrate it just prior to the return of Christ. David Brickner claims that the preparations for rebuilding the Temple began in 1967 with the capture of the Old City of Jerusalem.[66] Lindsey is equally sure that, 'right now, as you read this, preparations are being made to rebuild the Third Temple.'[67] Contemporary Christian Zionists are working to achieve this.

Promoting the Temple Mount Movement

Randall Price is the leading dispensational expert on the imminent plans to rebuild the Jewish Temple. In his 735 page The Coming Last Days Temple, he provides comprehensive details of all the Jewish organisations involved in attempts to seize the Temple Mount, destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock, rebuild the Jewish Temple and re-institute Temple worship, priesthood and sacrifices. These include the Temple Institute and Temple Mount Faithful.[68] Gershon Salomon is the controversial figurehead of the movement and founder of The Temple Faithful. Zhava Glaser, of Jews for Jesus, praises Salomon for his courage to talk about 'the most important subject in the Jewish religion.'Speaking as a guest of the ICEJ, at the Christian Zionist Congress in 1998, Salomon insisted:

'The mission of the present generation is to liberate the Temple Mount and to remove - I repeat, to remove - the defiling abomination there ... the Jewish people will not be stopped at the gates leading to the Temple Mount ... We will fly our Israeli flag over the Temple Mount, which will be minus its Dome of the Rock and its mosques and will have only our Israeli flag and our Temple. This is what our generation must accomplish.'[69]

In a London Times, interview Salomon insisted that the Islamic shrine must be destroyed: 'The Israeli Government must do it. We must have a war. There will be many nations against us but God will be our general. I am sure this is a test, that God is expecting us to move the Dome with no fear from other nations. The Messiah will not come by himself; we should bring Him by fighting.'[70] Since 1967 there have been over 100 armed assaults on the Haram Al-Sharif by Jewish militants, often led by rabbis. 'In no instance has any Israeli Prime Minister or chief rabbi criticized these assaults.'[71]

Facilitating the Temple Building Programme

In order to sustain a fully functioning Temple it is also necessary to identify, train and consecrate priests to serve in the Temple. According to the Book of Numbers, the ashes of a pure unblemished red heifer, itself previously offered by a ritually pure priest, must be mixed with water and sprinkled on both them and the Temple furniture. With the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD the ashes used in the ceremony were lost and the Jews of the Diaspora have therefore been ritually unclean ever since.

In 1998, however, Clyde Lott, a Pentecostal Mississippi rancher, formed Canaan Land Restoration of Israel, Inc. for the purpose of raising livestock suitable for Temple sacrifice.[72] According to Newsweek, in 1997, the first red heifer for 2000 years was born at the Kfar Hassidim kibbutz near Haifa and named 'Melody'.[73] Unfortunately she eventually grew white hairs on her tail and udder. Undaunted, Chaim Richman, an Orthodox rabbi and Clyde Lott, the Pentecostal cattleman, have teamed up to breed red heifers in the Jordan Valley, in the hope of producing a perfect specimen for sacrifice.[74]

The design and construction work, furnishings and utensils, the training of priests and breeding of sacrifices all require funds and in large measure, like the red heifer, these are being provided by Christian Zionists. According to Grace Halsell, Stanley Goldfoot raises up to $100 million a year for the Jerusalem Temple Foundation through American Christian TV and radio stations and evangelical churches.[75] 'Jewish longing for the Temple, Christian hopes for the Rapture, and Muslim paranoia about the destruction of the mosques [are being] stirred to an apocalyptic boil.'[76]

6. The Future : Opposing Peace and Hastening Armageddon

The US-Israeli Alliance

Jerry Falwell offers a simple explanation for the close relationship between America and Israel. God has been kind to America because 'America had been kind to the Jew.'[77] Gary Bauer, president of American Values, put it like this. "Terrorists don't understand why Israel and the United States are joined at the heart."[78] Mike Evans, founder and President of Lovers of Israel Inc. describes the special relationship between Israel and America: 'Only one nation, Israel, stands between ... terrorist aggression and the complete decline of the United States as a democratic world power ... Surely demonic pressure will endeavour to encourage her to betray Israel � Israel is the key to America's survival � As we stand with Israel, I believe we shall see God perform a mighty work in our day. God is going to bless America and Israel as well � If Israel falls, the United States can no longer remain a democracy.'[79]

For Christian Zionists such as Falwell and Evans, America is seen as the great redeemer, her super-power role in the world predicted in scripture[80] and providentially ordained.[81] The two nations of America and Israel are like Siamese twins perceived to be pitted against an evil world dominated by Communism and Islam both antithetical to the Judeo-Christian democratic values of America and Israel.[82]

Antipathy Toward Arabs

Ramon Bennett illustrates how such prejudices remain common today describing the modern Arab nations as 'barbarous'.[83] 'The customs of hospitality and generosity have changed little in 4,000 years,' he claims, 'nor have the customs of raiding (thieving, rustling), saving face or savagery.'[84] Bennett argues that the Arab 'is neither a vicious nor, usually, a calculating liar but a natural one.'[85]

Franklin Graham, President of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, made similar but unguarded remarks in an interview for the Charlotte Observer in 2000: 'The Arabs will not be happy until every Jew is dead. They hate the State of Israel. They all hate the Jews. God gave the land to the Jews. The Arabs will never accept that.'[86]

Hatred of Arabs is personified in attitudes toward Yasser Arafat. In February 1999, for example, Arafat was invited to attend the 47th annual Congress-sponsored National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. The breakfast is normally attended each year by more than 3,000 political and religious leaders but on this occasion Arafat's invitation generated considerable controversy. The Traditional Values Coalition, founded by Pat Robertson and representing 40,000 churches, urged congressmen to boycott the breakfast.[87] The ICEJ said that attending the breakfast with Arafat would be 'like praying with Satan himself.'[88] Despite considerable pressure from pro-Israeli groups the invitation was not withdrawn. It was left to the White House press secretary, Joe Lockhart, to defend the invitation. He lamented, 'it's done every year in the spirit of reconciliation. And it's unfortunate that there are some who don't fully understand the spirit of reconciliation and inclusion.'[89] But I'm afraid it gets worse�

Justifying the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
Frequently, defending Israeli security leads Christian Zionists to deny Palestinians the same basic human rights as Israelis. Some are even reluctant to acknowledge the existence of Palestinians as a distinct people. Dave Hunt is typical of those who equate Palestinians with the ancient Philistines, and use the term Palestinian in an entirely pejorative sense.

Central to the Middle East conflict today is the issue of the so-called Palestinian people... Palestinians? There never was a Palestinian people, nation, language, culture, or religion. The claim of descent from a Palestinian people who lived for thousands of years in a land called Palestine is a hoax!.[90]

Based on Hunt's logic presumably the same arguments could be used against the right to self-determination of citizens of the United States or indeed of several dozen nations founded in the 20th Century. The history of the persecution of the Jews illustrates how easily the denigration of an 'inferior' people or a denial of their existence as a distinct people can lead to the rationalizing of their eradication.

In May 2002, Dick Armey, the former Republican House Majority leader, made ground breaking news by justifying the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories. In an interview with Chris Matthews on CNBC on May 1st 2002, Armey stated that: 'Most of the people who now populate Israel were transported from all over the world to that land and they made it their home. The Palestinians can do the same and we are perfectly content to work with the Palestinians in doing that. We are not willing to sacrifice Israel for the notion of a Palestinian homeland � I'm content to have Israel grab the entire West Bank � There are many Arab nations that have many hundreds of thousands of acres of land, soil, and property and opportunity to create a Palestinian State.'[91]

Matthews gave Armey several opportunities to clarify that he was not advocating the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians from the West Bank, but Armey was unrepentant. When asked, 'Have you ever told George Bush, the President from your home State of Texas, that you think the Palestinians should get up and go and leave Palestine and that's the solution?', Armey replied, 'I'm probably telling him that right now � I am content to have Israel occupy that land that it now occupies and to have those people who have been aggressors against Israel retired to some other arena.'[92]

Armey's view that Palestinians should be 'retired' is only the latest in a series of calls in the mainstream US and UK media for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories.[93] While such racist attitudes among Christian Zionists toward Arabs are common, as are the stereotypes that Palestinians are terrorists, it is more especially Muslims who are demonised.

Demonising Islam

Anti-Arab and Islamaphobic sentiments have become even more widely tolerated since 11th September 2001. Such views have recently been described as a form of new 'McCarthyism'.[94] In February 2002, for example, Pat Robertson caused considerable controversy when he too described Islam as a violent religion bent on world domination. He also claimed American Muslims were forming terrorist cells in order to destroy the country. Robertson made the allegations on his Christian Broadcasting Network '700 Club.' After clips showing Muslims in America, the announcer, Lee Webb asked Robertson, 'As for the Muslim immigrants Pat, it makes you wonder, if they have such contempt for our foreign policy why they'd even want to live here?' Robertson replied: 'Well, as missionaries possibly to spread the doctrine of Islam ... I have taken issue with our esteemed President in regard to his stand in saying Islam is a peaceful religion. It's just not. And the Koran makes it very clear, if you see an infidel, you are to kill him � the fact is our immigration policies are now so skewed to the Middle East and away from Europe that we have introduced these people into our midst and undoubtedly there are terrorist cells all over them.'[95]

At the 2002 Southern Baptist Convention[96] held in Florida, the former national convention leader, the Rev. Jerry Vines, pastor of the 25,000 member First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, brought applause from several thousand participants of the pastors' conference when he described Muhammad as 'a demon-possessed paedophile'[97] Such antipathy toward Arabs, denigration of Palestinians and hatred of Islam invariably leads Christian Zionists to also oppose any peaceful resolution of the Arab Israeli conflict which might

require or coerce Israel to relinquish territory or compromise its security.

Opposing the Peace Process

While Christian Zionists endorse Israel's unilateral claim to the Occupied Territories, they oppose similar Palestinian aspirations to self determination since they believe the two are intrinsically incompatible. Christian Zionists have been most vociferous in opposing the Road Map to Peace initiative of the US government, UN, European Community and Russia. Hal Lindsey, for example lamented "I am heartbroken over the latest stage of the "road map to peace", describing it instead as a "Odyssey to Holocaust"[98] He went on to rebuke the US president.

"I was sickened to watch a well-meaning Christian American president talk incessantly about his vision for a Palestinian state and Jewish state living side by side in peace."[99] At the Interfaith Zionist Leadership Summit, held in Washington May 2003, Jewish and Christian Zionist leaders met to consider how to turn the "road map" into a road-block. Gary Bauer, called the president's initiative "a Satanic roadmap".[100] To many Christian Zionists, peace talks are not only a waste of time, they demonstrate a rebellious defiance toward God's plans. Such infallible certitudes lead some Christian Zionists to anathematise those who do not share their presuppositions.

Forcing God's Hand

Christian Zionists often attempt to silence critics with the threat of divine retribution. For example, recently Hal Lindsey said this,

"My great fear is that President Bush is ignorantly leading the United States into God's judgment. For God warns that He will judge all nations that have contributed to keeping Israel from living in the land He sovereignly gave them."[101]

Christians are left in no doubt which side to 'uphold.' On the 1st January 2002 edition of the CBN 700 Club, Pat Robertson warned that if the US

'wants to interfere with Bible prophecy and wants to move in and wrest East Jerusalem away from the Jews and give it to Yasser Arafat � heaven help this nation of ours � If the United States takes East Jerusalem back and makes it the capital of the Palestinian State, then we are asking for the wrath of God to fall on this nation.'[102]

Robertson even suggests that Rabin's assassination was an act of God, a judgement for his betrayal of his own people: 'This is God's land and God has strong words about someone who parts and divides His land. The rabbis put a curse on Yitzhak Rabin when he began cutting up the land.'[103]

Such pronouncements coming from highly influential Christian leaders appear little different from those of Muslim fundamentalists who call for a 'holy war' against the West. Karen Armstrong is not alone in tracing within Western Christian Zionism evidence of the legacy of the Crusades. Such fundamentalists have, she claims, 'returned to a classical and extreme religious crusading.'[104]

7. Conclusions: The Political Implications of Christian Zionism

We have seen how Christian Zionism as a movement has profound and deeply destructive political consequences. Christian Zionists have shown varying degrees of enthusiasm for implementing six basic theological convictions that arise from their literal and futurist reading of the Bible:

1. The belief that the Jews remain God's chosen people leads Christian Zionists to a justification for Israel's military occupation of Palestine.

2. As God's chosen people, the final restoration of the Jews to Israel is therefore actively encouraged and facilitated through partnerships between Christian organisations and the Jewish Agency.

3. Eretz Israel, as delineated in scripture, belongs exclusively to the Jewish people, therefore the land must be annexed and the settlements adopted and strengthened.

4. Jerusalem is regarded as the eternal and exclusive capital of the

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Spaced Out

Brain Cells Fused with Computer Chip

By Ker Than
LiveScience Staff Writer
27 March 2006

The line between living organisms and machines has just become a whole lot blurrier. European researchers have developed "neuro-chips" in which living brain cells and silicon circuits are coupled together.

The achievement could one day enable the creation of sophisticated neural prostheses to treat neurological disorders or the development of organic computers that crunch numbers using living neurons.
To create the neuro-chip, researchers squeezed more than 16,000 electronic transistors and hundreds of capacitors onto a silicon chip just 1 millimeter square in size.

They used special proteins found in the brain to glue brain cells, called neurons, onto the chip. However, the proteins acted as more than just a simple adhesive.

"They also provided the link between ionic channels of the neurons and semiconductor material in a way that neural electrical signals could be passed to the silicon chip," said study team member Stefano Vassanelli from the University of Padua in Italy.

The proteins allowed the neuro-chip's electronic components and its living cells to communicate with each other. Electrical signals from neurons were recorded using the chip's transistors, while the chip's capacitors were used to stimulate the neurons.

It could still be decades before the technology is advanced enough to treat neurological disorders or create living computers, the researchers say, but in the nearer term, the chips could provide an advanced method of screening drugs for the pharmaceutical industry.

"Pharmaceutical companies could use the chip to test the effect of drugs on neurons, to quickly discover promising avenues of research," Vassanelli said.

The researchers are now working on ways to avoid damaging the neurons during stimulation. The team is also exploring the possibility of using a neuron's genetic instructions to control the neuro-chip.

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NASA Reinstates Dawn Asteroid Mission

SPX
Mar 27, 2006

Washington DC - NASA officials announced Monday that the agency has decided to reinstate the Dawn mission, a robotic exploration of two major asteroids that had been canceled earlier this month because of technical problems and cost overruns.
The new decision arrived in a letter from Rex. D. Geveden, the agency's associate administrator for science missions, to Charles Elachi, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which was developing Dawn. It followed an appeal of the decision by JPL.

Officials had named the mission Dawn because it was designed to study objects dating from the beginning of the solar system. Its planned trajectory would have taken it to Vesta and Ceres, two of the largest asteroids orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter, including planned orbits of each object via an advanced electric ion-propulsion system.

The mission originally was approved in December 2001 and set for launch this June, but technical problems and other difficulties delayed the projected launch date to July 2007 and pushed its cost from the original estimate of $373 million to $446 million.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin decided to cancel Dawn on March 2, after about $257 million already had been spent. Officials estimated that about $14 million more needed to be spent to terminate the project.

The reinstatement resulted from a review process established by Griffin and intended to "help ensure open debate and thorough evaluation of major decisions regarding space exploration and agency operations," NASA said in a statement.

"We revisited a number of technical and financial challenges and the work being done to address them," Geveden, who chaired the review panel, said in the same statement. "Our review determined the project team has made substantive progress on many of this mission's technical issues, and, in the end, we have confidence the mission will succeed."

Based on the decision, Geveden's letter ordered JPL to restaff the Dawn project immediately, based on "full funding," and to resume planning operations for the mission.

The letter said Geveden's Science Mission Directorate would develop a detailed replan with JPL, "including an integrated master schedule and updated cost analysis with appropriate confidence factors. JPL will undertake Propulsion Power Unit 500-hour life testing as soon as possible and will report progress and outcomes to SMD within 90 days."

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Moon To Sweep Through The Pleiades

SPX
Mar 28, 2006

Washington DC - A special celestial event to watch is coming up on Saturday evening, April 1, 2006, for anyone who lives in the eastern or central part of North America. That evening, if the sky is clear, you can watch the waxing Moon eclipse, or "occult," a number of stars in the Pleiades cluster in the western sky during and after dusk.
You'll have a decent view with your unaided eyes if your vision is sharp, but binoculars will do much better. And if you have a telescope, now is certainly the time to get it out.

Just keep watch on the Moon from twilight on April 1st until the Moon sinks too low in the west to follow. You'll notice right away that the Moon is next to, or among, the stars of the Pleiades cluster. Optical aid will also show the Moon's dark, night side dimly visible by earthshine -- the light of Earth's daylit face lighting up the Moon's night landscape.

As time goes on, you'll see that the Moon's dim earthlit edge is creeping toward the stars it's facing. Eventually, with a little luck, you'll see the edge approach a star until the star seems to hang right on the edge, like a tiny white fire on the Moon. Then suddenly -- instantly -- the star will snap out of view. You've just witnessed a lunar occultation (from the Latin word occultare, to hide).

The Moon moves by about the width of its own diameter per hour against the background stars. So the occulted star reappears out from behind the Moon's other, sunlit edge up to an hour or so after disappearing. But the reappearances are much harder to see, since they happen in the bright glare of the Moon's daylit side. For these you really need a good telescope.

More on this beautiful event appears in the April 2006 issue of SKY & TELESCOPE and the April/May 2006 issue of NIGHT SKY magazine. Included in each is how to get time predictions of when individual stars will be covered up by the Moon's dark edge at your particular location.

The Value of Occultations

Astronomers have tracked occultations for centuries. Aristotle told of the Moon covering Mars on April 4, 357 BC -- proof that Mars was farther away than the Moon. The suddenness of star occultations offered the first proof that the Moon has no air and therefore cannot support life.

If the Moon had an atmosphere, stars would gradually dim as the Moon's edge approached them, the same way the setting Sun dims before it reaches Earth's horizon. Scrutinizing an occultation in 1843, Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel found that a star's light rays did not bend at the Moon's edge by any amount he could measure, a sign that the Moon could have no more than 1/2,000th as much air as Earth.

For many years, precise timings of occultations gave the most accurate fixes available on the Moon's orbital motion around the Earth. Also, many close double stars were first discovered by their "stepwise" occultations.

In such an event, the star drops out of sight on the Moon's edge in two distinct steps, as first one star of the double is covered, then the other -- even though the stars are so close together that they may look single even in the most powerful telescopes.

Most of these scientific uses for occultations have been superseded by other, more modern techniques. But amateur astronomers still go on expeditions to time grazing occultations -- when the Moon's edge barely skims a star sideways.

During such an event, the star may flash in and out of view several times as lunar hills and valleys slide silently across it. Timings of grazing occultations are still valuable for mapping the Moon's profile very accurately.

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A world of computers with one mind

3/27/2006
By ADT Staff

Toshiba and MIT's Media Lab plan to launch the "GlobalMind" project, a large-scale knowledge database designed to promote advancements in the field of AI technology. Toshiba hopes to bring to computers an understanding of situations and feelings as experienced by their human users so that they can recognize, understand and respond to information in a real-life environment as people do.

GlobalMind will be an extension of the OpenMind database project, which the MIT Media lab initiated in 2000; to date, it has gathered about 800,000 facts through the contributions of some 20,000 people. The aim is to teach computers these facts, more like common sense, and provide them with the same understanding that humans experience daily.

"The GlobalMind project allows us to build on our relationship with Professor Minsky and the Media Lab to promote human-centric technology, one of our key R&D activities," said Dr. Mutsuhiro Arinobu, corporate VP and director of the Corporate Research & Development Center at Toshiba. "With GlobalMind, we hope to move significantly closer to realizing computers that understand the meaning of information and real-life situations, and to apply that to communication with people. This is one of the most crucial issues in AI."

GlobalMind is an important step in bringing the research and information of OpenMind to different languages and cultures. This is significant because, while some cultural phenomena are universal (eating when hungry, drinking when thirsty) other behaviors experience a great deal of variety, at least in expression, across different cultures. GlobalMind will extend OpenMind to more languages, including Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, French and Spanish, with the goal of gathering common-sense facts and information from as many cultures and languages as possible.

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Earthquake shakes central Japan

www.chinaview.cn 2006-03-28 22:24:10

TOKYO, March 28 (Xinhua) -- An earthquake measuring about 6.0 magnitude on the Richter scale hit central Japan on Tuesday night, Japan Meteorological Agency reported.
Mild shakes were felt in downtown Tokyo. The quake occurred at around 10:33 p.m. ( 1333 GMT). Its epicenter was 410 km under the waters of the Pacific Ocean.

There were no immediate reports of casualty or damage.

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Climate Change

Climate Change Rice Genome To The Rescue

by Staff Writers
SPX
Mar 28, 2006

Los Banos, Philippines - New evidence is emerging that climate change could reduce not only the world's ability to produce food but also international efforts to cut poverty. However, the recent sequencing of the rice genome is already providing researchers with some of the tools they need to help poor rice farmers and consumers avoid the worst effects of the problem.
The new knowledge generated by the sequencing effort is allowing scientists to both develop new rice varieties faster and with the specific characteristics needed to deal with climate change, such as tolerance of higher temperatures. However, scientists are calling for more research to fully understand the impact of climate change � especially the extreme weather it may cause � on international efforts to reduce poverty and ensure food security.

A "Climate Change and Rice" planning workshop this month at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines was told that climate change is already affecting Asia's ability to produce rice, and that this could eventually slow efforts to reduce poverty in the region, where most of the world's poor live.

The workshop was informed that, to overcome many of the climate change�related problems facing rice production in Asia � and continue to meet the demand for rice in the region � yields will have to double over the next 50 years. Research has confirmed that global warming will make rice crops less productive with increasing temperatures decreasing yields.

"Clearly, climate change is going to have a major impact on our ability to grow rice," Robert S. Zeigler, IRRI director general, said. "We can't afford to sit back and be complacent about this because rice production feeds almost half the world's population while providing vital employment to millions as well, with most of them being very poor and vulnerable."

For these reasons, Dr. Zeigler announced at the workshop that IRRI � in an unprecedented move � was ready to put up US$2 million of its own research funds as part of an effort to raise $20�25 million for a major five-year project to mitigate the effects of climate change on rice production. "We need to start developing rice varieties that can tolerate higher temperatures and other aspects of climate change right now," he said.

"Fortunately, the recent sequencing of the rice genome will allow us to do this much faster than we could have in the past," Dr. Zeigler added. "But, in addition to new rice varieties, we must develop other technologies that will help poor rice farmers deal with climate change."

In one of several examples presented to last week's climate workshop, researchers mentioned El Nino weather phenomena that hit the Philippines in 1996-97 and caused a severe drought, resulting in a sharp drop in national rice production. Other examples focused on the impact of climate change and variability on gross domestic product, generally causing it to slip by several percentage points.

"One of the main problems with climate change is that the effects are felt mostly in poor, underdeveloped countries because of their reliance on agriculture as one of the main drivers for national development," Dr. Zeigler said. "In turn, agriculture is very dependent on climate.

"Another more insidious effect may be more frequent extreme weather events such as typhoons, floods and droughts," Dr. Zeigler warned. "IRRI's research has shown that even one drought year can push millions of rice farmers back below the poverty line. This affects the whole family for many years after the drought year, as they will have sold their livestock and withdrawn their children from school just to survive."

IRRI's senior climate change researcher, John Sheehy, told the workshop that poor farmers need help in several challenging new areas. "We need to develop rice varieties tolerant of higher temperatures that can maintain yield and quality when extreme temperatures occur," Dr. Sheehy said. "We also need rice varieties that can take advantage of higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, rice that is vigorous enough to recover quickly from extreme weather events and disasters, and very high yielding rice that will provide a supply buffer for poor communities during periods of change.

"We need to be able to protect poor people from the harmful effects of climate change, and rice is especially important because most of the world's poor depend on it," he added. "We also need to ensure that the world community is not adversely affected by greenhouse gas emissions from rice production systems."

Dr. Sheehy said researchers need to acquire knowledge and develop technologies critical to ensuring that rice production systems are sustainable in the face of climate change and do not adversely contribute to climate change.

Comment: Climate change is going to affect a lot more than just the poorest of the poor. Why else would the Pentagon be so concerned about climate change??

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Flashback: Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us

Mark Townsend and Paul Harris in New York
Sunday February 22, 2004
The Observer

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:

The Observer writes: "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."

Well, maybe that is disingenuous. Maybe the leaders of the world know that this is the truth and they have all agreed to pretend to be at odds with each other so as to create wars which will eliminate millions - or billions - of "useless eaters."

Or maybe Bush is setting the US up to be the "king of the mountain"? Not only can the US eliminate billions of people, they can then take all their resources for the "chosen people."

It's difficult to tell what the liars do or don't know, the only thing that is certain is that it does not look good for most of humanity. And, as Dave McGowan wrote:

"Perhaps you are thinking that this type of future is not for you. You'd really prefer something a little different. That's unfortunate, because the future holds very few options. Here's Campbell again, concluding his mini version of Mein Kampf:

Another problem is likely to be the residual opposition to population reduction from sentimentalists and/or religious extremists unable to understand that the days of plenty, when criminals and the weak could be cherished at public expense, are over. Acts of violent protest, such as are carried out today by animal rights activists and anti-abortionists, would, in the Darwinian world, attract capital punishment. Population reduction must be single-minded to succeed.

"So it appears as though those who fight back against the agenda will likely be summarily executed, while those who passively go with the flow stand about a 95% chance of being killed off anyway. With odds like that, I would think that fighting back might be a good idea. By any means available. And sooner rather than later."

Better do a quick re-read of Laura's two recent articles: 94% and Political Ponerology.

And again we say: get a copy of The Secret History of The World and How to Get Out Alive.

This ain't just an advertisement, either because you can get all the info that is in the book by reading everything on this site. But if you want to have the info available when the system locks down, and if you want it condensed and explicated clearly, get the book. Save yourself (and those you love) some time and grief in the coming "Hard Times."

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New City-sized Iceberg Created Near Antarctica

By LiveScience Staff
27 March 2006

A city-sized iceberg has broken off an island near Antarctica.

The iceberg is about 8 miles wide and 15 miles long. It broke free of the Fimbul Ice Shelf, a large glacial ice sheet along the northwestern section of Queen Maud Land, in the eastern Weddell Sea near Antarctica.
The discovery was announced Friday. The National Ice Center, using visible satellite imagery from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, spotted the iceberg now named named D-16.

Iceberg names are derived from the Antarctic quadrant where they are first sighted.

Last year, a larger wandering iceberg named B-15A rammed into the continent and single-handedly ripped two other new city-sized icebergs free.

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Earth Is At ... The Tipping Point

By JEFFREY KLUGER
03/27/06 "TIME"

Polar Ice Caps Are Melting Faster Than Ever... More And More Land Is Being Devastated By Drought... Rising Waters Are Drowning Low-Lying Communities... By Any Measure, Earth Is At ... The Tipping Point
No one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like Earth. Never mind what you've heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us.

It certainly looked that way last week as the atmospheric bomb that was Cyclone Larry--a Category 5 storm with wind bursts that reached 180 m.p.h.--exploded through northeastern Australia. It certainly looked that way last year as curtains of fire and dust turned the skies of Indonesia orange, thanks to drought-fueled blazes sweeping the island nation. It certainly looks that way as sections of ice the size of small states calve from the disintegrating Arctic and Antarctic. And it certainly looks that way as the sodden wreckage of New Orleans continues to molder, while the waters of the Atlantic gather themselves for a new hurricane season just two months away. Disasters have always been with us and surely always will be. But when they hit this hard and come this fast--when the emergency becomes commonplace--something has gone grievously wrong. That something is global warming.

The image of Earth as organism--famously dubbed Gaia by environmentalist James Lovelock-- has probably been overworked, but that's not to say the planet can't behave like a living thing, and these days, it's a living thing fighting a fever. From heat waves to storms to floods to fires to massive glacial melts, the global climate seems to be crashing around us. Scientists have been calling this shot for decades. This is precisely what they have been warning would happen if we continued pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, trapping the heat that flows in from the sun and raising global temperatures.

Environmentalists and lawmakers spent years shouting at one another about whether the grim forecasts were true, but in the past five years or so, the serious debate has quietly ended. Global warming, even most skeptics have concluded, is the real deal, and human activity has been causing it. If there was any consolation, it was that the glacial pace of nature would give us decades or even centuries to sort out the problem.
But glaciers, it turns out, can move with surprising speed, and so can nature. What few people reckoned on was that global climate systems are booby-trapped with tipping points and feedback loops, thresholds past which the slow creep of environmental decay gives way to sudden and self-perpetuating collapse. Pump enough CO2 into the sky, and that last part per million of greenhouse gas behaves like the 212th degree Fahrenheit that turns a pot of hot water into a plume of billowing steam. Melt enough Greenland ice, and you reach the point at which you're not simply dripping meltwater into the sea but dumping whole glaciers. By one recent measure, several Greenland ice sheets have doubled their rate of slide, and just last week the journal Science published a study suggesting that by the end of the century, the world could be locked in to an eventual rise in sea levels of as much as 20 ft. Nature, it seems, has finally got a bellyful of us.

"Things are happening a lot faster than anyone predicted," says Bill Chameides, chief scientist for the advocacy group Environmental Defense and a former professor of atmospheric chemistry. "The last 12 months have been alarming." Adds Ruth Curry of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts: "The ripple through the scientific community is palpable."

And it's not just scientists who are taking notice. Even as nature crosses its tipping points, the public seems to have reached its own. For years, popular skepticism about climatological science stood in the way of addressing the problem, but the naysayers--many of whom were on the payroll of energy companies--have become an increasingly marginalized breed. In a new TIME/ ABC News/ Stanford University poll, 85% of respondents agree that global warming probably is happening. Moreover, most respondents say they want some action taken. Of those polled, 87% believe the government should either encourage or require lowering of power-plant emissions, and 85% think something should be done to get cars to use less gasoline. Even Evangelical Christians, once one of the most reliable columns in the conservative base, are demanding action, most notably in February, when 86 Christian leaders formed the Evangelical Climate Initiative, demanding that Congress regulate greenhouse gases.

A collection of new global-warming books is hitting the shelves in response to that awakening interest, followed closely by TV and theatrical documentaries. The most notable of them is An Inconvenient Truth, due out in May, a profile of former Vice President Al Gore and his climate-change work, which is generating a lot of prerelease buzz over an unlikely topic and an equally unlikely star. For all its lack of Hollywood flash, the film compensates by conveying both the hard science of global warming and Gore's particular passion.

Such public stirrings are at last getting the attention of politicians and business leaders, who may not always respond to science but have a keen nose for where votes and profits lie. State and local lawmakers have started taking action to curb emissions, and major corporations are doing the same. Wal-Mart has begun installing wind turbines on its stores to generate electricity and is talking about putting solar reflectors over its parking lots. HSBC, the world's second largest bank, has pledged to neutralize its carbon output by investing in wind farms and other green projects. Even President Bush, hardly a favorite of greens, now acknowledges climate change and boasts of the steps he is taking to fight it. Most of those steps, however, involve research and voluntary emissions controls, not exactly the laws with teeth scientists are calling for.
Is it too late to reverse the changes global warming has wrought? That's still not clear. Reducing our emissions output year to year is hard enough. Getting it low enough so that the atmosphere can heal is a multigenerational commitment. "Ecosystems are usually able to maintain themselves," says Terry Chapin, a biologist and professor of ecology at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. "But eventually they get pushed to the limit of tolerance."

CO2 AND THE POLES

As a tiny component of our atmosphere, carbon dioxide helped warm Earth to comfort levels we are all used to. But too much of it does an awful lot of damage. The gas represents just a few hundred parts per million (p.p.m.) in the overall air blanket, but they're powerful parts because they allow sunlight to stream in but prevent much of the heat from radiating back out. During the last ice age, the atmosphere's CO2 concentration was just 180 p.p.m., putting Earth into a deep freeze. After the glaciers retreated but before the dawn of the modern era, the total had risen to a comfortable 280 p.p.m. In just the past century and a half, we have pushed the level to 381 p.p.m., and we're feeling the effects. Of the 20 hottest years on record, 19 occurred in the 1980s or later. According to NASA scientists, 2005 was one of the hottest years in more than a century.

It's at the North and South poles that those steambath conditions are felt particularly acutely, with glaciers and ice caps crumbling to slush. Once the thaw begins, a number of mechanisms kick in to keep it going. Greenland is a vivid example. Late last year, glaciologist Eric Rignot of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and Pannir Kanagaratnam, a research assistant professor at the University of Kansas, analyzed data from Canadian and European satellites and found that Greenland ice is not just melting but doing so more than twice as fast, with 53 cu. mi. draining away into the sea last year alone, compared with 22 cu. mi. in 1996. A cubic mile of water is about five times the amount Los Angeles uses in a year.

Dumping that much water into the ocean is a very dangerous thing. Icebergs don't raise sea levels when they melt because they're floating, which means they have displaced all the water they're ever going to. But ice on land, like Greenland's, is a different matter. Pour that into oceans that are already rising (because warm water expands), and you deluge shorelines. By some estimates, the entire Greenland ice sheet would be enough to raise global sea levels 23 ft., swallowing up large parts of coastal Florida and most of Bangladesh. The Antarctic holds enough ice to raise sea levels more than 215 ft.

FEEDBACK LOOPS

One of the reasons the loss of the planet's ice cover is accelerating is that as the poles' bright white surface shrinks, it changes the relationship of Earth and the sun. Polar ice is so reflective that 90% of the sunlight that strikes it simply bounces back into space, taking much of its energy with it. Ocean water does just the opposite, absorbing 90% of the energy it receives. The more energy it retains, the warmer it gets, with the result that each mile of ice that melts vanishes faster than the mile that preceded it.

That is what scientists call a feedback loop, and it's a nasty one, since once you uncap the Arctic Ocean, you unleash another beast: the comparatively warm layer of water about 600 ft. deep that circulates in and out of the Atlantic. "Remove the ice," says Woods Hole's Curry, "and the water starts talking to the atmosphere, releasing its heat. This is not a good thing."

A similar feedback loop is melting permafrost, usually defined as land that has been continuously frozen for two years or more. There's a lot of earthly real estate that qualifies, and much of it has been frozen much longer than two years--since the end of the last ice age, or at least 8,000 years ago. Sealed inside that cryonic time capsule are layers of partially decayed organic matter, rich in carbon. In high-altitude regions of Alaska, Canada and Siberia, the soil is warming and decomposing, releasing gases that will turn into methane and CO2. That, in turn, could lead to more warming and permafrost thaw, says research scientist David Lawrence of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. And how much carbon is socked away in Arctic soils? Lawrence puts the figure at 200 gigatons to 800 gigatons. The total human carbon output is only 7 gigatons a year.

One result of all that is warmer oceans, and a result of warmer oceans can be, paradoxically, colder continents within a hotter globe. Ocean currents running between warm and cold regions serve as natural thermoregulators, distributing heat from the equator toward the poles. The Gulf Stream, carrying warmth up from the tropics, is what keeps Europe's climate relatively mild. Whenever Europe is cut off from the Gulf Stream, temperatures plummet. At the end of the last ice age, the warm current was temporarily blocked, and temperatures in Europe fell as much as 10�F, locking the continent in glaciers.

What usually keeps the Gulf Stream running is that warm water is lighter than cold water, so it floats on the surface. As it reaches Europe and releases its heat, the current grows denser and sinks, flowing back to the south and crossing under the northbound Gulf Stream until it reaches the tropics and starts to warm again. The cycle works splendidly, provided the water remains salty enough. But if it becomes diluted by freshwater, the salt concentration drops, and the water gets lighter, idling on top and stalling the current. Last December, researchers associated with Britain's National Oceanography Center reported that one component of the system that drives the Gulf Stream has slowed about 30% since 1957. It's the increased release of Arctic and Greenland meltwater that appears to be causing the problem, introducing a gush of freshwater that's overwhelming the natural cycle. In a global-warming world, it's unlikely that any amount of cooling that resulted from this would be sufficient to support glaciers, but it could make things awfully uncomfortable.

"The big worry is that the whole climate of Europe will change," says Adrian Luckman, senior lecturer in geography at the University of Wales, Swansea. "We in the U.K. are on the same latitude as Alaska. The reason we can live here is the Gulf Stream."
DROUGHT

As fast as global warming is transforming the oceans and the ice caps, it's having an even more immediate effect on land. People, animals and plants living in dry, mountainous regions like the western U.S. make it through summer thanks to snowpack that collects on peaks all winter and slowly melts off in warm months. Lately the early arrival of spring and the unusually blistering summers have caused the snowpack to melt too early, so that by the time it's needed, it's largely gone. Climatologist Philip Mote of the University of Washington has compared decades of snowpack levels in Washington, Oregon and California and found that they are a fraction of what they were in the 1940s, and some snowpacks have vanished entirely.

Global warming is tipping other regions of the world into drought in different ways. Higher temperatures bake moisture out of soil faster, causing dry regions that live at the margins to cross the line into full-blown crisis. Meanwhile, El Ni�o events--the warm pooling of Pacific waters that periodically drives worldwide climate patterns and has been occurring more frequently in global-warming years--further inhibit precipitation in dry areas of Africa and East Asia. According to a recent study by NCAR, the percentage of Earth's surface suffering drought has more than doubled since the 1970s.

FLORA AND FAUNA

Hot, dry land can be murder on flora and fauna, and both are taking a bad hit. Wildfires in such regions as Indonesia, the western U.S. and even inland Alaska have been increasing as timberlands and forest floors grow more parched. The blazes create a feedback loop of their own, pouring more carbon into the atmosphere and reducing the number of trees, which inhale CO2 and release oxygen.
Those forests that don't succumb to fire die in other, slower ways. Connie Millar, a paleoecologist for the U.S. Forest Service, studies the history of vegetation in the Sierra Nevada. Over the past 100 years, she has found, the forests have shifted their tree lines as much as 100 ft. upslope, trying to escape the heat and drought of the lowlands. Such slow-motion evacuation may seem like a sensible strategy, but when you're on a mountain, you can go only so far before you run out of room. "Sometimes we say the trees are going to heaven because they're walking off the mountaintops," Millar says.

Across North America, warming-related changes are mowing down other flora too. Manzanita bushes in the West are dying back; some prickly pear cacti have lost their signature green and are instead a sickly pink; pine beetles in western Canada and the U.S. are chewing their way through tens of millions of acres of forest, thanks to warmer winters. The beetles may even breach the once insurmountable Rocky Mountain divide, opening up a path into the rich timbering lands of the American Southeast.
With habitats crashing, animals that live there are succumbing too. Environmental groups can tick off scores of species that have been determined to be at risk as a result of global warming. Last year, researchers in Costa Rica announced that two-thirds of 110 species of colorful harlequin frogs have vanished in the past 30 years, with the severity of each season's die-off following in lockstep with the severity of that year's warming.

In Alaska, salmon populations are at risk as melting permafrost pours mud into rivers, burying the gravel the fish need for spawning. Small animals such as bushy-tailed wood rats, alpine chipmunks and pi�on mice are being chased upslope by rising temperatures, following the path of the fleeing trees. And with sea ice vanishing, polar bears--prodigious swimmers but not inexhaustible ones--are starting to turn up drowned. "There will be no polar ice by 2060," says Larry Schweiger, president of the National Wildlife Federation. "Somewhere along that path, the polar bear drops out."

WHAT ABOUT US?

It is fitting, perhaps, that as the species causing all the problems, we're suffering the destruction of our habitat too, and we have experienced that loss in terrible ways. Ocean waters have warmed by a full degree Fahrenheit since 1970, and warmer water is like rocket fuel for typhoons and hurricanes. Two studies last year found that in the past 35 years the number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes worldwide has doubled while the wind speed and duration of all hurricanes has jumped 50%. Since atmospheric heat is not choosy about the water it warms, tropical storms could start turning up in some decidedly nontropical places. "There's a school of thought that sea surface temperatures are warming up toward Canada," says Greg Holland, senior scientist for NCAR in Boulder. "If so, you're likely to get tropical cyclones there, but we honestly don't know."
WHAT WE CAN DO
So much for environmental collapse happening in so many places at once has at last awakened much of the world, particularly the 141 nations that have ratified the Kyoto treaty to reduce emissions--an imperfect accord, to be sure, but an accord all the same. The U.S., however, which is home to less than 5% of Earth's population but produces 25% of CO2 emissions, remains intransigent. Many environmentalists declared the Bush Administration hopeless from the start, and while that may have been premature, it's undeniable that the White House's environmental record--from the abandonment of Kyoto to the President's broken campaign pledge to control carbon output to the relaxation of emission standards--has been dismal. George W. Bush's recent rhetorical nods to America's oil addiction and his praise of such alternative fuel sources as switchgrass have yet to be followed by real initiatives.

The anger surrounding all that exploded recently when NASA researcher Jim Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a longtime leader in climate-change research, complained that he had been harassed by White House appointees as he tried to sound the global-warming alarm. "The way democracy is supposed to work, the presumption is that the public is well informed," he told TIME. "They're trying to deny the science." Up against such resistance, many environmental groups have resolved simply to wait out this Administration and hope for something better in 2009.

The Republican-dominated Congress has not been much more encouraging. Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman have twice been unable to get through the Senate even mild measures to limit carbon. Senators Pete Domenici and Jeff Bingaman, both of New Mexico and both ranking members of the chamber's Energy Committee, have made global warming a high-profile matter. A white paper issued in February will be the subject of an investigatory Senate conference next week. A House delegation recently traveled to Antarctica, Australia and New Zealand to visit researchers studying climate change. "Of the 10 of us, only three were believers," says Representative Sherwood Boehlert of New York. "Every one of the others said this opened their eyes."

Boehlert himself has long fought the environmental fight, but if the best that can be said for most lawmakers is that they are finally recognizing the global-warming problem, there's reason to wonder whether they will have the courage to reverse it. Increasingly, state and local governments are filling the void. The mayors of more than 200 cities have signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, pledging, among other things, that they will meet the Kyoto goal of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions in their cities to 1990 levels by 2012. Nine eastern states have established the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative for the purpose of developing a cap-and-trade program that would set ceilings on industrial emissions and allow companies that overperform to sell pollution credits to those that underperform-- the same smart, incentive-based strategy that got sulfur dioxide under control and reduced acid rain. And California passed the nation's toughest automobile- emissions law last summer.
"There are a whole series of things that demonstrate that people want to act and want their government to act," says Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense. Krupp and others believe that we should probably accept that it's too late to prevent CO2 concentrations from climbing to 450 p.p.m. (or 70 p.p.m. higher than where they are now). From there, however, we should be able to stabilize them and start to dial them back down.

That goal should be attainable. Curbing global warming may be an order of magnitude harder than, say, eradicating smallpox or putting a man on the moon. But is it moral not to try? We did not so much march toward the environmental precipice as drunkenly reel there, snapping at the scientific scolds who told us we had a problem.

The scolds, however, knew what they were talking about. In a solar system crowded with sister worlds that either emerged stillborn like Mercury and Venus or died in infancy like Mars, we're finally coming to appreciate the knife-blade margins within which life can thrive. For more than a century we've been monkeying with those margins. It's long past time we set them right.

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Forecasts: Northeast Due for Big Hurricane

AP
Mar 27 7:37 PM US/Eastern

DOVER, N.H. - New England could be in for a big one. Meteorologists say conditions - including warmer temperatures in the Atlantic Basin and cooler temperatures in the Pacific Ocean - are ripe for the Northeast coast to be hit by a whopper of a hurricane this season.

Ken Reeves, a senior meteorologist at the AccuWeather Center in State College, Pa., said that when the Pacific is cooler, it "essentially drives the storm track further to the east in the Atlantic Ocean basin."

He predicts the East Coast north of the Mid-Atlantic states could see a Category 3 hurricane, a storm that could resemble the devastating systems that hit New England between the 1930s and 1950s.
"There are some eerie similarities to the pattern of the 1938 hurricane," he said.

A 1938 storm known as the "The Long Island Express" remains the region's worst hurricane. Its 121 mph winds gusted to 183 mph and caused massive flooding, power outages and wind damage throughout the region, leaving 600 people dead.

During recent decades, New Englanders mostly have experienced only the remnants of storms that hit other parts of the country, such as Hurricane Gloria in 1985 and Hurricane Bob in 1991, which brought heavy rains, localized flooding and power outages.

If a big storm did hit, the New Hampshire coast might be spared the worst of the damage because it is sheltered compared to areas like Cape Cod, Portland, Maine, and Long Island, N.Y., Reeves said.

Lourdes Aviles, a Plymouth State University assistant meteorology professor, said Reeves' forecast sounds right. That New England hasn't had a strong hurricane in 50 years could signal the region's luck is running out, she said.

John Jensenius, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine, said his group has been concerned for years that a strong hurricane could strike New England's coast.

Hurricane activity tends to be cyclical, he said. Every 50 years, a pattern develops that increases the potential for a major storm. But that doesn't mean a storm is imminent.

"The chances of one happening this year is no greater than it was last year," Jensenius said.

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Global Chaos

Russian Communist leader sees U.S. behind bird flu outbreak

March 14
Interfax News Agency

MOSCOW - Russian Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov has blamed the United States for the spread of avian influenza, or bird flu, in a number of European countries, including Russia.

"The forms of warfare are changing. It's strange that not a single duck has yet died in America - they are all dying in Russia and European countries. This makes one seriously wonder why," Zyuganov said at a press conference at the Interfax main office on Tuesday.

Zyuganov said that he has good knowledge of war gases as he dealt with them during his army service.

"I tested all kinds of war gases at a range myself," he said.

Asked to be more precise as to whether he believes the bird flu outbreak could be a deliberate attack by the U.S., Zyuganov answered positively.

"I not only suggest this, I know very well how this can be arranged. There is nothing strange here," he said.

Comment: But of course, he's a commie, so no need to give his claims any credit at all, he obviously has an agenda...then again, who doesn't have an agenda these days. Question is, could there be someone with an agenda to kill off a large percentage of the human race?

Ethnic Weapons For Ethnic Cleansing

Greg Bishop
March 2000

[T]his "theoretical possibility" was recognized over 25 years ago, if not before. It was originally brought to the attention of potential customers with the publication of an article in the Military Review of November 1970.

This journal for command-level military personnel was published by the US Army Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The feature, entitled "Ethnic Weapons," authored by Carl A. Larson, outlines the history, desirability, and possibilities of engineered biological pathogens which would affect only those races which historically have no natural defense against certain "enzyme inhibitors."

Larson is listed as head of the "Department of Human Genetics at the Institute of Genetics, Lund, Sweden" as well as a licensed physician. The Hippocratic oath was apparently not administered in Sweden when Larson received his accreditation.

Larson explains that many of the chemical activities and functions within the human body are caused by the interactions of enzymes. One of the more significant activities enabled by enzyme chemical reactions are the contraction and relaxation of muscle tissue. If the activities of these enzymes are blocked, the victim will be paralyzed, even to the point of death by asphyxiation.

Not coincidentally, the enzyme-blocking action of compounds called organophosphates were discovered in Germany in the 1930s when experimental insecticides killed the people unlucky enough to have used them. This discovery led to the mass production of a substance named "Trilon," later used to impressive effect in the extermination of groups of people the Nazis considered little more than insects. This substance and others of similar makeup became known as "nerve gas.

Israel planning 'ethnic' bomb as Saddam caves in

The London Times
November 15 1998

ISRAEL is working on a biological weapon that would harm Arabs but not Jews, according to Israeli military and western intelligence sources. The weapon, targeting victims by ethnic origin, is seen as Israel's response to Iraq's threat of chemical and biological attacks.

A scientist there said the task was hugely complicated because both Arabs and Jews are of Semitic origin. But he added: "They have, however, succeeded in pinpointing a particular characteristic in the genetic profile of certain Arab communities, particularly the Iraqi people."

Microbiologists With Link to Race-Based Weapon Turning Up Dead

Exclusive to American Free Press
By Gordon Thomas

Dr. David Kelly-the biological warfare weapons specialist at the heart of the continuing political crisis for the British government-had links to three other top microbiologists whose deaths have left unanswered questions.

The 59-year-old British scientist was involved with ultra secret work at Israel's Institute for Biological Re search. Israeli sources claim Kelly met institute scientists several times in London in the past two years....

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Twenty-five killed as rival factions clash in Pakistan

AFP
Tue Mar 28, 3:45 AM ET

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Gunmen loyal to rival pro-Taliban clerics fought street battles in Pakistan's tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, leaving at least 25 people dead.

The clashes erupted late Monday after supporters of a Pakistani preacher tried to knock down a house which belonged to an Afghan Islamic leader's faction, a tribal areas spokesman told AFP.

The fighting with automatic weapons near the remote town of Bara in Khyber district follows about a year of tensions during which the two mullahs have used illegal private FM radio stations to criticise each other.
Spokesman Shah Zaman said five of Pakistani cleric Mufti Munir Shakir's men were shot dead late Monday when they attempted to demolish the Afghan clan's house.

In retaliation, Shakir's men attacked tribesmen of Afghan rival Pir Saifur Rehman at around 2:00 am (2100 GMT) on Tuesday, killing 18 of them, Zaman said.

Another two of Shakir's men injured in the shooting later died, a local administration official said on condition of anonymity.

The Pakistani cleric's group also took hostage an unspecified number of women and children, the official said.

The situation was tense in the area and the local administration was trying to end fighting through a jirga, or tribal assembly, Zaman said.

Both clerics are supporters of Afghanistan's former Taliban regime, many members of which fled across the border to Pakistan's tribal areas after the fundamentalist movement was ousted by a US-led invasion in late 2001.

Tensions are already high in the border region following major clashes earlier this month between troops and pro-Taliban militants in the North Waziristan tribal area, which have left more than 200 insurgents dead.

Suspected militants blew up a checkpost in Patosi village, some 25 kilometres (15 miles) east of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, late Monday, a security official told AFP.

Separately a rocket fired by insurgents late Monday fell close to government buildings in Miranshah where Pakistani troops are camped, the official said on condition of anonymity.

Neither attack caused any casualties, he said.

Meanwhile the US consulate was temporarily closed for security reasons Tuesday in Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province, which adjoins the tribal areas.

A spokeswoman for the US embassy in Islamabad said there had been a "specific and credible" threat while a Pakistani official told AFP that a consulate official had received a telephone threat.

Pakistan, a key ally in the US-led "war on terror", has deployed 80,000 troops along the border to hunt down Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.

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Bus plunge kills 25, injures 4 in southwest China

Reuters
Tue Mar 28, 1:18 AM ET

BEIJING - A bus plunged into a deep valley in southwest China on Tuesday, killing 25 people and injuring four, Xinhua news agency said.

The bus carrying 29 people tumbled into a valley more than 100 meters (109 yards) deep in Laodian, a town in the province of Yunnan, Xinhua said, quoting a local official.

One of the injured was in a critical condition, it said.

China's roads are the deadliest in the world. Traffic accidents killed almost 100,000 people last year, or 270 a day.

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Battles after Belarus' election are over: Lukashenko

www.chinaview.cn 2006-03-28 23:10:23

MOSCOW, March 28 (Xinhua) -- Belarussian president-elect Alexander Lukashenko announced on Tuesday "all political battles after the March 19 presidential poll are over."
"At present, peace and order is ensured in Belarus after casual outbreaks of unrest that were promptly and effectively eliminated by law enforcers," the Itar-Tass news agency quoted Lukashenko as saying.
"The unique feature of the Belarussian election campaign is that the government is never involved in political events and remains the country's economic think tank," Lukashenko said.

The originally planned inauguration date, March 31, was postponed, Nikolai Lozovik, secretary of the Central Election Commission, said on Tuesday.

The date "has not been coordinated with the work schedule of the head of state," he said, adding, "It is the president who fixes the date."

Lozovik said the inauguration ceremony would, supposedly, take place in the first half of April.

Lukashenko won a landslide victory in the presidential election on March 19, collecting 83 percent of the votes. His main rival Alexander Milinkevich received just 6.1 percent.

Opposition demonstrators have camped in October Square since the day after the vote, in support of a call for a rerun of the presidential vote. Long after midnight on Wednesday, the number of people who remained on the square reached at least 700 and some 250 people stayed there overnight.

Thousands of opposition supporters also gathered on Saturday in a Minsk park after being denied access to square. Riot police were sent to break up the rally, which the government said was illegal.

The 51-year-old Belarussian leader was first elected in 1994 and got the go-ahead to run for a third term through a constitutional referendum in 2004.

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Psychopaths on the March

Che Rides Again (On a Mountain Bike)

By Nick Miroff

Has Latin America ever had such a unifying figure?

At political rallies, his visage is held aloft as a beacon to regional independence and self-determination. He's helped forge new trade partnerships to spur economic growth and alleviate poverty. And his leadership has fanned a gale-force electoral trend that's sweeping the hemisphere to topple one pro-Washington government after the next.

Who is this grand inductor of Latin American leftism? Venezuelan fireball Hugo Chavez? Blue-collar Brazilian Lula Ignacio da Silva? Bolivia's coca-farmer-cum-president, Evo Morales?

�Epa! It's George W. Bush, the accidental revolutionary.
In the past five years, the swaggering Texan has inspired a leftward surge that is uniting Latin America and threatening to knock Che Guevara right off all those natty t-shirts.

When Che's ill-fated insurgency ended in the jungles of Bolivia with his death in 1967, his vision of a single, unified, socialist continent remained utterly unfulfilled. U.S.-backed right-wing military dictators would rule much of Latin America over the ensuing two decades, and many of Che's followers would be tortured and killed in efforts to overthrow them.

As democracy returned to the region at the end of the Cold War, most Latin American governments rushed to embrace the "Washington consensus" -- market-oriented liberalization policies that cut social spending and privatized national industries in order to pay down national debts. But the formula, pushed on the region by successive American presidents, largely failed to deliver the goods and left entire governments bankrupt and beholden to foreign lenders. For Latin America's angry, marginalized, impoverished masses, already-threadbare social safety nets only unraveled further.

"The macroeconomic proposals of the Washington consensus have not been working," says Guillermo Delgado, professor of Latin American Studies at UC Santa Cruz. "That model was supposed to create prosperity and, after so many years, such prosperity has not been seen and class polarization has grown deeper."

Sensing an opportunity, new social and political movements in the region began marshalling their forces. Then George W. Bush came along, combining Yankee hubris with a Che-worthy radicalizing touch.

Bush has since presided over one of the most significant political re-alignments in the history of the Western Hemisphere. By this summer, every major Latin American nation but Colombia is likely to be run by elected leaders with stronger backgrounds in Marx than free markets. If Cold War-era "domino theory" has been a bust in the Middle East, it's working with textbook precision in Latin America.

Late last year, voters overwhelmingly elected former coca-grower Evo Morales, the founder of Bolivia's "Movement Toward Socialism" party, who fancies himself a "nightmare" for the Bush administration. Then, in January, Chilean voters chose socialist candidate Michele Bachelet, a torture victim of the Pinochet regime, as the nation's first woman president. Leftists now rule as well in Venezuela, Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina, and are leading in upcoming elections in both Peru and Mexico, the region's electoral grand prize. Even recycled Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega -- "a hoodlum," according to Roger Noriega, formerly the U.S.'s top Latin America official -- appears poised for a comeback when Nicaraguan voters go to the polls in November.

Though Latin America's national borders won't melt away anytime soon, Che's vision of pan-Latin cooperation has already begun to materialize. Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina recently announced a $20 billion plan to build a trans-national gas pipeline through the Amazon. Chile has opened dialogue with landlocked Bolivia, easing a long-simmering feud over seaport access that stretches back more than a century. Cuba, that tropical b�te noire of the White House, still uses doctor diplomacy and sends physicians all over the region -- only now, it receives billions of dollars worth of Venezuelan oil in return. And Mercosur, a South American common market dominated by Brazil, has emerged as a rival to the faltering U.S.-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

Mercosur member states blocked ratification of the FTAA at the 2005 Summit of the Americas in Argentina. When Bush arrived to deliver a speech at the conference, he was greeted by mobs of angry street protestors who burned American flags, a Burger King, and unflattering effigies in his likeness.

"Fascist Bush!" they chanted, "you are the terrorist!"

Fencing Off the "Backyard"?

Bush's overwhelming unpopularity in Latin America is especially disappointing given that he put Latin American relations at the top of his foreign-policy agenda after taking office. No other U.S. president had gone to Latin America for his first visit abroad, and even after 9/11, Bush maintained that the United States "has no more important relationship in the world than the one we have with Mexico." At every turn, he'd trot out his twangy Spanish in order to burnish his Latin cred.

Since then, Latin America has only drifted further south. Support for the U.S. war in Iraq is notably abysmal. Only a handful of countries in the region backed the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein and all were minor players with the exception of Colombia, the fifth-largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid. That Washington is willing to spend lavishly on drug eradication in the Andean region but little on development or public health has not been lost on the new ascendant left, either.

In a recent Zogby poll, fewer than 20% of Latin American elites (typically the most politically conservative voters in the region) gave Bush a favorable approval rating. Only 6% said Bush's policies were better than those of his predecessors.

Some analysts have attributed Latin America's political shift to U.S. foreign policy negligence, arguing that, because the Bush administration is so consumed with Iraq, American officials are now incapable of wielding effective diplomatic influence in the region.

"After 9/11, Washington effectively lost interest in Latin America," writes Peter Hakim, President of Inter-American Dialogue, in the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs. "Since then, the attention the United States has paid to the region has been sporadic and narrowly targeted at particularly troubling or urgent situations."

This interpretation suggests Bush has been a kind of inattentive steward, too busy riding that mountain bike to notice the mutiny going on beneath his nose. Worse yet, Hakim believes the United States has neither the resources nor the will to alter the course.

But Latin America's leftward shift stems from more than White House distraction. It's not that the United States is acting aloof with its neighbors; rather, we're the worst-behaved homeowner on the block. We fly the biggest flag, make the loudest demands, and on top of it all, we don't even like having guests over. Sure, the United States has treated Latin America as its "backyard" for two hundred years -- but now, Bush's own party wants to fence it off.

House Republicans recently approved a plan to erect a 2,000-mile, Israeli-style barrier that would wall off Mexico and the rest of Latin America. The plan isn't expected to survive a Senate vote, but it sums up the current state of north-south relations quite well. And it's been a godsend for the presidential campaign of left-wing Mexico City Mayor Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leading candidate in the July 2nd elections and a frequent Bush critic.

For Lopez Obrador, the border fence proposal is proof that NAFTA is faltering and that outgoing President Vicente Fox was on the wrong end of the rope in his faux-ranchero friendship with Bush. Fox had staked his presidential reputation on securing an immigration accord with the Bush administration, and his failure has made excellent fodder for Lopez Obrador's campaign. His election victory in July would leave the last domino leaning right on Washington's doorstep.

Helping Hugo

The Bush administration has been most frazzled by the growing regional influence of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, whom Donald Rumsfeld recently likened to Hitler. Chavez has his own nickname for Bush -- "Mr. Danger" -- and he's effectively shaped the American president into his political foil.

As Bush pushes the region away, Chavez pulls. The Venezuelan leader has fashioned himself into a kind of Latin American Robin Hood, raking in tanker-loads of petrodollars in order to bankroll massive social programs and regional integration schemes. He's provided oil at subsidized rates to poor countries throughout the Caribbean, even sending discounted winter heating oil to low-income residents in Boston and the Bronx -- an act of mockery as much as aid. The Bush administration's tacit endorsement of a 2002 coup that briefly ousted Chavez has left the U.S.'s rhetoric about respect for democracy ringing hypocritical.

At the World Social Forum in Caracas in January, Chavez t-shirts were reportedly de rigueur, along with all the other standard-fare knickknacks of rebellion: Castro-hats, Zapatista stickers, and anything red with Che on it. By comparison, Bush apparel was in short supply.

Granted, he did show up on a few banners and posters that weren't slated for immolation, like one that read "Chavez yes, Bush no!" But twenty years from now, who knows? Latin America may be much better off then. And perhaps he'll finally get the "Gracias Bush" he deserves -- with his own face on a silkscreen.

Nick Miroff is a student at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He has reported from Latin America for National Public Radio, Mother Jones, and the Oakland Tribune.

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America's Debt Wish

by Bob Burnett
OpEdNews.com
March 27, 2006

Late on the evening of March 16th, the Senate passed a record $2.8 trillion budget and increased our national debt limit to a tad below $9 trillion. You may ask what difference it makes that our national debt is trillions of dollars and each citizen's share is $27,981?

It makes a lot of difference in terms of the operation of the US government. More importantly, it says a lot about the American psyche.
We have an $8.363 trillion debt because the Bush Administration spends money as if there'll be no tomorrow. And they have a rather cavalier attitude about all their expenses; they don't want to pay for them. Their constant refrain is, "put it on my tab." When the tab comes due, there's not enough money in the US treasury to pay for it-remember those tax cuts that Republicans are so fond of-and so the government has to borrow money.

You may ask why don't we just refuse to pay? What if Congress refused to raise the debt limit? Wouldn't that teach bad George a lesson? Perhaps, but it would also mean that the Feds couldn't send checks to Social Security and Medicare recipients, not to mention victims of Hurricane Katrina. What's worse is that it would send a signal to the world that the US is no longer a credit-worthy client. Interest rates would shoot up, costing the US government, and you and me, a lot more to borrow money.

There are two schools of thought about our debts: One, represented by certain economists, and that old swifty, VP Dick Cheney, argues that the national debt, and the Bush Administrations annual deficits, don't really matter so long as they are a reasonable percentage of the gross national product. I won't bore you with the technical details, other than to say they're the sorts that economists love to ponder. This group says, in effect, don't worry, be happy.

The other group, represented by people who have their wits about them, folks like Paul Krugman and Robert Reich, argues that a day of reckoning is just around the corner. This has two faces: one actuarial and the other political.

I'll be brief about the actuarial problem. There are these folks called "baby boomers" who are about to retire. When they do, they will expect services such as Social Security and Medicare; services that already cost us more than $1 trillion each year. The additional service recipients will dramatically increase annual Social Security and Medicare costs and probably our national debt.

So what? Why don't we just keep borrowing? It's worked for the Bush Administration, why won't work it work indefinitely?

It might work indefinitely if we were borrowing from a politically neutral source, like The Bank of Heaven, but we aren't. Sixty percent of the debt is privately held; countries like China, Saudi Arabia, and Japan hold one third. There is an increasing danger that our debt holders will wake up one day and declare, "You Americans are on a non-stop spending spree. We're not going to pay for it any more."

Of course, they wouldn't cut us off completely. They'd be like our parents, they'd continue to loan us money, but with stringent conditions attached; like no going out after dark, and much higher interest rates. The problem is that these conditions would affect everything in our economy. They'd result in a drastic reduction in public services such as education and health care.

The other obvious problem is that we have dicey relationships with some of our creditors, like China and Saudi Arabia. So, if we threatened them militarily-I know that's hard to imagine, but bear with me-they might respond by refusing to buy more of our bonds and selling those they have on the open market. This would immediately raise interest rates and, some say, cause runaway inflation. DNC chair Howard Dean recently characterized this problem as "a national security failure" of the Bush Administration.

The larger problem is that it's not just the Bush Administration that likes to party as if there is no tomorrow, it's the American people. As a group we spend more than we earn. Americans have a negative personal savings rate; we cover our tabs by taking out home equity loans. This propensity to borrow shows up everywhere in our economy. Last year our imports were 57 percent more than our exports.

So it's not just the Bush Administration. Here's the ugly truth: those party animals in the White House are reflective of a national psyche that spends as if there is no day of reckoning. If you're one of those apocalyptic Christians who believe that the rapture is going to occur momentarily, then this may make sense. But, for the rest of us, it's a problem.

When the day of reckoning comes then, at the least, we're going to have to pay more for everything because all interest rates will jump up. Meanwhile, government services will be dramatically reduced. We'll experience America's morning after that will go on for a painfully long time.

In the meantime, America has to compete with other countries like India and China, and the European Community who have national mottos somewhat different from "Let's party" and "Let's kick some butt with our military." These countries have mottos like "Let's have the most advanced manufacturing capability in the world," "Let's become the world leader in telecommunications," and "Lets have the most skilled work force."

Remember, they can see us on TV. They're all watching. Marveling at our collective debt wish. Party on, you crazy gringos.

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Seattle killer "clearly intent on homicidal mayhem": police

www.chinaview.cn 2006-03-28 11:26:43

BEIJING, March 28 (Xinhuanet) -- The 28-year-old man, who killed six young people at a house party over the weekend before turning the gun on himself, was "clearly intent on doing homicidal mayhem," Seattle Deputy Police Chief Clark Kimerer said Monday.
The police identified the shooter as Aaron Kyle Huff, who moved to Seattle about four years ago from Montana, and shared an apartment with his identical twin brother Kane.

The police said Huff had attended a rave dance called "Better Off Undead" on Friday night at Seattle's Capitol Hill Arts Center. That event had heavy security, but some people continued the party at a home on Capitol Hill and Huff had been invited.

Some of the partygoers told the police that Huff left the after-party about 7:00 a.m. Saturday and returned minutes later wearing bandoliers of ammunition and carrying a 12-gauge pistol-grip shotgun and a handgun. He fired on the 30 young partygoers gathered in the house, and when a police officer arrived and confronted him, he turned one of the weapons on himself.

It was Seattle's deadliest crime in more than 20 years.

Witnesses interviewed by police said Huff was quiet and self-effacing at the party and acted calm and deliberate during the shootings, firing off bullets and saying something like "there's plenty for everyone."

The deputy chief particularly noted the amount of firepower Huff had with him. He had more than 300 rounds of ammunition, and the detectives seized additional weapons from the apartment he shared with his twin brother.

"My speculation is that this was not a sudden attack. He came heavily armed with additional ammunition ... clearly intent on doing homicidal mayhem in a killing spree," Seattle Deputy Police Chief Clark Kimerer said at a news conference.

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PENN HAS TORTURE DOLL

27/03/2006 21:11

Hollywood activist SEAN PENN has a plastic doll of conservative US columnist ANN COULTER that he likes to abuse when angry. The Oscar-winner actor has hated Coulter ever since she blacklisted his director father LEO PENN in her book TREASON. And he takes out his frustrations with Coulter, who is a best-selling author, lawyer and television pundit, on the Barble-like doll. In an interview with The New Yorker magazine, Penn reveals, "We violate her. There are cigarette burns in some funny places. She's a pure snake-oil salesman. She doesn't believe a word she says."

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Poodleville or Blairing Sycophancy

Guantanamo Bay Briton was MI5 spy, court is told

By Daniel McGrory
28/03/2006

THE Foreign and Commonwealth Office has been forced into an embarrassing change of heart over its refusal to press for the release of a British resident held at Guantanamo Bay after the High Court was told yesterday that he had links to MI5.

Bisher al-Rawi, 37, who has lived in Britain for more than 20 years, says that he was working for British Intelligence when he was picked up by the CIA during a trip to Africa.
Lawyers for Mr al-Rawi and two other long-term British residents held at Guantanamo claim that they are all being tortured and want the High Court to order Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, to lobby the US authorities for their release.

The Government has said that as foreign nationals the men have no legal right to the assistance they are demanding.

But the Foreign Office said yesterday that Mr al-Rawi's case was now regarded as different. "The Foreign Secretary considered it appropriate to reconsider Mr al-Rawi's request that he make representations to the US," it said.

Mr al-Rawi, an Iraqi national, and his Jordanian business partner, Jamil el-Banna, who was granted refugee status in 2000, were picked up in Gambia three years ago and accused of trying to set up an al-Qaeda terrorist training camp. Both men claim that they were asked by British Intelligence to infiltrate an organisation run by a London-based radical cleric, Abu Qatada.

Timothy Otty, who is appearing for the detainees, said that documents from a security service agent, "Witness A", established that there were "communications" relating to the two men before their arrest in November 2002, between the British and US security services.

The third man, Libyan-born Omar Deghayes, 36, had also been held at Guantanamo for three years and was now on a hunger strike, Mr Otty said.

The hearing is expected to last for two more days.

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Parliament vigil man is arrested

BBC News
28/03/2006

"We're killing each other - dropping bombs on our children. Someone somewhere has to do something to stop this madness."
Anti-war protester Brian Haw, who won a court battle to maintain his Parliament Square vigil which began in 2001, has been arrested.

The 56-year old father-of-seven, from Redditch, Worcestershire, was with a fellow campaigner when the arrest occurred, supporters said.

Mr Haw was arrested on suspicion of obstructing police.

Both Mr Haw and the other campaigner, Barbara Tucker, were taken into custody but were later released.

A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said: "A man and a woman were arrested at 2pm in Parliament Square."

Unlawful

The woman was arrested on suspicion of unlawfully demonstrating in Parliament Square, and she allegedly refused to give her details to police when requested.

Scotland Yard said the pair had been released pending a decision by the Crown Prosecution Service.

Last July a High Court ruled Mr Haw could continue his protest, which began initially over the international sanctions regime imposed against Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

New legislation means that police permission is required before mounting a demonstration within a mile of parliament.

But the court ruled that the requirement did not apply to Mr Haw, as his protest began in June 2001, which was before the law came into force.

Mr Haw's dedication is well known and he did not even return home last Christmas.

Speaking at that time he said: "We're killing each other - dropping bombs on our children. Someone somewhere has to do something to stop this madness."

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British agents set men up for CIA detention

By James Button Herald Correspondent in London
March 29, 2006

TWO British residents have spent three years in Guantanamo Bay because the security agency MI5 told the CIA the men were carrying a bomb part, even though MI5 knew the item was a harmless battery charger, documents released in Britain suggest.
Telegrams sent by MI5 to the CIA and released in Britain's High Court on Monday led to the "extraordinary rendition" of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil al-Banna from Gambia in November 2002, BBC news reported.

It is the strongest evidence to date that the British security services may have been aware of and supported the American practice of extraordinary rendition, in which terrorism suspects are arrested outside the United States and taken to another country for detention.

British officials arrested the men at Gatwick Airport after MI5 maintained they were carrying an "electronic device" that could be part of an improvised bomb.

In a note to the Foreign Office 10 days later MI5 said it had released the men at Gatwick "after it was assessed that this item was a commercially available battery charger that had been modified by Bisher al-Rawi in order to make it more powerful".

MI5 also agreed that the men genuinely planned to set up a peanut oil business in Gambia, where they were seized and secretly flown to an Afghan jail, and then Guantanamo.

However, while it told the CIA about the first arrest, it did not tell the American security agency of its subsequent view that the battery charger was harmless, the BBC reported.

The documents were released during a legal challenge to the British Government's failure to press for the release of Mr Rawi, an Iraqi refugee from Saddam Hussein's regime, and Mr Banna, a Jordanian Palestinian.

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