- Signs of the Times for Mon, 10 Apr 2006 -

• Signs Editorials
• Target: Iran
• Big Mama Ain't Happy
• Science and Technology
• The Americas
• Amerika
• Dollars and Cents
• Zionist Israel - Part 1
• Zionist Israel - Part 2
• Around the World
• Spygate
• Iraq
• Nutty News

Gold closed at 592.70 dollars an ounce on Friday, after having broken the $600 mark earlier in the day, representing an increase of 1.6% from last week's $583.50 price. The dollar closed at 0.8269 euros on Friday, up 0.2% from 0.8252 at the end of the previous week. That put the euro at 1.2093 dollars, compared to 1.2118 the week before. Gold in euros, then would be 490.12 per ounce, up 1.8% from 481.52. Oil closed at 67.38 dollars a barrel Friday, up 1.6% from $66.35. Oil in euros would be 55.72 euros a barrel, up 1.8% from 54.75 the week before. The gold/oil ratio closed at 8.80, up 0.1% from 8.79 at the end of the previous week. In the U.S. stock market, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 11,120.04 on Friday, down 0.1% from 11,109.32 for the week. The NASDAQ closed at 2,339.02, virtually unchanged from 2,339.79. In U.S. interest rates, the yield on the ten-year U.S. Treasury note closed at 4.98%, up 13 basis points from 4.85 the week before.
 
Last week we looked at the high rate of corporate profits realized lately.  With stocks strong, global growth rates high, and profits high, why does the economy feel so bad for most people?  The following article contains some clues:

Profits surge to 40-year high
When will corporations spend some of their hoard?

By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch
Mar 30, 2006

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- U.S. corporate profits have increased 21.3% in the past year and now account for the largest share of national income in 40 years, the Commerce Department said Thursday.

Strong productivity gains and subdued wage growth boosted before-tax profits to 11.6% of national income in the fourth quarter of 2005, the biggest share since the summer of 1966. See full story.

For all of 2005, before-tax profits totaled $1.35 trillion, up from $1.16 trillion in 2004 and just $767 billion in 2001.

Meanwhile, the share of national income going to wage and salary workers has fallen to 56.9%. Except for a brief period in 1997, that's the lowest share for labor income since 1966.

"It's a big puzzle," said Josh Bivens, an economist for the Economic Policy Institute. "If this is a knowledge economy, how come the brains aren't being compensated? Instead, the owners of physical capital are getting the rewards."
Despite the flood of cash coming in the door, corporations are investing comparatively little in expanding their operations. Capital spending has been below average, especially considering the strength of the economy, the level of profits and the special tax breaks given to boost investment.

In the fourth quarter, business fixed investment increased just 4.5%. In the past year, investment has risen 6.8%. The growth rate has been falling for the past four quarters.

Some economists are counting on the corporate sector to pick up their investments in the coming year, to replace the economic stimulus that will be lost as the housing market cools.

Profits have been so high because almost all of the benefits from productivity improvements are flowing to the owners of capital rather than to the workers.

While profits are up 21.3% in the past year, labor compensation is up just 5.5%. After adjusting for inflation, population growth and taxes, real disposable per capita incomes are up just 0.5% in the past year.

The economy is good for the very top of the system, and it is bad for the rest of us and likely to get worse. Neoliberal economics has a hard time understanding exploitation. See this, for example from the New York Times:

The Economics of Henry Ford May Be Passé

David Leonhardt
April 5, 2006

HENRY FORD was 50 years old, and not all that different from a lot of other successful businessmen, when he summoned the Detroit press corps to his company's offices on Jan. 5, 1914. What he did that day made him a household name.

Mr. Ford announced that he was doubling the pay of thousands of his employees, to at least $5 a day. With his company selling Model T's as fast as it could make them, his workers deserved to share in the profits, he said.

His rivals were horrified. The Wall Street Journal accused him of injecting "Biblical or spiritual principles into a field where they do not belong." The New York Times correspondent who traveled to Detroit to interview him that week asked him if he was a socialist.

But the public loved it. The country was then suffering a deep recession, and the Ford news seemed to offer hope. Within 24 hours, 10,000 men were lined up outside the Ford employment office in Michigan. The following year, Mr. Ford was mentioned as a future presidential contender.

The mythology around this story holds that Mr. Ford wanted to pay his workers enough so they could afford the products they were making.

In fact, that wasn't his original reasoning. But others made the point, and, in time, it became part of Mr. Ford's rationale as well. The idea became a linchpin in an industrial philosophy known as Fordism.

More production could lead to better wages, which in turn would lead to more spending by the public, yet more production and eventually even higher wages.
"One's own employees ought to be one's own best customers," Mr. Ford said years later. "Paying high wages," he concluded, "is behind the prosperity of this country."

This turned into a pillar of 20th-century economic wisdom. It's time to ask, though, whether Mr. Ford's big idea is as ill suited to this century as his car company seems to be.

By any reasonable standard, the last few years have been bad ones for most people's paychecks. The average hourly wage of rank-and-file workers - a group that makes up 80 percent of the work force - is slightly lower than it was four years ago, once inflation is taken into account. That's right: Most Americans have taken a pay cut since 2002.

But you would never know it by looking at the headline numbers on economic growth. From the standpoint of the broad national economy - the value of the goods and services the country produces - the last few years have been stellar. Despite two wars, soaring oil prices and business scandals, the economy has been growing more than 3 percent a year.

Henry Ford would have no idea what to make of this.

What was so comforting about Fordism was that it suggested that the economy operated on a virtuous, self-reinforcing cycle. Only when the middle class did well could the country do well. And as the country grew ever richer, so would the middle class.

In the last few years, however, the economy has kept growing in large part because high-income families - the top 20 percent, roughly - have done so well and have been such devoted spenders. Globalization and new technology have helped many white-collar workers make more money, even as those same changes have closed factories and depressed wages for others. Stock portfolios and houses on the coasts, meanwhile, are much more valuable than they once were, making their owners more willing to spend.

In fact, well-off families, not cash-short ones, have been the ones increasing their borrowing and cutting their savings the most in recent years, according to the Federal Reserve. In 1992, the top fifth of households, as ranked by income, accounted for 42 percent of consumer spending. By 2000, the share had grown to almost 46 percent, and it is probably not much different today. That may sound like a small change, but it's an enormous amount of money, a shift of $300 billion a year in spending from the poor and middle class to the affluent.

In Michigan, Ford and General Motors have been cutting thousands of jobs, creating the country's sickest local economy and hurting even well-to-do suburbs. Yet the Suburban Collection, a car dealership north of Detroit, sold 90 Bentleys last year, up from 70 in 2004. David Butler, a manager there, said he expected to sell more than 100 Bentleys this year. The car costs at least $180,000. The dealership also opened a Lamborghini showroom in January. It is true that Rolls-Royces aren't selling very well, but the main reason seems to be that Mr. Butler's customers don't feel comfortable being seen in a $300,000 car when the state is suffering so badly. "It's not that they can't afford it," he said. "It's because of the image it would give."

Wages are likely to rise slightly in 2006, but stagnation seems to be the norm over the long term. Except for a span of a few years in the late 1990's, the hourly pay of most workers has done no better than inflation for the last 30 years. Even some Democrats, who have long embraced Fordism, are coming to the conclusion that Mr. Ford's reassuring cycle is not the only thing that can keep the American economy humming. "You don't need an equitable distribution to have a sustainable recovery," said Jared Bernstein, a liberal economist in Washington.

Politically, though, I am not so sure that the current trends are sustainable. Before the 1990's boom lifted wages, stagnating pay had helped cause a series of upheavals: Bill Clinton's election, the Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan phenomena, the Republican takeover of Congress. Today, with the boom fading from memory, protectionism is on the rise, and President Bush's approval ratings are miserable.

So it seems as if now would be a good time to start talking about what to do. There has never been a shortage of ideas: helping more teenagers to finish college, training middle-age workers to switch careers, embarking on public projects like better highways and high-speed trains. Or we could pretend it's still 1914.

I guess wanting all workers to be paid well means we think we are in 1914.  To be 21st century, according to the New York Times, means to acquiesce in an economy based on a few rich families. The rest of us will be their servants. The logic is strange: because wages haven't been rising in the United States in the last thirty years, then there is nothing we can do about it, it is a fact of nature, and we should only try to re-train people to do jobs that are being offshored anyway.

In order to eliminate any successful model of high pay, strong economies, the globalizers, in coordinated action, are striking at the heart of social democratic Europe, going after French and German workers, perhaps the best-off in the world.  The fact that large majorities in both countries favor maintaining social insurance and worker protection matters to ruling groups only to the extent that such support requires those directing change to change tactics:

CPE à la Merkel: Job protection laws to be gutted in Germany

By Dietmar Henning
4 April 2006

With millions of people in France taking to the streets against attacks on the job security of young people, the Grand Coalition government in Germany is quietly attempting to push through parliament its own version of the CPE (First Job Contract), with provisions that go far beyond those in France.

The coalition pact which the government parties - the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), its sister organisation the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) - signed last year when they took office specified the extension of the current probationary period for new employees from six months to two years.

During the probationary period, employers can dismiss workers with two weeks' notice, without cause. The right to compensation or redundancy payments is more or less excluded. If the employment contract does not specify a probationary period, the general dismissal period (i.e., four weeks) applies.

At the heart of the French CPE is the establishment of a two-year probationary period during which employees 26 years of age and younger can be terminated without cause. The regulation specified in the German coalition pact is essentially the same, except that it would apply not only to young workers, but to all new hires, regardless of age.

The fact that no protests have occurred against this measure, and that most people are not even aware of its existence, is to be attributed to the German trade unions. They tacitly supported the creation of the Grand Coalition and are doing everything they can to prevent a mobilisation against it.

At the same time, the events in France are leaving their mark on Germany. On the one hand, the tough stance taken by the French government has encouraged the German employer associations and elements within the CDU and CSU to push for a more rapid dismantling of the social security system and the implementation of "reforms" outlined in the coalition pact. The SPD, on the other hand, is growing nervous over the prospect of mass resistance developing in Germany.

Speaking of Germany, Der Spiegel published an interview with Joseph Stiglitz about the true economic cost of the Iraq War:

Interview with Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz
 
"The War Is Bad for the Economy"

Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, 63, discusses the true $1 trillion cost of the Iraq conflict, its impact on the oil market and the questions of whether the West can afford to impose sanctions on Iran. 

SPIEGEL: Professor Stiglitz, at the beginning of the Iraq war, the United States administration was hoping to almost break even in terms of the costs ...
 
Stiglitz: ... they truly believed the Iraqi people could use their oil revenues to pay for reconstruction.

SPIEGEL: And now you are estimating the cost of war at levels between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. How do you explain this difference?

Stiglitz: First, the war was much more difficult than President Bush and his government expected. They thought they were going to walk in, everybody would say thank you, and they would set up a democratic government and leave. Now that this war is lasting so much longer, they constantly have to adapt their budget. It rose from $50 billion to $250 billion. Today, the Congressional Budget Office talks about $500 billion or more for this adventure.

SPIEGEL: That's still by far lower than your own calculations.

Stiglitz: The reported numbers do not even include the full budgetary costs to the government. And the budgetary costs are but a fraction of the costs to the economy as a whole. And compare this to Gulf War number one, where America almost made a profit!

SPIEGEL: Because Germany paid for it?

Stiglitz: Because Germans paid, because everybody paid. We got our allies to pay full price for used equipment, and we got to refurbish our military. This time, most of the other countries were not willing to do so again.

SPIEGEL: Did Bush just miscalculate, or was he misleading the public about the true costs of war?

Stiglitz: I think it was both. He wanted to believe it was not going to be expensive, he wanted to believe it would be easy. But there's also enormous evidence now that information channels into the White House were distorted. Bush wanted only certain information, and that's mostly what they supplied him with. Larry Lindsey ...

SPIEGEL: ... the White House's former top economic adviser ...

Stiglitz: ... gave -- back in 2002 -- a number of up to $200 billion. I think that was the most accurate inside information at the time. He was dismissed. They didn't want to hear it.

SPIEGEL: In the US, the financial costs of war are seldom discussed. It used to be considered a sacrifice to achieve common goals. Why is it different today?

Stiglitz: This is not like a world war where you're attacked. We were attacked in Pearl Harbor, we had to respond. This time, we had a choice, we had to decide how and who we are going to attack ...

SPIEGEL: ... and if you can afford it.

Stiglitz: Well, we can afford it, that's not the issue. The issue is: $1 trillion or $2 trillion is a lot of money. If our objective is to have stability in the Middle East, secure oil, or extend democracy, you can do a lot of democracy buying for this sum. To put it in context: The whole world spends $50 billion a year on foreign aid. So what we're talking about is multiplying the foreign aid budget 20-fold. Wouldn't you say this could do more for peace and stability and security?

SPIEGEL: Bush would argue it's worth spending that much to decrease the probability of a major terrorist attack on the US.

Stiglitz: Nobody takes that seriously. Instead, most people think the Iraq war has increased the probability of an attack. However, it's difficult to put this aspect into financial terms.

SPIEGEL: How did you calculate the costs of the war?

Stiglitz: The official figures are only the tip of an enormous iceberg. For instance, one of the costs of the war is that soldiers today get very seriously injured but stay alive, and we can keep them alive but at an enormous price.

SPIEGEL: Is this the biggest item in your calculations?

Stiglitz: It's very important. The Bush administration has been doing everything it can to hide the huge number of returning veterans who are severely wounded -- 17,000 so far including roughly 20 percent with serious brain and head injuries. Even the estimate of $500 billion ignores the lifetime disability and healthcare costs that taxpayers will have to spend for years to come. And the administration isn't even generous with veterans, widows and their kids.

SPIEGEL: What does that mean?

Stiglitz: If you're injured in an automobile accident, and you sue the driver, you get much more for your injury than if you're fighting for your country. There's a double standard here. If you happen to put your life at risk fighting for your country, you get a little. If you walk across the street and get injured, you get a lot more. Similarly, payments for a dead soldier amount to only $500,000, which is far less than standard estimates of the lifetime economic cost of a death. This statistical value of a life in the US amounts to circa $6.5 million.

SPIEGEL: How much will a severely brain-damaged soldier cost the US government?

Stiglitz: My moderate estimate is about $4 million. For this group alone there will be a total cost of $35 billion that nobody is talking about. But look at the broader picture: The Veterans Administration originally projected that roughly 23,000 veterans returning from Iraq would seek medical care last year. But in June 2005, it revised this number to an estimated 103,000. No wonder the Veterans Administration had to appeal Congress for emergency funding of $1.5 billion last year.

SPIEGEL: If this is a $1 trillion war, why couldn't the US provide its soldiers with safer body armor and better protected vehicles?

STIGLITZ: Obviously, the US can afford to pay for body armor. Rumsfeld, our Secretary of Defense, said you have to fight with the armor you have, but that's unconscionable. The military is focusing only on the short run costs. If they don't provide appropriate body armor, they save some money today, but the healthcare cost is going to be the future for some other president down the line. I view that as both fiscally and morally irresponsible.

SPIEGEL: This war could have been both safer for the troops and cheaper for the country?

Stiglitz: Exactly.

SPIEGEL: Is war no longer affordable even for countries as rich as the United States?

Stiglitz: You have to remember we are an economy of $13 trillion a year. The issue is not whether you can afford it but whether this is the way you want to spend your money. In using the limited resources that we have for fighting this war, we have less resources to do other things. You saw on your TV what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The Reserves or National Guard are usually the people we use for those national emergencies. They weren't here, they were over in Iraq, and so we were less protected.

SPIEGEL: Before the invasion of Iraq, the US administration said the best way to keep oil prices in check is a short and successful war. A barrel was at $25 at that time, and now it's over $60. What of this increase is due to Iraq?

Stiglitz: In our analysis about the cost of war, we only assumed a modest $5 to $10 caused by the war. We wanted to keep our study conservative, so no one would dispute our numbers, and no one did. But I believe that's a vast underestimation of the true cost.

SPIEGEL: But why? China and India are increasing their demand, real global growth has been going on. This is driving the prices.

Stiglitz: When demand rises so does supply -- that's how markets usually work. Now we're seeing that demand for oil is rising but we're not getting a commensurate increase in supply. And there's a simple answer, it's Iraq. But it's not just because it production has been down.

SPIEGEL: Why else?

Stiglitz: The Middle East is the lowest cost producer in the world. They can produce oil for $10, $15 or $20 a barrel. Now we have the technology to produce oil elsewhere for $35 to $45. But who wants to develop fields or invest in new technologies elsewhere if they know that in five years' time, the Middle East may be supplying oil at previous prices?

SPIEGEL: In other words, were peace and stability re-established in the Middle East, the oil price would be back to maybe $25, despite the huge global hunger for energy?

Stiglitz: Yes. By the way that's the price level oil traders were speculating on in futures trading before the outbreak of war.

SPIEGEL: There should be huge economic pressure on Bush to end this conflict.

Stiglitz: The only people benefiting in this war are Bush's friends in the oil industry. He has done the American economy and the global economy an enormous disfavor, but his Texan friends couldn't be happier. The price of oil is up, and they make money when the price of oil goes up. Their profits are at record levels.

SPIEGEL: You don't like this president very much.

Stiglitz: Oh, it's nothing personal. It's all about his politics.

SPIEGEL: There is an old saying: War is good for the economy.

Stiglitz: Listen, World War II was really unusual, because America was in the Great Depression before. So the war did help the US economy to get securely out of this decline. This time, the war is bad for the economy in both the short and long run. We could have spent trillions in research or education instead. This would have led to future productivity increases.

The liberal wing of the neoliberal movement always seems puzzled by events.  It stems the fact that they don't understand malevolent exploitation.  Stiglitz can detail the Bush administration's mistakes and profligacy with great effectiveness without understanding the deeper reasons, reasons may mean that seemingly stupid moves may actually have been shrewd ones.  Here is Salon's Andrew Leonard on Stiglitz and Robert Reich, both liberal/left globalizers.  Notice how they assume that those setting economic and trade policy have the best interests of their constituents at heart, when in fact they don't:

The zero-sum globalization game nightmare
Robert Reich asks Joseph Stiglitz a hard question.

Andrew Leonard
Apr. 03, 2006

On Sunday, the New York Times finally got around to reviewing a book that I've been talking about here since January, Joseph Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton's "Fair Trade for All." Maybe the reviewer, Robert Reich, the former Clinton administration labor secretary, had issues with his deadline. But better late than never -- the review is excellent and it nails a point that has come up with increasing frequency in the ongoing conversation at How the World Works about globalization.

Specifically, Stiglitz and Charlton's vision for fair trade is one in which rich nations are obligated to open their markets to poorer nations, but poorer nations enjoy the privilege of protecting their markets against the rich. This is because rich nations can adapt much more effectively to the competition unleashed by free trade.

"Surprisingly, though Stiglitz has spent some years in Washington, he doesn't answer the obvious next question: How can this commendable agenda be sold to richer nations?" writes Reich. "Their political leaders are in a bind since so many of their own citizens are also losing jobs and experiencing declining incomes and, rightly or wrongly, blaming globalization for their plight. This is one of the major reasons the antiglobalization movement is as strong in the developed world as in the developing.

"While Stiglitz and Charlton nobly assert that trade agreements should be viewed as presumptively unfair if they bestow disproportionate benefits on richer nations, they fail to acknowledge that within richer nations free trade is already disproportionately benefiting the best educated and best connected. The wealthy are growing much wealthier while the middle class is being squeezed. In fact, the adjustment mechanisms the authors find lacking in most developing economies -- good public schools, modern infrastructure and adequate social safety nets -- are coming to be less and less available even in America. Free trade surely generates the gains Ricardo claimed for it. But until those gains are more widely shared -- within richer countries as well as between richer and poorer -- we can kiss any further round of trade liberalization goodbye."

I think it's unfair to assert that Stiglitz and Charlton fail to acknowledge the inequality of the distribution of benefits from free trade in the developed world. My own guess is that this is so mind-bendingly obvious to them that they don't feel the need to belabor it.

But Reich's review does set the table for a challenging question. Liberal economists like Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs have focused their energies on trying to make globalization work for the world's poorest regions. In doing so, they run the risk, like Stiglitz here, of demonstrating a lack of concern for the poor and less well-off in their own, highly developed nations. But finding a solution that responds to globalization's pressures, as Stiglitz suggested in the Nation last week, without "trying to enhance the well-being of our citizens at the expense of those abroad who are even poorer" is a desperately hard nut to crack.

In How the World Work's darker moments, we recall an epiphany experienced by Frank Holliwell, the protagonist in Robert Stone's great novel about the U.S. and Central America, "A Flag for Sunrise." Contemplating the mess made by the U.S. in Latin America, he fears that the affluence of the rich countries of the North requires the poverty of the poor nations of the South. In Holliwell's nightmare, globalization is a zero-sum game: Luxury in New York mandates starvation in Zambia.

There's got to be a better way.

The following AP article details a simple fact, one that can only be puzzling to those who don't understand greed and exploitation.  If every economic trend of the past thirty years is concentrating wealth in fewer and fewer hands, the following should come as no surprise:

Labor Official Notes Pension Disparities

By WILL LESTER, Associated Press Writer
Thu Apr 6, 7:00 PM ET

The AFL-CIO, pushing for more federal regulation of lucrative corporate salaries and pensions, released information Thursday about some of the sweetest executive retirement deals in the country.

"As corporate America is slashing workers' pensions left and right, we think investors and the public should know about the huge pensions these CEOs are raking in," said Richard Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO.

The labor federation, which represents more than 9 million workers, posted updated information about executive salaries and pensions on its Web site.

Trumka said average executive pay at a company on the Standard & Poor's 500 is already more than 400 times the average worker's wages. And many executives now get multimillion-dollar "supplemental executive retirement plans" at a time that many companies are cutting back on reliable "defined benefit" retirement plans for workers, he said.

Those retirement deals could run as high as $6.5 million annually and may not reflect a company's performance, Trumka said.

The AFL-CIO Web site, http://www.paywatch.org, looks at 25 of the richest executive pension plans in the country, based on research done with the Corporate Library.

Trumka said the Securities and Exchange Commission is pushing for more public disclosure of executive pay and other benefits, an area that has angered company investors. He noted that some companies that have cut worker retirement several times in recent years have some of the richest pension deals for their chief executive.

He urged union supporters to push the SEC to improve disclosure of executive pay and benefits. The labor federation, he said, is urging the SEC to also require companies to publicize their standards for tying strong job performance to executive pay.

On the economic collapse front, a disturbing news item surfaced yesterday in the Financial Times:

Europe simulates financial meltdown

By George Parker in Vienna
Sun Apr 9, 4:10 PM ET

Europe's financial regulators have held a "war game" exercise, simulating a continent-wide financial crisis, amid fears they are ill- prepared to stop a problem in one country spreading across borders.

The exercise involved simulating the collapse of a big bank with operations in several large countries to see whether the European Central Bank, national central banks and finance ministries could work together to contain the crisis.

It is understood the exercise took place at the headquarters of the ECB in Frankfurt at the end of last week. One person involved said: "It is like checking whether a nuclear power plant can survive a plane crashing into it."

The exercise took place on the eve of a meeting of European Union finance ministers and central bank chiefs in Vienna, at which the bloc's financial stability was high on the agenda. Officials at the meeting confirmed that ministers had discussed the ECB crisis management exercise.

The aim was to test the ability of national regulators to share information with other national bodies in a crisis and to overcome "differences in culture" and other practical obstacles. The results are being analysed and will be reported to the Ecofin council in June.

Europe's vulnerability to a cross-border financial crisis was revealed in a confidential report prepared by officials for the Ecofin council. Regulators are particularly worried about the risks to financial stability posed by the growth in hedge funds and credit derivatives.

It said that "progress has been insufficient in most of the member states" in putting in place national structures for crisis management, and urged national regulators to stage their own crisis simulation exercises.

The EU has rejected the creation of a single European financial regulator to manage cross-border risks, and has instead placed its faith in national authorities working together.

Last year regulators signed an agreement that they would share information openly and speedily in the event of a crisis in a national financial institution, in an attempt to stop the contagion spreading across Europe's single market.

The report submitted to the Ecofin council identified a possible housing market crash, a bird flu pandemic and high oil prices as potential sources of risk, but said that the situation in the banking sector was "solid".

However, the report warned that hedge funds and credit derivatives were sources of concern "as related risks remain opaque and they have become extremely relevant in assessing financial stability both across borders and across all financial sectors".

It said that, while hedge funds could contribute to market efficiency, they "can also be sources of systemic risks".

Credit derivatives markets were said to have grown by 128 per cent in 2005 compared with the previous year, with a nominal value of EU12,430bn ($14,900bn, £8,700bn) in June last year….

At the risk of offending anyone out there, I really need to ask a question here: what the hell is the matter with you people? And by "you people," I don't mean specifically the regular readers of these newsletters, but rather the American people in general. So to all you John and Jane Q. Publics out there, let me rephrase the question: what the hell does it take to get a reaction out of you?

I realize, of course, that there has been a serious dumbing-down of American society and culture over the years. And I realize that government operatives have virtually complete control over the flow of information, so that virtually every thing you read, hear or see is, at best, an approximation of reality. And I realize that you have been systematically conditioned, over the course of many decades, to revere the institutions of this society - the very same institutions whose spokesmen are routinely called upon to serve you up a nice steaming platter of lies.

None of that, however, fully explains the near complete paralysis of the American people as a whole. So let me ask the question once again: what the hell does it take to get a reaction out of you? Let's quickly run through a partial list of things that, thus far, have failed to inspire you to summon your inner Howard Beales: two consecutive stolen presidential elections; back-to-back wars, both of them unprovoked and brazenly illegal, with more on the horizon; the deaths of well over two thousand of your sons and daughters in Central Asia and the Middle East, and the maiming and disfiguring of thousands more; the ongoing slaughter of tens of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis; countless corporate/political scandals directly tied to the Bush mob; diligent efforts by a veritable army of 9-11 skeptics (including a growing list of people that some of you might find more credible than us wacky Internet 'conspiracy theorists') to convince you that the official story of the 'terrorist' attacks of September 11 is a nothing more than a fairy tale; passage of the Patriot Act, and various other attacks on your civil, privacy, and due process rights; the entirely preventable deaths of an unknown number of people in New Orleans; military occupation of southern Louisiana; sanctioning of secret military tribunals; revelations of the widespread use of, and official sanction of, various forms of torture; getting slapped in the face with the Abu Ghraib photos; indefinite, warrantless detentions without access to legal counsel; illegal domestic surveillance; open witch-hunting of 'liberal' members of academia (though it is perfectly acceptable for a former Phoenix Program assassin and torturer to educate your children); gross invasions of your privacy - at airports, at sporting events, when entering many public buildings, even when sitting at home on your computer; massive cuts in social spending, even while hundreds of billions of dollars are spent waging war and militarizing domestic law enforcement; massive tax cuts that primarily benefit corporate America; the steady erosion of the nation's education and healthcare systems; trashing of the environment and environmental protections; the accumulation of an almost unfathomable level of debt; and the act of grand theft masquerading as Medicare 'reform.'

Through all of this and more, you have sat silently by. So again I must ask: what the hell will it take? How much worse does it have to get? How much worse will you allow it to get? And if you continue to sit by and do nothing, who do you think is going to save you from the increasingly bleak future we face? Who do you think is going to stop all the madness for you?

Amazingly enough, some of you actually seem to believe that a 'censure' resolution is the answer to the nation's woes, as if a firm pronouncement of "Bad George!" - perhaps coupled with a swat with a rolled-up newspaper - will effect a drastic change in the national landscape. Others seem to think that impeachment proceedings will rid the country of its diseased organs, but how you have convinced yourselves of such a bizarre notion is beyond my level of understanding. I know that a lot of phony 'progressive' websites regularly offer up such claims as some sort of political pacifier, but that doesn't mean that you have to eagerly suckle that teat.

Who do you think is going to conduct impeachment proceedings, or pass a censure resolution? The venerable United States Congress? The very same Congress that just overwhelmingly passed an extension of the Patriot Act? As I recall, when the act was first passed, you dutifully bought into the lie that many of the congressmen who voted "Aye" did so only because they hadn't had time to actually read the legislation. Buying into that lie, of course, allowed you to preserve your image of Congress as some sort of effective counterbalance to the gang in the White House. But four years, one would think, should have been adequate time for even the slowest readers among our elected representatives to catch up on what it was that they passed into law.

So I'm curious to know: what sort of mental gymnastics are required to still view this Congress as a body interested in, or capable of, reigning in this administration?

What actions by this Congress give you hope for the future? The regular allocation of tens of billions in additional dollars to fund an illegal war based on fully-exposed lies? The moves to retroactively legalize Bush's illegal domestic surveillance programs? The Medicare 'reform' bill? The bankruptcy 'reform' bill? The sterling work done investigating the 9-11 attacks and the unnatural disaster in New Orleans? The routine rubber-stamping of reactionary political appointees? The fast-tracking of 'free trade' legislation, predictably coupled with the wholesale 'outsourcing' of jobs and widespread attacks on wages and benefits? The fact that, for five years, this Congress has marched in total lockstep with the Bush administration, sparing King George the trouble of having to veto a single piece of legislation?

Trust me when I say that I too would like to hold onto a glimmer of hope that America's cancer can be excised through normal political channels, so please tell me what it is that I am missing? What is it that you so desperately cling to? Is it the occasional meaningless posturing by the likes of Russ Feingold, John McCain, Ron Paul, and Harry Reid? Is it because there are occasionally a few token dissenters in the crowd when Congress votes on a major piece of legislation? Or is it because you think that the midterm elections are going to magically usher in a new Congress with a new mindset? Are you one of those who hold out hope that elections are going to fix things? Have you convinced yourself that as long as you show up at your polling place every two years, you are doing your part to halt the headlong plunge into overt fascism?

Some of you think we can just ride out these bad times for a few more years, until the next presidential election rolls around, when some great and wise Democrat will take office and miraculously roll back the landscape to the way it was before the bad men came riding into town. Of course, you held out that same hope leading up to the 2004 elections, because you knew, with a certainty, that the American people were not going to confirm the appointment of this would-be president. And you were right. But guess what? It didn't matter, because it had already been established that in the twenty-first century, election results need not correlate with actual votes cast.

And so you watched it happen once again - after patiently waiting for four years to deliver your message to Washington, you watched passively as another presidential election was stolen in broad daylight - and now you sit back and wait once again. You wait for Hillary Clinton to come and save the day, because you see a Hillary presidency as a backdoor way to get your hero, Bill Clinton, back in the White House. But as I noted just a few newsletters ago, it becomes more obvious with each passing week that Bill and Hillary are wearing Team Bush jerseys. Just weeks after posting that newsletter, it was revealed (albeit discretely) that your hero, Bill Clinton, was a key player working behind the scenes to facilitate his buddy George's Dubai ports deal.

And yet still you hold out hope, just as you held out hope that George's Skull & Bones fraternity brother (seen here cozying up to another kindred spirit, the late Anton LaVey of the Church of Satan) would end the madness. You hold out hope even though all the Democratic Party's potential presidential contenders have demonstrated repeatedly that they will only attack Bush from the political right. They will not question the underlying legitimacy of the 'War on Terrorism,' they will only assert that that 'war' is not being waged aggressively enough. And they will not question the legality of the war in Iraq, they will only question how that war is being waged.

None of the outrages committed by this administration, either individually or collectively, have awakened you from your slumber, so I seriously doubt that there is anything that I could reveal here that would provide the necessary wake-up call. Nevertheless, I will give it my best shot.

What if I were to tell you, for starters, that our benevolent leaders have already got the ball rolling on an ambitious plan to build concentration camps? Right here on American soil! You would, of course, laugh heartily as you dismissed such sensational claims as the product of the overactive imagination of some Internet crackpots - which is exactly why I'm not going to tell you any such thing. Instead, I'm going to let Halliburton break the news to you, in the form of a press release issued on January 24, 2006. You can read it for yourself if you like; it's posted on the company's website. If you stop by for a visit, this is what you'll find:

ARLINGTON, Virginia - KBR announced today that its Government and Infrastructure division has been awarded an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract to support the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities in the event of an emergency. KBR is the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton (NYSE:HAL).

With a maximum total value of $385 million over a five-year term, consisting of a one-year based period and four one-year options, the competitively awarded contract will be executed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District ... The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs. The contingency support contract provides for planning and, if required, initiation of specific engineering, construction and logistics support tasks to establish, operate and maintain one or more expansion facilities.

The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other U.S. Government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster.
(Haliburton article)

Since there is little indication that America is about to be bum-rushed by "an emergency influx of immigrants," it seems safe to say that the real purpose of these 'detention centers' is to "support the rapid development" of these mysterious, unspecified "new programs." It doesn't take much reading between the lines to recognize that the "new programs" will involve mass detentions following the next disaster to strike the country, whether it be real or imagined, and whether it be of natural or unnatural origins.

The good news here is that, should you find yourself suddenly occupying a room at Guantanamo on the Pacific, you won't have to worry about having a lot of idle time on your hands. That's because the U.S. Army has an ambitious Civilian Inmate Labor Program in effect that you can read all about right here: http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/r210_35.pdf. As you can see, this report, direct from the Headquarters of the Department of the Army, "provides guidance for establishing and managing civilian inmate labor programs on Army installations. It [also] provides guidance on establishing prison camps on Army installations."

As I'm sure you'll agree, this sounds like a really great program. First of all, it insures that all the shuttered military bases in the country will still provide a benefit to society. And it provides an answer to that vexing question: in this time of greatly increased militarism, why all the base closures in recent years? Turns out they make great forced-labor camps. And everyone wins: the Army is provided with "a source of labor at no direct cost to Army installations to accomplish tasks that would not be possible otherwise due to the manning and funding constraints under which the Army operates," and you, the inmate, are "provid[ed] meaningful work."

Think of the possibilities here, folks: one day you're out demonstrating against a clearly illegal and immoral war, and the next day you're doing the Army's shit work at a military base cum concentration camp!

Due to your new employer's "funding constraints," brought on by the difficulty of operating with a paltry annual budget of less than half a trillion dollars, "the Army is not interested in, nor can afford, any relationship with a corrections facility if that relationship stipulates payment for civilian inmate labor," so it's a pretty safe bet that you won't be getting paid. In fact, your new employer will pretend that you don't really work there at all: "Inmates are not Department of Army employees and are not regarded as such. Inmates must not be referred to as employees. They will not be paid from Department of the Army funds, nor receive any personal or private gratuity for work accomplished or services rendered. Interservice, interagency, or interdepartmental support agreements and/or memoranda of agreement with the corrections facility must not create any appearance of employment of inmates."

This DoD program ostensibly applies only to federal inmates, but there are numerous loopholes that allow for state and local inmates to be drafted into a little forced labor as well. In fact, the program appears to provide incentive for a massive expansion of the number of state and local inmates (already the highest in the world, both in absolute numbers and on a per capita basis). "Inmate labor programs using State and local civilian inmates," you see, is allowed if said inmates are drawn from "on-post prison camps." And "Section 2667, Title 10, United States code governing leases of DoD property allows acceptance of inmate labor as payment in kind for real property leased to correctional systems for use as prison camps."

In other words, any correctional entity can acquire facilities in which to incarcerate you at no cost. So, like I said, everyone wins with this arrangement: the Army gets a steady supply of free slave labor, the correctional system gets free space to house additional inmates, and you are given meaningful employment. Sounds like a sweet deal for everyone.

In addition to the Civilian Inmate Labor Program, the Department of Defense has also drafted an ambitious new Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support. In the Foreword, we find that "Protecting the United States from direct attack is the highest priority of the Department of Defense." This is apparently a new policy, since the Defense Department obviously did nothing to protect the United States either before or during what were purportedly "direct attacks" on the United States on September 11, 2001. Reading on, we learn that "The military has traditionally secured the United States by projecting power overseas. While our current missions abroad continue to play a vital role for the security of our Nation, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 emphasized that we are confronting fundamentally different challenges from those faced during the Cold War."

Different challenges, of course, require different responses. The "terrorists," you see, seek to "exploit the openness of our society to their advantage." Even with all the changes we have seen in the last several years, our society is apparently still entirely too open. The solution to this problem, according to the Pentagon, is to take the military power that we have traditionally projected overseas, and project it right here in the Fatherland Homeland. What we need is an "active, layered defense" that is "global, seamlessly integrating US capabilities in the forward regions of the world, the global commons of space and cyberspace, in the geographic approaches to US territory, and within the United States. It is a defense in depth."

Ahh, yes, what we need is military control of everything - the nation, the world, the heavens, and the cyber world. What we need to do is create a world where 'terrorists,' as well as garden-variety dissidents and other persons-of-interest, will have no place to run and no place to hide. Because we are, you see, "a nation at war, a war whose length and scope may be unprecedented." To keep pace with this changing and dangerous world, the "DoD will continue to transform US military forces to execute homeland defense missions in the forward regions, approaches, US homeland, and global commons."

The DoD wants us to know that the "Department of Defense is responsible for homeland defense," and the "Department is prepared to conduct homeland defense missions whenever the President, exercising his constitutional authority as Commander in Chief, authorizes military action." The DoD also wants us to know that it "maintains land forces capable of responding rapidly, when so directed, to threats against DoD personnel, defense critical infrastructure, or other domestic targets." Among other duties, these land forces can be used "to support civilian law enforcement in responding to civil disturbances," or to provide "critical CBRNE [chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or high-yield explosive mass casualty attacks] consequence management capabilities in support of civil authorities ... DoD must therefore equip and train these war-fighting forces, as necessary, for domestic CBRNE consequence management."

So the plan, it would appear, is to call in combat troops to deal with a variety of domestic situations, including "civil disturbances" and "manag[ing] the consequences of an attack or a disaster." As we all remember from last summer, the DoD and the DHS have already run practice drills in the state of Louisiana, with rather predictable results.

In addition to the illegal domestic deployment of U.S. military forces, the Pentagon's plan for Total War also includes a massive amount of "information sharing across traditional military-civilian boundaries." Already in the works are the development of "automated tools to improve data fusion, analysis, and management, to track systematically large amounts of data, and to detect, fuse, and analyze aberrant patterns of activity," as well as the development of "capabilities to cue, surveil, identify, engage, and access potential threats in real time. Detection and tracking capabilities must be all-weather, around-the-clock, and effective against moving targets."

The grave threat we face today - as opposed to the rather quaint threat of global nuclear annihilation that we faced during the Cold War - "necessitates an unprecedented degree of shared situational awareness among Federal agencies, with state, local, tribal, and private entities, and between the United States and its key foreign partners." Note that the inclusion of "private entities" on the information sharing list is undoubtedly a reference to quasi-governmental paramilitary groups like the infamous Blackwater, which has already been deployed domestically in New Orleans. Note also that, throughout Latin America and other parts of the world, "information sharing" with such mercenary groups has usually involved corrupt governments supplying hit lists and/or round-up lists.

What?! Death squads? People gone missing in the middle-of-the-night? Here?! In America?! Why, that's just absurd! Things like that can't happen here, in the land of the free and the home of the brave!

That is what you're thinking, isn't it? That is the thought that you have always used to comfort yourself. As long as you can remain firm in your commitment to the idea that nothing truly bad can happen in the greatest nation on earth, then you can continue to ignore all evidence to the contrary. It doesn't matter that Halliburton has announced that it has a contract to build detention centers, because you know that the notion of concentration camps in America is absurd. It doesn't matter that the Army is operating a Civilian Inmate Labor Program, because you know that the very idea of forced-labor camps in America is ridiculous. It doesn't matter that the Department of Defense has drafted an ambitious plan to deploy military forces domestically, because you know that the Posse Comitatus Act forbids any such thing.

Not too many years ago, your list of things that "can't happen here" probably included indefinite 'detentions' in horrendous conditions without access to legal counsel. It probably also included the official endorsement of torture and assassination as 'war' fighting tools. It undoubtedly included the domestic deployment of military forces and mercenaries to deal with the aftermath of a hurricane. And it surely included the installation of an illegitimate president through massive voter fraud and Supreme Court intervention. It probably even included open pronouncements that America is now in a state of endless war.

None of that could happen here - you said so yourself, if I recall correctly - but all of it and more already has. Concentration camps and forced labor camps can't happen here, but the plans have already been drawn up and the contracts have already been awarded. How many more things that "can't happen here" have to happen before you come to terms with the fact that America does not have some sort of invisible shield around it that protects you from the evils that befall other nations? Before you answer, let's take a look at some of the other ways that the Pentagon is keeping America safe from the ever-present threat of 'terrorism.'

According to the Strategy for Homeland Defense report, the DoD will "ensure persistent wide-area surveillance and reconnaissance of the US maritime approaches," which will, of course, "require that Navy forces be placed under periodic command and control of US Northern Command as appropriate." That seems fair. After all, if we've already signed up the Army, the Air Force, the Department of Homeland Security, Blackwater, and federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement entities, it wouldn't be right to deny the Navy the opportunity to do some domestic policing.

Reading on through the DoD report, we learn that "Implementation of the Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support may require several new technological investments. Three areas of particular interest for further exploration are advanced information and communications technology, new generations of sensors, and non-lethal capabilities."

"The placement of sensors on high altitude platforms," we are told, "including new generations of unmanned aerial vehicles, satellites, and aerostats, could allow sustained surveillance of wide areas of the earth's surface." The Pentagon is also working feverishly to develop "an urban surveillance system that would use computers and thousands of cameras to track, record and analyze the movement of every vehicle in a city. Named 'Combat Zones That See,' the project is designed to help the U.S. military protect its troops abroad and fight in cities overseas. Police, scientists and privacy experts say the unclassified technology could be adapted easily to spy on Americans. The CTS' centerpiece is groundbreaking computer software that is capable of automatically identifying vehicles by size, color, shape and license tag, or drivers and passengers by face ... The project is being overseen by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is helping the Pentagon develop technologies for combating terrorism and fighting wars in the 21st century. Its other projects include developing software that scans databases of everyday transactions and personal records worldwide to predict terrorist attacks and creating a computerized diary that would record and analyze everything a person says, sees, hears, reads or touches."
(Washington Times)

As for so-called non-lethal weapons, "potential application to homeland defense missions include: counter-personnel technology, used to deny entry into a particular area, temporarily incapacitate individuals or groups, and clear facilities, structures, and areas," and "counter-material technology, to disable, neutralize, or deny an area to vehicles, vessels, and aircraft, or disable particular items of equipment." In other words, what is referred to as 'non-lethal technology' is actually crowd-control technology. And 'terrorists' don't, as far as I know, tend to gather in crowds. Angry Americans tend to gather in crowds, for the purpose of exercising their alleged constitutional right to assemble. Or at least they should.

Over the last several years, New Scientist magazine has taken a look at some of this emerging crowd-control technology. In June 2004, the publication revealed that "Weapons that can incapacitate crowds of people by sweeping a lightning-like beam of electricity across them are being readied for sale to military and police forces in the US and Europe. At present, commercial stun guns target one person at a time, and work only at close quarters. The new breed of non-lethal weapons can be used on many people at once and operate over far greater distances." As the manufacturer of one of these weapons systems gushed, "We will be able to fire a stream of electricity like water out of a hose at one or many targets in a single sweep." (http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6014)

In March 2005, we learned that the "US military is funding development of a weapon that delivers a bout of excruciating pain from up to 2 kilometres away. Intended for use against rioters, it is meant to leave victims unharmed. But pain researchers are furious that work aimed at controlling pain has been used to develop a weapon. And they fear that the technology will be used for torture." The explicit goal of the research is to create a weapon capable of causing "the maximum pain possible." (New Scientist)

Returning once again to the Pentagon strategy paper, we find that the Department of Defense will "identify opportunities to share appropriate non-lethal capabilities with domestic law enforcement agencies." The Pentagon, it seems, is all about sharing. And that's a good thing, since these weapons systems will certainly come in handy at those times when batons, pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets, bean bags and tasers just aren't enough to break up a legally assembled crowd of pissed-off American citizens.

Elsewhere on the technology front, "A scientist funded by the US government has deliberately created an extremely deadly form of mousepox, a relative of the smallpox virus, through genetic engineering. The new virus kills all mice even if they have been given antiviral drugs as well as a vaccine that would normally protect them. The work has not stopped there. The cowpox virus, which infects a range of animals including humans, has been genetically altered in a similar way ... the research brings closer the prospect of pox viruses that cause only mild infections in humans being turned into diseases lethal even to people who have been vaccinated." (New Scientist) (For much more on 'emerging technologies,' see Sunshine Project. I would provide some excerpts here, but the report really should be read in its entirety to fully grasp all the disturbing avenues of research currently being conducted in US labs, including the development of ethnic-specific biological weapons, weapons aimed at wiping out food supplies, reproductive control weapons, and the resurrection of the Spanish Flu, last seen wiping out some 20-40 million people.)

So there you have it, folks: concentration camps, forced labor, martial law, global surveillance, sadistic forms of crowd control, genocidal biological weapons - all this and more is looming in the not-too-distant future. And our trusty servants in Washington will have no trouble finding some handy justification for fully activating and expanding these programs. A seemingly natural disaster, such as an earthquake or hurricane, could serve as the trigger. So too could another 'terrorist' attack, and the Homeland Defense report promises us that more are coming: "Terrorists will seek and potentially gain surreptitious entry into the United States to conduct mass casualty attacks against Americans on US soil ... Terrorists and/or rogue states will attempt multiple, simultaneous mass casualty attacks against the US homeland."

These triggering events could themselves be triggered by any sudden increase in the anger level of average Americans. Because the truth is, you see, that beneath all the bluster and arrogance, the Washington gang is terrified of you. It's hard to believe, I know, but it is true nonetheless. Even though you have sit idly by while your beloved Constitution and Bill of Rights have been thoroughly trampled over, the powers-that-be view you as a sleeping giant that, if fully awakened, is capable of laying waste to their cherished plans.

Although they have convinced you that you are utterly powerless, they know that that is not the case. They know that they would not be able to contain the seething anger of the masses should it ever fully surface. They know the fury that will be unleashed should the dormant beast awaken to the fact it has been deliberately and systematically lied to. And they fear that some day soon one of their provocations will awaken you.

They will never let you see that fear, of course, for to do so would shatter the illusion that they are omnipotent and you are powerless to resist. But the fear is there, lurking just beneath the arrogant façade. In Washington, in the halls of academia, and in the newsrooms of Fox and CNN and ABC and NBC and CBS, the fear is palpable. It can be found in all the institutions of society that are complicit in serving you up your daily portion of lies.

Their greatest fear is facing the beast at full strength, for they know that if that day of reckoning ever comes, there will be hell to pay for their transgressions against the American people. And so they try to weaken the beast while it lies dormant - by demoralizing it, and by breaking it up into smaller, more manageable pieces, preferably pieces that can be played against each other. And as long as the American people continue to play along, by allowing Washington to dictate the rules of this game, the beast will remain too weak to fight back against the considerable oppressive powers of the state.

The rest of the world has a better understanding of how this game must be played. Turn on your television set and you might catch a glimpse of a few million French citizens taking to the streets to express their anger at their government's labor policies. Turn to another channel and you might see half-a-million Latino immigrants marching through the streets of Los Angeles to protest proposed immigration reforms. And yet the American people, as a whole, cannot summon the energy to take to the streets even as your sons and daughters are being fed into the meat grinder in Iraq.

Make no mistake about it: those images from Paris and Los Angeles scare the shit out of the criminals in Washington, as can be discerned from the tone of the news coverage provided by the Western media. They look at those masses of humanity and begin picturing such scenes in every big city across this nation. And then they imagine public anger becoming so widespread that they begin to lose control of the militarized law enforcement agencies all across the country that they rely upon to keep the masses at bay.

So what's it going to be, people? Are you going to continue to sit passively in the bleachers, or are you going to take to the streets in numbers previously unseen on these shores? Are you going to initiate a general strike and shut corporate America down? Are you going to storm the offices of all the major media outlets and let the opinion-shapers know that aiding and abetting the criminals in Washington is itself a crime, and one that has severe consequences?

Is it not your responsibility to act to protect your children if they are in danger? And can we not agree that virtually all of the key figures in the media are not merely messengers, as we are to believe, but rather highly-paid propagandists for the State? And can we not also agree that the propaganda being sold poses a direct threat to our children's futures? If a 'common criminal,' so to speak, were posing a direct and very serious threat to your children's safety, would you sit idly by doing nothing?

Is it not perfectly obvious that we would not be in our current predicament if we had anything resembling a free and independent press? Washington would still harbor a desire to implement an overtly fascist agenda, to be sure, but without a compliant media machine to obscure the truth and shape public opinion, those plans would remain but a dream. Without a compliant media, we would not be living in a post-911 world, because no 'terrorist' attacks would have occurred on September 11, 2001. Why? Because without a propaganda machine masquerading as a free press, such an audacious and patently fraudulent story could have never been sold to the American people, just as the lie-based wars in Central Asia and the Middle East could have never been marketed.

When your children come to you ten or twenty years in the future (and they will - assuming, of course, that they survive that long, given the unfolding plans to wipe out 90% of humanity, likely justified on the basis of the junk science known as 'Peak Oil' theory: Ebola for Population Reduction) to ask why you were asleep at the wheel while the country was evolving into an overtly fascist police state, what will you tell them? That there was nothing you could do? And when they then ask if you were truly powerless or if you just allowed yourself to be convinced that you were, what will you tell them then?

The Pentagon's Homeland Defense report concludes as follows: "The Department of Defense must change its conceptual approach to homeland defense. The Department can no longer think in terms of the 'home' game and the 'away' game. There is only one game. The Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support is a significant step toward this strategic transformation. Defending the US homeland - our people, property, and freedom - is our most fundamental duty. Failure is not an option."

As has been demonstrated repeatedly in various foreign adventures, the US Department of Defense has little interest in defending freedom or people. Its primary function is the acquisition and defense of property - property 'owned' by US and multinational corporations. In the 'Homeland' as elsewhere, the role of the military will be to protect corporate property and corporate profits, at the expense of the rights and the freedoms of the people - and quite likely at the expense of the very lives of the people.

The responsibility of defending the rights and freedoms of the American people falls squarely on your shoulders. Nobody else is going to do it for you. It is your most fundamental duty. And failure is definitely not an option.

"Mon dieu! The riots in France continue. It's not revolution, but a combination of spring fever and counter-revolution designed to protect the perks of those who have cushy lifetime jobs and lavish pensions. It's a 'cri du coeur' of anguish from all those sociology and cultural anthropology students who are discovering that they may not have jobs when they graduate."

Youth unemployment is at a terrifying 23 per cent and rises to 50 per cent in some suburbs; and yet there is almost no way of getting these people into jobs, because in France there is almost no way of getting the shiftless and idle out of their jobs, especially in the state sector.
In order to fire someone, French companies with more than 600 employees must go through legal procedures lasting 106 days. It costs French companies 2.6 times as much to fire a 35-year- old as it costs an English company; and of course there may be some people out there who are sometimes nervous about losing their jobs, and might wish that they had the kind of protections enjoyed in France.

But that is to miss the central economic reality, an understanding that was at the heart of the British labour market reforms of the 1980s, changes that have been very largely responsible for the 52 consecutive quarters of growth enjoyed by Britain and unemployment currently low by European standards.
The point is that if you make it easier to fire, you also make it easier to hire: and that is the way to get the economy moving. Anyone who cares about the future of the European economy - and it matters deeply to us, the fate of our leading trading partners - should get out to Paris and support de Villepin in a counter-demonstration.

US clandestine activities inside Iran have increased

Planning for a possible air attack has intensified

The option of using of tactical nuclear weapons to ensure the destruction of well-protected Iranian nuclear facilities is still on the table.

Bill Sammon, Washington Examiner: "A lot of critics are conflating the two and are saying that because Bush disclosed this piece of information, they're implying that Bush leaked the name."

Ben Affleck: "He probably also leaked the name. There's just no proof of that."

Sammon: "Even the prosecutor, even Fitzgerald is saying Bush didn't leak the name. So let's be clear, Bush didn't leak Valerie Plame's name -- not that we know of."

Affleck: "Because if he did, you can be hung for that! That's treason!"

Bill Maher: "That is treason."

Affleck: "You could be killed. That's not a joking around Tom DeLay 'I'll do a year, I bribed the state officials with corporate money.' That's like they shoot you in the battlefield for doing that. Don't you think we should find out who leaked that name?"

Maher proposed that Tom DeLay is "the poster boy for the kind of getting paid off, sludge fund, influence-peddling [said "petting"], crony capitalism that has turned America into something less than a first-rate power."

Sammon: "...You're right that he is the poster boy for the left. He's the guy the left loves to hate and his departure means you can't use his name to raise funds anymore. His departure means his seat will probably go to a Republican this time. His departure mean-"

Maher: "A Democrat, you mean?"

Sammon: "No, if he'd of stayed in the race he probably would have lost. By getting out, he actually makes it more likely for that to go to a Republican. "

Affleck: "Tom DeLay personally gerrymandered that district so severely that it looks like a map of Italy, you know what I mean?. There won't be a Democrat elected in that seat for a thousand years. You can't say he's the poster boy for the left. He happens to be an incredibly powerful Republican who is a criminal and now you blame Democrats for pointing it out!" (Loud applause)

Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at: rsamples@sirinet.net. © 2005 Sheila Samples



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Libby Sings

John Prados
April 07, 2006

The irony is so thick you can cut it with a knife. Just a few months ago defenders of the Bush administration were lambasting Justice Department prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald for engaging in a fishing expedition that might hurt President George W. Bush. The pundits considered Fitzgerald's indictment for perjury of former vice-presidential aide I. Lewis ("Scooter") Libby to be politically motivated and wrong.
To recap, Libby's alleged perjury occurred during his testimony to a grand jury investigating the blown cover of CIA clandestine officer Valerie Plame Wilson, bound up in a White House bid to neutralize criticism of the Iraq war. The Plame affair started as an effort to discredit Ambassador Joseph Wilson, whom the CIA had sent to Niger to look into charges that Iraq was buying uranium ore there. Wilson found nothing to substantiate the claim and subsequently became a critic of Bush's resort to war. His wife was outed in an attempt to undermine Wilson's charges.

Continued legal filings in the case now reveal Prosecutor Fitzgerald as a guardian of White House secrets and Scooter Libby plus his defense team as assiduously implicating President Bush. For those who questioned George Bush's modus operandi in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq and afterwards these are perhaps not unexpected developments. But the gradual emergence of the contents of the Libby grand jury testimony is important not only because it contradicts the president's public denials of the leaks, but also for potentially placing the president at the center of a smear campaign.

Prosecutor Fitzgerald's April 5 response to the Libby team's latest motion to compel discovery of a vast array of documents discloses that Vice President Dick Cheney told Libby that President Bush had "specifically" authorized officials in the summer of 2003 to reveal certain contents of the secret U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. There will be an argument over whether Bush or Cheney actually had that authority (which is vested in the Director of Central Intelligence by a law on the books since 1949) but that is not the concern here. Rather, the disclosure of this deliberate Bush leak-given to Judith Miller of The New York Times and others-provides new evidence that the White House regarded the top secret NIE not as an intelligence appreciation but as fodder for political warfare. In fact on July 12 Cheney ordered Libby to speak to the press about the NIE.

The new evidence also says something about Bush secrecy. This administration has moved on many levels to restrict public-and even official-access to information. Cutting off flows of data formerly routinely provided to Congress or the public, defenestrating access to the records of former presidents mandated by the Presidential Records Act, curbing the Freedom of Information Act, refusing to describe to Congress its domestic communications interception program and most recently reclassifying documents in the public domain for years. Suddenly we see President Bush, without a care, releasing secret records he felt would bolster his case.

Moreover, the way in which this was done should send shudders down the spine: according to the Fitzgerald filing, Scooter Libby told the grand jury that "he understood that even in the days following his conversation with Ms. Miller, other key officials-including Cabinet level officials-were not made aware of the earlier declassification even as those officials were pressed to carry out a declassification of the NIE, the report about Wilson's trip and another classified document dated January 24, 2003," evidently a reference to the materials assembled by CIA officer Robert Walpole regarding Iraq's weapons programs and used for Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's speech to the United Nations Security Council a couple of weeks later. If Libby's testimony is accurate, documents were to be simultaneously deemed secret and declassified, depending upon White House whim, convenience, or legal liability.

This is the same administration that is seeking to prosecute those who leaked information considered less favorable to its cause, such as the fact of the National Security Agency's dubious domestic spying program or the existence of the CIA's secret prison network. Under the interpretation of the Espionage Act the Bush Justice Department is using to prosecute two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, even reporters who gain access to such information, media that inform the public of it, or persons who merely possess the information are currently at risk, although the statute appears to criminalize only the act of leaking. Indeed, the law makes it necessary for the NIE data not to be classified in order for Libby to legally leak it. There may be an argument here that under the Bush interpretation of the statute the act of declassification to abet a leak could amount to a criminal conspiracy, in this case by President George Bush himself.

Those who contend that there was no Bush effort to make political use of intelligence in the months leading up to the war will now have an even harder time of it. At various points during those months there were similarly orchestrated leaks-of claims about aluminum tubes supposedly being used in an Iraqi nuclear weapons program and of alleged ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda to name just two. And there were carefully prepared occasions where Bush officials took advantage of those leaks to advance the cause of war. The events of July 2003 demonstrate that this was a standard administration tactic, not an aberration. Given the circumstances, the need for a "Phase II" investigation of the political use of intelligence for the Iraq war becomes inescapable.

The most important aspect of the new evidence is that it locates the center of the effort to discredit Ambassador Wilson, and of the actions taken to further that aim, squarely within the Oval Office. If that project rose to the level of a criminal conspiracy, or if anything done to further that goal was in fact illegal, it is George W. Bush who must be called to account. That is a very troubling development indeed. The censure motion introduced by Wisconsin Senator Russell Feingold may turn out to be merely the opening salvo in a very intense political battle.

John Prados is a senior fellow of the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C., and author of Hoodwinked: The Documents that Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War (The New Press).



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The Leaker-in-Chief

By William Rivers Pitt
Friday 07 April 2006

Is there not some chosen curse,

Some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven,

Red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man

Who owes his greatness to his country's ruin? - Joseph Addison

"I don't know of anybody in my administration
who leaked classified information," said George W. Bush on September 30,
2003. "If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it,
and we'll take the appropriate action."

"If someone leaked classified information," said
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan on October 7, 2003, "the President
wants to know. If someone in this administration leaked classified information,
they will no longer be a part of this administration, because that's not the
way this White House operates, that's not the way this President expects people
in his administration to conduct their business."

"I'd like to know if somebody in my White House
did leak sensitive information," said Bush on October 28, 2003. On this
same day, Bush said, "I have no idea whether we'll find out who the leaker
is, partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very
good job of protecting the leakers."

On Thursday, we found out who the leaker is.

TruthOut investigative reporter Jason Leopold wrote
in the
first of two reports that, "Attorneys and current and former White
House officials close to the investigation into the leak of covert CIA operative
Valerie Plame Wilson said Thursday that President Bush gave Vice President
Dick Cheney the authorization in mid-June 2003 to disclose a portion of the
highly sensitive National Intelligence Estimate to Washington Post reporter
Bob Woodward and former New York Times reporter Judith Miller."

 In the second
of Leopold's reports, he writes, "Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald
stated in a court filing late Wednesday in the CIA leak case that his investigators
have obtained evidence during the course of the two-year-old probe that proves
several White House officials conspired to discredit former Ambassador Joseph
Wilson, a critic of the administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence.
This is the first time the special counsel has acknowledged that White House officials
are alleged to have engaged in a coordinated effort to undercut the former
ambassador's credibility by disseminating classified intelligence information
that would have contradicted Wilson's public statements."

So there it is. We have Bush authorizing the disclosure
of classified information, and we have that disclosure taking place for no
other reason than to discredit an administration critic. Bush is often fond
of defending his wildly inappropriate and often illegal activities by claiming
that he has every right to do whatever he wants because America is "at
war."

Never mind that no war has actually been declared.
If we take his premise that we are in fact at war, than the disclosure of classified
information for political gain must be defined simply and directly.

It is treason.

Representative Jane Harman, ranking Democrat on the
House Intelligence Committee, made the following statement on Thursday. "Leaking
classified information to the press when you want to get your side out or silence
your critics is not appropriate. The reason we classify things is to protect
our sources - those who risk their lives to give us secrets. Who knows how
many sources were burned by giving Libby this 'license to leak?' If I had leaked
the information, I'd be in jail. Why should the President be above the law?"

 "The President has the legal authority to declassify
information," continued Harman, "but there are normal channels for
doing so. Telling an aide to leak classified information to the New York Times
is not a normal channel. A normal declassification procedure would involve
going back to the originating agency, such as the CIA, and then putting out
a public, declassified version of the document. I am stunned that the President
won't tell the full the Intelligence Committee about the NSA program because
he's allegedly concerned about leaks, when it turns out that he is the Leaker-in-Chief."

We can even take this a step further. The name of
covert CIA operative Valerie Plame was all over the classified National Intelligence
Estimate Bush ordered to be leaked. The pertinent text of the 1947 National
Security Act reads as follows:

SEC. 601. (50 U.S.C. 421) (a) Whoever, having or having had authorized
access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally
discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not
authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information
disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking
affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship
to the United States, shall be fined under title 18, United States Code, or
imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.



(b) Whoever, as a result of having authorized access to classified information,
learns the identity of a covert agent and intentionally discloses any information
identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified
information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert
agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal
such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be
fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned not more than five
years, or both.



(c) Whoever, in the course of a pattern of activities intended to identify
and expose covert agents and with reason to believe that such activities would
impair or impede the foreign intelligence activities of the United States,
discloses any information that identifies an individual as a covert agent to
any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that
the information disclosed so identifies such individual and that the United
States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such individual's classified
intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title
18, United States Code, or imprisoned not more than three years or both.

George W. Bush and his people lied with their bare
faces hanging out about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

They lied about connections between al Qaeda and the
Iraqi government, lied about Iraqi connections to September 11, and further
lied about the threat to America posed by Iraq.

They made a decision to invade that had nothing to
do with those weapons, and even conspired with their British counterparts to
goad Hussein into a war regardless of whether the weapons were there or not.

They used September 11 against the American people
to frighten them into a fearfully subservient acceptance of the invasion.

They bypassed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act in order to spy illegally on thousands of American citizens.

They leaked classified intelligence information in
order to destroy a political foe, and in the process annihilated an intelligence
network run by Valerie Plame. That network, it should be noted, was dedicated
to tracking any person, nation or group that would deliver weapons of mass
destruction to terrorists.

Every time they broke the law, their cronies in Congress
manipulated those laws to make the actions taken legal.

Tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead. Tens
of thousands more have been maimed. Millions live with the wretched deprivations
caused by this war. The new Shia-dominated government wants no part of American
involvement in this, and their so-called armed forces are in truth death squads
masquerading as police and soldiers.

2,345 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq,
with 17 of those deaths coming in the first six days of April alone. Tens of
thousands more have been grievously wounded; nearly two thirds of all injuries
suffered by American soldiers in Iraq are brain injuries, and amount to permanent
debilitation.

We will be generations digging out from under the
vomitous refuse left behind by this administration. From this day forward,
any politician who claims that censure is not appropriate and impeachment is
a waste of time should have their head examined by a whole team of medical
experts. Bush and his people have committed treason, and did so for the lowest
of reasons: personal gain and political protection.

"The dead cannot cry out for justice," said
Lois McMaster Bujold. "It is a duty of the living to do so for them." So
very many have died at the hands of this administration, its lies, and its
crimes. If there is to be no reckoning for this, even after all this time,
there will never again be a person in America who can speak of justice
while keeping a straight face.



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Iraq

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US propaganda magnifies Zarqawi threat: report

Mon Apr 10, 2006
Reuters

Officers familiar with the propaganda program were cited as saying that one goal was to drive a wedge into the insurgency by emphasizing Zarqawi's terrorist acts and foreign origin.

"Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response," a U.S. military briefing document from 2004 stated, the Post reported.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to overstate the threat to stability posed by the al Qaeda leader in Iraq, The Washington Post reported on Monday.

Some senior military intelligence officers believe the importance of the Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may have been exaggerated, the newspaper reported, citing military documents and officers familiar with the program.

According to the article, Col. Derek Harvey, who served as a military intelligence officer in Iraq, told a U.S. Army meeting last summer: "Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will -- made him more important than he really is, in some ways."

"The long-term threat is not Zarqawi or religious extremists, but these former regime types and their friends," Harvey said in a transcript of the meeting at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the Post reported.
Harvey said at the meeting that, while Zarqawi and other foreign insurgents in Iraq have carried out deadly bombing attacks, they remain "a very small part of the actual numbers," according to the newspaper.

Largely aimed at Iraqis, the Zarqawi campaign began two years ago and was believed to be ongoing, the Post said. It has included leaflets, radio and television broadcasts and at least one leak to an American journalist, the newspaper said.

Another military officer familiar with the program told the newspaper that the material was all in Arabic. But the officer said the Zarqawi campaign "probably raised his profile in the American press's view," the report said.

Zarqawi has a $25 million U.S. bounty on his head.

Officers familiar with the propaganda program were cited as saying that one goal was to drive a wedge into the insurgency by emphasizing Zarqawi's terrorist acts and foreign origin.

"Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response," a U.S. military briefing document from 2004 stated, the Post reported.



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Flashback: How US fuelled myth of Zarqawi the mastermind

By Adrian Blomfield outside Fallujah
04/10/2004

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist leader believed to be responsible for the abduction of Kenneth Bigley, is 'more myth than man', according to American military intelligence agents in Iraq.

Several sources said the importance of Zarqawi, blamed for many of the most spectacular acts of violence in Iraq, has been exaggerated by flawed intelligence and the Bush administration's desire to find "a villain" for the post-invasion mayhem.

Zarqawi fuels his ambition with the release of a video of the beheading of Nick Berg

US military intelligence agents in Iraq have revealed a series of botched and often tawdry dealings with unreliable sources who, in the words of one source, "told us what we wanted to hear".

"We were basically paying up to $10,000 a time to opportunists, criminals and chancers who passed off fiction and supposition about Zarqawi as cast-iron fact, making him out as the linchpin of just about every attack in Iraq," the agent said.

"Back home this stuff was gratefully received and formed the basis of policy decisions. We needed a villain, someone identifiable for the public to latch on to, and we got one."

The sprawling US intelligence community is in a state of open political warfare amid conflicting pressures from election-year politics, military combat and intelligence analysis. The Bush administration has seized on Zarqawi as the principal leader of the insurgency, mastermind of the country's worst suicide bombings and the man behind the abduction of foreign hostages. He is held up as the most tangible link to Osama bin Laden and proof of the claim that the former Iraqi regime had links to al-Qa'eda.

However, fresh intelligence emerging from around Fallujah, the rebel-held city that is at the heart of the insurgency, suggests that, despite a high degree of fragmentation, the insurgency is led and dominated not by Arab foreigners but by members of Iraq's Sunni minority.

Human intelligence about Zaqawi is minimal

Pentagon estimates have put the number of foreign fighters in the region of 5,000. However, one agent said: "The overwhelming sense from the information we are now getting is that the number of foreign fighters does not exceed several hundred and is perhaps as low as 200. From the information we have gathered we have to conclude that Zarqawi is more myth than man. He isn't in the calibre of what many politicians want to believe he is.

"At some stage, and perhaps even now, he was almost certainly behind some of the kidnappings. But if there is a main leader of the insurgency he would be an Iraqi. The insurgency, though, is not nearly so centralised to talk of a structured leadership."

Military intelligence officials complain that their reports to Washington, are largely being ignored. They accuse the Pentagon of over-reliance on electronic surveillance and aerial and satellite reconnaissance carried out for the CIA.

In recent weeks American military command in Iraq has claimed a series of precision air strikes on targets in Fallujah identified by the CIA as housing known associates of Zarqawi.

It has denied that there were any civilian casualties, despite television footage showing dead and wounded women and children being pulled from the rubble of flattened homes.

Some US military spies maintain that this is evidence of continued dependency on technology over old-fashioned human intelligence.

Both President George W Bush and Tony Blair have, to varying degrees, conceded that intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programme was misleading. But both continue to maintain that the continued violence since Saddam was ousted is because Iraq is now the front line in the war on terrorism.

Yet it now seems that the intelligence on which such claims are based is haphazard, scanty and contradictory.

No concrete proof of the link between Zarqawi and bin Laden was offered until US officials this year trumpeted the discovery of a computer disk, allegedly intercepted by Kurdish peshmerga guerrillas. Among its files was an apparent draft of a letter from Zarqawi to bin Laden.

"We will be your readied soldiers, working under your banner, complying with your orders and indeed swearing fealty to you publicly and in the news media," the letter read.

That seemed proof enough for the US government. "Zarqawi is the best evidence of the connection to al-Qa'eda affiliates and al-Qa'eda," Mr Bush said in June.

But senior diplomats in Baghdad claim that the letter was almost certainly a hoax. They say the two men may have met in Afghanistan but it appeared they never got on and there has been a rift for several years.

One diplomat claimed that there was evidence to suggest that Zarqawi's aides may have passed on information to the Americans that led to the arrest of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, one of the main planners of the September 11 attacks.

The diplomats describe Zarqawi as deeply ambitious. His actions are aimed as much at boosting his position in the Islamic terrorist fraternity as striking at America. He achieved that in April when a grisly and apparently authentic video showing the beheading of the contractor Nick Berg. The footage was released under the title "Sheikh Abu Musab Zarqawi executes an American with his own hands and promises Bush more".

A diplomat commented: "That catapaulted Zarqawi to exactly where he wanted to be - giving Osama a run for his money as US public enemy number one. But, the video apart, intelligence on the Jordanian is thin.

Intelligence reports are contradictory even on whether he is missing a leg.

Initial claims of a Long John Silver character with an artificial leg were disputed by more recent alleged sightings of the 38-year-old apparently fully limbed and looking rather sprightly.



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Flashback: Iraq militants claim al-Zarqawi is dead

March 4, 2004
MSNBC

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A Jordanian extremist suspected of bloody suicide attacks in Iraq was killed some time ago in U.S. bombing and a letter outlining plans for fomenting sectarian war is a forgery, a statement allegedly from an insurgent group west of the capital said.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in the Sulaimaniyah mountains of northern Iraq "during the American bombing there," according to a statement circulated in Fallujah this week and signed by the "Leadership of the Allahu Akbar Mujahedeen."

The statement did not say when al-Zarqawi was supposedly killed, but U.S. jets bombed strongholds of the extremist Ansar al-Islam in the north last April as Saddam Hussein's regime was collapsing.

It said al-Zarqawi was unable to escape the bombing because of his artificial leg.
Before the Iraq conflict began last March, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said al-Zarqawi received hospital treatment in Baghdad after fleeing Afghanistan. U.S. intelligence sources said he apparently was fitted with an artificial leg.

The statement said the "fabricated al-Zarqawi memo" has been used by the U.S.-run coalition "to back up their theory of a civil war" in Iraq.

In February, the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq made public an intercepted letter it said was written by al-Zarqawi to al-Qaida leaders, detailing a strategy of spectacular attacks to derail the planned June 30 handover of power to the Iraqis. U.S. officials say al-Zarqawi may have been involved in some of the series of suicide bombings this year in Iraq.

"The truth is, al-Qaida is not present in Iraq," the Mujahedeen statement said. Though many Arabs entered the country to fight U.S. troops, only a small number remain, the group said.



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U-S ambassador warns of threat of sectarian war to entire Middle East

KrisTV.com
10/04/2006

BAGHDAD - The US ambassador to Iraq says a conflict that could affect the entire Middle East might emerge if efforts to build an Iraqi government don't succeed.

Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad tells the BBC that the political contacts between Iraq's groups are improving, but the country faces the possibility of sectarian civil war if the government formation doesn't work.

He says that the role of armed militias is in part to blame for the intensifying "polarization along sectarian lines."

Khalilzad says the best way to prevent a conflict is to form a government that includes representatives of all groups - an effort that has stalled because of opposition to Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

Khalilzad says the international community must do everything possible "to make this country work."


Comment: Finally, someone "in authority" comes out and publicly recognises what we have been saying for years. However, it should be noted that, contrary to what the good ambassador says, it is NOT the armed militias that are in any way to blame for the intensifying "polarization along sectarian lines". The responsiblity for that lies with the people who have been carrying out Shrine and Mosque bombings and indiscriminate so-called "suicide car bombings" against the Iraqi people. Who might those people be?

See here for the answer.

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Saudis plan to fence off Iraq border

By Michael Theodoulou
The Sunday Times
April 10, 2006

SAUDI ARABIA has invited bids for the construction of a security fence along the entire length of its 900km (560mile) desert border with Iraq in a multimillion-pound project that will attract interest from British defence companies.

The barrier is part of a package to secure the Kingdom's 6,500km of borders in an attempt to improve internal security and bolster its defences against external threats.
Saudi Arabia is concerned that the chaos in Iraq could cause an overspill of sectarian violence and terrorism. The kingdom claims to be winning the battle against al-Qaeda's Saudi wing but wants to protect itself against Saudi insurgents returning from Iraq.

"There's no suggestion that the border isn't secure at the moment, so it could be a bit of an expensive white elephant," a European diplomat in Riyadh said. Saudi militants join ing the insurgency use other routes, such as Syria.

Riyadh is worried by the rise to power in Iraq of the Shia majority, with its close links with Iran, which Saudi Arabia mistrusts. It is concerned that its Shia minority, which is concentrated in the oil-producing eastern province, may become radicalised.



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Iraqi Troops Start Rolling Out in Ramadi

By TODD PITMAN
Associated Press
Mon Apr 10, 3:49 AM ET

RAMADI, Iraq - The troops didn't go far, the mission didn't last long and the neighborhood wasn't the most dangerous in town. But when Iraqi army troops moved out on a recent patrol in central Ramadi, they took a crucial step forward, rolling out in their own armored Humvees for the first time.

Until now, this unit has mostly patrolled their small, relatively quiet slice of downtown on foot, leaving the worst parts of the turbulent city center to better-equipped U.S. troops.
American commanders want Iraqi units to operate independently in the more dangerous downtown areas of Ramadi, about 75 miles west of Baghdad. But they lack equipment - especially proper transport. Though they have their own trucks, they rely heavily on U.S. forces to move around.

In recent weeks, that's begun to change.

The Iraqi Defense Ministry has begun distributing armored Humvees to Iraqi units that look nearly identical to their tan-colored U.S. counterparts. The Iraqi vehicles are equipped with bulletproof glass and radios, painted outside with the Iraqi flag and chocolate chip camouflage markings.

"This is a huge step," said Marine 2nd Lt. Ryan Hub, who accompanied Iraqi troops on a foot patrol Friday while the Humvees provided back-up.

Tracing a finger along a satellite map of central Ramadi, Hub circled a roughly one-square-mile area near the Marine base which the Iraqis patrol. He then pointed to other Marine-controlled zones he hoped Iraqis troops would soon patrol in Humvees.

"It means we can extend their battle space," said the 25-year-old from Sumter, S.C.

On Tuesday, the Humvees proved useful as Iraqi forces evacuated a soldier shot in the leg, said Lt. Col. Steve Neary, who commands the Marine's 3rd Battalion, 8th Regiment. Previously, such tasks would have been carried out by the U.S. military.

On Friday, an Iraqi 2nd lieutenant named Ahmed was in the first Humvee of a four-vehicle convoy leaving a U.S. Marine base. Marine commanders asked that his full name not be used for fear he could be targeted by insurgents.

Taking a drag off a cigarette a few blocks on, Ahmed was startled to see two of his own vehicles - they had taken a wrong turn - coming in the opposite direction. "Follow me!" he yelled into the radio. "Follow me!"

Soon, all four Humvees were circling the block in unison, passing rusted-out cars, blown-out apartment blocks and children raising their fists in the air to show support.

Unlike other joint missions, only the Iraqis were radioing their minute-by-minute progress back to base.

Ahmed's role was to provide back-up support for the foot patrol, which swept the apartment complex with several Marines in tow. Ahmed said if need be, his Humvees could evacuate casualties, or open fire with heavy machine guns.

Such support has traditionally been the job of the U.S. military. Marines weren't taking chances Friday, though, and had a separate supporting patrol that halted traffic so the Iraqi convoy could move unhindered.

The Iraqis didn't go far. The base's barbed-wire-topped wall was often visible as the Humvees repeatedly circled past it. Following the Marines' advice, the Iraqi gunners kept their heads down in their turrets to avoid snipers. Less than two hours later, Ahmed was back on base.

"It's baby steps," said Marine Capt. Carlos Barela, commander of Lima Company. "They're nervous, but that's good. If they weren't, they'd be careless."

It was a quiet first trip out, though it might not have been. Insurgents, apparently, had been watching. A Marine in a watchtower spotted a man planting a roadside bomb one street over from where the Iraqi Humvees had been circling.

Ahmed praised the newly arrived vehicles, but expressed a deep concern for lack of other equipment. Although his men had uniforms, kneepads, and aging Kalashnikov rifles, they have no mortars, sniper rifles or rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

Capt. Jabar, an Iraqi commander who directed Ahmed's movements from base, agreed.

"The insurgents are better armed than us," Jabar said. "The Humvees will help. And we can still fight them, but we depend on the Americans for everything" - medics, logistics, firepower, air support.

Jabar said his 90-man company had only two sets of night-vision goggles. Another Iraqi commander, who made similar complaints about equipment at an army recruiting drive in Ramadi last week, said his unit had to share armored vests to go on patrols.

Barela said American commanders were aware of the complaints - and Iraqi soldiers' concerns over pay - but ultimately, those were issues for the Iraqi Defense Ministry to overcome.

"We could solve all their problems for them, but if we do it all, that's going to make them dependent," said Barela, 35, of Albuquerque, N.M. "We're standing up a military from scratch. There's going to be growing pains."

A lot more training will be needed before Iraqi forces can stand on their own. In central Ramadi, for example, only Marines are going out on night patrols.

The U.S. command in Baghdad says the Iraqi army numbers about 111,000 troops, and is expected to reach full strength of 130,000 next year.

But they are struggling to retain those who've already joined up. Some quit because of the hazards of duty, others because of low pay.

Iraqi troops deployed here get one week of vacation after every three-week stint. "Every month, two, three, five members of each company don't come back," Jabar said. "At this rate, our companies will be reduced to single platoons."



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Iraqi official: 'It's civil war'

Sat Apr 8 2006
ITV.com

A senior official in the Iraqi government has for the first time admitted the country is in a state of civil war.

Deputy interior minister Hussein Ali Kamal said Iraq had been in "undeclared" civil war for the past year.

He told reporters: "Actually Iraq has been in an undeclared civil war for the past 12 months.

"On a daily basis Shias, Sunnis, Kurds and Christians are being killed and the only undeclared thing is that a civil war has not been officially announced by the parties involved. Civil war is happening but not on a wide scale."

Mr Kamal's admission mirrors the words of former Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi who last month said Iraq was in civil war. Mr Allawi warned that the violence was reaching the point of no return and Europe and the USA would not be spared the consequences.

But British ministers have repeatedly denied civil war is either imminent or inevitable. Criticising anti-war protesters, Defence Secretary John Reid recently suggested those who argued that Iraq was on the brink of civil war were siding with the terrorists.



Comment: The time is not yet right to declare civil war in Iraq, even though agents of the American, British and Israeli governments have been actively attempting to "create" civil war in Iraq. Only when the international spotlight has moved from Iraq, probably when an attack on Iran ensues, will Iraq's civil war status be revealed, with the blame being put on "Islamic terrorists" or some other ridiculous assertion. From there, the process of breaking Iraq up into managable (by the US, Britain and Israel) statlets will begin.

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Nutty News

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The rise and rise of Sudoku

The Indepedent
10 April 2006

As The Independent launches its second Soduko Championship, Adrian Turpin celebrates the phenomenal puzzle that has transformed the way we live

The year 2005 was not a good one for anyone who believed the Sudoku craze, like the First World War, would all be over by Christmas. National passion for the Japanese puzzle - which involves trying to arrange the numbers one to nine across a nine-by-nine grid so that no two numbers appear in the same row, column or designated three-by-three square box - has shown no sign of stopping since The Independent organised the first British Sudoku championship last year.

Sudoku widows remain condemned to silence at the breakfast table. Fearful employers watch their productivity graphs taper downwards like Davina McCall's chat show ratings. Then there are the commuters, such as Tony Flanaghan from Salisbury, who pleaded with The Independent: "Sir" I have a train journey of one and a half hours. Before you started to include Sudoku I could read a newspaper for an hour and sleep the last half-hour. You introduced Sudoku - I would read for an hour, do the puzzle in 10 minutes, sleep for 20 minutes. This week you put in three Sudokus; I didn't get any sleep. Today, there were four Sudokus - I am in danger of falling asleep in the office. When is this proliferation going to stop?"
He shouldn't hold his breath. The classic Sudoku grid contains a possible 5,472,730,538 unique combinations of numbers which, even allowing for repeats, makes it unlikely that setters are going to run out of new material soon. And that is to ignore the variations - circular and "jigsaw" varieties and puzzles based on letters, such as The Independent on Sunday's Godoku.

Mr Flanaghan may lose the little sleep still left to him when he learns that sales of pencils in Britain are reported to have risen 700 per cent on the back of the Sudoku boom. Or that, in November, British Airways issued a memo to its 13,000 cabin staff, forbidding them from attempting the puzzles during take-off and landing (a directive that, you pray, wasn't aimed at pilots). Or that the craze - until recently the preserve of Japan and Britain - has been embraced by the US in the past 12 months to the extent that no US newspaper is complete without a piece about how it is sweeping the nation.

He is also unlikely to find comfort in Channel Four's claim that Sudoku is the seventh most popular search term on the internet. And we should all probably be nervous that one particularly fiendish toymaker has just launched Rubik's Sudoku, an attempt to merge the obsessive power of cube and grid. This may require a government health warning.

In July, the world's largest Sudoku grid - 275ft by 275ft - was carved into a chalk hill near Chipping Sodbury. Sensibly, it was beside a section of the M4 with a 40mph limit. Less sensibly, it allowed 1,905 possible solutions rather than the single one Sudoku demands, rendering it almost meaningless as a puzzle.

Archaeologists may one day mull this work of public art, just as our culture mulls the white horse at Uffington or the priapic giant at Cerne Abbas. What, they will ask, was important enough for a long-dead culture to commemorate in this way? Being archaeologists, they will probably scratch their heads privately before declaring with complete confidence it is an expression of something sacred. Fortunately, no one will know it was commissioned to promote a Sudoku special on Sky TV.

That Sudoku is sustaining its popularity has a lot to do with its simplicity and democratic appeal. If football is the people's game, then Sudoku can claim to be the people's pastime. All you need is the puzzle and a pencil: no batteries, no board, no paraphernalia. Instructions are few and, unlike cryptic crosswords, a working knowledge of classical civilisation and an intimate acquaintance with the backwaters of the dictionary is not required. Indeed, to do Sudoku, you don't even need to be able to count above nine - although this fact appears to have escaped the Training and Development Agency for Schools when, last month, it took Carol Vorderman and a giant Sudoku grid to London's Liverpool Street station to recruit more maths teachers.

Yet, as football shows, being democratic doesn't preclude a pastime from having stars. It has taken just 18 months for the puzzle to transform itself from foreign curiosity to part of the British cultural landscape, but during that time we have seen the rise of an elite: what one might call the Sudokurati. They may not be household names such as Messrs Beckham, Zidane or Ronaldhino but for the fans who visit Sudoku websites the Sudokurati's skills are no less silky, and the trivia about their lives just as fascinating. Curiously, even the most logical of puzzlers have a desire to find faces behind the numbers.

Sudoku's undisputed high priest is Wayne Gould, a retired Hong Kong judge who has done more to popularise the puzzle in the West than anyone on the planet - which makes a change from judges asking: "What is this Sudoku?"

On a trip to Tokyo in 1997, the New Zealander (described by one interviewer as "a supremely happy nerd") came across a Sudoku book in a shop. The puzzle, first published as "Number Game" in New York in 1979, had been imported to Japan and renamed Sudoku ("single number") in 1984. But Mr Gould knew nothing of this. Not speaking Japanese, he thought it was some kind of crossword.

As a lifelong puzzle addict, he was intrigued, buying the book to take with him on a flight to Naples, where he was going to meet his wife Gaye, a professor of linguistics. When he arrived in Italy, she became the West's first Sudoku widow.

It probably helps that the couple choose to live on opposite sides of the world - Wayne on Lantau island in Hong Kong and Gaye in New Hampshire. Is he obsessed? "Mmm ... aah, well, I suppose that would be a fair comment, compared to most people I suppose," he has said.

For six years, Mr Gould worked on a computer programme to write the puzzles. His first published Sudoku grid appeared in September 2004 in New Hampshire's Conway Daily Sun. But it was only after he gave it for free to UK newspapers - reasoning he'd make money from people downloading his computer program at $14.95 (£8.60) a pop - that the game took off.

But being "Mr Sudoku" does not mean Mr Gould is among the quickest solvers: he says he takes an impressive 20 minutes for the hardest puzzles and four minutes for the easy, but that Gaye - his tester - is quicker.

For Sudoku's speed kings (and queen), look no further than the first Sudoku world championship, held in the Italian city of Lucca last month. Two of the top-placed solvers are familiar names in the introverted world of puzzling. The fourth-placed contestant, Tetsuya Nishio, looks like a mild-mannered chap but has a reputation as one of Sudoku's hard men, which he has put to use training many of Japan's masters. To him, "logic is a knife that kills" and he is best known for inventing the appallingly frustrating Sudoku variation Samunamupure ("sum number place"), or Killer Sudoku.

Unfortunately, he seemed to have left his logical knife in its sheath during a final round during in which he let the title slip away. Pipping him to third spot was a Google programmer, Wei-Hwa Huang (a former world puzzle champion), who was so confident he had won in the final round that he was doing high fives with his friends - until it was pointed out he had mistakenly placed identical numbers in the same row. It's comforting to know it happens at the top, too.

Second spot went to a Harvard chemistry postgraduate, Thomas Snyder, 26 , who told reporters he spent 70 hours a week in the lab and most of the rest puzzling. (No, he doesn't have a girlfriend.) Mr Snyder appears to be heir apparent as Sudoku's godfather, although his clean-cut looks and slicked-back hair do not appear to have endeared him to everyone. In Sudoku terms, he's a sort of Sampras to the Japanese man's McEnroe.

But the world championship's surprise package was the winner - the pony-tailed Czech Jana Tylova, the only woman in the top 18. An economics graduate from the Czech Agricultural University in Prague, the accountant, 31, had already participated in the world championships for the Japanese game Go.

This time, she left nothing to chance: her husband, an IT manager, is her coach, leading her through four hours of practice a day. Such dedication may not leave her time to get out. Invited to kiss one of the judges as she received her prize, she did her best to stick her tongue down his throat.

It may come as relief to readers contemplating entering The Independent's Sudoko championship this year that becoming one of the Sudokurati doesn't have to involve dispensing with social skills.

Ed Billig, 23, the winner of last year's competition, seems a perfectly normal, wryly humorous chap, who manages to keep his Sudoku habit down to a relatively modest four puzzles a day in the office (he transcribes police interviews) and a couple on the bus to and from work. "I think I'm managing to keep it under control," he says.

Mr Billig is happy in the role of gentleman amateur, politely scoffing at the idea of hiring a trainer. He has other interests - he hardly had time to savour his triumph because he had to go to a rehearsal with his band.

His only regret at winning was being bumped off an appearance on Radio Five Live by the death of Edward Heath. But that was assuaged by an invitation to compete in Hong Kong against the local champion and 1,000 schoolchildren. For this he won the title "King of Sudoku" and "a trophy that looks a bit like the FA Cup". Who could want more?

The bad news for everyone else is that he's keen to defend his British title this year. "Any chance of a bye, do you think?" he asks. Sorry, but you're going to have to slug it out like everyone else. Just make sure you bring your logical knife.

COULD YOU BE BRITAIN'S SUDOKU CHAMPION?

Today, The Independent launches it's second Sudoku Championship of Great Britain. Participation is open to all, and the event will enable enthusiasts to pit their skills against each other - and against the clock - in a prestigious national competition, with the opportunity to win the coveted title Sudoku Grand Master of Great Britain.

Every day for the next fortnight, The Independent will publish a series of numbered championship Sudoku puzzles. To enter the Sudoku Championship of Great Britain, players must complete nine differently numbered puzzles and submit them to The Independent's Sudoku Championship committee.

Once their entries are verified, competitors will be invited to participate in a series of regional heats in cities around Britain, in which they will be asked to complete Sudoku puzzles against the clock. The fastest 100 competitors will be asked to attend the grand final in London, at which the winner will be crowned Britain's Sudoku Grand Master. He or she will be presented with a specially commissioned trophy and a cash prize of £1,000. The next championship Sudoku puzzle will be published in The Independent tomorrow, so don't miss it.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

1. To enter, readers must complete nine of the 14 differently numbered Sudoku Championship puzzles that will be featured in the Mon-Sun editions of The Independent, between Monday 10 April & Sunday 23 April. 2. The completed puzzles must be sent to The Independent Sudoku Grand Master Championship, PO BOX 55705, Independent House, London, E14 1AQ. 3. Entries must be received by Friday 28 April 2006. They are invalid if they arrive any later than the first post on the specified closing date. Photocopied puzzles will not be accepted. 4. Proof of postage will not constitute proof of delivery and no responsibility will be accepted for any failure of receipt of entries. 5. Entrants who complete their nine puzzles correctly will be invited to attend a regional final at a time, date and location in the UK to be specified by The Independent, terms and conditions for which will be supplied. 6. The 100 fastest people to successfully complete the challenge in the regional finals will be invited to the grand final which will be held at a time, date and location in London to be notified. 7. Each entrant is responsible for making their own arrangements and for paying for all necessary travel and accommodation. No alternative arrangements will be made if any entrant invited to compete at a regional or the grand final invited is unable for any reason whatsoever to attend. 8. All entrants must residents of the UK. 9. Entrants who are under 18 must specify their date of birth on their entry and, if invited to attend a regional or the grand final, must be accompanied by a parent or guardian who are solely responsible for their safety and welfare at all times. Entrants under 18 must be able to prove their parent/guardian's consent to their entry and to their participation in any publicity as may be decided upon by The Independent. 10. Standard Independent News and Media competition rules apply (www.independent.co.uk/legal) 11. The judges' decision is final, including the right to exclude any entrant whose conduct, in the judges' sole and unfettered judgement, is undesirable. 12. No correspondence will be entered into.



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Bigs bunny: monster rabbit devours English veggie plots

Fri Apr 7, 11:21 AM ET

LONDON (AFP) - In a tale reminiscent of the last Wallace and Gromit movie, furious villagers in northeast England have hired armed guards to protect their beloved communal vegetable gardens from a suspected monster rabbit.
Leeks, Japanese onions, parsnips and spring carrots have all been ripped up and devoured by the mystery were-rabbit -- prompting the 12 allotment holders in Felton, north of Newcastle, to hire two marksmen with air rifles and orders to shoot to kill.

"It is a massive thing. It is a monster. The first time I saw it, I said: 'What the hell is that?'" the Northumberland Gazette newspaper quoted local resident Jeff Smith, 63, as saying on its website (www.northumberlandtoday.co.uk).

He claims to have seen the black and brown rabbit -- with one ear bigger than the other -- about two months ago, and at least three fellow allotment holders say they have seen it as well.

"I have seen it and it is bigger than a normal rabbit. It's eating all our crops and we grow the best stuff here," said retired miner George Brown, 76, quoted by the domestic Press Association news agency.

Smith could not be reached for comment Friday, but his mother told AFP that the hare-raising story is true -- and no less an authority than the British Rabbit Council said it was credible.

"Certain breeds do grow very big, like the Continental Giant" which can be 66 centimetres (26 inches) in length or more, a spokesman for the Nottinghamshire-based council, which represent rabbit breeders, told AFP.

In the last hit movie featuring Wallace and his dog Gromit, the two cartoon characters battled a monster rabbit that was cutting a swathe of destruction through locals' prize vegetable plots.



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Psychic helps probe plot to kill Australian PM

Scotsman.co.uk
10/04/2006

A Scottish psychic was called in to help an Australian police officer investigate a plot to assassinate the Australian prime minister, John Howard, it emerged yesterday.

But the decision by a senior officer to involve clairvoyant Elizabeth Walker in the case has led to his suspension, amid claims that in doing so he disclosed classified information about Mr Howard and the death threats.

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has a strict code of conduct regarding confidentiality and national security, which the officer may have breached in turning to the small-town psychic.

As a storm of publicity broke yesterday, Scottish-born psychic Ms Walker, who knows the police officer socially, said: "It was private. It should not have been made public the way it has been and made a mockery of."

In a statement, a federal police spokesman said: "I can confirm we are currently investigating the matter. A member of the AFP has been suspended. The AFP takes seriously all allegations of misconduct by officers and does not condone the use of psychics in security matters."

At her home in the town of Cooma in New South Wales, Ms Walker read a statement saying: "I can confirm I am currently assisting the Australian Federal Police with an investigation.

"As this matter involves an individual, the individual's privacy needs to be considered."

But when she was first confronted by an Australian newspaper, Ms Walker was a little less considered in her remarks.

She said: "It's an extremely sensitive situation. How did you find out about this? If this gets out, the lad will lose his job."

"I can't comment because in my profession client confidentiality is paramount.

I've done lots of people. I've done political people, famous people, but I don't talk about who's been in."

The AFP hierarchy was alerted in December to the security breach. The officer was not part of the prime minister's personal security entourage, but knew about the death threat, and that it was being treated seriously.

Knowing some investigations had hit a dead end, he took matters into his own hands and turned to Ms Walker.

It is unclear how he was exposed, but his actions sparked an internal inquiry that resulted in Ms Walker, who reads "auras" and "past-life energies", being questioned.

The Australian Labour Party spokesman for homeland security, Arch Bevis, said he would be greatly concerned if the AFP was using clairvoyants to hunt criminals and terrorists. "I think, perhaps, this fellow has watched a few too many of the US detective shows," he said.

The AFP had doubled security staff between 2002 and 2005, Mr Bevis said, but added that apart from the comical aspect, the incident raised the serious issue of adequate training.

A spokesman for Mr Howard said: "We don't run the AFP, and if there is a matter regarding discipline or an individual officer, it really is something for them to deal with."

A national security and terrorism expert, Clive Williams, who is a former Defence Intelligence Organisation attache to Washington, said the use of a clairvoyant for such a task was "highly unusual". He said: "This sort of thing is really at the fringes of credibility."

Comment: The paranoia that comes with being corrupted by power?

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Ark's Quantum Quirks

Ark
Signs of the Times
April 10, 2006






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