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Editorial: Peace In the Middle East? - Over the bodies of 3 million Palestinians

Joe Quinn
Signs of the Times
03/05/2006

"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them."

- Ariel Sharon, as Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.

By now it should be clear to all Middle East analysts that the main impediment to peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is Israel and the right-wing Zionist extremists in Israeli politics. Time and again the Palestinians have expressed their sincere desire to end the inhuman conditions under which they are forced to live by the occupying IDF forces, yet every time that a peaceful settlement seems to be within their grasp, bizarrely, Hamas or Islamic Jihad decide to fire a few, usually harmless, Qasam rockets at an illegal Israeli settlement, or unknown "Palestinian gunmen" will murder an Israeli settler, inviting the IDF to retaliate with deadly and overwhelmingly superior force.

How to explain such repeated, apparently self-defeating acts by the alleged representatives of the beleaguered Palestinian people? It has been obvious for many years now that the Palestinians cannot win an armed conflict with the massively militarily superior Israel and any further attacks against Israeli forces, population or interests simply provide Israeli politicians with the justification to increase Israeli control and oppression in the occupied territories. And Israel's nukes ensure that no other Arab nation dare interfere. It is equally obvious that the international community has all but washed its hands of the conflict and is resigned to allowing it to play out to its final and surely tragic denouement.

In the June 2005 "summit" between Sharon and PA authority Chairman Abbas, Abbas told the Israelis that he wanted "freedom of movement in and out of Gaza, air and sea ports re-opened, key Palestinian towns handed back to their control and the release of Palestinian prisoners." Such demands are widely understood to be a precursor to the formation of a Palestinian state, an eventuality that Sharon had built his political career on ensuring never occurs.

On that occasion, the Israeli government agreed to Abbas' demands on the proviso that all Palestinian attacks against Israel must first stop. What is clear is that the only reason Sharon accepted Abbas' demands is because he was confident that he could ensure that the Palestinian authority would never be able to meet the condition of a cessation of all "terrorist" attacks.

It is clear that Israeli government oppression of Palestinians has little to do with "security concerns" and everything to do with harassing and murdering Palestinian civilians and leaders in order to prevent them from establishing themselves as a independent people with a sovereign voice on the world stage.

Central to this goal is the continued portrayal of any Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation as "terrorism", when in reality, resistance (including armed) to an occupying power is a fundamental right laid down in the article four of the third Geneva Convention.

However, according to humanitarian law, in order to lawfully use force in a conflict you must first be designated a lawful 'combatant'. To be a 'combatant', you have to belong to an 'armed resistance group' and that group must belong to a 'party' to the conflict. It is in this fact that we find one of the chief reasons why Israel will never willingly allow the creation of a Palestinian state.

As long as Palestine does not have official state status, any Palestinian resistance group cannot claim to be a party in the conflict and must remain a simple independent resistance group, or "terrorist" group in modern parlance.

Not only did the developed world oversee the theft of Palestinian land in order to create the state of Israel in 1948, but in continuing to refuse to lobby for an independent Palestinian state, they ensure that any Palestinian resistance to Israeli aggression is delegitimised in advance.

To the shame of the international community, in April 2006 it was an Israeli court that first officially ruled that the Palestinian Authority fulfilled all of the criteria to be classified as a state and that Israel had no jurisdiction over Palestinian lands. Of course, the ruling changed nothing, and any opportunity that it contained to open international debate on the Israel-Palestine conflict was immediately crushed by a mainstream media blackout on the story. As I have said so often in the past, from the ruling Israeli right-wing's point of view, open and honest discussion, dialogue and debate on the Palestine issue must be prevented at all costs, because the day that ruling Israeli politicians engage in fair negotiations with the PA, is the day that they lose their death grip on Palestine and its people. And that is the very last thing they are willing to do.

But how then can the Israeli government be so confident that the Palestinian dream of a state of their own will remain just that - a dream?

Israel controls all entrances and exits to and from the Gaza strip and the West Bank, it is Israel therefore - or more accurately Israel's military and intelligence apparatus - that decides who and what gets in and out of the occupied Palestinian territories. Without doubt, the Israeli army could, with relative ease, accomplish the goal of a cessation of all "terrorist" attacks that successive Israeli Prime Ministers have demanded of their Palestinian counterparts, yet the hard, cold fact of the matter is that Israel's present position as the dominant force in the Middle East is dependent on the continued existence of a terrorist threat. That this has been true for many, many years was made clear by Israeli commentator, Yoram Bar Porath, in the Israeli News outlet, Yediot Aahronot of 14 July 1972:

"It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands."

In attempting to ensure that the "terrorism" so necessary to the state of Israel is never vanquished, Sharon and his predecessors have gone to great lengths to infiltrate and co-opt various Palestinian resistance organizations. Indeed, there is much evidence to support the thesis that, far from being the victim of terrorism, Israel is in fact one of the prime instigators of terrorist attacks in the Palestinian territories, attacks that are conveniently set up to look like the work of Palestinians. For example, consider the following excerpt from a UPI article from June 2002:

Hamas history tied to Israel

Richard Sale
UPI Terrorism Correspondent
6/18/2002

In the wake of a suicide bomb attack Tuesday on a crowded Jerusalem city bus that killed 19 people and wounded at least 70 more, the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, took credit for the blast.

Israeli officials called it the deadliest attack in Jerusalem in six years.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon immediately vowed to fight "Palestinian terror" and summoned his cabinet to decide on a military response to the organization that Sharon had once described as "the deadliest terrorist group that we have ever had to face."

Active in Gaza and the West Bank, Hamas wants to liberate all of Palestine and establish a radical Islamic state in place of Israel. It is has gained notoriety with its assassinations, car bombs and other acts of terrorism.

But Sharon left something out.

Israel and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly combat, but, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years.

Israel "aided Hamas directly -- the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization)," said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies.

Israel's support for Hamas "was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative," said a former senior CIA official. [...]

Of course, here, we are deep into conspiracy theory territory, yet when several current and former U.S. intelligence officials openly state that Hamas is basically a tool of Israeli intelligence, are we talking about a conspiracy theory, or simply the much-ignored SOP (standard operating procedure) of most of the world's spy agencies? Readers should also take note of the fact that, over the past few years, it has been Hamas that has repeatedly scuppered Palestinian aspirations for statehood by launching attacks on Israeli targets at the most inopportune moments, thereby providing Sharon with the justification to renege on his hollow promises to the Palestinian people.

Of course, Israel has a willing partner in its phony terror-crime in the American government. Vast sums ($billions) in non-refundable loans are funneled every year from the pockets of U.S. taxpayers into the coffers of the Israeli treasury for the purpose of "fighting terrorism". Israel, with the implicit support of the U.S. government, has been allowed to contravene or ignore dozens of UN resolutions, the Geneva conventions and Humanitarian and International law because it claims it is "fighting terrorism". Indeed, the role of the current U.S. government in facilitating the continued persecution of the Palestinian people can be clearly seen in its promotion of the phony "war on terror" and the equally phony 9/11 attacks that precipitated it, both of which have greatly benefited the extreme right despots in Tel Aviv and Washington.

Israel then, in its present configuration, is an illegal state founded on the unlawful theft of Palestinian land and the blood of the thousands of innocent Palestinian people that refused, and continue to refuse, to bow down to the murderous racism of their Israeli taskmasters. Every Israeli Prime Minister knew and understood this. They also knew that the day that an Israeli government allows Palestine to be officially recognised as an independent state, is the day that Israel will no longer have the right to bulldoze Palestinian homes or arbitrarily execute Palestinian school children and claim that they are "fighting terrorism". On that day, Palestinian resistance to a brutal occupying power will be legitimised and the actions of successive Israeli governments and the IDF will be recognised for the war crimes that they are.

For this very reason, all "peace summits" between Israeli and Palestinian leaders should be understood as nothing more than a sop to the spineless international political community and a publicity stunt designed to con the world into believing that any Israeli government is genuinely interested in peace. Those in control of the state of Israel and its evolution have but one plan in mind, and it can be summed up by the words of recently elected, 80 year-old member of the Knesset and former top Mossad agent, Rafi Eitan, as quoted by Gad Becker of the Yediot Ahronot and which appeared in the 14 April 1983 edition of the New York Times:

"We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz (Greater) Israel... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours."

The real question therefore is not whether Israel can find a partner for peace in Palestinian politicians, but whether there can ever be a just and peaceful resolution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict while Israeli politicians continue to insist that they have the right to bomb the Palestinian people into submission.
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Editorial: Dumbed Down Americans: Chattel for Global Tyranny

Wednesday May 03rd 2006, 8:18 am
Kurt Nimmo

Education in America has done a fine job. "Despite nearly constant news coverage since the war there began in 2003, 63 percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 failed to correctly locate the country on a map of the Middle East. Seventy percent could not find Iran or Israel," reports National Geographic. "Young Americans just don't seem to have much interest in the world outside of the U.S.," mused David Rutherford, a specialist in geography education at the National Geographic Society in Washington. Young Americans are so ill-educated, half of them can't find New York on a map, let alone Iran and Iraq. "Many young Americans also lack basic map-reading skills.... Told they could escape an approaching hurricane by evacuating to the northwest, only two-thirds could indicate which way northwest is on a map." But it is not simply geography.

"Three in ten respondents put the U.S. population between one and two billion (it's just under 300 million, according the U.S. Census Bureau). Seventy-four percent said English is the most commonly spoken native language in the world (it's Mandarin Chinese)." Considering the widespread ignorance of the American public-and older Americans are not much better when it comes to finding countries on a map, or for that matter naming their state representative-it makes perfect sense a gaggle of neocons, espousing what amounts to fascist authoritarianism, were able to capture the government, invade two countries in six years, and now threaten to attack a third.

As John Taylor Gatto writes, "the once mighty reading Samson of America was led eyeless to Gaza with the rest of the slaves." Gatto points out a few astounding facts. "Looking back, abundant data exist from states like Connecticut and Massachusetts to show that by 1840 the incidence of complex literacy in the United States was between 93 and 100 percent wherever such a thing mattered," writes Gatto, a former New York teacher of the year.

According to the Connecticut census of 1840, only one citizen out of every 579 was illiterate and you probably don't want to know, not really, what people in those days considered literate; it's too embarrassing. Popular novels of the period give a clue: Last of the Mohicans, published in 1826, sold so well that a contemporary equivalent would have to move 10 million copies to match it. If you pick up an uncut version you find yourself in a dense thicket of philosophy, history, culture, manners, politics, geography, analysis of human motives and actions, all conveyed in data-rich periodic sentences so formidable only a determined and well-educated reader can handle it nowadays. Yet in 1818 we were a small-farm nation without colleges or universities to speak of. Could those simple folk have had more complex minds than our own?

Dictatorship and despotism thrive when ignorance and stupidity rule societies. "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be," Thomas Jefferson declared in 1816. At the time, the populace of America understood the powers of sovereignty are vested in the people and are exercised by the people, not the government. Americans read and comprehended the Preamble of the Constitution, where specific tasks are assigned to government. In the early 19th century, John Locke's "liberal" philosophy of natural rights (universal rights derived from natural law) inspired and guided many Americans. Now most Americans follow the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, although they have no idea of Hobbes or what he wrote about government. Hobbes believed that sovereignty was vested in the state. As an example of the Hobbesian state, consider that most Americans believe only the government may grant "civil rights," when in fact rights are natural, much like the physical laws of nature, and inalienable, that is to say the government cannot take them away.

In 1810, an editorialist for the Portland Gazette and Maine Advertiser wrote in response to Napoleon Bonaparte's banning of printing presses: "When people are ... determined to be ignorant, what is the use of printing? When a man is determined that he will not receive information, it is of very little use to lay it before him.... You may talk to him, and print for him, he will still be ignorant.... An ignorant man is easily led astray-he envies the man of enlightened mind, and would sooner vote for an unprincipled blockhead, than an honest and upright man of talents and learning. This kind of system leads to riot and anarchy-anarchy leads to absolute despotism, and ignorance fits the people to bear that despotism."

In Napoleon's time, "prefects of departments and special censors" micromanaged news and information. Now we have the corporate media releasing select government propaganda to masses dumbed-down by decades of public education. Many people are functionally illiterate and unable to navigate the written language. Knowing the characters of American Idol is more important than knowing the names of state representatives. In such a fetid environment, tyranny grows quite naturally and unopposed-and thanks to the corporate media and state administered education, most people do not know their country is now a dictatorship, or dangerously close to this condition, and the situation will be nearly complete after our Napoleon and his minions ban the equivalent of the printing press.

Of course, for our neolib rulers and their bankster handlers, widespread ignorance-especially ignorance of geography and, more importantly, igorance of the concepts of our one-time constitutional republic-is the preferred state of existence, for chattel unenlightened make for better slaves. As George Orwell wrote in his dystopian novel, 1984, the state depends on ignorance and fear to control the masses, who are of course the ultimate enemy:

At this moment, for example, in 1984 (if it was 1984), Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.

Original
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Editorial: Evo Morales' Courageous Move Now Makes Him A Us Target Along With Hugo Chavez

by Stephen Lendman

To get a good sense of where US policy is heading, one need only read the front page of the New York Times or Wall Street Journal - painful as that may be to do. I skip the Times but do read the Journal daily because of the audience it reaches - high level people in business and government who want real information to guide them in their work. So despite the Journal being a voice for US business and imperialism, knowing how to read it and doing it carefully yields useful information and clues about what future US policy is likely to be.

The Wall Street Journal Signals Evo Morales Is Now A US Target

The May 2 Journal was a good example as they had a feature front page story headlined "Bolivia Seizes Natural-Gas Fields In a Show of Energy Nationalism." That alone signals a call to arms that's backed up strongly in the copy that follows.

The Journal began its heated rhetoric claiming Evo Morales has been "emboldened by Hugo Chavez's moves against private oil companies" and on May 1 (symbolically on May Day celebrating working people around the world including in the US in a big way for the first time) nationalized the country's largest natural gas field, San Alberto, and ordered the army to "take control of it and the country's other fields." It went on to explain that it ordered foreign oil companies to relinquish control of the fields, accept "much tougher operating terms or leave the country."

Bolivian law is clear that the state owns the resources in the country. Up to now it's allowed foreign investors to operate the fields and take the majority share of production from them to sell for their gain. Last year, however, Bolivia raised the state's take to an effective 50% of production by increasing taxes and royalties. Yesterday the government went further by declaring the state owns the gas once it's been extracted and that the companies operating in the two largest fields would only get 18% of the production for themselves.

Translating the Journal's Message Including What They Failed to Explain

A little translation is in order. What the Journal didn't explain and never would is that those "tougher operating terms" are simply Bolivia's right as an independent nation (and all other nations as well) to get the majority benefits from its own natural resources and that foreign investors are there sharing in them only because the country allowed them to. But instead of being grateful, the Journal makes clear, without stating it, that the investors are greedy and want the lion's share and on their terms.

What's also left unsaid or unsatisfactorily explained is nationalization does not mean expropriation. Evo Morales has made it clear that foreign investors will not lose the rights to their investments. What they will lose once Morales' plan is implemented (he's giving them six months to comply) is their unfair share of the profits and benefits they never had a right to have in the first place. Under the Morales plan, a new contract will be made between the government and foreign investors guaranteeing that the people of Bolivia will receive the majority of benefits from its own resources while at the same time foreign investors will receive their fare share but no more than that. It also means the government alone now will decide the terms of revenue sharing and tax obligations due rather than Big Oil dictating them with the long shadow of the US looming in the background, which is still the case, of course.

The Journal then became more inflammatory as it has in its past and recent railings against Hugo Chavez. It claimed high energy prices have sparked a resurgent wave of nationalism from Caracas to Moscow. Of course, it forgot to mention the one country above all others where so-called nationalism and protectionism is a national religion - the US. Here where I live, no outside investors are allowed in (especially from developing nations) to profit except on the ironclad rules we set, take it or leave it. So by US imperial rules (the only ones, no others allowed), what's good for us is not acceptable or allowed for anyone else because we said so.

The Journal went on to say Morales is mimicking measures against Big Oil by "Mr. Chavez" (he happens to be the President and should be addressed that way), and that Morales and Chavez are "both playing a game of chicken with foreign oil companies." It also couldn't resist raising the specter of Fidel Castro and the fact that Chavez and Morales signed a free trade accord over the past weekend with the man the imperial US hates most.

There's more to this story as well which the Journal points out into their long article. The leading Peruvian candidate, Ollanta Humala, in the upcoming presidential runoff election against US choice by default Alan Garcia, has also called for nationalization of the country's natural gas and mining resources. And Evo Morales has made it clear he intends to nationalize Bolivia's other natural resources likely beginning with its forests and mines. Further, to cap off a growing US Latin American nightmare, last month Equador passed a law designed to cut the windfall profits of foreign crude producers (including US based Occidental Petroleum) by giving the government (meaning the people) 50% of oil company profits whenever the international oil market exceeds the prices established in existing contracts.

What These Developments Mean for the US and How It's Likely to Respond

There certainly is trouble for the US in Latin America and in the oil patch there as well as in Iraq, Iran, Nigeria and who knows where else it may spread. So what can we make of all this, and what's most likely to happen going forward. The US is now spending hundreds of billions of dollars trying to hold on to the oil treasure it stole by invading Iraq. It's also made it clear it has designs on those same resources in neighboring Iran and may attack that country using nuclear weapons. And if that isn't enough on one plate to digest, it faces a dilemma in Venezuela it's tried unsuccessfully three times to solve.

Venezuela has even greater hydrocarbon reserves than Iraq or Iran (possibly the largest in the world even above Saudi Arabia's) and is led by a courageous man unwilling to surrender his nation's sovereignty (or its resources) to its imperial northern neighbor demanding it and them. And now the heavenly virus of the desire to be truly independent is beginning to spread to Bolivia, Peru if Hamala wins the runoff election, hopefully Equador and significant opposition groups outside the governments in other countries as well like Nigeria and Nepal. These nations, or opposition groups in them, are demanding equity and justice for their people, and are beginning to raise their heads and demand the rights they're entitled to. If they all get them, that's bad news for the US and the dominant corporate interests here that profit handsomely by exploiting the resources of underdeveloped nations and its cheap labor as well. Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales know this and have spoken out and acted courageously against these longtime abuses in defense the rights of their own people. But their doing so is intolerable to the US which will do everything in its power to reverse the loss of its special privilege.

So what can we expect ahead. I have no doubt whatever, and I've written about this several times. When the heat is turned up against US interests, this country won't go quietly into the night. The plans are well underway now for a fourth attempt to oust Hugo Chavez that may include assassinations and possibly an armed assault by US invading forces. Last Sunday VHeadline published a commentary/review I wrote about Noam Chomsky's new book Failed States. In an email I received from Chomsky on April 29 he updated the views he stated in his new book and gave a blunt assessment of what may be in prospect which I'll quote again here: he said he "wouldn't be surprised to see (US inspired) secessionist movements in the oil producing areas in Iran, Venezuela and Bolivia, all in areas that are accessible to US military force and alienated from the governments, with the US then moving in to 'defend' them and blasting the rest of the country if necessary."

I share that view although I'm not privy to what hostile plans my government has in mind. I'll only state my strong belief that something big is planned to oust President Chavez (and now maybe Evo Morales as well) that will only become apparent once the fireworks begin. Today's feature article in the Wall Street Journal only strengthens my view.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog address at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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Us vs. Them: The Revenge


Get ready for the Coalition of the Willing, Episode II: Bolton says US could seek Iran sanctions outside UN

By Vicki Allen
Reuters
May 2, 2006

WASHINGTON - With no clear sign the United States can win U.N. support for sanctions against Iran, the Bush administration said on Tuesday it could work instead with like-minded nations to punish Tehran for its nuclear programs.

The United States, which has its own sanctions on the Islamic republic, is lobbying for the United Nations Security Council to impose international sanctions on Iran but faces resistance from veto holders Russia and China.

"If for whatever reason the council couldn't fulfill its responsibilities, then I think it would be incumbent on us, and I'm sure we would press ahead to ask other countries or other groups of countries to impose those sanctions," John Bolton, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, told a House of Representatives government reform subcommittee.
Diplomats have said the United States could seek to persuade Iran's European trade partners to sanction Tehran if it fails to win support for wider sanctions at the council.

Under sharp questioning from Democrats who said President George W. Bush appeared intent on war with Iran, Bolton dismissed as "fiction" news reports that the United States has covert forces in Iran. He said Bush was focused on diplomatic remedies.

Washington says Iran is pursuing a nuclear program to develop weapons, while Tehran insists it is only for civilian energy needs.

Bolton, along with U.N. ambassadors from France and Britain are expected to introduce a new Security Council resolution this week. It would require Tehran to abandon uranium enrichment, invoking Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, making compliance mandatory.

Bolton raised the prospect that Russia and China could abstain rather than veto the Chapter 7 resolution.

"While it would be desirable to have a unanimous Security Council when we adopt this resolution under Chapter 7," Bolton said, "it's not impossible that we would proceed without them."

AT ODDS ON U.N. CHANGES

As the Bush administration presses for U.N. action on Iran and to quell the violence in Sudan's Darfur region, the hearing focused on whether U.N. sanctions can be effective given the corruption in the oil-for-food program in Iraq.

"We need an effectively functioning U.N. We need a U.N. that can handle major sanctions programs," Bolton said, pressing the administration's case for sweeping reforms at the international body.

He complained that developing nations last week adopted a resolution "which, for all intents and purposes, tanks" U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's management reform plan.

Bolton said he hoped those nations, which he said provide around 12 percent of the U.N. budget, realize "that repudiating the countries that contribute the overwhelming bulk of the U.N. budget isn't a way to win friends and influence people."

Comment: If that wasn't a blatant threat, we're not sure what is...


Under questioning by Democrats, Bolton said he had not read an article in the New Yorker magazine that the United States had covert military operations in Iran "because I don't have time to read much fiction."

He also rebuffed persistent questions from Democrats on whether in his previous post as the State Department's top arms control diplomat, he had a role in writing administration documents making now discredited assertions about Iraq's pursuit of nuclear weapons.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Congressman. I had no role in this issue," Bolton told Rep. Henry Waxman of California, top Democrat on the Government Reform committee.



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UN powers divided over Iran; US threatens sanctions

AFP
May 2, 2006

PARIS - Envoys from the top five UN powers, plus Germany, said that a "firm" international response was needed over Iran's nuclear programme, but remained at odds over what measures to take after a Paris meeting ended without agreement.

Further negotiations were to take place in coming days, with foreign ministers to gather in New York next Monday with the aim of producing a UN resolution acceptable to all.

The hardening stance against Iran, led by the West's push to impose sanctions, sent oil prices to a new record level. Brent North Sea crude for June delivery rose to 74.97 dollars a barrel.
The Paris talks were the first among senior representatives of Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, as well as Germany, since the International Atomic Energy told the Security Council last Friday that Iran was in breach of a UN demand to halt uranium enrichment.

Nicholas Burns, the number three in the US State Department, said after the meeting with counterparts from the other countries that "all agreed that the Iran nuclear programme should be suspended, and agreed to begin Security Council debate and start negotiating a resolution for suspension".

But he also voiced frustration with permanent Security Council members Russia and China which are opposing the United States and its EU allies.

"It's time for countries to take responsibilities, especially those countries that have close relationships with Iran," he said.

The United States, backed by Britain, France and Germany, fear Iran is on the path to building a nuclear arsenal under cover of developing atomic energy and wants to invoke Chapter 7 of the UN's Charter -- a passage that would open the way for sanctions and eventually even force as a way to freeze its activities.

But Moscow and Beijing, which are major trading partners with oil-rich Iran, are calling instead for a softer approach.

The US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, said Tuesday that if a tough resolution was stymied, his country was ready to form a coalition of allies to impose sanctions outside of a UN mandate.

"If we were faced with a veto by one of the permanent members, if for whatever reason the council couldn't fulfill its responsibilities, then I think it would be incumbent on us, and I'm sure we would press ahead to ask other countries or other groups of countries to impose those sanctions," Bolton told a congressional committee in Washington.

French foreign ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei said the six countries involved in the Paris meeting agreed that Iran's nuclear program "is not compatible with the demands of the international community" and were concerned at its development.

He added: "It has been agreed to pursue discussions, in particular in New York, with the aim of reaching a firm decision from the UN Security Council and addressing a clear message to Iran."

But Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki said earlier Tuesday there was no question -- "absolutely not" -- of Iran suspending its uranium enrichment work, and he predicted China and Russia would block the threat of UN sanctions.

"There is a very wrong assumption held by some that the West can do anything it wants through the Security Council," he told the hardline Tehran daily Kayhan.

At the same time, the head of the Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, said Iran had succeeded in enriching uranium to a higher level of purity than previously achieved.

The grade reached -- 4.8 percent purity -- would not be exceeded because "this level suffices for making nuclear fuel," he said.

The clerical regime has insisted its nuclear activities are exclusively for developing atomic energy.

Purity of more than 90 percent is required to produce the fissile core of an atom bomb -- a weapon Western intelligence assessments say Iran is at least seven years from being able to build.



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Iran close to having reactor quality uranium

Last Updated Wed, 03 May 2006 06:47:29 EDT
CBC News

Iran has nearly managed to enrich uranium to the point where it can be used to fuel nuclear reactors, the head of the country's nuclear program said on Wednesday.

Gholamreza Aghazadeh said Iran had produced uranium of 4.8 per cent purity. Last month, Tehran declared it had enriched uranium to 3.6 per cent


Nuclear reactors used to produce electricity need uranium enriched to five per cent purity.

Meanwhile, the United States, Britain and France were set on Wednesday to brief the United Nations Security Council on a proposed resolution aimed at getting Iran to halt its nuclear program.

Despite Iran's protestations to the contrary, Western allies are concerned the Islamic country's ambitions go beyond nuclear power generation to nuclear weapons.

However, Russia and China are likely to oppose the resolution. Both countries are concerned it would be a step toward sanctions, or even military action against Iran.

A vote has yet to be scheduled.

While a reactor needs fuel enriched to five per cent, a nuclear warhead needs uranium enriched to 90 per cent.



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Iran slams Europe policies on Iran

www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-03 21:07:10

TEHRAN, May 3 (Xinhua) -- Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has slammed European countries for their policies on the Islamic Republic, saying they have always been under U.S. pressure, according to an interview published on Wednesday.
"We can analyze Iran's relations with Europe both in the economic, political fields and the international cooperation, then we will see that Europe adopted inapposite and illogical gestures from the beginning of the revolution and has sustained those gestures," Mottaki said on Tuesday in an interview with the daily paper Kayhan.

"Under the U.S. leadership, Europe has always put accusations which are against Iran in their list," said Mottaki.

When referring to the alleged breakage of the good relationship between Iran and Europe by Iran's new government, the minister dismissed the allege, saying "European countries have never toned down their unfriendly approach toward Iran, and have always been covetous on Iran's markets with greedy and avarice."

"These relations have always benefited the west and we have no break with them in economic relations," he stressed.

The European countries are Iran's biggest trade partners, who import oil, carpet and some other agriculture products, such as pistachios from Iran.

Commenting on Iran's sensitive nuclear issue and an attempt by the U.S., Britain and France to introduce a resolution in the United Nations Security Council to compel Iran to halt the uranium activities, Mottaki vowed that Iran would never give in to pressures.

"We will never return suspension of the uranium enrichment work. It's very wrong some people believe the west could do anything it likes through the use of a tool called Security Council," said Mottaki.

The foreign minister made these remarks when envoys from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany were meeting in Paris to discuss the current situations.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei submitted a report on April 28 to the UN Security Council, saying Iran had ignored the council's non-binding demand to suspend all uranium enrichment by the April 28 deadline. The IAEA has prompted calls from Western powers for tougher Security Council action against Iran.

Foreign ministers of five permanent members of the UN Security Council -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China --plus Germany are scheduled to meet in New York on May 9 to discuss response to ElBaradei's report.

Tuesday's meeting in Paris was meant to prepare the ground for the New York meeting of foreign ministers of the six nations.

Iran announced in earlier April that it had produced low-grade enriched uranium by launching 164 centrifuges at the uranium enrichment facility in the central town of Natanz.

That marked a technical leap in the process for nuclear power plant construction, which immediately aroused strong international concern.

Iran has been insisting that its nuclear program is fully peaceful.



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This high-octane rocket-rattling against Tehran is unlikely to succeed

Tariq Ali
Wednesday May 3, 2006
The Guardian

Till now, what has prevented the crisis in Iraq from becoming a total debacle for the United States has been the open collaboration of the Iranian clerics. Iranian foreign policy - fragmentary and opportunist - has always been determined by the needs and interests of the clerical state rather than any principled anti-imperialist strategy. In the past, this has led to a de facto collaboration with Washington in Afghanistan and Iraq. During the Iran-Iraq war, the clerics had no hesitation in buying arms from the Israeli regime to fight Iraq, then backed by Britain and the US. In the wake of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq - hoping, no doubt, that clearing the path for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and Mullah Omar might have won them a respite - the regime took a tougher stance on the nuclear question.
The Bush administration appears to be psyching itself up for a safe strike against Iran either by itself or via the Israelis, whose new leaders have referred to the Iranian president as a psychopath and a new Hitler. Why has Washington manufactured this crisis? The hypocrisy of Bush, Blair, Chirac or Olmert - their own states armed with thousands of nuclear weapons - making a casus belli of what are, by all accounts, primitive gropings on Iran's part towards the technology necessary for the lowest grade of nuclear self-defence, hardly needs to be spelled out. So long as these powers are allowed to enlarge their nuclear armouries unimpeded, why should Tehran not?

The country is not only ringed by atomic states (India, Pakistan, China, Russia, Israel), it also faces a string of American bases with potential or actual nuclear stockpiles in Qatar, Iraq, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. Nuclear-armed US aircraft carriers and submarines patrol the waters off its southern coast. Historically, Iran has every reason to fear outside threats. Its elected government was overthrown with covert Anglo-American aid in 1953, and the secular opposition destroyed. From 1980 to 1988, the western powers abetted Saddam Hussein's onslaught, in which hundreds of thousands of Iranians died. More than 300 Iraqi missiles were launched at Iranian cities and economic targets, especially the oil industry. In the war's final stages, the US destroyed nearly half the Iranian navy in the Gulf and, for good measure, shot down a crowded civilian passenger plane.

For the clerical state, the war on terror has been the best and the worst of times. Oil prices have soared. Enemy regimes on both sides, Baghdad and Kabul, have been overthrown. The Iraqi Shia parties that they have been fostering for years are now in office. Washington has been reliant on their help to sustain its occupations both there and in Afghanistan. Yet social tensions in Iran are high. In this context, the nuclear issue is one of the regime's few unifying projects. It is worth recalling that the Iranian nuclear programme began under the Shah with technology offered by the Americans. Khomeini put the project on hold, considering it un-Islamic. Operations were restarted, with Russians later taking over construction of the light-water reactors at Bushehr begun by the West Germans in the 1970s. From the start, Iran, like Germany, the Netherlands or Japan, has wanted its programme to take in the full nuclear cycle, including uranium enrichment; Russia has several times threatened to impose conditions on fuel deliveries. Enrichment centrifuges were surreptitiously imported from neighbouring Pakistan; not the process, but the failure to report it, was in contravention of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) agreements.

There is no evidence that Iran is much closer to nuclear weapons now than was Iraq in September 2002, when Blair and Cheney assured the world that Baghdad represented a "genuine nuclear threat". Reports in 2003 by a somewhat demented sect, the Mojahedin e-Khalq, of preliminary nuclear research at the Natanz installation were no such proof. But in the competitive scramble by European powers to enhance their standing with Washington after the invasion of Iraq, France, Germany and Britain were keen to prove their mettle by forcing extra agreements on Tehran. The Khatami regime immediately capitulated. In December 2003, they signed the "Additional Protocol" demanded by the EU3, agreeing to a "voluntary suspension" of the right to enrichment guaranteed under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Within three months, the IAEA was condemning them for having failed to ratify it; in June 2004, its inspectors produced examples of Iranian enrichment work, perfectly legal under the NPT, but ruled out by the Additional Protocol. Israel has boasted of its intention to "destroy Natanz" - the contrast to its stealth bombing of Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981 a measure of the new balance of forces. In the summer of 2004, a large bi-partisan majority in the US Congress passed a resolution for "all appropriate measures" to prevent an Iranian weapons programme and there was speculation about an "October surprise" before the 2004 presidential poll. Plans were thus well advanced before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's victory in the June 2005 Iranian presidential election.

Ahmadinejad reaped the vote against Khatami's miserable record between 1997 and 2005. Economic conditions had worsened and Khatami was prepared to defend the rights of foreign investors, but not those of independent newspapers or protesting students. Manoeuvring ineffectually between contradictory pressures, he exhausted his moral credit. Contrary to some reports, Ahmadinejad has not so far imposed any new puritanical clampdown on social mores. Instead, the most likely constituency to be disappointed is Ahmadinejad's own: the millions of young, working-class jobless, crammed into overcrowded living conditions, in desperate need of a national development policy that neither neoliberalism nor Islamist voluntarism will provide.

Nor is fundamentalist backwardness exhibited in the denial of the Nazi genocide against the Jews and the threat to obliterate Israel, a basis for any foreign policy. To face up to the enemies ranged against Iran requires an intelligent and far-sighted strategy - not the current rag-bag of opportunism and manoeuvre, determined by the immediate interests of the clerics.

Clearing the way for the overthrow of the Iraqi Ba'ath and Afghan Taliban regimes and backing the US occupations has bought no respite. The US undersecretary of state has spoken of "ratcheting up the pressure". Israeli defence minister Shaul Mofaz has said that "Israel will not be able to accept an Iranian nuclear capability, and it must have the capability to defend itself with all that this implies, and we are preparing." Hillary Clinton accused the Bush administration of "downplaying the Iranian threat" and called for pressure on Russia and China to impose sanctions on Tehran. Chirac has spoken of using French nuclear weapons against such a "rogue state". Perhaps it is simply high-octane rocket-rattling, the aim being to frighten Tehran into submission. Bullying is unlikely to succeed. Will the west then embark on a new war? If so, the battlefield might stretch from the Tigris to the Oxus and without any guarantee of success.

· Tariq Ali is the author of Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity



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Power Makes Men Mad

By Patrick Seale
04/14/06
Dar Al-Hayat

Enormously powerful and yet paranoid with fear, the U.S. and Israel act as if the possession of overwhelming force is the only guarantee of their security.

An extraordinary paradox of the current international scene is that the most powerful countries in the world are also the most afraid - and fear has caused them to lose their senses.

Globally, the United States has no immediate military rival; certainly no other state has the power to strike anywhere on our planet - and far beyond it into space - at very short notice. American strategists call this the doctrine of Global Strike.

Similarly, in terms of military power, both conventional and non-conventional, Israel has no challenger in a vast region from Central Asia, across the Arab world, to north, east and central Africa. At a conservative estimate, it has a nuclear arsenal of between 200 and 300 warheads, as well as highly effective long-range delivery systems. As Ariel Sharon, its stricken leader, used to be fond of saying, Israel's sphere of influence extends as far as an F16 can fly.
And yet the U.S. and Israel behave as if they are about to be attacked by a formidable enemy. They scold and threaten, huff and puff, flex their muscles and brandish their weapons as if facing an imminent danger to their very existence.

Instead of putting their formidable power to work reducing tensions and resolving conflicts - as they should be doing - they go about stoking the fires of anger and hate, apparently unaware that the destabilization they cause must in due course engulf them too.


'Destabilization' is, in fact, too mild a term to describe the profound disturbance to the regional and global order which the United States and Israel are creating by their violently hostile approach to the Islamic Republic of Iran and to the Islamic resistance movement Hamas, which the Palestinians democratically elected as their government.

Demonisation and vilification, international isolation, sanctions, boycotts and military strikes, these are just some of the policies and threats directed at both Iran and Hamas. In the United States, pro-Israeli groups, such as the powerful Jewish lobby AIPAC, and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the influential think-tank AIPAC created, are beating the drums of war against Iran, while Israel has led the world-wide campaign to boycott Hamas. Shimon Peres, Israel's wolf in sheep's clothing, even travelled to the Vatican to persuade the Pope to join the boycott!

In the past week or so, as Palestinian groups continue their pinpricks of Israel with a few harmless home-made rockets, Israel launched repeated air strikes and fired more than one thousand artillery shells at the northern Gaza strip, killing at least sixteen Palestinians, including several children. It has killed about 50 Palestinians and wounded many more since the Palestinian elections last January. Last Tuesday, the Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz warned that 'Our operations are going to intensify!' The real scandal is that the rich Arab Gulf states have not rushed to help the bankrupt Palestinian government.

In the case of Iran, U.S. air and sea strikes at hundreds of targets - including the use of tactical nuclear weapons - are being seriously considered in the more demented higher reaches of the U.S. government, according to Seymour Hersch, the usually well-informed American journalist writing in the current issue of the New Yorker magazine.

Not daring to stand up for its own values, the European Union has shamefully joined in the pressure on Iran and the boycott of Hamas. Reeking of hypocrisy and double standards, the chorus raised is that Hamas must renounce violence, recognize Israel's right to exist and abide by past agreements.

The truth is that Hamas has honored a truce for the past 15 months in spite of Israel's ceaseless attacks and killings. It has declared itself ready for Quartet-sponsored peace talks with Israel which, if successful, would inevitably lead to mutual recognition. But Israel refuses to negotiate with a Hamas government, has severed all political contacts with it, has demonized it as a 'terrorist organization', and has withheld some $50m a month of the Palestinians' own money raised from taxes and customs dues. Needless to say, Israel has violated every agreement concluded with the Palestinians.

Enormously powerful and yet paranoid with fear, the U.S. and Israel act as if the possession - and indeed the use - of overwhelming force is the only guarantee of their security. Dialogue and diplomacy, mutual accommodation, the search for a balance of power, the mediation of international institutions - all these traditional instruments for conflict resolution have been discarded and, as a result, the world has become a very dangerous place.

Iran claims to have successfully enriched small quantities of uranium for research purposes, up to a low level of 3.5 per cent, appropriate for use as nuclear fuel in power stations, such as the Bushehr plant now under construction by Russia. Does this Iranian achievement constitute a threat to either the U.S. or Israel? No objective expert thinks so, and certainly not the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its chief Muhammad AlBaradei, who is this week visiting Tehran.

Should the U.S. attack Iran to put a halt to its nuclear program? The usually sober New York Times this week denounced as 'reckless folly' the possibility of such an American war.

Iran has pledged that its nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes. It cooperates closely with the IAEA. It has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the so- called Additional Protocol, which allows for intrusive and surprise inspections of its nuclear facilities. Under the NPT rules, Iran has every right to master the uranium fuel cycle in order to produce nuclear fuel. Even if it wished to build a nuclear weapon - which is by no means certain - this would require many more years of work.

So why the fuss? Why the hysteria? Rehashing the tired old cliché, General Dan Halutz, Israel's chief of staff, declared this week that a nuclear Iran was a 'threat not only to Israel but to the entire free, democratic world.' He was thus echoing the overheated rhetoric of John Bolton, that finger-wagging neocon scare-monger, surely the worst envoy the United States has ever sent to the United Nations.

The war in Iraq, ruthlessly promoted by pro-Israeli neocons, has resulted in a strategic catastrophe for the United States - with the painful end still not in sight. A war in Iran would set the region on fire; unleash a world-wide wave of anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli terror; expose U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan to devastating attack; put intolerable strain on the trans- Atlantic relationship between Europe and the U.S.; endanger the oil flow from the Gulf; and trigger a world economic recession. In the view of Zbigniew Brzezinski, former President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, it could put an end to America's role in the world.

Washington should stop its senseless sabre-rattling and instead engage Tehran in wide- ranging political talks leading to diplomatic relations, security guarantees and a recognition of Iran's important place in the Gulf. Israel, in turn, should talk to Hamas, not seek to destroy it. Peace and integration into the region are of far greater value than a few kilometers of stolen territory on the West Bank.

Commenting on Iran's claim to have enriched uranium, Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary declared this week that 'This is a regime that needs to be building confidence with the international community. Instead they're moving in the wrong direction.' With greater lucidity, he might have offered this advice to his own government and that of its Israeli ally.

-Dr Patrick Seale is a leading British writer and consultant on the Middle East and is the author of many books including "Assad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East".



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Iran threatens Israel if US acts "evil"

By Edmund Blair
Reuters
Tue May 2, 2006

TEHRAN - Iran threatened on Tuesday to attack Israel in response to any "evil" act by the United States and said it had enriched uranium to a level close to the maximum compatible with civilian use in power stations.

The defiant statements were issued shortly before world powers met in Paris late on Tuesday to plan their next moves after Tehran rejected a U.N. call to halt uranium enrichment.
Senior officials from the U.N. Security Council's permanent members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- plus Germany discussed how to curb an Iranian program that Western nations say conceals a drive for atomic warheads.

"The participants discussed the steps to come in the United Nations Security Council," a French Foreign Ministry statement said after the dinner.

"The three European political directors presented the broad lines of a draft resolution aimed at giving mandatory force to the IAEA's (U.N. nuclear watchdog) demands, in particular those which deal with the suspension of activities linked to the enrichment and reprocessing of uranium."

Iran refuses to back down from what it calls its right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.

Driving home that message, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, said his country had now succeeded in purifying uranium to 4.8 percent, at the top end of the 3 to 5 percent range for fuel used in nuclear power plants.

"Enrichment above 5 percent is not on Iran's agenda," Aghazadeh told the students' ISNA news agency.

Iran has previously said it had enriched to more than 4 percent, far below the 80 percent level needed for bomb-making.

It has used a test cascade of 164 centrifuges to enrich uranium so far and is building two similar cascades. It says it will start installing 3,000 centrifuges later this year -- which could yield enough material for one bomb within a year.

The United States and Israel have vowed to deny Iran nuclear weapons. Washington has not ruled out military action if diplomacy fails and Tehran has sworn to retaliate if attacked.

TARGETING ISRAEL

"We have announced that wherever America does something evil, the first place that we target will be Israel," ISNA quoted a senior Revolutionary Guards commander, Rear Admiral Mohammad-Ebrahim Dehqani, as saying on Tuesday.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the Jewish state to be "wiped off the map".

Iran's deputy oil minister said there was "some possibility" of a U.S. attack on his country over its nuclear program.

"I am worried. Everybody is worried," Mohammad Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian said in New Delhi after talks on a proposed $7 billion pipeline from Iran to India via Pakistan.

Concerns that Iran's dispute with the West could lead to disruption of its oil output pushed oil prices above $74 a barrel, close to the record of $75.35 touched last month. [...]

Comment: Isn't it curious how all the uproar over Iran is being fueled not be the nation's nuclear technology, but by its alleged threats against Israel? And isn't it also curious that, as we report elsewhere on today's page, 75% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 cannot even find Israel on a map of the world??

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By Way of Deception


Impatient Mossad warns of (lies about) 'monster in the making'

April 30, 2006
WorldNetDaily.com

"This is what we know and this is what we'll do if you continue to do nothing"

If the visit to Washington last week by the head of Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, was not enough to communicate Israel's growing impatience with the international community's failure to deal with Tehran's unchecked development of nuclear technology and bellicose threats to wipe the Jewish state "off the map," Ehud Olmert, prime minister designate, made it clear yesterday by denouncing Iran's president as a "psychopath" and comparing him to Hitler.

Mossad chief Meir Dagan, in Washington last week in preparation for a visit to the U.S. by Olmert on May 23, held secret meetings with U.S. officials to discuss Iran's nuclear program, reports the London Times. While details of the meetings were not revealed, it is believed Dagan met with his counterparts at the CIA, the Pentagon and the National Security Council.

"Dagan is not given to small talk and niceties," said an Israeli intelligence source, who believes Dagan's message to Washington policy makers was simple and blunt: "This is what we know and this is what we'll do if you continue to do nothing."
The revelation of the briefing comes in the wake of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) admission of alarming "gaps" in its knowledge of Iran's centrifuge program to enrich uranium and the level of involvement of Iran's military. Many intelligence experts believe Iran is operating a parallel nuclear program where military applications are secretly under development. Mossad reportedly claims to have evidence of enrichment sites in Iran hidden to IAEA inspectors "which can short-cut their timetable in the race for their first bomb."

"When I read the recent reports regarding Iran, I saw a monster in the making," said Dr. Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Israeli parliament's foreign and defense committee.

Steinitz, who oversees Mossad's activities in Iran, fears Iran's first nuclear bomb is just one year away. "There is only one option that is worse than military action against Iran and that is to sit and do nothing," he said.

Comment: Let there be no mistake about the real identities of the motivators behind the entire War on the Middle East.

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Outed CIA agent was working on Iran

Rawstory
01/05/2006

According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.

Reports Shuster in this rush transcript: "intelligence sources say Valerie Wilson was part of an operation three years ago tracking the proliferation of nuclear weapons material into Iran. And the sources allege that when Mrs. Wilson's cover was blown, the administration's ability to track Iran's nuclear ambitions was damaged as well."
MSNBC transcript follows:

Matthews: Ever since the White House/CIA leak scandal erupted, the nation has seen photographs here and there of Valerie Wilson, the CIA operative whose identity was blown. Now, thanks to a black tie event Saturday night, we have some video. Hardball correspondent David Shuster brings it to us and has the latest on the CIA leak case.

(David Shuster)

For the first time since bush administration officials revealed her undercover identity and ruined her career --- former CIA operative Valerie Wilson... Accompanied by her husband Joe Wilson, stepped in front of the television cameras. And their red carpet appearance Saturday night at the white house correspondent's dinner could not have come at a more dramatic moment in the CIA leak investigation itself.

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is weighing whether to indict top presidential advisor Karl Rove, otherwise known as bush's brain. And, white house supporters are stepping up their argument that unveiling Wilson's identity was not a crime. Joe Wilson's response?

Wilson: "Well the CIA I think has responded first by asking the Justice Department to open an investigation and my judgment the leak of national security information is a betrayal a minimum of one's security clearance and certainly of the public trust and I for one can't understand how Mr. Rove remains on the payroll of the US Government."

early in the case, rove admitted to investigators that he outed Valerie Wilson's identity to columnist Robert Novak -- Novak was the first journalist to publish Wilson's identity and the first to talk about it to investigators.

And last week, Karl rove testified again he may have spoken about the Wilson's with time magazine's matt cooper.

Rove said he denied that under oath for the first year of the investigation because of memory problems. A case of bad memory is scooter Libby's defense.

But in regards to Karl Rove, lawyers in the case say prosecutor Fitzgerald is still troubled by the timing of Rove's rolling disclosures: it seems that Rove's memory perks up with every new indication someone else will expose him. When rove finally began to update his testimony in October 2004... It was just days after cooper was first held in contempt for refusing to disclose confidential sources. And rove did not give cooper a clear waiver to testify until after cooper's appeals had been exhausted 9 months later.

In any case, as prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald considers whether to charge Karl rove with perjury, obstruction of justice, or worse... MSNBC has learned new information about the damage caused by the white house leaks.

Intelligence sources say Valerie Wilson was part of an operation three years ago tracking the proliferation of nuclear weapons material into Iran. And the sources allege that when Mrs. Wilson's cover was blown, the administration's ability to track Iran's nuclear ambitions was damaged as well.

The white house considers Iran to be one of America's biggest threats.

President George W. Bush: "the Iranians should not have a nuclear weapon, the capacity to make a nuclear weapon, or the knowledge as to how to make a nuclear weapon. And now that we've got the goal in mind, we're working on the tactics."

But the tactics are not as clear in the midst of record low approval ratings and a diplomatic and military playing field limited by the u-s war in Iraq.

Madeleine Albright: "The world is in total turmoil right now. Worst I've ever seen it. (reporter) How do we get out of it? What's the number one issue as far as what's related to that turmoil? (Albright) Iraq. (reporter) What do we do about it? (Albright walks away)

the Iraq war is the backdrop for the CIA leak case. Joe Wilson had criticized the administration's case for the Iraq war... And the white house tried to undercut him by leaking, among other things, information about his CIA wife.

Shuster: the Wilsons say they've spoken to prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald twice since the case began... And the last time was several months ago. So, they are waiting, like everybody else, for some sort of announcement from Fitzgerald's office about rove. Karl Rove's attorneys say they've been told by Fitzgerald that no decision will be made for at least another week. Chris?


Comment: Hmmm...now why do you suppose somone in the US or Israeli government would want to prevent anyone obtaining information about where Iran was getting its alleged WMD technology? See this link for short video on this story

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Attacking Iran: The Israel Connection

Stephen Zunes,
Foreign Policy in Focus
May 3, 2006.

As the Bush administration spins stories on Iran, Americans are left to wonder whether we will be thrust into another war.


With even mainstream media outlets like the Washington Post and The New Yorker publishing credible stories that the United States is seriously planning a military attack on Iran, increasing numbers of Americans are expressing concerns about the consequences of the United States launching another war that would once again place the United States in direct contravention of international law.

The latest National Security Strategy document published earlier this year labeled Iran as the most serious challenge to the United States posed by any country. This should be an indication of just how safe the United States is in the post-Cold War world, where the "most serious challenge" is no longer a rival superpower with thousands of nuclear weapons and sophisticated delivery systems capable of destroying the United States, but a Third World country on the far side of the planet which, according to the latest National Intelligence Estimate out of Washington, is at least 10 years away from actually producing a usable nuclear weapon.

Furthermore, Iran has no capacity to develop any delivery system in the foreseeable future capable of landing a weapon within 10,000 miles of our shores.

However, despite the fact that there is no evidence that Iran is even developing nuclear weapons in the first place, the Bush administration and Congressional leaders of both parties argue that simply having the technology which would make it theoretically possible for Iran to manufacture a nuclear weapon at some point in the future is sufficient casus belli.
As part of his desperate search for enemies, President Bush claimed in January that a nuclear-armed Iran would be "a grave threat to the security of the world," words that echoed language he used in reference to Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion of that oil-rich country. Meanwhile, Vice President Dick Cheney vowed "meaningful consequences" if Iran did not give up its nuclear program and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton claimed there would be "tangible and painful consequences" if Iran did not cooperate.

The Washington Post quoted White House sources as reporting that "Bush views Tehran as a serious menace that must be dealt with before his presidency ends," apparently out of concern that neither a Democratic nor Republican successor might be as willing to consider a military option.

Not that he needs to worry about that. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, widely seen as the front-runner for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, accused the Bush administration in January of not taking the threat of a nuclear Iran seriously enough, criticized the Bush administration for allowing European nations to take the lead in pursuing a diplomatic solution, and insisted that the administration should make it clear that military options were being actively considered.

Similarly, Democratic Senator Evan Bayh, another likely contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, accused the Bush administration of "ignoring and then largely deferring management of this crisis to the Europeans." Taking the diplomatic route, according to Bayh, "has certainly been damaging to our national security."

Despite the hostility of these two Democratic senators toward diplomatic means of resolving the crisis and the similarity of their rhetoric to the false claims they made prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein's government was a threat to global security and that diplomatic solutions were impossible, both Clinton and Bayh are widely respected by their fellow Democrats as leaders on security policy.

Indeed, in May of 2004, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution with only three dissenting votes calling on the Bush administration to "use all appropriate means" -- presumably including military force -- to "prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons."

As with the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, both Republican and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill have tended to call witnesses before the relevant committees who would present the most alarmist perceptions as fact. Last month, for example, Patrick Clawson of the right-wing Washington Institute for Near East Policy testified before the Senate International Relations Committee that, "So long as Iran has an Islamic Republic, it will have a nuclear-weapons program, at least clandestinely."

None of the senators present, however, bothered to mention the inconvenient fact that under the secular regime of the Shah that preceded the Islamic Republic, Iran also had a nuclear program (which was actively supported and encouraged by the United States.) However, Clawson said that since a nuclear program was inevitable under the Islamic Republic, only by overthrowing the government--not through a negotiated settlement -- would the United States be safe from the nuclear threat. He insisted, therefore, that "the key issue" was not whether an arms control agreement could be enforced, but "How long will the present Iranian regime last?"

The Risks from a U.S. Attack on Iran

With the ongoing debacle in Iraq, any kind of ground invasion of Iran by U.S. forces is out of the question. Iran is three times bigger than Iraq, both in terms of population and geography. It is a far more mountainous country that would increase the ability of the resistance to engage in guerrilla warfare and the intensity of the nationalist backlash against such a foreign invasion would likely be even stronger.

An attack by air and sea-launched missiles and bombing raids by fighter jets would be a more realistic scenario. However, even such a limited military operation would create serious problems for the United States. The Washington Post, in a recent article about a possible U.S. strike against Iran, quoted Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA Middle East specialist, as noting how "The Pentagon is arguing forcefully against it because it is so constrained" by ongoing operations in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan.

Similarly, the Post quoted a former Pentagon official in contact with his former colleagues as observing how "I don't think anybody's prepared to use the military option at this point." Given that the growing opposition to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld 's handling of the war in Iraq within the leadership of the armed services, as expressed by a number of prominent recently-retired generals, would make a major military operation without strong support from America's military leadership particularly problematic.

Fears expressed by some opponents of possible U.S. military action against Iran that the Iranians would retaliate through terrorist attacks against American interests are probably not realistic. Indeed, Iran's control over foreign terrorist groups and its role in terrorist operations has frequently been exaggerated by American analysts. However, there are a number of areas in which the United States would be particularly vulnerable to Iranian retaliation:

One would be in the Persian Gulf, where U.S. Navy ships could become easy targets for Iranian missiles and torpedoes.

Perhaps more serious would be in Iraq, where American troops are currently operating against the Sunni-led insurgency alongside Iranian-backed pro-government militias. If these Iranian-backed militias also decided to turn their guns on American forces, the United States would be caught in a vise between both sides in the country's simmering civil war with few places to hide.

It would be difficult for the United States to label militias affiliated with the ruling parties of a democratically-elected government fighting foreign occupation forces in their own country as "terrorists" or to use such attacks as an excuse to launch further military operations against Iran. (Given that the Iraqi government is ruled by two pro-Iranian parties, recent charges by the Bush administration that Iran is aiding the anti-government Sunni insurgency are utterly ludicrous and have been rejected by the Iraqi government.)

A U.S. air strike would be a clear violation of the United Nations Charter and would be met by widespread condemnation in the international community. It would further isolate the United States as a rogue superpower at a time in which it needs to repair its damaged relations with its European and Middle Eastern allies. Even Great Britain has expressed its opposition to military action.

Pro-Western Arab states, despite their unease at Iran's nuclear program, would react quite negatively to a U.S. strike, particularly since it would likely strengthen anti-American extremists by allowing them to take advantage of popular opposition to the United States utilizing force against a Muslim nation in order to defend the U.S.-Israeli nuclear monopoly in the region. As a result, the negative consequences of a U.S. attack may be strong enough to convince even the Bush administration not to proceed with the military option.

Israel as Proxy

Though direct U.S. military action against Iran is still very possible, it is more likely that the United States will encourage Israel to take military action instead. In such a scenario, the U.S. officials believe that the United States would gain the perceived benefits of a military strike against Iran while limiting the damage to the United States by focusing the world's wrath on Israel. Fox News reported that Bush administration officials effectively told the Israelis that "we are doing the heavy lifting in Iraq and Afghanistan... and that Israel needs to handle this themselves."

Israel has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to violate international legal norms and -- with U.S. veto power blocking the UN Security Council from imposing sanctions, and the United States providing vast sums of unconditional military and economic assistance to their government -- its ability to get away with doing so. The Israeli government is convinced that the U.S. occupation of Iraq has radicalized the Iranian clerical leadership and that Iran, unlike Iraq in the final years of Saddam Hussein, poses a risk to Israel's national security interests. However, for reasons mentioned above, Israeli leaders have been reported to believe that the United States will not move militarily against Iran and that they will end up using their own forces instead.

An Israeli strike is not inevitable, however. Public opinion polls show that a majority of Israelis oppose the idea of an Israeli strike against Iran. Policy analyst Steve Clemons was quoted in the Washington Monthly as saying, "I have witnessed far more worries about Iranian President Ahmadinejad's anti-Holocaust and anti-Israel rhetoric in the U.S. than I did in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem... Nearly everyone I spoke to in Israel who ranged in political sympathies from the Likud right to Maretz left thought that... Israel thought it wrong-headed and too impulsive to be engaged in saber-rattling with Iran at this stage." He added, "Israeli national security bureaucrats -- diplomats and generals -- have far greater confidence that there are numerous potential solutions to the growing Iran crisis short of bombing them in an invasive, hot attack."

There is no indication that Iran would ever contemplate a first strike against Israel or any other country. Iran, like other Islamic governments in the region, has used Israel's repression of the Palestinians for propaganda purposes, but has rarely done anything to actually help the Palestinians.

It is inconceivable that the Iranians would ever consider launching a nuclear attack on Israel -- which possesses at least 300 nuclear weapons and sophisticated missiles and other delivery system that could totally destroy Iran -- for the sake of the Palestinians, many thousands of whom would die as well. However, an Israeli attack could give Iran grounds for retaliation. Despite these dangers, Israel -- with U.S. encouragement -- has long considered the possibility of an attack against Iran.

In the mid-1990s, prior to the election of the U.S.-backed Likud government of Benyamin Netanyahu to office, the peace process with the Palestinians was progressing steadily, a peace treaty had been signed with Jordan, and diplomatic and commercial ties with other Arab states was growing. With the prospects of a permanent Israeli-Arab peace, American arms exporters and their allies in Congress and the Clinton administration, along with their hawkish counterparts in Israel, began emphasizing the alleged threat to Israel from Iran as justification for the more than $2 billion worth of annual U.S. taxpayer subsidies for U.S. arms exporters for them to send weapons to Israel.

Among these was an agreement to provide Israel with sophisticated F-15 fighter bombers. As the peace process faltered due to increased repression and colonization by Israel and increased terrorism from radical Palestinian groups and as reformists appeared to be gaining momentum in Iran, Israel began focusing upon more immediate threats closer to home, though deliveries of the F-15s continued through 2001.

Last year, however, the United States unexpectedly provided Israel with an additional thirty long-range F-15s at a cost of $48 million each. The United States has also recently provided Israel with 5000 GBU-27 and GBU-28 weapons, better known as "bunker busters," warheads guided by lasers or satellites which can penetrate up to ten meters of earth and concrete to destroy suspected underground facilities. Reuters reported a senior Israeli security source as noting, "This is not the sort of ordinance needed for the Palestinian front. Bunker busters could serve Israel against Iran..." Israel also has at least five submarines armed with sea-launched missiles which could easily get within range of Iranian targets.

One scenario reportedly has Israel sending three squadrons of F15s to fly over Jordanian and Iraqi airspace, currently controlled by the U.S. air force, to strike at major Iranian facilities. The United States would provide satellite information for the attack as well as refueling for the Israeli jets as they leave Iranian air space for their return to Israel. The Sunday Times has reported that the Israelis have been "coordinating with American forces" for such a scenario.

That same article described Israeli commando training operations at a full-sized mockup of Iran's Natanz nuclear facility at a military facility in Israel's Negev Desert and the dispatch of clandestine Israeli Special Forces units into Iran. Meanwhile, the Israeli Ofek-6 spy satellite is now reported to have been moved to an orbit over Iranian facilities.

As far back as April 2004, President Bush exchanged letters with Sharon in which he stated, in reference to Iran, that, "Israel has the right to defend itself with its own forces."

Despite the widely-held tail-wagging-the-dog assumptions, history has shown that the United States has frequently used Israel to advance its strategic interests in the region and beyond, such as aiding pro-Western governments and pro-Western insurgencies, keeping radical nationalist governments like Syria in check and engaging in covert interventions in Jordan, Lebanon, and now Kurdistan.

During the 1980s, Israel was used to funnel arms to third parties the United States could not arm directly, such as the apartheid regime South Africa, the Guatemalan junta, the Nicaraguan Contras, and, ironically, the Iranian mullahs. Israel's bombing of Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 -- despite formal criticism -- was enthusiastically supported by the Reagan administration.

One Israeli analyst was quoted as saying in the Washington Post during the Iran-Contra scandal, "It's like Israel has become just another federal agency, one that's convenient to use when you want something done quietly." Nathan Shahan wrote in Yediot Ahronot that his country serves as the "Godfather's messenger," since Israel "undertakes the dirty work of the Godfather, who always tries to appear to be the owner of some large respectable business." Israeli satirist B. Michael describes U.S. aid to Israel as a situation where "My master gives me food to eat and I bite those whom he tells me to bite. It's called strategic cooperation."

Just as the ruling elites of medieval Europe used the Jews as money-lenders and tax collectors to avoid the wrath of an exploited population, the elites of the world's one remaining superpower would similarly be quite willing to use Israel to do their dirty work against Iran. That way Israel, not the United States, will get the blame. (In fact, there are those who blame Israel even when the United States takes military action itself, such as the various conspiracy theories now circulating that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was done on behalf of Israel.)

It Won't Work

A military strike against Iran, either directly by the United States or through Israel, will not likely succeed in curbing Iran's nuclear program. Indeed, it will likely motivate the Iranian government, with enhanced popular support in reaction to foreign aggression against their country, to redouble their efforts.

Iran has deliberately spread its nuclear facilities over a wide geographical range, with at least nine major locations. Even the bunker buster bombs may not fully penetrate a number of these facilities, assuming all the secret sites could be located.

The U.S.-backed Israeli raid of Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, according to virtually all accounts by Iraqi nuclear scientists, was at most a temporary setback for Saddam Hussein's nuclear program and ultimately led to the regime accelerating its timetable for the development of nuclear weapons until it was dismantled under the watch of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency in the early 1990s. Despite this, the Congress passed a resolution in 1991 defending Israel's action and criticizing the United Nations for its opposition to Israel's illegal military attack.

The only real solution to the standoff over Iran's nuclear program is a diplomatic one. For example, Iran has called for the establishment of a nuclear weapons-free zone for the entire Middle East in which all nations in the region would be required to give up their nuclear weapons and open up their programs to strict international inspections. Iran has been joined in its proposal by Syria, by U.S. allies Jordan and Egypt, and by other Middle Eastern states. Such nuclear weapons-free zones have already been successfully established for Latin America, the South Pacific, Antarctica, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

The Bush administration and Congressional leaders of both parties have rejected such a proposal, however, insisting that the United States has the right to unilaterally decide which countries get to have nuclear weapons and which ones do not, effectively imposing a kind of nuclear apartheid. In 1958, the United States was the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the region, bringing tactical nuclear bombs on its ships and planes.

Israel became a nuclear weapons state by the early 1970s with the quiet support of the U.S. government. To Iran's east, Pakistan and India have developed nuclear weapons as well, also with U.S. support: the Bush administration recently signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with India and has provided both countries with nuclear-capable jet fighter-bombers.

Located in such a dangerous region, then, it is not surprising that Iran might be seeking a nuclear deterrent. The United States and Israel do not want Iran to have such a deterrent, however, since it would challenge the U.S.-Israeli nuclear monopoly in that oil-rich region. In other words, what those in the Bush administration, the Israeli government, and the bipartisan leadership in Congress are concerned about is protecting the hegemonic interests of the United States and its junior partner Israel, not stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Such a policy does not protect the interests of the American or Israeli people, nor does it help the people of Iran and the Middle East as a whole. It remains to be seen, however, whether the American public will once again allow the Bush administration and the leadership of both parties Congress to successfully employ exaggerated stories of potential "weapons of mass destruction" controlled by an oil-rich country on the far side of the world to justify a disastrous war.

Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco and Middle East editor of Foreign Policy In Focus. He is the author of "Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism" (Common Courage Press, 2003).



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Israeli Forces Kill 36 Palestinians Including 3 Children In April

IMEMC
03/05/2006


A report based on data collected from Palestinian humanitarian centers and press agencies revealed that Israeli soldiers shot and killed 36 Palestinians, including three children, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during the month of April; at least 300 residents were arrested in several areas in the West Bank

Al Jeel Center for Journalism reported that most of the residents killed were either wanteds who were assassinated or were civilians killed during assassination attacks and shelling.

Ten of those killed were from the West Bank, while 26 residents were killed in the Gaza Strip during air strikes and shelling especially in the northern areas.

The month of April has been the bloodiest month since Israel carried its unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, in august 2005.
In April the , Israeli soldiers arrested 320 Palestinian residents; most of the arrestees are members of resistance factions; the arrests were mainly carried out during invasions of the cities of Hebron and Nablus. Women and children werealso among the arrested.

During the invasions dozens of residents, including children, were injured.

Soldiers also causes serious environmental damage they uprooted dozens of trees, annexed and bulldozed hundreds of Dunams of Palestinian farmlands for the construction of the Wall and settlement expansion.

Most of the main Palestinian areas were closed off with residents unable to leave their areas as a result of the strict procedures practiced by the soldiers at the checkpoints scattered, all over the West Bank.



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IDF chief: I will resist demands to reenter Gaza

Haaretz
03/05/2006

Chief of Staff Dan Halutz said yesterday he is currently opposed to a ground force operation in the Gaza Strip.

In an Independence Day interview for Haaretz, Halutz said he is not pushing for such an operation since it would not necessarily end the firing of Qassam rockets at targets within Israel.

"We were in Gaza for 38 years. In all the years of fighting in Gaza, we never managed to cut the number of Qassams to zero." [...]


Comment: One has to wonder how, in 38 years of almost complete infiltration of life in the tiny gaza strip, the IDF were unable to stop the firing of rockets. One would almost think that someone within the Israeli establishment wanted "Palestinian terrorists" to continue to present at least the semblance of a threat to Israel...

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Mourning a West Bank wife

By Matthew Price
BBC News, Tulkarm

In a small room on the edge of Tulkarm, they are wailing for 44-year-old Eitas Zalat.

There are tears, screams, and whimpers. Women turn to me in sorrow, and in anger.

Eitas Zalat was a mother of five. She was killed at dawn by an Israeli army bullet while sitting in her living room.

Outside one of Tulkarm's mosques, as the people of this impoverished West Bank town prayed, I spoke to Eitas Zalat's husband.

"We were sitting next to each other and the Jews shot her while we were speaking together. There were no weapons, there were no bombs. Why they do this? Why?"

Military 'mistake'

In a place as complex as the Middle East there are many answers to that question. Two are worth noting here, I think.

The first is the Israeli army's answer. I called the spokesperson's unit and was told Israeli soldiers had gone to Tulkarm to arrest a leader of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad.

The Israeli army said they surrounded a building they believed he was in. They called for people to leave the apartment building. No one did.

Then - the army says - soldiers saw a "suspicious movement" at a window. They thought they would be fired at, so the soldiers opened fire at the house.


Mrs Zalat was killed. The army says it made a mistake. It has apologised.

That is one possible answer to Yousef Zalat's question, "Why?"

'Pattern of indifference'

Another comes from an Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem.

The circumstances under which Eitas Zalat was killed, the group says, "raise the grave suspicion that Israeli security forces acted as if they were conducting an assassination rather than an arrest operation".

B'Tselem says that between January 2004 and 1 May 2006, 157 Palestinians were killed in what Israeli forces term arrest operations in the West Bank.

Of these, at least 35 were civilians, whom the military admits were mere bystanders to the operation.

B'Tselem accuses the Israeli army of "demonstrating a pattern of indifference to the safety of Palestinian civilians".

Such words though do not comfort Palestinians.

The death of Mrs Zalat is for them just another illustration of how deadly Israel's occupation of their land often is.

It shows - they say - how they are the victims of this conflict. [...]




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French foreign ministry confirms visa denial to Hamas officials

www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-03 23:17:00

PARIS, May 3 (Xinhua) -- French Foreign Ministry confirmed Wednesday that they have denied entry visas to two Hamas officials Salah Muhammad al-Bardawil and Mohammad al-Rantissi.

At an electronic news briefing on Wednesday, the French Foreign Ministry said after negotiating with its European partners, France decided not to issue visa for Rantissi and Bardawil before a common stand would be taken at the next European foreign ministers' meeting on May 15.
To the question if France's decision would lead to the result that the Hamas members could not get into any other Schengen country, the French ministry said: "Except that there is one country among them to decide to give them Limited Territorial Validity visas (LTV)."

The French government last month denied an entry visa to Palestinian Planning Minister Samir Abu Eisheh, who had been due to attend a conference in the French capital.

The European Union plans to discuss relations with the Hamas at the meeting on May 15.

Hamas won a landslide victory in the Jan. 25 parliamentary elections. The Hamas-led Palestinian government has been under a severe financial siege since it took office in March due to its refusal to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept previous peace deals, three conditions required to get western aid.

The United States and the European Union suspended direct financial aid to the Palestinian National Authority after Hamas took over the government.

Hamas has dismissed the pressure as blackmail and punishment for the Palestinians for their rightful democratic choice.



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Rockin' and Rollin'


Big new asteroid has slim chance of hitting Earth

02 May 2006
New Scientist

A newly discovered asteroid is now the biggest thing known with a possibility of hitting the Earth in this century - and it is also the one that could hit the soonest.

But the odds of impact currently stand at just one in six million, reducing the fear factor somewhat, and these odds should further diminish with additional observations. This latest addition to NASA-JPL's list of potentially hazardous asteroids was discovered on 27 April 2006.

The asteroid, called 2006 HZ51, has an estimated diameter of about 800 metres and is the one of the largest objects ever to make the list. An object of that size would cause widespread devastation if it did strike the Earth.

HZ51 also has one of the shortest lead-times to a potential impact of any such object yet found, and the shortest of any potential Earth-impactor currently on the list. The earliest of its 165 possible impact dates is just over two years away, on 21 June 2008.
Dan Durda, an asteroid expert and president of the B612 Foundation - which aims to anticipate and prevent such impacts - thinks the discovery of HZ51 highlights that at present there are no good options when faced with so little time to prepare. "There really isn't a whole lot we could do," he told New Scientist. "Most of the options that don't resemble a Hollywood movie involve deflection techniques that require many years or decades."

Other than stockpiling food and supplies and evacuating the regions most likely to be affected, he said, we would have to "hunker down and take the impact".

But this is an unusual case, statistically speaking. It is far more likely that Earth's nations would benefit from a much greater lead time before a potential impact, allowing more time for planning.

For example, the second-most imminent threat now on the list is the asteroid Apophis, which has about a 1-in-6000 chance of hitting Earth in 2036 - plenty of time to prevent it.
Altering orbits

The B612 Foundation has been pushing for a mission to place a tracking device on Apophis sometime in the next decade, so that the possibility of impact can be definitively proved or ruled out. The foundation also wants to send a mission to test ways of altering the orbit of a non-threatening asteroid, to test the viability of such methods.

But the chance of an impact by Apophis might be ruled out as early as this weekend, which will be the last chance until 2013 to observe it by radar, from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.

As for the newfound 2006 HZ51, the orbit calculations so far are based on just over 24 hours of observations, and so are likely to change quickly and should not be seen as a serious concern. As Clark Chapman of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, US, explains: "Almost certainly, observations from one or two more nights will put this to bed as a zero probability."

Comment: Correct us if we are wrong here, but does the fact that scientists claim that there are 165 possible impact dates not conflict with the claim that there is very little (one in 6 million) possiblity of an impact? That is to say, 165 *possible* impact dates seems to suggest that there is very little known about the reality of what this comet may or may not do. In which case, how can scientists be so sure that there is a very slim chance of impact?

Of course, we have a good idea as to the answer to this last question: at all costs, don't scare the population, because, who knows what they might do if they were all scared at the same time. The powers that be don't like unpredictable or chaotic scenarios - they don't augur well for an assured continuance of their grip on power.


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Earthquake Magnitude 8.0 - TONGA

2006 May 3 15:26:35 UTC

Earthquake Details
Magnitude 8.0 (Great)
# Date-Time Wednesday, May 3, 2006 at 15:26:35 (UTC)
= Coordinated Universal Time
# Thursday, May 4, 2006 at 4:26:35 AM
= local time at epicenter
Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location 20.035°S, 174.227°W
Depth 16.1 km (10.0 miles) (poorly constrained)
Region TONGA
Distances 155 km (95 miles) S of Neiafu, Tonga
160 km (100 miles) NE of NUKU'ALOFA, Tonga
455 km (280 miles) S of Hihifo, Tonga
2145 km (1340 miles) NNE of Auckland, New Zealand
Location Uncertainty horizontal +/- 7.9 km (4.9 miles); depth +/- 32.2 km (20.0 miles)
Parameters Nst=161, Nph=161, Dmin=725.7 km, Rmss=0.9 sec, Gp= 29°,
M-type=moment magnitude (Mw), Version=6
Source USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)
Event ID usmgas




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Mild earthquake felt in parts of Pakistan

Press Trust of India
Islamabad, May 3, 2006


A slight earthquake measuring 4.5 on the Richter scale was felt in the capital city and the adjoining areas on Wednesday.

There are no reports of injuries or damage, an official said.




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Quake shakes southern Iran

Wednesday, May 03, 2006
IranMania.com

LONDON - A mild earthquake jolted the suburbs of Andimeshk city in Khuzestan province, southern Iran, Tuesday evening. According to IRNA, it was measuring 3.6 on the Richter scale.

The seismological centers affiliated to Tehran University's Geophysics Institute recorded the tremor at 21:35 hours local time (17:35 GMT)




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New Lava Dome Grows On Top Of Indonesias Rumbling Mount Merapi

AFP
May 03, 2006

Jakarta - A new lava dome has formed at the peak of Indonesia's rumbling Mount Merapi volcano, reinforcing indications that it may soon erupt, scientists said Tuesday.

The dome has been expanding since last Wednesday behind another dome that was formed in 1997, said Dewi Sri from the vulcanology office in the ancient cultural city of Yogyakarta, 30 kilometers (18 miles) south of the volcano.

"It continues to grow and its volume has now reached into the hundreds of cubic meters... It is a sign that the magma pressure is increasing," she told AFP.
She said the mountain has significantly increased its activity, with a higher frequency of multi-phased earthquakes as well as those caused by lava fallout.

"All this indicates that magma pressure is building up and an eruption could follow," Sri said.

The alert status of the 2,914-meter (9,560-foot) volcano remained on "standby" however, as it has for more than two weeks, one level below that which would require a mandatory evacuation for more than 29,000 people.

Ratdomo Purbo, who heads the Vulcanology Research and Technology Development Office in Yogyakarta, was quoted by the Koran Tempo newspaper as saying that the dome had now grown some 10 meters (33 feet) high.

Purbo, who could not be reached for comment on Tuesday, was also quoted as saying that should the dome break or burst, it would spew lava accompanied by pyroclastic flows, or heat clouds.

In its last large eruption in 1994, heat clouds known locally as "shaggy goats" reached 600 degrees Celsius and speeds of over 100 kilometers per hour. They killed 66 people on the southern slope of the mountain.

Hundreds of residents have already been relocated to temporary shelters but many living on the volcano's slopes have refused to leave. Merapi, which has been rumbling intermittently over the past four years, looms above a plain in the south of Central Java province.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" noted for its volcanic and seismic activity. The country has more than 100 active volcanoes.



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Engineers Say Fla. Dike Poses Storm Danger

By BRENT KALLESTAD
Associated Press
May 2, 2006

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - With another hurricane season approaching, Gov. Jeb Bush has asked the federal government to shore up a dike that keeps the nation's second-largest lake from overflowing, after a report that predicts a catastrophe if the barrier fails.

The report by a state-hired panel of engineering experts said the flooding that could result from breaches on the dike surrounding Lake Okeechobee could harm Big Cypress National Preserve and the Everglades, perhaps irreversibly, and cause tens of billions of dollars in damage.
"It needs to be fixed now, and it needs to be fixed right," the engineers wrote in the 82-page report. "The region's future depends on it."

A dike failure could also contaminate South Florida's drinking water and flood thousands of acres of farmland.

"It would be devastating to our economy, environment and quality of life," Bush said in a letter sent Friday to John Paul Woodley Jr., deputy assistant secretary of the Army for civil works.

Messages left for Woodley were not immediately returned Tuesday.

Bush met Tuesday with Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, who was in the state capital for a readiness update on the hurricane season, which begins June 1.

"As I understand it, that presents a different set of evacuation issues than in a normal hurricane," Chertoff said. "That's something obviously we want to work very closely with the state on."

Lake Okeechobee is surrounded by the 143-mile Herbert Hoover dike, built in the 1950s in part to prevent another disaster like the 1928 hurricane, in which flooding and storm surge from the lake killed more than 2,000 people.

The report noted that the dike has a 1 in 6 chance of being breached in a hurricane, Bush said.

The 730-square mile lake is the second-largest natural freshwater lake within the contiguous United States, behind Lake Michigan.



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Freeport mine 'poisoning' West Papua's environment

By Marianne Kearney, Jakarta
May 4, 2006

THE giant Freeport mine is polluting West Papua's rivers and estuaries and a world heritage-protected national park, according to the company's own environmental assessments and Indonesian Government standards.

Documents leaked to an environment group show that the world's largest gold and copper mine has dumped a billion tonnes of mine waste, known as tailings, into surrounding rivers, polluting forests and river systems with heavy metals such as copper and arsenic, and endangering species such as the flying fox.
The environmental risk assessments were leaked to Indonesian environment group Wahli. "Freeport has known that their operation is endangering the environment but they don't do anything," Wahli spokesman Torry Kuswardono said.

The environmental assessments show that the company's tailings are polluting the world-heritage Lorentz National Park, which stretches from glacier-capped mountains to a tropical marine environment.

Wahli's Igor O'Neill, who examined the documents, said: "Modelling by an expert employed by Freeport confirmed that the tailings are reaching the coastal part of the national park and testing showed that aquatic animals are contaminated with copper."

Mr O'Neill said that while there was no direct proof that the Freeport mine was the source of high levels of copper, animals tested upstream in the rivers free of mine waste showed normal copper levels.

He said dumping the billion tonnes of tailings in rivers rather than using pipes violated Indonesian law, but the Indonesian Government was reluctant to enforce the law, because "they are scared to challenge Freeport".

Acidic waste produced by the mine was so toxic that it violated even the environmental hazard restrictions for factories.

"The mine is breaching Indonesian industrial standards and breaching water quality laws for lakes, streams and rivers. It is definitely illegal," he said.

Indonesian Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar dismissed Wahli's claims, saying a team of experts from the ministry had inspected the mine recently.

"I say they are abiding by the law, following all directions," he said. "But we are scrutinising them ..."

Mr Witoelar said pollution from the mine was minor, adding that the team had found some damage to the rivers and this was being monitored.

Wahli has called on the Government to suspend operations at the mine until the company abides by environmental laws.

A Freeport spokesman declined to comment.

West Papuan groups have launched several protests against the mining giant in the past few months, accusing it of environmental and human rights abuses. Four security force officers and one civilian were killed during a violent anti-Freeport protest in the West Papuan capital of Jayapura recently.



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The Resistance


36 US House Reps Want Bush Impeachment Probe

By Matthew Cardinale

(APN) ATLANTA -- 36 US House Representatives have signed on as sponsors or co-sponsors of H. Res 635, which would create a Select Committee to look into the grounds for recommending President Bush's impeachment, Atlanta Progressive News has learned.

The two latest co-sponsors, as of Friday, were US Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) and US Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA).
"For the House to impeach and the Senate to convict a President, the public must be fully informed and convinced by credible information that a President deserves impeachment. That means gathering the facts. Rep. Conyers' bill calls for setting up a select committee to gather information to see if there is any basis for impeachment - i.e., a violation of the Constitution - or if impeachment should even be considered. With that understanding I support H. Res. 635," Congressman Jackson said in a statement released to Atlanta Progressive News.

Rep. Fattah's Office was not able to provide comment in time for press, but was invited to send along comments to be added to the Atlanta Progressive News website when available.

"The Bush administration must be held accountable for the failures in their Iraq War policy. Congress has a Constitutional obligation to determine whether this disastrous Iraq policy is the result of deceit and deception or simply reckless incompetence. Providing the Congress and American people with the opportunity to seek the truth regarding the facts and the fabrications that led our nation into the Iraq War is why I am supporting the Conyers' resolution," US Rep. Betty McCollum, another recent co-sponsor, said in a statement prepared for Atlanta Progressive News.

An Atlanta Progressive News analysis has found that, interestingly, 29 of the 36 total co-sponsors are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. However, only 29 of the 62 members of the Caucus have signed on.

Atlanta Progressive News is calling out the other 33 self-described progressives who have not signed on. They are Reps. Becerra, Bordallo, Corrine Brown, Sherrod Brown, Carson, Cristenson, Cleaver, Cummings, DeFazio, DeLauro, Evans, Frank, Grijalva, Gutierrez, Tubbs Jones, Kaptur, Kilpatrick, Kucinich, Lantos, Markey, McGovern, Miller, Holmes-Norton, Pastor, Rush, Serrano, Slaughter, Solis, Thompson, Udall, Watson, Watt, and Waxman.

As noted below, two of these Progressive Caucus members who have not signed on, are in fact two of the four Democrats on the House Rules Committee, meaning they have direct influence over this bill: Slaughter and McGovern.

In the US Senate, Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) are currently the two co-sponsors of US Senator Russ Feingold's (D-WI) bill, S. Res 398, to censure President Bush.

"There has been massive support for House Resolution 635 from a very vigorous network of grassroots activists and people committed to holding the Bush Administration accountable for its widespread abuses of power," US Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) said in a statement prepared for Atlanta Progressive News.

"The Atlanta Progressive News has reported regularly on this bill," Conyers wrote in an article on his blog.

A spokesperson for Rep. Conyers noted the Congressman is continuing in his lobbying efforts for the bill, which was first introduced in December 2005, prior to so many recent additional shocking revelations about the actions of President Bush.

It was recently revealed, for one thing, that Bush himself authorized the leak of the identity of a CIA agent, endangering US security, in retaliation for the agent's husband questioning the US's faulty intelligence on Iraq's nonexistent WMDs.

In another recent revelation, Bush was provided with evidence that the information he was propagating on Iraq was faulty.

Conyers's spokesperson also concurred there continues to be some confusion among Members of US Congress who have not yet signed on to the bill about the content of the bill. Specifically, some members have not signed on because the media has not clearly reported that the bill is not a call for impeachment, nor an impeachment inquiry, but rather is a call for the creation of a committee that would look into the possible grounds for impeachment and could make recommendations.

Meanwhile, at least twelve (12) US cities, including Arcata, Berkeley, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz, each in California; Woodstock in New York; and Battleboro, Brookfield, Dummerston, Marlboro, Newfane, Putney, and Rockingham, each in Vermont, have passed resolutions calling for Bush's impeachment, according to a running tally atwww.impeachpac.org/resolutions.

In addition, the State Legislatures in California, Illinois, and Vermont are each considering impeachment resolutions, which, if passed, could fast track the impeachment issue to the US House.

Over 17% of US House Democrats now support the impeachment probe; over 8% of all US House Representatives now support the probe. In December 2005, there were 231 Republicans in the US House, 202 Democrats, 1 Independent, and 1 vacancy, a clerk for the US House of Representatives told Atlanta Progressive News.

The best represented states on H. Res 635 are California (8), New York (6), Illinois (3), Massachusetts (3), Minnesota (3), Georgia (2), and Wisconsin (2).

The current 36 total co-sponsors are Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Rep. Michael Capuano (D-MA), Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA), Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-MO), Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL), Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA), Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA), Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA), Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA), Rep. Jackson, Jr., (D-IL), Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX), Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN), Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA), Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI), Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Rep. James Oberstar (D-MN), Rep. John Olver (D-MA), Rep. Major Owens (D-NY), Rep. Donald Payne (D-NJ), Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), Rep. Martin Sabo (D-MN), Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Rep. Fortney Pete Stark (D-CA), Rep. John Tierney (D-MA), Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), and Rep. David Wu (D-OR).

"What a lot of activists group want is the next step, which is Articles of Impeachment. You don't have to pass this type of bill first. I think there's a fair chance that if the list of co-sponsors grows dramatically, Conyers and others will take that next step of introducing articles of impeachment," David Swanson of ImpeachPAC told Atlanta Progressive News.

At least two members of Congress are prepared to sign Articles of Impeachment if they were to be introduced, sources tell Atlanta Progressive News. One of the members is US Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), whose office clarified earlier Associated Press reports, by saying Lewis would indeed sign such a bill, assuming that any bill of impeachment would of course be introduced as a result of a thorough process, such as one including the investigation called for in H. Res 635.

Dave Lindorff wrote in The Baltimore Chronicle that he and Barbara Olshansky (an attorney at The Center for Constitutional Rights) will reveal in an upcoming book that "members of Congress-even firebrands like Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Cynthia McKinney (D-GA)-have been strong-armed behind the scenes by the Democratic National Committee not to introduce an impeachment bill in the House."

Conyers's bill was initially referred to the US House Rules Committee, which has not taken action. None of the US House Democrats on the Rules Committee have signed on as co-sponsors. The Ranking Democrat on the Committee is US Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY). Democratic members of the Committee are Alcee Hastings (D-FL), Doris Matsui (D-CA), and James McGovern (D-MA). Republicans currently outnumber Democrats on the committee by about a two-to-one ratio.

The US House Rules Committee would need to take action on H. Res 635 because it calls for the creation of a Select Committee, in other words the creation of a new committee that is not a standing committee, Jonathan Godfrey, Communications Director for US Rep. Conyers, told Atlanta Progressive News. Such a Committee would need to be staffed, Godfrey noted.

If the Democratic Party is able to retake the US House of Representatives, Rep. Conyers would become Chairman Conyers of the House Judiciary Committee, whereas he is currently the Ranking Democrat on the Committee. The Judiciary Committee would oversee any actual impeachment investigation.

If not acted on this session, the bill would have to be reintroduced next session. It is possible that a new bill could include new language regarding Bush's approval of illegal NSA domestic wiretapping.

For now, however, sources in Washington DC tell Atlanta Progressive News that H. Res 635 is a venue for coalition among members of Congress who are willing to consider impeachment for a variety of reasons.

Even though H. Res 635 does not specifically reference the NSA domestic wiretapping issue, some Members of US Congress have found the wiretapping issue to be a compelling reason to sign on as a co-sponsor, sources say.

In other words, why introduce separate legislation to address a single issue when momentum has been built with H. Res 635?

The thing about H. Res. 635 is, it deals with impeaching Bush over a cluster of issues from misleading the public to go to war, to authorizing torture. Wiretapping was not listed as one of the reasons to investigate the grounds for Bush's impeachment in the bill because the existence of the secret, illegal wiretapping had not come to light yet when the bill was being prepared.

US Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) withdrew her name from H. Res 635 at the end of January 2006, whereas she had been listed as a cosponsor throughout January 2006. Lofgren cited a clerical error for her name having been listed in the first place. Lofgren's Office told Atlanta Progressive News the Representative learned of her being listed as a co-sponsor after reading an exclusive article by Atlanta Progressive News issued January 01, 2006.

Lofgren, and 17 other Members of Congress, wrote to President Bush in February 2006 that they wanted the wiretapping issue to be pursued by a Special Counsel, which Lofgren considers a next step in a crucial investigation, seeing as how the Republicans have been stonewalling on necessary documents and testimony to determine if Bush's domestic wiretapping program was legal.

H. Res 635 reads as its official title: "Creating a select committee to investigate the Administration's intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment."

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) also just released a book, Articles of Impeachment Against President Bush. The Center is extremely influential in high-profile court fights over issues such as wiretapping, the treatment of detainees by the US, and felon voting rights.

"We have the book, we are calling for the impeachment of the President, and we're supporting Conyers's resolution," Bill Goodman, CCR Legal Director, told Atlanta Progressive News.

Rock music artist Neil Young has also released a song with the lyrics, "Let's impeach the President for lying..."

Atlanta Progressive News has provided near-exclusive-and during many times, exclusive-coverage of the progress of H. Res 635. We will continue to follow this story and any related developments.

From Atlanta Progressive News

--About the author: Matthew Cardinale is the Editor of Atlanta Progressive News and may be reached at matthew@atlantaprogressivenews.com



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Ex-U.S. negotiator on North Korea faults Bush

By Thomas Omestad
USNews.com
5/3/06

At a conference Monday held by the Seoul-Washington Forum, the former assistant secretary of state for east Asia, James Kelly, unveiled some criticism of how the Bush administration is conducting its North Korea policy.
The six-nation nuclear talks involving the North Koreans have been stalled for months, and some U.S. negotiating partners have been quietly urging the Bush administration to take any opportunity to speak directly with Pyongyang's diplomats rather than keeping such contacts to a minimum, which has been the pattern of late. Kelly's successor in the State post, Christopher Hill, recently declined to meet with a North Korean counterpart at a Tokyo meeting while diplomats from the other negotiating partners did.

Kelly has kept a fairly low profile since leaving the administration early last year and has held any criticisms largely in private. However, as a keynote speaker at the forum Kelly criticized the "unjustified fear that we should avoid direct, bilateral contacts" with the North. He said they "are natural and in no way need to impede the six-party process."

Kelly went on to describe the relative lack of face-to-face meetings as an "awkward absence" that has given Pyongyang a "handy excuse for North Korea to delay." Kelly also called the situation "probably tactically unwise."

Vice President Cheney and other hard-liners are known to favor restricting such meetings to a minimum and are believed to have urged such a policy on both Kelly and Hill.



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Judge Doesn't Believe Moussaoui Claims

By MATTHEW BARAKAT
Associated Press
Wed May 3, 2006

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - The judge presiding over Zacarias Moussaoui's sentencing told trial lawyers that she doesn't believe Moussaoui's claims on the witness stand that he knew advance details of the Sept. 11 plot.

"I still think that Moussaoui was not accurate in a lot of what he said about how much he knew about what was going to happen with which particular buildings and when," U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said during a closed hearing on April 21 outside the jury's presence. Transcripts of the hearing were released Tuesday.
Moussaoui's bombshell testimony on March 27, in which he took the stand against the advice of his court-appointed lawyers and claimed a direct role in the 9/11 plot after years of denial, revived a moribund prosecution case. Defense attorneys have argued that Moussaoui lied on the stand either to inflate his role in history or antagonize the jury into making him a martyr through execution.

Specifically, Moussaoui claimed that he and would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid were to have flown a fifth plane on 9/11 into the White House, and that he also knew the World Trade Center towers were targeted.

Brinkema made her comment during a debate over jury instructions. She defended a technical ruling in favor of the defense as a way of "evening the playing field" in response to her concerns about Moussaoui's testimony.

Even though jurors have no way of knowing about Brinkema's editorial comment presuming they obey rules against following news coverage, prosecutor David Novak objected to her remark.

"With all due respect, that's the jury's decision to decide whether they found him to be credible or not," Novak told Brinkema.

A separate transcript released Tuesday revealed that defense attorneys tried unsuccessfully to remove a juror from the panel after she expressed fears that the media would harass her after the trial concludes.

The unidentified female juror said that a coworker had deduced she was on the panel even though the jury is anonymous. She also said during the April 17 hearing - before deliberations began - that she fears losing her privacy.

Defense lawyers said she should be replaced because her fears might influence her decision, but Brinkema kept the juror on the panel after she said her concerns would not affect her decision.

Meanwhile, the jury headed into a seventh day of deliberations Wednesday without reaching a verdict on whether to sentence the Sept. 11 conspirator to death or life in prison.

The nine men and three women have so far deliberated more than 35 hours. The jury does not plan to deliberate on Thursday afternoon and Friday so that one juror can attend his parents' 50th wedding anniversary and another can attend a school ceremony for his daughter.

Moussaoui is the only person charged in this country in the Sept. 11 attacks. The jury previously found Moussaoui eligible for execution after more than 16 hours of deliberations in late March and early April.

Although he was in jail on immigration violations on Sept. 11, the jury ruled that lies he told federal agents the month before the attacks kept them from identifying and stopping some of the hijackers.



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Oscar-winner Dreyfuss campaigns against "shaped news"

By Astrid Zweynert
Reuters
May 3, 2006

LONDON - Richard Dreyfuss has challenged the establishment for decades and now the maverick actor and activist is taking on the mainstream media.

The Oscar-winning star says an obsession with delivering instantaneous news and images provides too little context for audiences to reflect and understand what is happening in the world.

"There is no room to pause, no room to think," Dreyfuss, who starred in films ranging from "Jaws" to "Mr Holland's Opus" told Reuters in a recent telephone interview.

"We don't build into our system of thoughts the need to explain, the media doesn't build that into its transmission of knowledge and information."

That creates what Dreyfuss calls "shaped news" -- a version of events according to how the mainstream media want audiences to see what happened, and a violation of journalism's core value of objectivity.
Citizen journalism is playing a vital part in broadening news coverage, as well as scrutinizing professional journalism, Dreyfuss said.

"Information from more than one source is good. I'm totally in favor of it, even if people send propaganda. In the aggregate you can find more truth than in one opinion."

But despite an explosion in blogs, people's views of the news is still shaped by what powerful media corporations print, broadcast and put on their Web sites, Dreyfuss, 58, said.

"Do the mainstream media ever tell their readers 'Don't believe everything we tell you?' No, they don't."

Dreyfuss said media coverage of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York was a pertinent example of how a non-stop supply of images and spot news shaped people's views.

"The falling Twin Towers -- pictures that produced anger, a lot of anger that were sent instantly around the world, they created a need to react."

"People in Kansas could see the Twin Towers fall at exactly the same instant as in Nigeria and Cairo. Such an instantaneous knowledge of a situation leads to an instantaneous reaction which creates demand for an instantaneous, reflexive response.

"The question is how do you get people to find out more, how do you get people to read not just what they are told to read."

The power of language is also an important factor in shaping the news.

"The 'war on terror' -- objection to using this term is dead. It's become part of our vocabulary, but what does it really mean? You should know more specifically what you are fighting."

Dreyfuss is eager to point out that he is not anti-technology: "I'm not in love with technology and speed but I don't want to sound like a luddite.

"We've got to be aware of the power of technology and the speed at which it allows us to transmit information.

"You have to encourage prose, analysis and detail -- otherwise people will go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan without really knowing why."

Dreyfuss, who won an Oscar for his performance in "The Goodbye Girl," has pursued his passion for political and social activism since his college days.

An active opponent of the Vietnam War, he has also worked to promote solutions to the Mideast conflict, campaigned for education and, most recently, has lent his support to a campaign for the impeachment of President Bush.

He is studying civics and democracy as a senior associate member at St Antony's College at the University of Oxford.

"Civics is no longer taught in the U.S, a sign of a neurosis that is inexplicable," he said. "Not to teach civics is suicide.

"Reason, logic, civility, dissent and debate -- five ancient words that should be taught again and better, at elementary level, so that people know the difference between news and shaped news," Dreyfuss said.



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Hollywood star Robbins blasts US media ignorance of 'high crimes' in Iraq

AFP
May 02, 2006

Acclaimed American actor/director Tim Robbins blasted the US government's policy on terrorism -- and the US media's failure to examine it critically -- at a news conference in Athens promoting his stage version of George Orwell's "1984".

"We have right now a media that is willfully ignoring the high crimes and misdemeanours of the president of the United States," the star of Hollywood hits including "Mystic River" and "The Player" told reporters.

"Clinton lied about a blowjob, and got impeached by the media and Congress," Robbins said.

"(Bush) got us into (the Iraq) war based on lies that he knew were lies. ... His war has recruited more Al-Qaeda members than Osama bin Laden could ever have dreamed for ... yet no one in the media is calling for impeachment," he said.
Robbins pointed out similarities between current US policies on terrorism and the authoritarian society described by Orwell.

"Unfortunately, the book and the play is more relevant now than it ever has been," he said. "(It) talks about continuous warfare as a means to control the Western economy, and as a way to control rebel elements within society through the use of fear, constant fear."

"In my country we seem to be sanctioning renditioning of innocent people without trial ... put them in jail without telling anyone ... and torture them out of suspicion of what we think they might do," Robbins said.

"This is exactly what Orwell was talking about when he spoke of thought crimes," he added.

Orwell's bleak classic, published in 1949, is based on a futuristic society in which the government, known as "Big Brother", spies on its citizens' every move and tortures them on suspicion of dissent.

The play, which Robbins produces and directs, opened in Athens for a five-day run on Tuesday.

He is hoping to also direct a film version of the play in the fall.



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ACLU: Women at Wis. Prison Treated Badly

By CARRIE ANTLFINGER
Associated Press
Tue May 2, 2006

MILWAUKEE - A lawsuit filed on behalf of inmates at the largest women's prison in the state alleges the inmates have received grossly deficient care, amounting to "cruel and unusual punishment."

One woman who suffers from endometriosis did not see a gynecologist during her first seven years at the prison, according to the lawsuit filed Monday. She was forced to have a hysterectomy in 2000 and has never seen a gynecologist again.

Another woman at Taycheedah Correctional Institution was diagnosed with lupus in early 1999 but didn't see a doctor until December 2000, the lawsuit said.
"The women at Taycheedah are in prison to pay their debt to society, not to be subjected to untreated disease and premature death. But that is exactly what they are enduring at Taycheedah," said Gouri Bhat, an attorney for the ACLU's national prison project.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the 49-page lawsuit, which names top state officials as defendants, including Gov. Jim Doyle, Department of Corrections Secretary Matthew J. Frank and various medical professionals who work in the prison system.

It also alleges the prison failed to provide mental health services comparable to those for male prisoners in Wisconsin.

John Dipko, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections, said he couldn't comment on the allegations but said the department plans to make improvements in prison health care over the next six years.

He said officials are working to get the facilities accredited by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care. Taycheedah will become accredited in the next two years, he said.

"That demonstrates our commitment to improving the quality of health care throughout our system," he said.

Doyle's spokesman Dan Leistikow couldn't comment on the complaint because he had not seen it but said the governor takes the issue seriously.

The prison houses 700 maximum and medium security prisoners.



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Fear and Courage, Pt 1: The Division. Protection or Weakness?

by Joaquin Ramon Herrera
OpEdNews.com
May 2, 2006

I have been thinking a lot on racism lately. Racism, and her always-lurking father, Fear. I have begun thinking of these things more critically, and more often, since our war on Afghanistan. And I have been doing so because it is called for. In the last few years, and it began immediately after the WTC attacks, I have noted a rise in racist thought and expressions from too many people. In our very human fear and need to survive, we have traveled a long way down the road to alienating a lot of humans who are scared just like ourselves, and to aggravating the racism (tribal instinct?) already latent in all of us. This has ballooned since the introduction of HR 4437, which of course, is a natural progression following the instinct to be safe from the Strange and Unknown Other.

Most Americans share one thing: we come from other lands. Even though many of us were born here, our families came here on boats, by foot, or as a captive. We came here from another place, not from a stork, or a hole in the space-time continuum. So we all share a struggle for the "right" to be on American soil, somewhere in our past. In our histories, people have shed blood or tears for our citizenship. We may no longer see them at the family barbecue, but it was not you and I who struggled for our right to say "I am an American." You and I, like heirs in a wealthy family, simply benefit from our birth here; not by any work or sacrifice of our own.
Some of us, however, are closer to that struggle. Some of us have swum across streams of sewage, nearly starved in the desert, been shot at, or brutally beat in our attempts to make it to America-and only years ago. Some of us work our fingers to the bone day in and day out feeding our children, hoping one day to be a True Citizen, and fearing the bill or law or policeman who might turn it all upside down; even though we may already pay taxes, and help the big American Economic Machine to chug along, doing all its deeds; even though the notion of American patriotism is often far stronger in the breast of an immigrant than in that of an apathetic, comfortable, and otherwise-successful natural-born citizen.

Other American residents have been here for generations and don't think about it, anymore; they imagine themselves American-to-tha-Bone, as if their family has been here since the days the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria docked. As if when the throngs of people began arriving and stepping off the vessels that carried them here, the land was pristine and awaiting their use and their flag and their new laws and judgment.

A smaller number of that group even thinks the pregnant mothers escaping Mexico's sometimes-cruel conditions should be shot dead in the attempt. There's a video game circulating on the Internet that allows a xenophobe to fulfill this sick little fantasy vicariously (and sorry, I'm not linking). I have sometimes become personally acquainted with such unfortunate views and attitudes by way of email, and usually after writing one of my essays on the topic. These nasty fragments of American fear and hatred are not the majority, which is good. The majority of Americans, Wolf, realize the diverse makeup and history of America are what make America what she is. Tolerance and acceptance are far more powerful and wise attributes than fear and intolerance. And those who understand America's core (in my opinion) see America as a wise and evolved soul. Additionally, such hate-filled ranters do nothing but confirm their own critics' condemnation by sending out their vitriolic missives. But I suspect they lack the insight to realize this.

The Metaphor on Terror is fertile breeding ground for this type of intolerance, fear, and hate. For some of us remain in the "Fight or Flight" reactionary state that naturally follows such catastrophe. And from what this writer has seen, racism has been given a mighty platform as of late. This is difficult to prevent, I imagine, in a time when the country is mired down in a (colloquial and metaphorical but never formally declared) war with darker-skinned people that is producing literal corpses, and who are purported to be sneaking amongst us, and lurking about in our ports, our neighborhoods, and our telephone conversations. We are continually handed this irrational fear by those who profit from the violence it breeds.

I don't think the racism I speak of-the type that people catch and radiate, like trapped animals-is born of evil. Like all racism, its father is Fear. And watching almost three thousand people die three thousand times on television does a lot to sow irrational fear and fury in the hearts of even the most reasonable people. Especially when their leaders feed the flames of this destructive thought process.

I am a Survivor. And I don't mean of the 9/11 attacks. I mean of some threatening and dangerous situations in my past. But I don't stop with the identification of escaped victimhood. That is not enough for me. I am not only a Survivor, but I am a Thriver. And to me, that means I do not lay down or run away after I am delivered a threat or a blow. After such an event, I begin thinking of what measure I should take to protect me and Mine, and what measures I should take to affect my path so that I can continue to grow and seek liberty, a productive life, and the pursuit of my and my family's happiness. But just as Fear is the father of racism, Fear is the Mother of Violence, which Peter Gabriel has so eloquently reminded us with his song of the same name. (And so we must assume that Fear spawns many crippled children, and they hold hands in their mission to obscure light and true freedom.) The truth of that song can be seen in the instance of my cheering the attack on Afghanistan from my New York City apartment, in September of 2001. I was rooting for that attack because I was terrified. I am not even engaging the argument of whether or not we were justified in that instance. I am simply telling you my personal reasons for wanting violence at the moment. This is a confession, not a brag. I was scared, and like a wounded cat, I was all claws. And fear. I even stopped picking up my mail after a local post office was hit with Anthrax. It just hung around outside my door, like the faint whiff of charred matter that laced the city's air for weeks. I understand being afraid. I understand wanting to be safe. I understand fearing the Other.

So...of whom should we be afraid? Everyone outside our borders? Everyone who physically resembles the people the government claims attacked us on that horrible day? Everyone who sounds like the hijackers? Muslims? All non-Americans? All who do not agree with Bush's paradigm of a never-ending war on an invisible enemy? Fans of the Colbert Report? Arab-looking people with cameras on the subway platform? Chinese tourists who snap too many pictures of trains, or banks? Cab drivers with turbans? Delivery men who have scraggly, dark, oily-looking beards and carry the boxes very gingerly? Bloggers who hate the White House occupants? People who sing our Anthem in their own language? Mexicans standing on the corners, hoping for a day's work? Mexicans who send money across the border? Mexicans sending money to Egypt? Mexicans, themselves? Egyptians?

It's a tough line to draw. Fear has a way of growing when you feed it even a crumb. And rather than enlarging the spirit or the mind, fear darkens and shrinks our options; brings us to a room where we are backed against a corner and the enemy is approaching.

This is not life, to me. And this is Part III of my formal declaration to the world and my own country and countrymen:

I will not live in a dark corner. I will not live afraid. I will not fear so easily. I refuse to hate so easily, and especially on distinctions like what part of land you are standing on, or what side of an imaginary line you are standing, or what color your skin is. I will not buy my allegiance wholesale, have it fed to me by Fox-Pravda; or stammer, stare and shout at the screen for your minute of hate. Look elsewhere for captives.

I make up my own mind. I do it using my heart and my thoughts and my experience. I will (and do) decide to save my hate, my repulsion, and my righteous rage for those who lie to me, who use me for their own purposes, or who profit from the pain and suffering of other humans.

This includes any non-American who tries to attack my people in the name of a holy war, and any American politician who encourages and aids such attacks using similar justification. This most certainly does not include immigrants chasing a dream that our nation has stickered upon every television in the world, or carved into our statues and symbols of America. After all, why do we declare so proudly that at the base of our might is the notion that you ought to "send us your tempest-tossed," if all we plan to do is throw them in prison for being tossed harder than the others? And all in the name of a war that isn't even worthy of being declared as much by the aggressors?



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Bush and the America he created

by Steven Leser
OpEdNews.com
May 2, 2006

Imagine, for a moment, that you could transport yourself back to March of 2000. You land around the block from your home at a point in time just before the 2000 election campaign really begins to heat up. Imagine that you are going to walk around the block and talk to the version of yourself for whom that point in time is their current reality. Take a moment to remember and reflect on what you, the US and the world were like back then, what you believed, what you thought, what your reality was. Then imagine that you would try to explain what was going to happen during the future six years.

Imagine that you would have to explain that as a new President was sworn in, the country would swoon into a forty plus month depression and the new President would not do anything to relieve it. Imagine that you would have to explain to 'the you of the past' that the US would be attacked in the near future, 2400 civilians would die, and the US would respond militarily. Instead of concentrating on retaliating against those who attacked us and the people who harbored them, the new President would expend most of our available forces in the attack on a different country on justifications that turned out to be false. Imagine that you would have to explain that the new President would ask for and pass laws allowing unprecedented invasions of our privacy by the government and secret courts to provide secret warrants and wiretapping of citizens. Imagine having to explain to yourself that despite having passed those laws, the President would exceed even those boundaries and order the NSA to wiretap citizens without even going through the secret courts.

Imagine having to explain all of these things and more to the you of six years ago. When I think of trying to do this, I cannot imagine that the me of March 2000 believing it.
"How would that be possible?" I can imagine the me of the past saying to the me of 2006, "How could the President do all of that without the congress stopping him, without the press reporting on it and hounding him and without the people at the very least voting him out of office in 2004 if not demanding his resignation and/or impeachment? What kind of screwed up, moronic version of reality are you proposing exists six years from now?"

Yes, we live in what I call a Moronoreality during a Moronothon of a Presidency conceived by; yes, I am sure you can guess, a moron of a President and administration. Science fiction programs like the various incarnations of Star Trek and Stargate and countless other shows and books including the Back to the Future series of movies propose situations where someone goes back in time, changes a few key things and it creates a horrible future reality. I feel like this has happened to us, as if some kid went back in a Delorean and made Biff President, it screwed everything up, and we are all just waiting for some mad scientist to get the kid 1.21 gigawatts to go back and fix everything. However, it is not going to be fixed or changed this is our lives and this is our reality. Most of what we are going through is absolutely the fault of this administration. That is the truthiness of the situation as Stephen Colbert puts it, that which the Bush administration desperately wants to keep us all from thinking about (and that is why Bush and the Republicans are so angry with Colbert). We did not have to be where we are. A better President and administration could and SHOULD have made MUCH better choices. The congress, no matter the party of its members, should have stood up and prevented this President from making such terrible choice and the press, which is supposed to be the watchdog of America was muzzled or complicit at every turn.

America needs a major change of direction. We need to get rid of this President soon, preferably via a rapid impeachment or resignation. We need to change the congress and elect Democratic majorities in both houses. We need to reject the temptation to elect popular Republican figures to the Presidency in 2008, yes, I am talking about McCain and Giuliani. They are both going to try and tell us how different they are from Bush, but neither of them has spoken up one iota during this terrible administration to propose anything different. Do not trust either of them to end this Moronoreality in which we find ourselves. When they utter sweet promises, just remember 'Compassionate Conservatism'. We need to return America to that great place we were back in early 2000 before the barbarian morons sacked the White House, Presidency and our Democracy. We cannot trust anyone from the party of the sitting moron to do that.

Steven Leser is a freelance journalist specializing in Politics, Science & Health, and Entertainment topics. He has held positions within the Democratic Party including District Chair and Public Relations Chair within county organizations. His coverage of the Ohio Presidential Recount in 2004 was distinguished by interviews with Carlo Loparo, spokesperson for the Ohio Secretary of State, along with Supervisors of Elections of several Ohio counties. Similar efforts on other topics to get first hand information from sources separate Mr. Leser from many of his contemporaries. Mr Leser was the journalist who broke the story of the Bush Impeachment Resolution being drafted in the Illinois General Assembly. The story was printed right here on OpEdNews.com

Comment: While the exercise the author presents in the beginning of this article is indeed an interesting one, his solution leaves quite a bit to be desired. In the bio at the end, note the part that states he has held positions within the Democratic party.

Let's face it, folks: plenty of Democrats went right along with Bush just like the Republicans. John Kerry "ran" against Bush in the last presidential "election" under the slogan, "Vote Kerry: He's into imperialism and fascism just like Bush!"

Any solution to the current American problem will not come from the Democratic party - they are half of the problem. The solution will come from a populace that is aware of what is really going on in the country and the halls of power.


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Pathocrats in "Hot Water"


Investigate Big Dick

By Stephen Pizzo,
News for Real
May 3, 2006.

Did Cheney and oil company execs lick their chops over Iraqi oil less than two years before we invaded Iraq? Shouldn't someone find out?

If the US Senate really wants to earn our respect, I have a suggestion for them: Hold bipartisan hearings into Dick Cheney's 2001 Energy Task Force.

If not now, when?

Low-wage working Americans can't afford to drive to their jobs? Already some folks have been forced to pawn personal items just to fill their tank for another week. How bad does it have to get before you guys up there start asking the questions you should have asked years ago -- and this time, demanding real answers.


So, Bill Frist, Harry Reid, pull together a bipartisan panel made up of your toughest, most skeptical prosecutional-minded members, hire a couple of junkyard dog lawyers to act as GOP and Dem counsels, and let the long overdue hearings begin.

Subpoena everyone who had anything to do with those meetings, including secretaries who transcribed the original minutes. Oh, and when you call oil industry execs back, put them under oath this time. Because they lied last time when they said they had no idea...

(Washington Post, May 2005) A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress ...The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.

I mean really guys -- if not now, when?

Almost everyone else except Congress has tried to get this information out of the administration. The non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) filed suit in April 2002 seeking access to the records of Cheney's energy task force. But one of those "liberal activist federal judges" dismissed the suit. The Sierra Club carried its fight for those records all the way to the US Supreme Court, which in 2004 voted 7-2 to uphold "a paramount necessity of protecting the executive branch from vexatious litigation."

But just to make sure no one got lucky in court, the administration built a wide moat around all things it feels are none of our damn business; including whatever deals Cheney made in 2001 with energy company CEOs.

"WASHINGTON - As the Bush administration has dramatically accelerated the classification of information as 'top secret' or 'confidential,' one office is refusing to report on its annual activity in classifying documents: the office of Vice President Dick Cheney ... A standing executive order, strengthened by President Bush in 2003, requires all agencies and 'any other entity within the executive branch' to provide an annual accounting of their classification of documents. More than 80 agencies have collectively reported to the National Archives that they made 15.6 million decisions in 2004 to classify information, nearly double the number in 2001, but Cheney continues to insist he is exempt. (Full Story)

It's not as though we don't have good reason to suspect skullduggery was afoot at those meeting -- skullduggery that has now been allowed to manifest itself in the form of war, economic hardship for average Americans and record profits for the Big Energy folk who attended the meetings. Over the past four years we have learned little about what happened at those meetings, but what little we have learned startles even those of us who thought we had seen it all:

"Documents turned over in the summer of 2003 by the Commerce Department as a result of the Sierra Club's and Judicial Watch's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force, contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as two charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and 'Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.' The documents, dated March 2001, also feature maps of Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirates oilfields, pipelines, refineries and tanker terminals. There are supporting charts with details of the major oil and gas development projects in each country that provide information on the project's costs, capacity, oil company and status or completion date." (Full Text)

So, did Cheney and oil company executives lick their chops over Iraqi oil less than two years before we attacked over non-existent WMD? When the administration brushed off questions about Cheney's meetings by telling us they concerned "securing America's energy future," was this the plan they cooked up? To overthrow Saddam, set up a puppet government and pump, pump, pump? If so, that plan has gone terribly wrong.

So, shouldn't Congress find out? If not now, when?

Well, let me correct myself. Not everything went wrong for everyone; just 2,800 American kids who died and tens of thousands of Iraqis who died. Now American motorists are getting the shaft. But look who came out smelling like a rose. By disrupting oil supplies from Iraq, the world's third largest producer, and destabilizing the entire oil producing region, and now by threatening Iran, oil companies with oil assets in the Gulf, Alaska and other regions, have seen the price of their oil skyrocket. Clearly a seat at those energy task force meetings was a seat worth having -- worth billions.

"Last week, Exxon Mobil (the majority owner of Imperial Oil (AKA 'Esso') announced its first-quarter profits had risen 14 per cent to $8.4 billion over the same period last year. That followed similar announcements by Conoco/Phillips and Chevron, the next two largest U.S. integrated oil companies. Chevron's profits jumped 50 per cent to $4 billion while Conoco/Phillips saw its profits climb 13 per cent to $3.3 billion."

A citizen would think that such obscene profits, at the very time real wages of working Americans are falling, the cost of heating and cooling their homes rises every month and transportation costs soar, would provide Congress with some backbone.

Senators, this is where the proverbial rubber hits the road. Investigate. Not just Big Oil, but Big Dick as well. Inquiring minds want to know. We are waiting and we are watching. If not now, when?



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US general urged "outer limits" Iraq interrogation

Tue May 2, 2006
Reuters


WASHINGTON - The top U.S. commander in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal urged U.S. forces to "go to the outer limits" to extract information from prisoners, according to a U.S. officer cited in a military document.

The Army last year exonerated Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez of wrongdoing relating to detainee abuse, but human rights lawyers said the document raises fresh questions about the degree to which senior officers sanctioned the abuse.

"This is evidence that raises additional questions about the role of Lt. Gen. Sanchez in authorizing and endorsing the abuse of prisoners," Jameel Jaffer, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, said on Tuesday.
The May 19, 2004 Defense Intelligence Agency document was among more than 100,000 pages of files turned over by the government to the ACLU under court order as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

The DIA inspector general's office document, marked "secret," described an interview in which an officer, whose name was redacted, expressed "knowledge of incidents relating to Iraq prison situation."

It was written three weeks after the first pictures of U.S. forces abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib -- including beating them, stacking naked men in a pyramid and menacing them with snarling dogs -- became public in April 2004.

The officer, who headed a team of three to four interrogators, described a 35-page document detailing "rules of engagement" for interrogators questioning prisoners in Iraq.

"The people were encourage (sic) to go to the outer limits to get information from the detainees by people who wanted the information," the document stated.

'BREAK THE DETAINEES'

It said Sanchez saw a "desperate need" to get intelligence from the prisoners, adding that "HQ (headquarters) wanted the interrogators to break the detainees."

The document did not mention individual interrogation techniques, nor did it link Sanchez to any specific abuses

Sanchez served for about a year as the top commander in Iraq beginning in June 2003, and was in the post during the worst of the abuse at Abu Ghraib. Sanchez currently serves in Germany as commander of the U.S. Army's 5th Corps.

Pentagon officials said the Army takes seriously issues related to detainee abuse.

"The goal has been to examine allegations of detainee abuse or potential reports of detainee abuse, thoroughly investigate them and, if appropriate, handle them through judicial or nonjudicial punishment if substantiated," said Army spokesman Paul Boyce.

Nearly all the U.S. service members who have faced criminal charges for detainee abuse have been low ranking.

"The documents that have been released under the Freedom of Information Act make very clear that senior military officials and civilian leaders should be held accountable for what took place," Jaffer said.

Jaffer also pointed to an April 2, 2004, document -- coming weeks before the Abu Ghraib pictures brought the issue of prisoner abuse to the attention of the world -- detailing 62 military investigations of detainee abuse and death cases.

A previously released September 14, 2003, memo from Sanchez showed that he authorized the potential use of interrogation tactics more harsh than accepted Army practice, including using guard dogs to exploit "Arab fear of dogs."

That memo also allowed for "stress positions," in which a prisoner is placed in potentially painful bodily positions to try to get him to talk.



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Torture "widespread" under U.S. custody: Amnesty

Wed May 3, 2006
Reuters

GENEVA - Torture and inhumane treatment are "widespread" in U.S.-run detention centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba and elsewhere despite Washington's denials, Amnesty International said on Wednesday.

In a report for the United Nations' Committee against Torture, the London-based human rights group also alleged abuses within the U.S. domestic law enforcement system, including use of excessive force by police and degrading conditions of isolation for inmates in high security prisons.

"Evidence continues to emerge of widespread torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees held in U.S. custody," Amnesty said in its 47-page report.

"The U.S. government is not only failing to take steps to eradicate torture, it is actually creating a climate in which torture and other ill-treatment can flourish," said Amnesty International USA Senior Deputy Director-General Curt Goering.

It said that while Washington has sought to blame abuses that have recently come to light on "aberrant soldiers and lack of oversight," much ill-treatment stemmed from officially sanctioned interrogation procedures and techniques.

"The U.S. government is not only failing to take steps to eradicate torture, it is actually creating a climate in which torture and other ill-treatment can flourish," said Amnesty International USA Senior Deputy Director-General Curt Goering.

The U.N. committee, whose experts carry out periodic reviews of countries signatory to the U.N. Convention against Torture, is scheduled to begin consideration of the United States on Friday. The last U.S. review was in 2000.

It said in November it was seeking U.S. answers to questions including whether Washington operated secret detention centers abroad and whether President George W. Bush had the power to absolve anyone from criminal responsibility in torture cases.

The committee also wanted to know whether a December 2004 memorandum from the U.S. Attorney General's office, reserving torture for "extreme" acts of cruelty, was compatible with the global convention barring all forms of cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment.

UNTIL THE END

In its own submission to the committee, published late last year, Washington justified the holding of thousands of foreign terrorism suspects in detention centers abroad, including Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, on the grounds that it was fighting a war that was still not over.

"Like other wars, when they start, we do not know when they will end. Still, we may detain combatants until the end of the war," it said.

Comment: From the above report:
Amnesty listed a series of incidents in recent years involving torture of detainees in U.S. custody, noting the heaviest sentence given to perpetrators was five months in jail.

This was the same punishment you could get for stealing a bicycle in the United States, it added.

"Although the U.S. government continues to assert its condemnation of torture and ill-treatment, these statements contradict what is happening in practice," said Goering, referring to the testimony of torture victims in the report.
What does this suggest about the value that the American government and its supporting structures place on human life? And remember, we are talking about human life in general, not "Islamic" or "Arab" but ALL human life that is not part of the elite club, i.e. you and your family.

The deliberate restriction by the US government of the aid effort to New Orleans in the wake of hurrican Katrina gave us all an insight into the value that the Bush administration placed on the lives of American citizens. When the next disater strikes, as it surely must, do not be foolish enough to expect Bush and Co. to rush to save you, if anything, they will use the opportunity to engage in a little population reduction.

To be forewarned is to be forearmed. This warning goes out to all citizens of any country on the planet. Do not place you faith or trust in government. Goverment does not exist to protect you, but to control you and to secure their positions of power.

Just as the farmer will sometimes cull the herd in order to maintain control, so too will our "leaders" sacrifice the lives of their citizens in order to main their control. Do not doubt it, history is replete with examples of such inhuman acts, albeit that most have been to a large extent, and for obvious reasons, covered up.


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No. 3 Official at CIA Is Subject of Investigation Related to Bribery Probe

March 3, 2006
ABCNews

A stunning investigation of bribery and corruption in Congress has spread to the CIA, ABC News has learned.

The CIA inspector general has opened an investigation into the spy agency's executive director, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, and his connections to two defense contractors accused of bribing a member of Congress and Pentagon officials.

The CIA released an official statement on the matter to ABC News, saying: "It is standard practice for CIA's Office of Inspector General - an aggressive, independent watchdog - to look into assertions that mention agency officers. That should in no way be seen as lending credibility to any allegation.

"Mr. Foggo has overseen many contracts in his decades of public service. He reaffirms that they were properly awarded and administered."

The CIA said Foggo, the No. 3 official at the CIA, would have no further comment. He will remain in his post at the CIA during the investigation, according to officials.


Two former CIA officials told ABC News that Foggo oversaw contracts involving at least one of the companies accused of paying bribes to Congressman Randall "Duke" Cunningham. The story was first reported by Newsweek magazine.

Friendship With Defense Contractor

The California Republican has pleaded guilty after admitting he accepted $2.4 million in bribes in exchange for arranging defense contracts. He was sentenced today to eight years and four months in prison for corruption. Federal law enforcement officials said Cunningham is cooperating and the investigation is continuing.

As executive director of the CIA, Foggo oversees the administration of the giant spy agency. He was appointed to the post by CIA Director Porter Goss after working as a midlevel procurement supervisor, according to former CIA officials.

While based in Frankfurt, Germany, he oversaw and approved contracts for CIA operations in Iraq.

Foggo is a longtime friend of Brent Wilkes, referred to as co-conspirator No. 1 in government documents filed in the Cunningham investigation. The two played high school football and were in each other's weddings.

According to government documents, Wilkes gave Cunningham $630,000 in cash and gifts in exchange for help in getting government contracts.

Wilkes was the founder of ADSC Inc, in 1995. Under Wilkes, the company obtained more than $95 million in government contracts.

Officials say they could not describe the CIA contracts in question because some of them were classified secret.

'Bribe Menu'

Cunningham is involved in what prosecutors call a corruption case with no parallel in the long history of the U.S. Congress. He actually priced the illegal services he provided.

Prices came in the form of a "bribe menu" that detailed how much it would cost contractors to essentially order multimillion-dollar government contracts, according to documents submitted by federal prosecutors for today's sentencing hearing.

"The length, breadth and depth of Cunningham's crimes," the sentencing memorandum states, "are unprecedented for a sitting member of Congress."

Prosecutors will ask federal Judge Larry Burns to impose the statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

The sentencing memorandum includes the California Republican's "bribery menu" on one of his congressional note cards, "starkly framed" under the seal of the United States Congress.

The card shows an escalating scale for bribes, starting at $140,000 and a luxury yacht for a $16 million Defense Department contract. Each additional $1 million in contract value required a $50,000 bribe.

The rate dropped to $25,000 per additional million once the contract went above $20 million.

At one point Cunningham was living on a yacht named after him, "The Dukester," docked near Capitol Hill, courtesy of a defense company president.

Comment: Of course, the really interesting story would be an investigation of bribery and corruption involving the Israeli lobby and American politicians, but such is the extent of the Israeli lobby's control over politics and media in America, there is little or no chance that such an expose would ever be ing done.

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Number 3 guy at the CIA denies prostitutes...

Jan Frel
May 2, 2006.

but he admits to playing cards.

Clinton didn't inhale, and Kyle "Dusty" Foggo didn't engage with prostitutes at card parties hosted and sponsored by two federally indicted arms contractors. He just played cards, he said. Justin Rood at Muckracker spills the goods:

The CIA confirmed to the Wall Street Journal what we knew already from multiple eyewitness accounts: Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, the CIA's #3 official, attended Wilkes' poker parties at hotel suites around Washington, D.C. where prostitutes allegedly entertained.

But that's it, the agency says. He never saw any hookers -- at least not while they were playing cards.

"If he attended occasional card games with friends over the years, Mr. Foggo insists they were that and nothing more," CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise-Dyck told the WSJ:

"She said Mr. Foggo says he never witnessed any prostitutes at the games and that any allegation to the contrary would be 'false, outrageous and irresponsible.'"

The scandal sheet that Josh Marshall has put together with reporters Justin Rood and Paul Kiel is really dishing out the hot DC sleaze news.

In more sleaze news, outgoing press secretary Scott McLellan made a strange statement about Jack Abramoff's White House visit logs, which the Secret Service has been court ordered to release: "I don't know exactly what they'll be providing, but they only have certain records and so I just wouldn't view it as a complete historical record."




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Follow-up: Red Lights on Capitol Hill

Monday, May 1, 2006
Ken Silverstein
Harpers Magazine

I reported last Thursday that Shirlington Limousine and Transportation, Inc., a firm allegedly used by defense contractor Brent Wilkes to provide prostitutes to ex-Rep. Duke Cunningham, is headed by a man who has a long criminal rap sheet and is also a contractor for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
It was Mitchell Wade, another defense contractor who has acknowledged bribing Cunningham, and who is cooperating with investigators, who reportedly told prosecutors about Shirlington's relationship with Wilkes and the latter's alleged pimping scheme. (Wilkes's attorney denies the charge.)

Since my report, Shirlington's role in the case has been covered by national media including the San Diego Union-Tribune, whose reporting on the Cunningham case is indispensable, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, as well as by bloggers Jason Vest at POGO and Laura Rozen at War and Piece. I reported that Shirlington had won a $21.2 million contract from DHS last year, and the Post found a second contract from the agency, worth $3.8 million, awarded in 2004. Vest found yet another contract for Shirlington: $342,555 from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And Rozen unearthed a number of interesting finds, including an old Atlanta Journal Constitution article on poker parties that were apparently sponsored by Wilkes.

I've learned more about the Shirlington affair from a source familiar with the company's $21.2 million DHS contract for limousine and bus service. At DHS, the limousines operated by Shirlington are reserved for the most senior agency officials: undersecretaries, senior staff, and senior political appointees. (Department Secretary Michael Chertoff has a separate transport detail.) DHS plebes take a Shirlington bus to travel between the agency's facilities in and around Washington and Virginia; a bus will also drop employees at a Metro stop on the Red Line.

My source told me that under its multi-year, sole-source contract, Shirlington has office space in at least two locations: at the DHS building in upper northwest Washington near American University and at a downtown facility of the General Services Administration, a federal procurement agency. For DHS, Shirlington provides buses, and bus drivers, as well as limousine drivers for GSA-owned limousines.

Shirlington's president, Christopher D. Baker, has a criminal rap sheet that runs from 1979 to 1989. Cab drivers in the Washington area have told me that it would be all but impossible for a man with Baker's past to obtain a license to drive a taxi here, because applying for a license requires the provision of a criminal report and a set of fingerprints cleared by the FBI. Even a string of traffic tickets can lead to the suspension of a taxi license. In fact, being hired to drive a limousine under Shirlington's DHS contract requires a security clearance, which Baker, given his criminal record, would not be able to obtain. Yet Baker had no problem winning a sole-source contract from the DHS that has his company ferrying around town the most senior government officials charged with protecting the country from a terrorist attack. (Neither DHS nor Baker's attorney returned calls seeking comment.)

All of this raises questions. We know that, a few years after his last brush with the law, Baker was retained as Wilkes's exclusive limousine provider. So how did Wilkes and Baker start working together? Did Baker have any other political contacts that helped him win the contracts? And, if so, who?

I'll keep digging . . .



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For the Children


Poll: 1/3 of Youths Can't Find La. on Map

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
Associated Press
Tue May 2, 2006

WASHINGTON - Despite the wall-to-wall coverage of the damage from Hurricane Katrina, nearly one-third of young Americans recently polled couldn't locate Louisiana on a map and nearly half were unable to identify Mississippi.

Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 fared even worse with foreign locations: six in 10 couldn't find Iraq, according to a Roper poll conducted for National Geographic.
"Geographic illiteracy impacts our economic well-being, our relationships with other nations and the environment, and isolates us from the world," National Geographic president John Fahey said in announcing a program to help remedy the problem. It's hoping to enlist businesses, nonprofit groups and educators in a bid to improve geographic literacy.

Planned is a five-year, multimedia campaign called My Wonderful World that will target children 8 to 17. The goal is to motivate parents and educators to expand geographic offerings in school, at home and in their communities.

They will have their task cut out for them, judging by the results of the survey of 510 people interviewed in December and January.

Among the findings:

- One-third of respondents couldn't pinpoint Louisiana on a map and 48 percent were unable to locate Mississippi.

- Fewer than three in 10 think it important to know the locations of countries in the news and just 14 percent believe speaking another language is a necessary skill.

- Two-thirds didn't know that the earthquake that killed 70,000 people in October 2005 occurred in Pakistan.

- Six in 10 could not find Iraq on a map of the Middle East.

- While the outsourcing of jobs to India has been a major U.S. business story, 47 percent could not find the Indian subcontinent on a map of Asia.

- While Israeli-Palestinian strife has been in the news for the entire lives of the respondents, 75 percent were unable to locate Israel on a map of the Middle East.

- Nearly three-quarters incorrectly named English as the most widely spoken native language.

- Six in 10 did not know the border between North and
South Korea is the most heavily fortified in the world. Thirty percent thought the most heavily fortified border was between the United States and Mexico.

Joining in the effort to improve geographic knowledge will be the 4-H, American Federation of Teachers, Asia Society, Association of American Geographers, National Basketball Association, National Council of La Raza, National PTA,
Smithsonian Institution and others.

"Geography exposes children and adults to diverse cultures, different ideas and the exchange of knowledge from around the world," said Anna Marie Weselak, president of the National PTA. "This campaign will help make sure our children get their geography - so they can become familiar with other cultures during their school years and move comfortably and confidently in a global economy as adults."



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Most US young people can't find Iraq on map: study

Tue May 2, 2006
Reuters

WASHINGTON - Most American young people can't find Iraq on a map, even though U.S. troops have been there for more than three years, according to a new geographic literacy study released on Tuesday.

Fewer than 4 in 10 Americans aged 18-24 in a survey could place Iraq on an unlabeled map of the Middle East, a study conducted for National Geographic found. Only about one-quarter of respondents could find Iran and Israel on the same map.

Sixty-nine percent of young people picked out China on a map of Asia, but only about half could find India and Japan and only 12 percent correctly located Afghanistan.

"I'm not sure how important it is that young adults can find Afghanistan on a map. But ... that is symptomatic of the bigger issue, and that's (U.S. young adults) not having a sense that things around the world really matter that much," said John Fahey, president of the National Geographic Society.
The study results confirm Fahey's concern: 21 percent said it was "not too important" to know where countries in the news are located.

Half of respondents said it was "absolutely necessary" to know how to read a map, but a large percentage lacked basic practical map-reading skills.

For example, most young people were able to locate a port city on a fictitious map, but one-third would have gone in the wrong direction in the event of an evacuation.

In general, natural disasters appear to have a limited impact on young Americans' view of the world, the study found.

Only 35 percent identified Pakistan as the country hit by a catastrophic earthquake last October, killing over 70,000 people; 29 percent thought it happened in Sri Lanka.

Most respondents could find Louisiana and Mississippi, but still more than one-third failed to find those two states that were the subject of daily news coverage after the onslaught of hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year.

There were some positive signs: young people who go online for news and who use two or more different news sources show a greater knowledge of geography, the study found.

Comment: Kind of ironic, is it not, that in a report on the dire state of young American's awareness of the rest of the world, the American President of the National Geographic Society expresses the opinion that it is not important for young Americans to know where Afghanistan is. Of course, such thinking would certainly please members of the US governemnt who are also of the opinion that not only should young Americans not know where Afghanistan is, they also should remain unaware of what the US military is doing there, and why.

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Career plans by age 12? Maybe in Florida.

By Richard Luscombe | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

TAMARAC, FLA. - Brianna Cunningham loves learning Spanish, playing the clarinet in her middle-school band, and hanging out with her friends.

Like most kids her age, Brianna doesn't know yet what she wants to do with her life. But if a new education bill working its way through Florida's Legislature is passed, she could soon have some serious decisions to make.

As part of Gov. Jeb Bush's plan to reform the state's schools, an intensive study of careers would become mandatory for middle-schoolers.
"I like science and doing the experiments ... but I don't know if that's what I want to be," says the seventh-grader, who attends Ramblewood Middle School in Coral Springs.

Do children barely out of elementary school have the knowledge and experience to declare a career path? Brianna's feelings on the subject are shared by some adults, who also worry that a career curriculum would come at the expense of other activities such as music, art, and sports.

But supporters of the proposal say it gives kids a taste of the real world and encourages them to widen, not narrow, their sense of career options. Supporters also say the program demonstrates the state's commitment to middle-schoolers. And since it is believed to be the first statewide program of its kind for sixth- to eighth-graders in the United States, it could be one way of bringing educational distinction to Florida.

"No one is being made to choose a major in sixth grade, just to do some real-time learning in the real world," says Theresa Willingham, president of Learning Is for Everyone, an education-resource organization in Tampa that supports family choice in learning. "Middle-schoolers are, for the most part, too young to really commit to what they want to do for a living, if only because there's yet so much to be discovered between middle school and the college years. But life moves a lot faster now, and careers can be more academically demanding."

The career proposal comes during a challenging time for Florida schools. Of US states, Florida has the 12th-lowest spending per pupil, at $7,588 annually, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Only two states, Nevada and Georgia, fare worse than its 59 percent high school graduation rate.

As part of an effort to improve the system, Governor Bush (R) appointed a high school reform task force. It recommended that middle-schoolers take a minimum nine-week course in career education before stepping up to high school. Each student would also have to develop an academic and career plan for the next five years.

"We're looking to ... better prepare students for the future and for postsecondary education," Bush said earlier this year in a lecture at Stanford University in California. "The goal is for students to graduate knowing what they want to do with their lives."

Responding to such ideas, House lawmakers in Tallahassee have approved a bill that would, among other measures, require middle-schoolers to take a full year of career studies. And the Florida Senate is now mulling legislation that would require students to complete a half year of career study by seventh grade.

"What's unique is that the state is trying to create a system with a lot more rigor in its middle schools. It's about trying to give parents good schools for their kids," says Jeanne Allen, founder and president of the Center for Education Reform, an organization in Washington advocating accountability and higher standards. "We underestimate the ability of teenagers and our high school students to know what they like, what they're good at, and what they excel at."

Other states, including Mississippi, Oklahoma, and the Carolinas, offer less formal career "exploration" programs. But Florida is believed to be the first to propose specific classroom time for middle-schoolers.

From one teacher's vantage point, Florida would be better off without such an experiment. "I've taught in middle schools for 21 years, and few to none of my students have ever come to me to talk about a particular career. At that age, they just want to learn and absorb," says Richard Cantlupe, who teaches at Westglades Middle School in Parkland.

Mr. Cantlupe notes that he worked at another middle school in Broward County that introduced careers as an elective. "It failed miserably," he says. "The kids hated it."

For others, the foremost concern is that a compulsory career curriculum will shove out other beneficial classes. "Giving children exposure to those areas in middle school is a very good idea, but where it derails is in its emphasis," says Shelley Vana (D) of Palm Beach, a member of the House Education Appropriations Committee.

"This is not going to allow students to also have exposure to arts, music, and physical education, which, at a time of growing concerns over our children's health, is not a good thing," she says.

For many parents, though, the issue comes down to one simple fact: Their kids are still young. For Kevin Cunningham, father of Brianna, middle school is too early for career decisions. And it's not just Brianna he's thinking about: Daughter Meaghan will be in sixth grade next fall.

"It's good if it gives them exposure to occupations and a greater range of career options," says Mr. Cunningham. "But my daughters both think this is too early to be deciding anything."

Comment: Careers in grade 6?!?! Is that a psychopathic idea or what?!?!

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146 million children dangerously underfed, UN warns

Last Updated Tue, 02 May 2006 10:37:29 EDT
CBC News



More than a quarter of children under age five in developing countries don't get enough to eat and are at risk of dying prematurely, says a UNICEF report.

Progress for Children: A Report Card on Nutrition found that 27 per cent of young children in those countries - or about 146 million people - are underweight, many to a life-threatening degree.
The UN children's rights agency says poor nutrition contributes to about 5.6 million child deaths per year, more than half the total deaths.

Bangladesh, India and Pakistan account for half of all the world's underweight children.

Ann Veneman, the executive director of UNICEF, said the figures in the report don't give the complete picture of the number of children facing malnutrition.

"For every visibly undernourished child, there are several more battling a hidden nutritional crisis," she said.

Problem grows in Iraq, Yemen, parts of Africa

The average number of underweight children has fallen by only five per cent in the last 15 years, the report says.

In some countries - including Iraq, Yemen and parts of Africa - the number is actually increasing due to conflict, food shortages and the prevalence of HIV/AIDS, the report says.

China was the only country to significantly reduce the number of underweight children in the last 15 years, cutting the proportion from 19 per cent to eight per cent.

World failing to meet goals to eliminate hunger

The report warns that unless the world takes action, the UN's World Millennium Development Goals for eradicating extreme poverty and hunger will not be reached.

The goals, set in 1990, were aimed at significantly improving the lives of the world's poor by 2015.

One of them focused on cutting in half the rate of poor nutrition among children younger than age five.



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Children Living Near Major Roads Face Higher Asthma Risk

Posted: May 2, 2006

Young children who live near a major road are significantly more likely to have asthma than children who live only blocks away, according to a study that appears in the May 1 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives.

The study found that children living within 75 meters (about 82 yards) of a major road had a 50 percent greater risk of having had asthma symptoms in the past year than were children who lived more than 300 meters (about 328 yards) away. Higher traffic volumes on the different roads were also related to increased rates of asthma.
"These findings are consistent with an emerging body of evidence that local traffic around homes and schools may be causing an increase in asthma," says lead author Rob McConnell, M.D., professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. "This is a potentially important public health problem because many children live near major roads."

More than 5,000 children ages 5 to 7 were involved in the study which was an expansion of the Children's Health Study, currently underway in 13 southern California communities. The researchers determined how far each participating child lived from a major road - a freeway, large highway or a feeder road to a highway.

"These results suggest that living in residential areas with high traffic-related pollution significantly increases the risk of childhood asthma," says David A. Schwartz, M.D., director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the primary agency that funded the study. "Children with no parental history of asthma who had long-term exposure or early-life exposure to these pollutants were among the most susceptible."

Children who lived at the same residence since age 2 had slightly higher rates of asthma than those who had moved to the residence later. "That is what you would expect if the asthma was being caused by traffic," McConnell says. Risk for wheeze also decreased the further away a home was from a major road, dropping to background rates at roughly 150 meters (not quite two blocks).

Study sites included the cities of Alpine, Anaheim, Glendora, Lake Arrowhead, Lake Elsinore, Long Beach, Mira Loma, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Dimas, Santa Barbara, Santa Maria and Upland. McConnell noted that air pollution regulations typically focus on regional air pollutants rather than localized exposures within communities, such as living near a busy road, that may also be a problem. "We've taken some tentative steps to address that, for example with a law that a new school can't be built within 500 feet of a freeway. But we have to also consider whether building parks, play areas, or homes right next to a major road is a wise land use decision in terms of health."

McConnell and his colleagues plan to follow up with a subgroup of the children to measure pollutants in their homes and also to look at characteristics that may make children more susceptible (or that may be protective), such as genetic characteristics.

This study was supported by the NIEHS, California Air Resources Board, the Southern California Particle Center and Supersite, the Environmental Protection Agency, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, and the Hastings Foundation.





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Nearly All Sodas Sales to Schools to End

By SAMANTHA GROSS
Associated Press
May 3, 2006

NEW YORK - The nation's largest beverage distributors have agreed to halt nearly all soda sales to public schools, according to a deal announced Wednesday by the William J. Clinton Foundation.

Under the agreement, the companies have agreed to sell only water, unsweetened juice and low-fat milks to elementary and middle schools, said Jay Carson, a spokesman for former President Bill Clinton. Diet sodas would be sold only to high schools.
Cadbury Schweppes PLC, Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo Inc. and the American Beverage Association have all signed onto the deal, Carson said, adding that the companies serve "the vast majority of schools." The American Beverage Association represents the majority of school vending bottlers.

The deal follows a wave of regulation by school districts and state legislatures to cut back on student consumption of soda amid reports of rising childhood obesity rates. Soda has been a particular target of those fighting obesity because of its caloric content and popularity among children.

"It's a bold and sweeping step that industry and childhood obesity advocates have decided to take together," Carson said.

A man who answered the phone at Cadbury Schweppes' London headquarters said no one was available for comment. Calls seeking comment from the other distributors were not immediately returned early Wednesday.

Nearly 35 million students nationwide will be affected by the deal, The Alliance for a Healthier Generation said in a news release. The group, a collaboration between Clinton's foundation and the American Heart Association, helped broker the deal.

"This is really the beginning of a major effort to modify childhood obesity at the level of the school systems," said Robert H. Eckel, president of the American Heart Association.

Under the agreement, high schools will still be able to purchase drinks such as diet and unsweetened teas, diet sodas, sports drinks, flavored water, seltzer and low-calorie sports drinks from distributors.

School sales of those kinds of drinks have been on the rise in recent years, while regular soda purchases by students have been falling, according to an ABA report released in December. But regular soda is still the most popular drink among students, accounting for 45 percent of beverages sold in schools in 2005, the report said.

The agreement applies to beverages sold for use on school grounds during the regular and extended school day, Carson said. Sales during after-school activities such as clubs, yearbook, band and choir practice will be affected by the new regulations. But sales at events such as school plays, band concerts and sporting events, where adults make up a significant portion of the audience, won't be affected, he said.

How quickly the changes take hold will depend in part on individual school districts' willingness to alter existing contracts, the alliance said. The companies will work to implement the changes at 75 percent of the nation's public schools by the 2008-2009 school year, and at all public schools a year later.

Many school districts around the country have already begun to replace soda and candy in vending machines with healthier items, and dozens of states have considered legislation on school nutrition this year.

The agreement follows an August decision by the American Beverage Association to adopt a policy limiting soft drinks in high schools to no more than 50 percent of the selections in vending machines. That recommendation was not binding.



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Business as Usual


Dobbs: Radical groups taking control of immigrant movement

By Lou Dobbs
CNN
Monday, May 1, 2006

Summary: Most of the mainstream media has been absolutely co-opted by the open borders and illegal immigration advocates. I'm not opposed to demonstrations and protests of any kind, even by those who are not citizens of this country, because one way or another, demonstrations and protests enrich and invigorate the national debate and raise the public consciousness of truth.

But only one newspaper, to its credit, reported that illegal aliens and their supporters' boycott of the national economy on the First of May is clear evidence that radical elements have seized control of the movement. The Washington Post, alone among national papers, reported that ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) has become an active promoter of the national boycott.
NEW YORK (CNN) -- We all awoke to headlines in our nation's most important newspapers reminding us that this is "A Day Without Immigrants." Not illegal immigrants, mind you, but immigrants.

USA Today headlined today's demonstrations and boycott "On Immigration's Front Lines." The New York Times headlines its story "With Calls for Boycott by Immigrants, Employers Gird for Unknown." The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times are both calling their coverage "The Immigration Debate."

These major newspapers obviously don't want to disturb their readers with the information that today's demonstrations and boycott are about illegal immigration and amnesty for illegal aliens.

CNN and Fox News are both using a banner calling their coverage "A Day Without Immigrants," while MSNBC is titling its coverage "Immigrant Anger."

Most of the mainstream media has been absolutely co-opted by the open borders and illegal immigration advocates. I'm not opposed to demonstrations and protests of any kind, even by those who are not citizens of this country, because one way or another, demonstrations and protests enrich and invigorate the national debate and raise the public consciousness of truth.

But only one newspaper, to its credit, reported that illegal aliens and their supporters' boycott of the national economy on the First of May is clear evidence that radical elements have seized control of the movement. The Washington Post, alone among national papers, reported that ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) has become an active promoter of the national boycott.

Some illegal immigration and open borders activists in the Hispanic community are deeply concerned about the involvement of the left-wing radical group. But others, like Juan Jose Gutierrez, whom I've interviewed a number of times over the past several months, manages to be both director of Latino Movement USA and a representative of ANSWER.

As Gutierrez told us on my show, "The time has come...where we need to stand up and make a statement. We need to do what the American people did when they pulled away from the British crown. And I am sure that back in those days many people were concerned that was radical action."

Just how significant is the impact of leftists within the illegal immigration movement? It is no accident that they chose May 1 as their day of demonstration and boycott. It is the worldwide day of commemorative demonstrations by various socialist, communist, and even anarchic organizations.

Supporters of the boycott have made no secret of their determination to try to shut down schools, businesses and entire cities. Much of Los Angeles' Seventh Street produce market, which supplies thousands of local restaurants and markets, is closed today. Many meat-packing companies like Cargill and Tyson are also closing many of their plants.

"The meat packers are confirming what we know," says University of Maryland economics professor Peter Morici, "and that is that this large group of illegal aliens in the United States is lowering the wage rate of semiskilled workers, people who are high school dropouts or high school graduates with minimal training."

In fact, a meat-packing job paid $19 an hour in 1980, but today that same job pays closer to $9 an hour, according to the Labor Department. That's entirely consistent with what we've been reporting -- that illegal aliens depress wages for U.S. workers by as much as $200 billion a year in addition to placing a tremendous burden on hospitals, schools and other social services.

Radicalism is not confined to Gutierrez and Latino Movement USA. Ernesto Nevarez of the L.A. Port Collective is promising to shut down the Port of Los Angeles today: "[Transportation and commerce] will come to a grinding halt. ...They are going to put a wall along the border with Mexico. We're going to put a wall between us and the ocean. And those containers ain't going to move."

No matter which flag demonstrators and protesters carry today, their leadership is showing its true colors to all who will see.

Comment: Well, we all knew this was coming. We wouldn't be surprised to see illegal immigrants associated with terrorism in the coming days and weeks.

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French PM defends himself against new allegations

03/05/2006

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin defended himself today against new allegations that he was deeply involved in a scheme to undermine his chief political rival.

The rival, presidential hopeful Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, appeared emboldened by the scandal, insisting he would not back down from his drive to determine who tried to sully his name with bogus corruption charges.

The latest salvos against Villepin were fed by alleged extracts from testimony of a French intelligence chief published in Le Monde today.

The excerpts implicate Villepin as well as his mentor, President Jacques Chirac who, it is widely thought, would have liked to see Villepin assume the presidency in next year's elections.

Chirac's aides today reiterated their denial that the president played a role in the affair, which involves secret accounts in Luxembourg bank Clearstream allegedly used for kickbacks from the French sale of frigates to Taiwan in 1991.

The key question: whether Villepin ordered an investigation into Sarkozy's role in the deal. Villepin admits asking intelligence official Gen. Philippe Rondot in 2004 to investigate the case, but denies naming Sarkozy.

Later probes found Sarkozy had no Clearstream accounts and was not involved.

Le Monde earlier published alleged notes by Rondot indicating that Villepin had named Sarkozy.

According to the excerpts released today, Rondot had warned Villepin - foreign minister at the time - of the risks of such an investigation, but "no one had the political courage to say stop."

The affair has dealt a new blow to Villepin, who was trying to find his feet after two other crises in the past six months - riots in poor suburbs last year and recent student protests that forced Villepin to withdraw a youth jobs law he had passionately defended.

"How can a government like yours continue to work serenely when suspicion abides within it?" opposition Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande asked Villepin at a question session in parliament today. "This situation can't continue."

Villepin chastised Hollande for relying on rumours and reacting "to a soap opera conducted by the press."

"Today, believe me, no one wants the truth more than me," Villepin said.

Sarkozy, too, said: "The truth must be known."

Speaking at the National Assembly later today, he insisted that the affair "is it is not a political problem for me. It's first of all a question of public morality. That is why I will not compromise."

Rondot met March 28 with an investigating judge trying to determine who was behind what appears to have been a smear campaign targeting Sarkozy. According to Le Monde, he said that in a January 2004 meeting, Villepin ordered him to investigate some Clearstream accounts - and that the orders had come from Chirac.

Investigators are trying to determine who was behind the list of alleged Clearstream account holders, which includes leading industry executives and secret service officials.

They have conducted searches of Defence Ministry offices and intelligence agency offices.

Comment: Protocols of the Pathocrats:

PROTOCOL No. 12: Control of the Press


1. The word "freedom," which can be interpreted in various ways, is defined by us as follows -

2. Freedom is the right to do what which the law allows. This interpretation of the word will at the proper time be of service to us, because all freedom will thus be in our hands, since the laws will abolish or create only that which is desirable for us according to the aforesaid program.

3. We shall deal with the press in the following way: what is the part played by the press today? It serves to excite and inflame those passions that are needed for our purpose, or else it serves selfish ends of parties. It is often vapid, unjust, mendacious, and the majority of the public have not the slightest idea what ends the press really serves. We shall saddle and bridle it with a tight curb: we shall do the same also with all productions of the printing press, for where would be the sense of getting rid of the attacks of the press if we remain targets for pamphlets and books? The produce of publicity, which nowadays is a source of heavy expense owing to the necessity of censoring it, will be turned by us into a very lucrative source of income to our State: we shall law on it a special stamp tax and require deposits of caution-money before permitting the establishment of any organ of the press or of printing offices; these will then have to guarantee our government against any kind of attack on the part of the press. For any attempt to attack us, if such still be possible, we shall inflict fines without mercy. Such measures as stamp tax, deposit of caution-money and fines secured by these deposits, will bring in a huge income to the government. It is true that party organs might not spare money for the sake of publicity, but these we shall shut up at the second attack upon us. No one shall with impunity lay a finger on the aureole of our government infallibility. The pretext for stopping any publication will be the alleged plea that it is agitating the public mind without occasion or justification. I beg you to note that among those making attacks upon us will also be organs established by us, but they will attack exclusively points that we have pre-determined to alter.

WE CONTROL THE PRESS

4. Not a single announcement will reach the public without our control. Even now this is already being attained by us inasmuch as all news items are received by a few agencies, in whose offices they are focused from all parts of the world. These agencies will then be already entirely ours and will give publicity only to what we dictate to them.

5. If already now we have contrived to possess ourselves of the minds of the normal people's communities to such an extent the they all come near looking upon the events of the world through the colored glasses of those spectacles we are setting astride their noses; if already now there is not a single State where there exist for us any barriers to admittance into what normal people's stupidity calls State secrets: what will our positions be then, when we shall be acknowledged supreme lords of the world in the person of our king of all the world ....

6. Let us turn again to the future of the printing press. Every one desirous of being a publisher, librarian, or printer, will be obliged to provide himself with the diploma instituted therefore, which, in case of any fault, will be immediately impounded. With such measures the instrument of thought will become an educative means on the hands of our government, which will no longer allow the mass of the nation to be led astray in by-ways and fantasies about the blessings of progress. Is there any one of us who does not know that these phantom blessings are the direct roads to foolish imaginings which give birth to anarchical relations of men among themselves and towards authority, because progress, or rather the idea of progress, has introduced the conception of every kind of emancipation, but has failed to establish its limits .... All the so-called liberals are anarchists, if not in fact, at any rate in thought. Every one of them in hunting after phantoms of freedom, and falling exclusively into license, that is, into the anarchy of protest for the sake of protest ....

FREE PRESS DESTROYED

7. We turn to the periodical press. We shall impose on it, as on all printed matter, stamp taxes per sheet and deposits of caution-money, and books of less than 30 sheets will pay double. We shall reckon them as pamphlets in order, on the one hand, to reduce the number of magazines, which are the worst form of printed poison, and, on the other, in order that this measure may force writers into such lengthy productions that they will be little read, especially as they will be costly. At the same time what we shall publish ourselves to influence mental development in the direction laid down for our profit will be cheap and will be read voraciously. The tax will bring vapid literary ambitions within bounds and the liability to penalties will make literary men dependent upon us. And if there should be any found who are desirous of writing against us, they will not find any person eager to print their productions in print the publisher or printer will have to apply to the authorities for permission to do so. Thus we shall know beforehand of all tricks preparing against us and shall nullify them by getting ahead with explanations on the subject treated of.

8. Literature and journalism are two of the most important educative forces, and therefore our government will become proprietor of the majority of the journals. This will neutralize the injurious influence of the privately-owned press and will put us in possession of a tremendous influence upon the public mind .... If we give permits for ten journals, we shall ourselves found thirty, and so on in the same proportion. This, however, must in no wise be suspected by the public. For which reason all journals published by us will be of the most opposite, in appearance, tendencies and opinions, thereby creating confidence in us and bringing over to us quite unsuspicious opponents, who will thus fall into our trap and be rendered harmless.

9. In the front rank will stand organs of an official character. They will always stand guard over our interests, and therefore their influence will be comparatively insignificant.

10. In the second rank will be the semi-official organs, whose part it will be to attack the tepid and indifferent.

11. In the third rank we shall set up our own, to all appearance, off position, which, in at least one of its organs, will present what looks like the very antipodes to us. Our real opponents at heart will accept this simulated opposition as their own and will show us their cards.

12. All our newspapers will be of all possible complexions - aristocratic, republican, revolutionary, even anarchical - for so long, of course, as the constitution exists .... Like the Indian idol "Vishnu", they will have a hundred hands, and every one of them will have a finger on any one of the public opinions as required. When a pulse quickens these hands will lead opinion in the direction of our aims, for an excited patient loses all power of judgment and easily yields to suggestion. Those fools, who will think they are repeating the opinion of a newspaper of their own camp, will be repeating our opinion or any opinion that seems desirable for us. In the vain belief that they are following the organ of their party they will, in fact, follow the flag that we hang out for them.

13. In order to direct our newspaper militia in this sense, we must take special and minute care in organizing this matter. Under the title of central department of the press we shall institute literary gatherings at which our agents will without attracting attention issue the orders and watchwords of the day. By discussing and controverting, but always superficially, without touching the essence of the matter, our organs will carry on a sham fight fusillade with the official newspapers solely for the purpose of giving occasion for us to express ourselves more fully than could well be done from the outset in official announcements, whenever, of course, that is to our advantage.

14. These attacks upon us will also serve another purpose, namely, that our subjects will be convinced as to the existence of full freedom of speech and so give our agents an occasion to affirm that all organs which oppose us are empty babblers, since they are incapable of finding any substantial objections to our orders.

ONLY LIES PRINTED

15. Methods of organization like these, imperceptible to the public eye but absolutely sure, are the best calculated to succeed in bringing the attention and the confidence of the public to the side of our government. Thanks to such methods, we shall be in a position as from time to time may be required, to excite or to tranquilize the public mind on political questions, to persuade or to confuse, printing now truth, now lies, facts or their contradictions, according as they may be well or ill received, always very cautiously feeling our ground before stepping upon it .... We shall have a sure triumph over our opponents since they will not have at their disposition organs of the press in which they can give full and final expression to their views owing to the aforesaid methods of dealing with the press. We shall not even need to refute them except very superficially.

16. Trial shots like these, fired by us in the third rank of our press, in case of need, will be energetically refuted by us in our semi-official organs.

17. Even nowadays, already, to take only the French press, there are forms which reveal masonic solidarity in acting on the watchword: all organs of the press are bound together by professional secrecy; like the augurs of old, not one of their numbers will give away the secret of his sources of information unless it be resolved to make announcement of them. Not one journalist will venture to betray this secret, for not one of them is ever admitted to practice literature unless his whole past has some disgraceful sore or other .... These sores would be immediately revealed. So long as they remain the secret of a few, the prestige of the journalist attacks the majority of the country-the mob follow after him with enthusiasm.

18. Our calculations are especially extended to the provinces. It is indispensable for us to inflame there those hopes and impulses with which we could at any moment fall upon the capital, and we shall represent to the capitals that these expressions are the independent hopes and impulses of the provinces. Naturally, the source of them will be always one and the same-ours. What we need is that, until such time as we are in the plenitude of power, the capitals should find themselves stifled by the provincial opinion of the nations, i.e., of a majority arranged by our agentur. What we need is that at the psychological moment the capitals should not be in a position to discuss an accomplished fact for the simple reason, if for no other, that it has been accepted by the public opinion of a majority in the provinces.

19. When we are in the period of the new regime transitional to that of our assumption of full sovereignty, we must not admit any revelation by the press of any form of public dishonesty; it is necessary that the new regime should be thought to have so perfectly contended everybody that even criminality has disappeared ... Cases of the manifestation of criminality should remain known only to their victims and to chance witnesses - no more.


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Administration Conducting Research Into Laser Weapon

By WILLIAM J. BROAD
The New York Times
May 3, 2006

The Bush administration is seeking to develop a powerful ground-based laser weapon that would use beams of concentrated light to destroy enemy satellites in orbit.

The largely secret project, parts of which have been made public through Air Force budget documents submitted to Congress in February, is part of a wide-ranging effort to develop space weapons, both defensive and offensive. No treaty or law forbids such work.
The laser research was described by federal officials who would speak only on the condition of anonymity because of the topic's political sensitivity. The White House has recently sought to play down the issue of space arms, fearing it could become an election-year liability.

Indeed, last week Republicans and Democrats on a House Armed Services subcommittee moved unanimously to cut research money for the project in the administration's budget for the 2007 fiscal year. While Republicans on the panel would not discuss their reasons for the action, Congressional aides said it reflected a bipartisan consensus for moving cautiously on space weaponry, a potentially controversial issue that has yet to be much debated.

The full committee is expected to take up the budget issue today.

The laser research is far more ambitious than a previous effort by the Clinton administration nearly a decade ago to test an antisatellite laser. It would take advantage of an optical technique that uses sensors, computers and flexible mirrors to counteract the atmospheric turbulence that seems to make stars twinkle.

The weapon would essentially reverse that process, shooting focused beams of light upward with great clarity and force.

Though futuristic and technically challenging, the laser work is relatively inexpensive by government standards - about $20 million in 2006, with planned increases to some $30 million by 2011 - partly because no weapons are as yet being built and partly because the work is being done at an existing base, an unclassified government observatory called Starfire in the New Mexico desert.

In interviews, military officials defended the laser research as prudent, given the potential need for space arms to defend American satellites against attack in the years and decades ahead. "The White House wants us to do space defense," said a senior Pentagon official who oversees many space programs, including the laser effort. "We need that ability to protect our assets" in orbit.

But some Congressional Democrats and other experts fault the research as potential fuel for an antisatellite arms race that could ultimately hurt this nation more than others because the United States relies so heavily on military satellites, which aid navigation, reconnaissance and attack warning.

In a statement, Representative Loretta Sanchez, a California Democrat on the subcommittee who opposes the laser's development, thanked her Republican colleagues for agreeing to curb a program "with the potential to weaponize space."

Theresa Hitchens, director of the Center for Defense Information, a private group in Washington that tracks military programs, said the subcommittee's action last week was a significant break with the administration. "It's really the first time you've seen the Republican-led Congress acknowledge that these issues require public scrutiny," she said.

In a statement, the House panel, the Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, made no reference to such policy disagreements but simply said that "none of the funds authorized for this program shall be used for the development of laser space technologies with antisatellite purposes."

It is unclear whether the Republican-controlled Congress will sustain the subcommittee's proposed cut to the administration's request, even if the full House Armed Services Committee backs the reduction.

The Air Force has pursued the secret research for several years but discussed it in new detail in its February budget request. The documents stated that for the 2007 fiscal year, starting in October, the research will seek to "demonstrate fully compensated laser propagation to low earth orbit satellites."

The documents listed several potential uses of the laser research, the first being "antisatellite weapons."

The overall goal of the research, the documents said, is to assess unique technologies for "high-energy laser weapons," in what engineers call a proof of concept. Previously, the laser work resided in a budget category that paid for a wide variety of space efforts, the documents said. But for the new fiscal year, it has moved under the heading "Advanced Weapons Technology."

In interviews, Pentagon officials said the policy rationale for the arms research dated from a 1996 presidential directive in the Clinton administration that allows "countering, if necessary, space systems and services used for hostile purposes."

In 1997, the American military fired a ground-based laser in New Mexico at an American spacecraft, calling it a test of satellite vulnerability. Federal experts said recently that the laser had had no capability to do atmospheric compensation and that the test had failed to do any damage.

Little else happened until January 2001, when a commission led by Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the newly nominated defense secretary, warned that the American military faced a potential "Pearl Harbor" in space and called for a defensive arsenal of space weapons.

The Starfire research is part of that effort.

Federal officials and private experts said the antisatellite work drew on a body of unclassified advances that have made the Starfire researchers world-famous among astronomers. Their most important unclassified work centers on using small lasers to create artificial stars that act as beacons to guide the process of atmospheric compensation.

When astronomers use the method, they aim a small laser at a point in the sky close to a target star or galaxy, and the concentrated light excites molecules of air (or, at higher altitudes, sodium atoms in the upper atmosphere) to glow brightly.

Distortions in the image of the artificial star as it returns to Earth are measured continuously and used to deform the telescope's flexible mirror and rapidly correct for atmospheric turbulence. That sharpens images of both the artificial star and the astronomical target.

Unclassified pictures of Starfire in action show a pencil-thin laser beam shooting up from its hilltop observatory into the night sky.

The Starfire researchers are now investigating how to use guide stars and flexible mirrors in conjunction with powerful lasers that could flash their beams into space to knock out enemy satellites, according to federal officials and Air Force budget documents.

"These are really smart folks who are optimistic about their technology," said the senior Pentagon official. "We want those kind of people on our team."

But potential weapon applications, he added, if one day approved, "are out there years and years and years into the future."

The research centers on Starfire's largest telescope, which Air Force budget documents call a "weapon-class beam director." Its main mirror, 11.5 feet in diameter, can gather in faint starlight or, working in the opposite direction, direct powerful beams of laser light skyward.

Federal officials said Starfire's antisatellite work had grown out of one of the site's other military responsibilities: observing foreign satellites and assessing their potential threat to the United States. In 2000, the Air Force Research Laboratory, which runs Starfire, said the observatory's large telescope, by using adaptive optics, could distinguish objects in orbit the size of a basketball at a distance of 1,000 miles.

Another backdrop to the antisatellite work is Starfire's use of telescopes, adaptive optics and weak lasers to track and illuminate satellites. It is considered a baby step toward developing a laser powerful enough to cripple spacecraft.

Col. Gregory Vansuch, who oversees Starfire research for the Air Force Research Laboratory, said in an interview that the facility used weak lasers and the process of atmospheric compensation to illuminate satellites "all the time." Such tests, Colonel Vansuch emphasized, are always done with the written permission of the satellite's owner.

He said that about once a month, Starfire conducted weeklong experiments that illuminate satellites up to 20 times.

Though the House subcommittee recommended eliminating all financing next year for antisatellite laser research, it retained money for other laser development. Congressional aides said the proposed cut to the Air Force's $21.4 million budget request for such work would eliminate two of three areas of development, for a total reduction of $6.5 million.

At least one public-interest group has seized on the issue. Last week, the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, based in Brunswick, Me., said that if Congress approved the antisatellite money, "the barrier to weapons in space will have been destroyed."



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An open-ended operation?

May 3, 2006 12:50 PM
Richard Norton Taylor

Tomorrow Britain takes over command of the international security assistance force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. For the first time since the second world war a senior British military officer - Lieutenant General David Richards, commander of Nato's allied rapid reaction corps (ARRC) - will be in charge of American troops on foreign operations.

The new deployments, which over the next few months will see 5,000 British troops encamped in Afghanistan, the majority of them in the hostile southern province of Helmand, raises serious issues.
ISAF is a Nato-controlled force. Tomorrow's take-over by Lt Gen Richards and his headquarters, which will be based in Kabul, is the first step in the plan by the western allies to take over the whole of Afghanistan. Nato's supreme allied commander, the American four-star General James Jones, calls it "Nato's most ambitious mission in its history".

Nato planners, looking for a new role for an alliance set up to counter the Soviet bloc in Europe during the cold war, see it as a highly significant test case, possibly providing a blueprint for missions elsewhere, notably Africa.

Britain, as ever, is more than happy to do America's bidding. The deployment of British troops will allow the US to cut number of its troops on the ground.

David Richards is one of our more thoughtful generals, with experience of Sierra Leone and East Timor. He is the best choice for the job, with a keen interest in history - important given the treatment meted out by Afghans to British troops in the nineteenth century - and sensitive to local cultures. "Respect for the people, for Islam, and for the cultural traditions of the country, will be central to all we do", he says.

These are fine words. Yet deployment of British troops - who will join others, notably Canadian and Dutch, in southern Afghanistan, is fraught with danger, and is highly risky.

The job of British troops, says the defence secretary, John Reid, is to help build up Afghan national military and security forces to make the country safe from terrorists, the Taliban, warlords, and the opium trade. It is entirely separate, he says, from the job the US will continue to take on - looking for al-Qaeda and Taliban remnants along the border with Pakistan.

This is the remnant of US-led Operation Enduring Freedom. The Europeans and Canadians, meanwhile, will bed down and help all well-meaning Afghanis safeguard their security until they can look after themselves.

They are in severe danger of "mission creep", with British and other foreign troops bogged down in Afghanistan for decades. For the division of tasks is artificial and does not relate to the reality on the ground. The main task of British troops is to train the Afghani authorities and protect them as they go about trying to eradicate the poppy harvest. But as Reid himself has conceded, British troops will not run away if they are attacked by insurgents or terrorists, or drug traders, or criminals - especially as it will it be impossible to tell one from the other, according to British defence sources. Indeed Reid says British troops may take preemptive strikes against them.

The Taliban reportedly says it is looking forward to attacking Nato troops in the belief that they will not be equipped to face up to guerrilla tactics and suicide bombers and would be vulnerable to political opposition back home. The test as far as the British public is concerned is whether it has the stomach for a new and expensive military adventure so soon after Iraq. Sadly, a lot may depend simply on the number of soldiers who are killed there.



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Yemen court sentences key al Qaeda suspect to jail

Wed May 3, 2006
Reuters

SANAA - Yemen's state security court sentenced a senior al Qaeda suspect to 37 months in prison on Wednesday for funding militants in the Arab state.

Mohammad Hamdi al-Ahdal, named as al Qaeda's number two in Yemen, was charged with forming an armed gang, financing al Qaeda militants and involvement in the deaths of 18 Yemeni soldiers.

Judge Najib al-Qaderi said Ahdal was convicted of "gathering funds and distributing them to a number of people accused of belonging to al Qaeda." He did not mention the rest of the charges, and it was not clear whether Ahdal would face further sentencing later.

[...] Both men were key suspects in the 2000 bombing of the U.S. warship Cole in Aden port.
The 35-year-old Ahdal, also known as Abu Asem al-Macci, had denied all charges.

"Praise God (but) the trial is unjust," said the convict from behind the bars of a cage at the court room after the sentence was passed.

Legal sources said Ahdal can appeal against the ruling.

Ahdal, who has been in custody for almost three years, was an aide of al Qaeda's leader in Yemen, Ali Qaed Senyan al-Harthi, who was killed by a missile fired by an unmanned CIA drone in Yemen in 2002.

Both men were key suspects in the 2000 bombing of the U.S. warship Cole in Aden port.

The prosecutor told the state security court that Ahdal, who was arrested in 2003, had received around $50,000 from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to purchase arms and explosives.

Yemen, the ancestral home of bin Laden, joined the U.S.-led war on terrorism after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States and has launched a crackdown on Islamic militants.


Comment: See this link for a report on who was really behind the bombing of the USS Cole.

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For Your Health


Journals 'regularly publish fraudulent research'

David Batty
Wednesday May 3, 2006

Fraudulent research regularly appears in the 30,000 scientific journals published worldwide, a former editor of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) said today.

Even when journals discover that published research is fabricated or falsified they rarely retract the findings, according to Richard Smith, who was also chief executive of the BMJ publishing group.
When journals decide not to publish studies because they suspect misconduct, they often fail to alert the researchers' employers or medical authorities, such as the Department of Health and the General Medical Council, he added.

Writing in the latest edition of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Dr Smith called on editors to blow the whistle on bad research and to use their clout to pressure universities into taking action against dodgy researchers.

"In many ways editors are privileged 'whistleblowers' with the power to publish and expose institutions who fail to investigate alleged research misconduct," he said.

But the former BMJ editor said it was likely that research fraud was "equally common" in the 30,000 plus scientific journals across the globe but was "invariably covered up".

His call for action comes in the wake of several high profile cases of fraudulent research, including the Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk who fabricated stem cell research that it was claimed would open up new ways to treat diseases like Parkinson's.

Dr Smith criticised the failure of scientific institutions, including universities, to discipline dodgy researchers even when alerted to problems by journals.

"Few countries have measures in place to ensure research is carried out ethically," he said.

"Most cases are not publicised. They are simply not recognised, covered up altogether or the guilty researcher is urged to retrain, move to another institution or retire from research."

Dr Smith called for the UK Research Integrity Office, launched last month to develop a code of practice for researchers, to be given stronger powers to investigate allegation of fraudulent or unethical work.

The Committee on Publication Ethics, which advises scientific journals, estimates that there are about 50 cases of seriously fraudulent research in major institutions in Britain a year.



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U.S. flight attendants could screen visitors for illness

Last Updated Tue, 02 May 2006 13:53:48 EDT
CBC News

American flight attendants would be asked to remove Canadians from U.S.-bound planes if they appear ill, under a proposal by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, a report published Tuesday said.

The controversial plan, aimed at better detection and containment of a potential flu pandemic or other infectious diseases, would affect travellers on airlines, cruise ships and at border-entry points.
The new quarantine regulations would give airline employees the power to forcibly detain passengers who look sick, the Toronto Star reported.

International health regulations already require the captain of a vessel or plane to report an ill passenger, and the CDC wants that extended to staff.

Dr. Anthony Marfin, a West Nile virus expert with the CDC, said the measures would get passengers through the screening process more quickly.

Civil liberty activists argue that people with no medical background would essentially be diagnosing passengers, the paper said.

Dr. Allison McGeer, director of infection control at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital, said having untrained airline staff check for symptoms allows for a greater risk of miscommunication.

The CDC is also proposing airline operators be required to collect and store an array of personal information on travellers for 60 days, to be handed over to the CDC in the event of a public health risk.

During the SARS outbreak in 2003, Canadian officials screened passengers at major airports, but no one was ordered into quarantine.





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Report: Federal Bird Flu Aid May Be Tough

By LAURAN NEERGAARD
The Associated Press
Wednesday, May 3, 2006; 6:35 AM

WASHINGTON -- States, cities and businesses should not expect to be rescued by the federal government if a flu pandemic strikes, warns a draft of the latest national response plan, one already under fire from critics who say federal preparations are moving too slowly.

On Wednesday, the Bush administration will update the $7.1 billion pandemic preparations it proposed last fall, an incremental step that basically outlines exactly which government agency is responsible for some 300 tasks.
"This would really be a road map," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Tuesday. "It will cover both the government and nongovernment actions that are being taken to plan and prepare for any potential pandemic."

A draft of the document, obtained Monday by The Associated Press, provides little new information on government preparations _ but instead offers an acknowledgment that even the most draconian steps would almost certainly fail to keep a flu pandemic from penetrating U.S. borders.

The messy medical reality is that people can spread flu a full day before they show symptoms, meaning even shutting U.S. borders against outbreaks abroad offers no reassurance that a super-strain isn't already incubating here.

The government is preparing for a worst-case scenario of up to 2 million deaths in the United States.

Once a pandemic begins, expect massive disruptions with as much as 40 percent of the work force off the job for a few weeks at a time, even if the government slowed the spread by limiting international flights, quarantining exposed travelers and otherwise restricting movement around the country, the document says.

"Local communities will have to address the medical and nonmedical impacts of the pandemic with available resources," the draft warns, because federal officials won't be able to offer the kind of aid expected after hurricanes or other one-time, one-location natural disasters.

A flu pandemic instead would roll through the country, causing six to eight weeks of active infection per community.

The report aims to energize the private sector, noting that 85 percent of the systems that are vital to society, such as food production, medicine and financial services, are privately run. Those businesses must ensure that power stays on and food is shipped even if 40 percent of their workers are absent because they're ill, caring for sick relatives or other pandemic upheaval.

But the report doesn't actually put anyone in charge of checking whether vital businesses are heeding these warnings.

Few are, suggests a survey that found 66 percent of mid- to large-sized companies have made no preparations, said former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, whose new Deloitte Center for Health Solutions conducted the survey.

Businesses and local governments need specific instructions, he said.

"Everybody is asking, 'Well, we want to do something. How do we do it?'" said Thompson, who heard those questions Tuesday while addressing pandemic preparations at a Michigan law-enforcement conference. "We've got to be much more specific."

The incremental plan was drawing complaints Tuesday that despite months of dire talk about the threat of a pandemic, the Bush administration hasn't accomplished enough.

"Other nations have been implementing their plans for years, but we're reading ours for the first time now. These needless delays have put Americans at risk," complained Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

Influenza pandemics strike every few decades when a never-before-seen strain arises. It's impossible to predict when the next will occur, although concern is rising that the Asian bird flu, called the H5N1 strain, might lead to one if it starts spreading easily from person to person.



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Half-tonne man seeks life-saving surgery in Italy

Wed May 3, 2006
Reuters

ROME - A Mexican man who at 550 kg (1,200 lb) is possibly the heaviest person in the world hopes to travel to Italy for a life-saving operation to shed weight.

Manuel Uribe, bedridden for the past five years, cannot stand on his own and will need a special flight to take him from Monterrey, Mexico to Modena, where a surgical team has offered to perform an intestinal bypass free of charge.

"I can't walk. I'm can't leave my bed," the 40-year-old Uribe, who weighs the same as five baby elephants, said in a recent telephone interview.

"I'm trying to reduce my weight a bit right now so I can be in the right condition for the operation."
Uribe made an impassioned plea for help earlier this year on Mexican television, saying he weighed a more normal 130 kg (290 lb) until aged 22 and did not know what happened to him.

The broadcast drew the attention of doctor Giancarlo De Bernardinis, who visited Mexico with a medical team to examine Uribe in March.

Bernardinis, whose biggest patient to date weighed 350 kg (770 lb), told Reuters he plans a gall bladder, intestinal bypass procedure that will allow Uribe to pass food more quickly without so many calories being absorbed.

Bernardinis planned to perform the surgery in Modena as early as this month, although a Mexican health official doubted Uribe would be ready for a trip to Europe that quickly.

MEDICAL MYSTERY

Uribe's case puzzles doctors since his cholesterol and blood-sugar levels are normal, despite his extreme obesity.

"His heart works very well. He has some respiratory difficulty because of his obesity, but in strict terms, he's well," said Marco Anibal Rodriguez Vargas, the director of hospitals in the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon.



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I'm still alive, condemned man tells executioner as lethal drugs fail

By Jim Leckrone in Columbus, Ohio
May 4, 2006

A DOUBLE murderer was put to death in Ohio - but not until after one of his veins had collapsed, causing the condemned man to sit up and tell his executioners "It's not working", officials say.
The Ohio Department of Corrections said Joseph Clark, 57, was pronounced dead on Tuesday at 11.26am Ohio time following an injection of lethal chemicals at the Southern Ohio Correctional Institution in Lucasville.

A spokeswoman, Andrea Dean, said the execution was delayed about 90 minutes because technicians had trouble initially finding a site in Clark's arm for the intravenous line carrying the chemicals. Then shortly after the poisons were supposed to have been pumping into his body, she said he sat up saying: "It's not working. It's not working."

Officials determined that a vein had collapsed. Curtains were closed to block witnesses' view until technicians found a vein in his other arm. They were then parted to reveal him dying, witnesses said.

Ohio has used lethal injection repeatedly without similar problems, but this method of execution, used in all but one of the 38 US states that impose capital punishment, is under legal attack. The US Supreme Court has a challenge before it from Florida claiming it causes undue pain, while the matter is also before a court in California.

The method involves three separate drugs: the first renders the victim unconscious, the second stops all muscle movement except the heart and the third stops the heart, causing death.

Clark was given a meal of his request, consisting of shrimp, steak, chicken wings, fries, rolls with butter, cherry pie and a soft drink. Just before the execution process started the first time Clark made a final statement apologising to his victims' families and saying: "Today my life is being taken because of drugs. If you live by the sword you die by the sword."

On January 13, 1984 Clark shot David Manning and stole $US65 from the petrol station where the marine reservist and father of two was working.

The murder came during an eight-day crime spree in which Clark also murdered another man, student Donald Harris, and wounded a third man during an attempted robbery.

Harris was filling in for a friend at a convenience store when Clark entered and demanded the contents of the store's safe. Harris said he did not know the combination, and was shot in the head.

Clark was the 21st person to be executed in Ohio since the state resumed carrying out the death penalty in 1999, and the 1021st inmate executed in the US since capital punishment resumed in 1976.



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When Disaster Strikes


Indian bus crashes off bridge, kills 19

Wed May 3, 2006
Reuters

LUCKNOW, India - Nineteen people were killed and 25 injured on Wednesday when a bus plunged into a dry river bed near the north Indian town of Rampur, 180 km (110 miles) east of New Delhi.

Four of the injured were in a critical condition, a local official said. The bus had left the hill resort of Nainital for the capital.

On Tuesday 18 people died when their bus veered off a bridge near India's financial capital, Mumbai.




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27 children hurt in German school bus crash

03/05/2006

A school bus and a lorry crashed head-on early today, injuring 27 children and the lorry driver, said police in the western German town of Senden where the accident occurred.

Five of the children were seriously injured, said Ralf Storck, a spokesman for Senden police.

The accident occurred at about 7.30am (6.30am Irish time) at an on ramp to a main highway, after the truck driver failed to see the oncoming school bus before making a left hand turn onto the ramp.

The two vehicles collided head-on.


Comment:

Yesterday:

27 killed in bus crash india
7 killed in bush crash in arizona
13 hurt in bush crash in canada

Today:

19 killed in bus crash in india
27 hurt in bus crash in germany

Symoblism?

Humanity heading off the verge?

A bus load with nobody driving?


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Armenian jet crash kills 113

Wed May 3, 2006
Reuters

SOCHI, Russia - All 113 passengers and crew on board an Armenian airliner were killed on Wednesday when the plane crashed into the Black Sea off the Russian coast in heavy rain and disintegrated, the Russian Emergencies Ministry said.

Investigators blamed the bad weather. The Airbus A-320 had been trying to land at Sochi, a popular holiday spot in southern Russia. Justice officials said they had no reason to suspect a bomb.

Rescue workers in motorized dinghies criss-crossed heaving seas to search for survivors but a ministry spokeswoman said preliminary information was that everyone on board was dead.

At least 39 bodies had been retrieved from the water by 0900 GMT, along with dozens of body parts.

Russia's Channel One television showed rescue workers using boat hooks to retrieve jagged pieces of fuselage from the choppy water. Pieces of foam and fabric from the aircraft's seats were piled up on the quayside at Sochi's port.
The plane, operated by Armavia, had been making a short flight of about an hour from the Armenian capital Yerevan. Most of the passengers were Armenian nationals.

Some passengers' relatives, hoping to collect the victims' bodies and bring them home, had arrived at Sochi's airport on board a special flight from Yerevan organized by the airline.

Mostly men, they huddled around a list of victims posted on a noticeboard in the airport terminal.

Ambulances were waiting on the kerb outside the terminal in case any of the relatives needed medical assistance.

VANISHED FROM RADAR

Russia's Foreign Ministry said 26 of the passengers were Russian passport holders and almost all the rest were Armenians. The plane was carrying at least five children.



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NYC Blaze Called Biggest Since WTC Attack

By RICHARD PYLE
Associated Press
May 2, 2006

NEW YORK - A raging fire laid waste to a complex of seven old warehouses on Brooklyn's waterfront on Tuesday, sending a huge plume of acrid smoke over Brooklyn that evoked memories of the World Trade Center attacks nearly five years ago.

Shortly after the walls of one five-story brick warehouse collapsed, Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said the cause of the 9-alarm fire would be investigated as possible arson.
"We're calling it suspicious in origin," he said in a street news conference two blocks from the scene. "The buildings were fully involved with fire when the first units arrived. That plus the fact that it started early in the morning are indications of a suspicious fire."

Eighty units and more than 400 firefighters joined the battle, using several tower ladders on three street sides while five fireboats pumped water on the flames from the East River, a technique the department calls "surround and drown."

More than 6 million gallons of water were poured on the blaze, Scoppetta said, and the fire was "holding but not under control" by noon, more than six hours after it erupted. The ninth alarm was posted about an hour later.

Scoppetta and Chief of Department Peter Hayden said eight firefighters had suffered minor injuries but no civilians were hurt, nor was there any need to evacuate the area. Scoppetta identified the warehouse owner as Joshua Guttman, but had no other information.

John Mulligan, a department spokesman, said the fire was the biggest, exclusive of the World Trade Center, since a 19-alarm fire at Brooklyn's St. George Hotel in 1995. He said the WTC disaster was so large that the department quit counting alarms.

The site is on the waterfront in Brooklyn's Greenpoint neighborhood, a mixture of 19th century and small shipping and manufacturing firms. The famed Civil War ironclad, USS Monitor, was built in a shipyard that adjoined the warehouse property. The nearest homes are at least a block away.

The flames were clearly visible from the east side of Manhattan, where rubberneckers slowed morning rush hour traffic on the FDR Drive past the United Nations buildings. The acrid smoke, smelling at times of wood, rose in a huge black cloud visible for miles.

The fire started just after 5:30 a.m. and blazed furiously for six hours. At midmorning, the partial collapse of the largest of the seven warehouses caused utility wires to tug on nearby poles, one of which vibrated as if about to split. The crashing brick walls left only the corners of the five-story building still standing. Flames also spread to a storage lot where at least one rental truck was destroyed.

Area residents, watching from behind yellow tape, said the warehouses were destined to be torn down, for a park or other development. Some parts of Brooklyn's long-neglected waterfront have been targeted for new housing or other purposes.

"They're going to save a lot of money on demolition," said Yuda Geller, a real estate agent who lives in Greenpoint.

"A block away, you could feel the heat," said Filip Mielnicki, 17, a neighbor watching the blaze with his friend, 18-year-old Wojciech Wasilewski.

The two, students at Manhattan's High School for Environmental Studies, said they had often "hung out" in the warehouse that caved in. It contained a lot of old clothing and boxes of blank checks but was otherwise unused, Mielnicki said.

They, among others, remarked on the smoke cloud's resemblance to the pillar that drifted across Brooklyn for two days after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center's twin towers.

Fire officials said the warehouse complex on West Street between Quay and Noble streets - measuring 200 feet by 800 feet - was officially unoccupied, though it was unclear whether squatters were living there. Bales of cloth burned in one of the warehouses, Scoppetta said.



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H.S. Teacher Accused Of Trying To Kill Student

Local6.com
May 2, 2006

A high school teacher in Belleville, Ill., was arrested and charged with breaking the neck of a 17-year-old student and then leaving her to die in some woods, according to police.

Investigators said Samson Shelton, 26, who is a teacher at Columbia High School, tried to strangle Ashley Reeves and then left her to die.
Shelton was with St. Clair County detectives when they found Reeves in a park in Belleville. She survived in the woods for 30 hours before she was found.

"They worked all night, never let up, and they found her and they saved her life," St. Clair County Sheriff Mearl Justus said. "It's that simple."

Police said Shelton apparently used his forearm to break Reeves' neck.

The report said Shelton has experience wrestling other people and was due to wrestle at the South Broadway Athletic Club on May 13.

On the club's Web site, it said Shelton's signature move is a diving head-butt from the top rope.

"We're shocked, our entire school community is shocked by this situation, by the charges being filed against Mr. Shelton," Freeburg Superintendent Andrew Lehman said.

Shelton faces charges of attempted first-degree murder and aggravated kidnapping in the attack.

Ashley Reeves remains in serious condition. However her uncle died of a heart condition after learning of his niece's ordeal.

Police said the Shelton and Reeves apparently had a relationship, Local 6 News reported.



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Dollars and Nonsense


Dollar drops as great sell-off looms

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The Telegraph
05/02/06

The dollar has tumbled to one-year lows against the euro and the lowest level since the 1970s against the Canadian dollar as the markets bet on an end to monetary tightening by the US Federal Reserve.

Greenback liquidation comes amid growing concerns that global central banks and Middle East oil funds are quietly paring back their holdings of US bonds.
The dollar dropped to $1.2680 against the euro and the yen gained sharply to 112.40, though it recovered some ground in New York on strong manufacturing data.

Gold leapt to a 25-year high of $660.95 an ounce on fears the dollar decline could spiral out of control, disrupting the global financial system.

Fed chief Ben Bernanke set off the slide last week by talking of a possible "pause" in interest rate rises, citing worries about the risks of a "pronounced housing slowdown".

The comments followed Fed minutes revealing that some governors feared "the dangers of tightening too much". Rates have risen 15 times to 4.75 pc since June 2004.

The dollar slide and the Fed's apparent willingness to wink at higher inflation has roiled the bond markets, where yields on 10-year Treasuries have spiked to 5.13pc, the highest in four years.

David Bloom, a currency expert at HSBC, said the dollar was vulnerable to a steep sell-off as investors began to refocus on America's yawning current account deficit, now 7pc of GDP. The currency has been boosted for more than a year by rising US interest rates, but the yield advantage could soon slip away as Europe, Japan, and China play catch-up.

"Beware regime change. When it turns, it will be totally poisonous for the dollar because the US will have to start paying investors for the risk of financing their massive deficits," he said.

Smaller central banks are already taking precautionary steps. Sweden's Riksbank has slashed its dollar reserves from 37pc to 20pc over the past month, while the United Arab Emirates said it is planning to switch 10pc from dollars to euros.

The combined dollar reserves of China and Japan are so vast - perhaps $1,400bn, mostly in US bonds - that they cannot easily be sold without setting off a global panic. However, the Bank of Japan has stopped accumulating US treasuries now it no longer needs to hold down the yen to combat deflation.

The fall may be checked, however, by the inherent weakness of Europe's monetary union. The euro's strength in early 2005 set off mayhem in Italy, prompting two ministers to float ideas for a return to the lira, largely to bail out struggling exporters.

The European Central Bank is already softening its monetary policy to try to dampen enthusiasm for the euro, stunning the markets last month by shying away from an expected rate rise in May.

"If the euro gets to $1.30 against the dollar there will be another chorus of complaint from the weakest states," said a veteran EMU-watcher.

"If it gets above $1.40, Italy will be blown out of the euro-zone."



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Study: US mothers deserve $134,121 in salary

Wed May 3, 2006
Reuters

NEW YORK - A full-time stay-at-home mother would earn $134,121 a year if paid for all her work, an amount similar to a top U.S. ad executive, a marketing director or a judge, according to a study released on Wednesday.

A mother who works outside the home would earn an extra $85,876 annually on top of her actual wages for the work she does at home, according to the study by Waltham, Massachusetts-based compensation experts Salary.com.

To reach the projected pay figures, the survey calculated the earning power of the 10 jobs respondents said most closely comprise a mother's role -- housekeeper, day-care teacher, cook, computer operator, laundry machine operator, janitor, facilities manager, van driver, chief executive and psychologist.

"You can't put a dollar value on it. It's worth a lot more," said Kristen Krauss, 35, as she hurriedly packed her four children, all aged under 8, into a minivan in New York while searching frantically for her keys. "Just look at me."
Employed mothers reported spending on average 44 hours a week at their outside job and 49.8 hours at their home job, while the stay-at-home mother worked 91.6 hours a week, it showed.

An estimated 5.6 million women in the United States are stay-at-home mothers with children under age 15, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data.

NOT 'JUST A MOM'

"It's good to acknowledge the job that's being done, and that it's not that these women are settling for 'just a mom,"' said Bill Coleman, senior vice president of compensation at Salary.com. "They are actually doing an awful lot."

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, some 26 million women with children under age 18 work in the nation's paid labor force.

Both employed and stay-at-home mothers said the lowest-paying job of housekeeper was their most common role, with employed mothers working 7.2 hours a week as housekeeper and stay-at-home mothers working 22.1 hours in that role.

"Every husband I've ever spoken to said, 'I'm keeping my job. You keep yours.' It's a tough one," said Gillian Forrest, 39, a stay-at-home mother of 22-month-old Alex in New York. "I don't know if you could put a dollar amount on it but it would be nice to get something."



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Qatar, US row over free trade pact

AFP
Tue May 2, 2:53 PM ET

DOHA - The United States said it had yet to start talks on a free trade agreement with close ally Qatar after the gas-rich Gulf state accused Washington of multiplying conditions for such a pact.
"The US and Qatar have not yet started formal talks on an FTA," US ambassador in Doha Chase Untermeyer said in a statement, three days after Qatar's envoy in Washington likened the negotiations to a "dialogue of the deaf."

Washington and Doha "have a strong and thriving trade relationship. US direct investment in Qatar is between 60-70 billion dollars and US exports to Qatar exceeded 900 million dollars in 2005," Untermeyer said.

The two sides "signed a bilateral Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) in March of 2004. The TIFA provides a forum for bilateral discussions on trade and investment issues," he said.

Washington has signed such agreements with nine countries in the Middle East, the US diplomat said, adding: "In some cases, TIFA talks lead to a mutual decision to begin negotiating a Free Trade Agreement. However, the US and Qatar have not yet started formal talks on an FTA."

Untermeyer said that before proceeding with formal talks on an FTA with any country, "the US asks for information indicating that the laws of that country comply with international agreements in different areas, including labor and copyright protection.

"The US also seeks high-level commitments to open markets in investment, finance, telecommunications and other areas to US firms," he said.

He said Washington looked forward to "continuing to engage with Qatar through the US-Qatar TIFA."

In remarks published in the Ash-Sharq daily Saturday, Doha's ambassador in Washington Nasser Hamad al-Khalifa said talks on an FTA had stalled after turning into a "dialogue of the deaf."

"Advanced countries put a list of conditions to developing countries, and each time the latter strive to meet these terms and think they have done so, they (industrial states) take a new list of conditions out of their pocket," he said.

Qatar has close ties with the United States, which has two military bases -- Al-Udeid and As-Sayliyah -- in the tiny Gulf country.

Many US firms are involved in gas and oil ventures in Qatar.


Washington has signed FTAs with two Gulf countries -- Bahrain and Oman -- and is negotiating a similar deal with a third, the United Arab Emirates.



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The Sins Of Venezuelan President Chavez

By Matt Robson
05/02/06
Scoop.nz

The oil rich despots of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Kazakhstan use the oil wealth of their people to enrich themselves and their ruling elites, set up Swiss bank accounts and in the case of the Royal Saud Family,.finance terrorism. Democratic activists and thinkers are persecuted.

Such regimes, which strip the wealth of their countries for personal gain, are emulated in many countries and supported by the G8 as valuable allies.

In oil rich Venezuela, however, democratically elected President Hugo Chavez and his government are not following the above model. Instead Venezuela's vast oil wealth, under Chavez, is being used for massive poverty eradication programmes to provide health, education, housing and employment to the poorest. Its leaders do not siphon off wealth to offshore banks.

You would think (wouldn't you?) that the United States with its proclaimed mission of bringing democracy and its benefits to all and fighting corruption would be applauding President Chavez and holding him up as an exemplar for the despotic regimes whose oil and other mineral wealth goes into their own back pockets while the cesspools for terrorism continue to expand.

But no Washington has condemned the leader of Venezuela as a menace to world order. It has also done everything possible short of invasion, to bring Chavez down. It tried to employ its old favourite , the staged coup, in 2002.

According to John Negroponte, Bush's Director of National Intelligence , the despicable Chavez is " spending considerable sums involving himself in the political and eceonomic life of other countries in Latin America and elsewhere, this despite the very real economic development and social needs in his own country."

Now this particular US pot has a massive underclass with huge social and economic needs ( remember who suffered from Hurricane Katrina) and yet cheerfully spends 1 billion dollars a week in Iraq.

Meanwhile the Venezualan kettle is setting a cracking pace in improving the lives of the poorest workers and farmers and has been banking $10 billion per year in a special fund to continue tackling the causes of poverty.

But, complains the New York Times on April 4th, echoing the chagrin of the Bush administration , this abomination of a President is using the oil wealth to influence other countries : With Venezuela's oil revenues rising 32 percent last year , Mr Chavez has been subsidising samba parades in Brazil, eye surgery for poor Mexicans and even heating fuel for poor families from Maine to the Bronx to Philadelphia. By some estimates , the spending now surpasses the nearly $ 2 billion Washington allocates to pay for development programmes and the drug war in western South America."


So while the US selfessly funds development programs and fights drug wars which just happen to provide the cash and weaponry to keep corrupt regimes in power, the abominable Chavez is winning supporters across Latin America by investing in social and health programmes and making sure that the samba parade on Brazil went off with an even bigger bang then usual. How dare he peddle influence, the preserve of the old imperialist powers let alone spread socialist ideas that another world is possible by using national resources for the common good at home and abroad.

But the New York Times in the April 4 article lets us into the real secret of why Chavez is such a dangerous fellow for throwing money at poverty rather than handing it over to multinational corporations.. Apparently he is intent on being " the next Fidel Castro, a hero to the masses who is intent on opposing every move the United States makes, but with an important advantage.

It was bad enough having that Fidel Castro and his communist government nationalise US corporations , kick out the Mafia and their gambling, prostitution and drug rackets and provide free heath care and education to all Cubans after the Revolution in 1959.

Now along comes this Hugo come lately with vastly greater wealth that used to flow North spreading his bad influence with all those newly elected leftist governments in Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay.

And it is this influence that is sending the US ballistic about comrade Hugo.
New Zealand should look more closely at this challenge to the policies of the rich world. . For the countries of Latin America as a whole are demanding social and economic policies that are opposed to the measures that have allowed United States and European corporations to seize control of the internal markets of Latin America and deepen the dependence and poverty of the continent.

The Latin American countries , with Venezuela leading the charge , are developing their common market mechanism Mercosur to counter the US plan to expand the free trade area created by NAFTA.

What Venezuela has brought to Mercosur is an impetus to boosting the integration process between the economies where the member countries will co-operate on all levels - economic , political , social and cultural. Co-operative advantage under Venezuelan influence is edging out the neoliberal philosophy of comparative advantage.

And to make matters worse, from the perspective of Western corporations, Venezuela and Cuba are showing how it can be done to the benefit of their peoples and the peoples of the other Mercosur countries.

Venezuela has signed dozens of agreements with Cuba. Among them is a plan that uses Cuban expertise in healthcare to benefit the entire continent. This has included 600 new diagnosis centres for Venezuela, 600 dispensaries and 35 hi-tech centres to guarantee free healthcare for all Venezuelans who can also travel to Cuba for cataract operations and this scheme is being extended throughout Latin America.

Venezuela has opened branches of its national oil company in Cuba and many preferential trade tarfiffs have been put in place thus boosting employment in both countries.

The Venezuelan -Cuban axis condemned by Washington as an axis of evil is being
seen by Latin Americans as a beacon of hope. It is an example of genuine fair trade:
Each country provides what it is best placed to produce, in return for what it most needs, independent of global market prices.

The model is expanding. The Venezualan initiative Petro Caribe is a company created to provide energy resources to 11 Caribbean countries at a low price.

Venezuela is cooperating with Uruguay and Brazil to build oil refineries. The possibility of a single pan-South American oil company to benefit all is being discussed.

And the views on Latin America disseminated by the New York Times and other western media is under challenge by Telesur which is jointly owned by the governments of Venezuela, Uruguay, Cuba and Argentina. This television channel will provide news free of commercial interests and the influence of North American media.

Si senor , something is happening south of the border and New Zealand should be watching as this challenge to globalisation a la the neo liberal model grows stronger.
Perhaps it is time for Phil Goff to shake hands with Hugo Chavez rather than Donald Rumsfeld.

Matt Robson is a former New Zealand Cabinet Minister and MP. In the Labour-Alliance Government Mr Robson was the Associate Minister for Foreign Affairs




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Occupied Iraq


US, Iraqi forces kill over 100 insurgents in Ramadi

Reuters
May 2 2006

BAGHDAD - U.S. and Iraqi forces killed more than 100 insurgents last week in the town of Ramadi in the rebel heartland of Anbar province, the U.S. military said on Tuesday.

Two Iraqi soldiers died in the fighting and no Americans were killed, the military said in a written response, confirming a media report. It did not provide more details.

Reuters witnesses in Ramadi, 110 km (68 miles), west of Baghdad, said there were heavy clashes last week between U.S. forces and insurgents inside Ramadi but could not independently confirm such a high number of insurgents killed.

Ramadi is a stronghold of Sunni Arab insurgents fighting U.S. and Iraqi forces and the Shi'ite- and Kurdish-led government in Baghdad.


Comment: Given previous evidence, it is very likely that a large percentage of these 100 Iraqis were not even holding guns or involved in fighting.

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U.S. Contractor Kills Ambulance Crewman:

Reuters
03/05/2006

U.S. private security contractors shot dead an Iraqi ambulance crewman as the ambulance approached a site in northern Baghdad where the contractors' armoured vehicle had been hit by a roadside bomb, a U.S. military spokesman said.


Comment: U.S. contractors are vicious bloodthirsty killers with no respect for any human life.

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Suicide bomber kills at least 18 in Iraq

Reuters
Wed May 3, 2006

FALLUJA, Iraq - A suicide bomber blew himself up among a crowd of men waiting to sign up to join the police force in the Iraqi city of Falluja on Wednesday, killing at least 18 people, doctors said.

Violence has flared in mainly Sunni Arab Anbar province, with U.S. and Iraqi forces killing over 100 insurgents over the past week in the capital, Ramadi, west of Falluja, and a suicide car bomber killing 10 in an attempt to assassinate the governor on Tuesday.


Comment: How easy it is to stage a "suicide bombing".

Consider the example of two British agents apprehended last September driving a car bomb and wearing full Arab garb.

Consider the words of Robert Fisk in a recent article:
The Americans, my interlocutor suspected, are trying to provoke an Iraqi civil war so that Sunni Muslim insurgents spend their energies killing their Shia co-religionists rather than soldiers of the Western occupation forces. "I swear to you that we have very good information," my source says, finger stabbing the air in front of him. "One young Iraqi man told us that he was trained by the Americans as a policeman in Baghdad and he spent 70 per cent of his time learning to drive and 30 per cent in weapons training. They said to him: 'Come back in a week.' When he went back, they gave him a mobile phone and told him to drive into a crowded area near a mosque and phone them. He waited in the car but couldn't get the right mobile signal. So he got out of the car to where he received a better signal. Then his car blew up."

"There was another man, trained by the Americans for the police. He too was given a mobile and told to drive to an area where there was a crowd - maybe a protest - and to call them and tell them what was happening. Again, his new mobile was not working. So he went to a landline phone and called the Americans and told them: 'Here I am, in the place you sent me and I can tell you what's happening here.' And at that moment there was a big explosion in his car."
Consider the the words of John Kaminski:
Khadduri's report went like this:

"A few days ago, an American manned check point confiscated the driver license of a driver and told him to report to an American military camp near Baghdad airport for interrogation and in order to retrieve his license. The next day, the driver did visit the camp and he was allowed in the camp with his car. He was admitted to a room for an interrogation that lasted half an hour. At the end of the session, the American interrogator told him: 'OK, there is nothing against you, but you do know that Iraq is now sovereign and is in charge of its own affairs. Hence, we have forwarded your papers and license to al-Kadhimia police station for processing. Therefore, go there with this clearance to reclaim your license. At the police station, ask for Lt. Hussain Mohammed, who is waiting for you now. Go there now quickly, before he leaves his shift work".

The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was driving as if carrying a heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter that kept hovering overhead, as if trailing him. He stopped the car and inspected it carefully. He found nearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat and along the two back doors.

The only feasible explanation for this incident is that the car was indeed booby trapped by the Americans and intended for the al-Khadimiya Shiite district of Baghdad. The helicopter was monitoring his movement and witnessing the anticipated "hideous attack by foreign elements".

The same scenario was repeated in Mosul, in the north of Iraq. A car was confiscated along with the driver's license. He did follow up on the matter and finally reclaimed his car but was told to go to a police station to reclaim his license. Fortunately for him, the car broke down on the way to the police station. The inspecting car mechanic discovered that the spare tire was fully laden with explosives."

If this were the only example of this type I heard, I might have let it pass as just a story. But it wasn't.

There was also the sorry tale of the Iraqi man who saw American soldiers plant a bomb which shortly thereafter exploded, and when he said so out loud for all to hear, he was hauled away, never to be seen again.

This story was reported on arguably the most authentic and riveting source of news from Iraq, the heart-rending "Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq," which is compiled by someone known only as Riverbend or Iraqi Girl. Again, recommended reading.

But back to the explosions. One of the larger blasts was in an area called Ma'moun, which is a middle class area located in west Baghdad. It's a relatively calm residential area with shops that provide the basics and a bit more. It happened in the morning, as the shops were opening up for their daily business and it occurred right in front of a butcher's shop. Immediately after, we heard that a man living in a house in front of the blast site was hauled off by the Americans because it was said that after the bomb went off, he sniped an Iraqi National Guardsman.

I didn't think much about the story - nothing about it stood out: an explosion and a sniper - hardly an anomaly. The interesting news started circulating a couple of days later. People from the area claim that the man was taken away not because he shot anyone, but because he knew too much about the bomb. Rumor has it that he saw an American patrol passing through the area and pausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion. Soon after they drove away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued. He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it. He was promptly taken away.

On May 13, 2005, a 64 years old Iraqi farmer, Haj Haidar Abu Sijjad, took his tomato load in his pickup truck from Hilla to Baghdad, accompanied by Ali, his 11 years old grandson. They were stopped at an American check point and were asked to dismount. An American soldier climbed on the back of the pickup truck, followed by another a few minutes later, and thoroughly inspected the tomato filled plastic containers for about 10 minutes. Haj Haidar and his grandson were then allowed to proceed to Baghdad.

A minute later, his grandson told him that he saw one of the American soldiers putting a grey melon size object in the back among the tomato containers. The Haj immediately slammed on the brakes and stopped the car at the side of the road, at a relatively far distance from the check point. He found a time bomb with the clock ticking tucked among his tomatoes. He immediately recognized it, as he was an ex-army soldier. Panicking, he grabbed his grandson and ran away from the car. Then, realizing that the car was his only means of work, he went back, took the bomb and carried it in fear. He threw it in a deep ditch by the side of the road that was dug by Iraqi soldiers in preparation for the war, two years ago.

Upon returning from Baghdad, he found out that the bomb had indeed exploded, killing three sheep and injuring their shepherd in his head. He thanked God for giving him the courage to go back and remove the bomb, and for the luck in that the American soldiers did not notice his sudden stop at a distance and his getting rid of the bomb.

"They intended it to explode in Baghdad and claim that it is the work of the 'terrorists', or 'insurgents' or who call themselves the 'Resistance'.


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Spying and Lying


Electronic Voting Switch Threatens Mass Confusion

The Financial Times
Monday 01 May 2006

The last three election cycles in the US have been marked by controversy not only about candidates, but also about the fairness and accuracy of the voting process. And as voters head to the polls today for primaries in some jurisdictions, the coming cycle promises more of the same.
With about 8,000 separate election authorities managing approximately 175,000 polling places and perhaps as many as 150,000 different ballot forms that include choices for everyone from senator to dogcatcher, American elections are complex even when all goes well. But this cycle sees many states and smaller jurisdictions making last-minute efforts to switch to electronic voting, and early signs of trouble are appearing.

In California, the League of Women Voters has protested against a new, computerised statewide election registry that the group says is improperly rejecting registered voters, while county clerks in several Indiana jurisdictions complained that the electronic ballots programmed by the vendors of their electronic voting machines had been delivered late, were incorrect and poorly proofread.

The clerk for Marion County - the state's most populous - said that, so far, nine rounds of "fixes" had been required; she was unsure whether the primary vote today could be held without problems, according to The Indianapolis Star.

The scramble to convert to electronic voting has spurred disputes with vendors of the new machines. Last month, Oregon filed a breach of contract lawsuit against Election Systems & Software, alleging that the company reneged on a commitment to supply the state with electronic voting machines suitable for handicapped people for its May 16 primary.

In Florida, ground zero for election disasters in 2000, the election supervisor for Leon County allowed anti-electronic voting activists to try breaching security in the county's optical scan voting system, prompting the big three electronic voting systems companies - Diebold, Election Systems & Services, and Sequoia - to refuse to sell the county new machines. The Florida secretary of state has since opened an anti-trust investigation.

After the 2000 presidential election made "hanging chad" a sure laugh line for television comics, Congress passed the "Help America Vote Act", or Hava.

The law promised states funding to replace old voting technology with computerised systems.

The new systems fall into two categories - optical scan systems, in which voters mark paper ballots that are read by computer scanners, and direct recording electronic (DRE) systems in which voters touch computer screens or push buttons to mark their ballots.

But delays in setting standards, insufficient funding for Hava, and lack of technical expertise among the nation's election administrators have election experts predicting the 2006 election will not run smoothly.

Last September, the US Government Accountability Office issued a report with a litany of potential flaws in the reliability and sec-urity of electronic voting and warned that steps needed to ensure voter confidence in the integrity of the vote were unlikely to be in place in time for the 2006 election.

A principal author of the report, analyst David Powner, said in an interview that since last autumn, nothing had happened to change the report's conclusions.

One problem is that many of the new voting machines that will be deployed are arriving from offshore manufacturing sites - mainly China - and are being rushed into service without adequate quality controls, says Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services, a voting consultancy firm.

In some cases, election officials are "getting equipment three weeks before the election".

"We're all behind the eight ball," says Mr Brace.

"There are going to be enough problem areas that the issue of voting will be front and centre on everybody's plate."

Texans who want to vote early in elections set for May 12 may be voting on paper ballots because Election Systems & Software, one of the big e-voting machine vendors, is late in providing computer coding and electronic ballots for some of the 140 counties that use the company's machines. The company's president went to the state last week to mollify irritated election officials.



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Q. What could a boarding pass tell an identity fraudster about you? A. Way too much

Wednesday May 3, 2006
The Guardian


A simple airline stub, picked out of a bin near Heathrow, led Steve Boggan to investigate a shocking breach of security

This is the story of a piece of paper no bigger than a credit card, thrown away in a dustbin on the Heathrow Express to Paddington station. It was nestling among chewing gum wrappers and baggage tags, cast off by some weary traveller, when I first laid eyes on it just over a month ago.

The traveller's name was Mark Broer. I know this because the paper - actually a flimsy piece of card - was a discarded British Airways boarding-pass stub, the small section of the pass displaying your name and seat number. The stub you probably throw away as soon as you leave your flight.

It said Broer had flown from Brussels to London on March 15 at 7.10am on BA flight 389 in seat 03C. It also told me he was a "Gold" standard passenger and gave me his frequent-flyer number. I picked up the stub, mindful of a conversation I had had with a computer security expert two months earlier, and put it in my pocket.

If the expert was right, this stub would enable me to access Broer's personal information, including his passport number, date of birth and nationality. It would provide the building blocks for stealing his identity, ruining his future travel plans - and even allow me to fake his passport.

It would also serve as the perfect tool for demonstrating the chaotic collection, storage and security of personal information gathered as a result of America's near-fanatical desire to collect data on travellers flying to the US - and raise serious questions about the sort of problems we can expect when ID cards are introduced in 2008. [...]
To understand why the piece of paper I found on the Heathrow Express is important, it is necessary to go back not, as you might expect, to 9/11, but to 1996 and the crash of TWA Flight 800 over Long Island Sound, 12 minutes out of New York, with the loss of 230 lives. Initially, crash investigators suspected a terrorist bomb might have brought down the aircraft. This was later ruled out, but already the Clinton administration had decided it was time to devise a security system that would weed out potential terrorists before they boarded a flight. This was called Capps, the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-screening System.

It was a prosaic, relatively unambitious idea at first. For example, in highly simplistic terms, if someone bought a one-way ticket, paid in cash and checked in no baggage, they would be flagged up as an individual who had no intention of arriving or of going home. A bomber, perhaps.

After 9/11, the ambitions for such screening grew exponentially and the newly founded Department of Homeland Security began inviting computer companies to develop intelligent systems that could "mine" data on individuals, whizzing round state, private and public databases to establish what kind of person was buying the ticket.

In 2003, one of the pioneers of the system, speaking anonymously, told me that the project, by now called Capps II, was being designed to designate travellers as green, amber or red risks. Green would be an individual with no criminal record - a US citizen, perhaps, who had a steady job and a settled home, was a frequent flyer and so on. Amber would be someone who had not provided enough information to confirm all of this and who might be stopped at US Immigration and asked to provide clearer proof of ID. Red would be someone who might be linked to an ever-growing list of suspected terrorists - or someone whose name matched such a suspect.

"If you are an American who has volunteered lots of details proving that you are who you say you are, that you have a stable home, live in a community, aren't a criminal, [Capps II] will flag you up as green and you will be automatically allowed on to your flight," the pioneer told me. "The problem is that if the system doesn't have a lot of information on you, or you have ordered a halal meal, or have a name similar to a known terrorist, or even if you are a foreigner, you'll most likely be flagged amber and held back to be asked for further details. If you are European and the US government is short of information on you - or, as is likely, has incorrect information on you - you can reckon on delay after delay unless you agree to let them delve into your private details.

"That is inconvenient enough but, as we tested the system, it became clear that information was going to be used to build a complete picture of you from lots of private databases - your credit record, your travel history, your criminal record, whether you had the remotest dubious links with anyone at your college who became a terrorist. I began to feel more and more uncomfortable about it."

Eventually, he quit the programme.

All of this was on my mind as I sat down with my computer expert, Adam Laurie, one of the founders of a company called the Bunker Secure Hosting, to examine Broer's boarding-pass stub. Laurie is known in cyber-circles as something of a white knight, a computer wizard who not only advises companies on how to make their systems secure, but also cares about civil rights and privacy. He and his brother Ben are renowned among web designers as the men who developed Apache SSL - the software that makes most of the world's web pages secure - and then gave it away for free.

We logged on to the BA website, bought a ticket in Broer's name and then, using the frequent flyer number on his boarding pass stub, without typing in a password, were given full access to all his personal details - including his passport number, the date it expired, his nationality (he is Dutch, living in the UK) and his date of birth. The system even allowed us to change the information.

Using this information and surfing publicly available databases, we were able - within 15 minutes - to find out where Broer lived, who lived there with him, where he worked, which universities he had attended and even how much his house was worth when he bought it two years ago. (This was particularly easy given his unusual name, but it would have been possible even if his name had been John Smith. We now had his date of birth and passport number, so we would have known exactly which John Smith.)

Laurie was anything but smug.

"This is terrible," he said. "It just shows what happens when governments begin demanding more and more of our personal information and then entrust it to companies simply not geared up for collecting or securing it as it gets shared around more and more people. It doesn't enhance our security; it undermines it."

Just over $100m had been spent on Capps II before it was scrapped in July 2004. Campaigners in the US had objected to it on grounds of privacy, and airlines such as JetBlue and American faced boycotts when it emerged that they were involved in trials - handing over passenger information - with the Department of Homeland Security's Transportation Security Administration. Even worse, JetBlue admitted it had given the private records of 5 million passengers to a commercial company for analysis - and some of this was posted on the internet.

But the problems did not end with the demise of Capps II. Earlier that month, after 18 months of acrimonious negotiation, the EU caved in to American demands that European airlines, too, should hand over passenger information to the United States Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, BCBP, before their aircraft would be allowed to land on US soil. The BCBP wanted up to 60 pieces of information routinely gathered by booking agencies and stored as a Passenger Name Record, PNR. This included not only your flight details, name, address and so on, but also your travel itinerary, where you were staying, with whom you travelled, whether you booked a hire car in the US, whether you booked a smoking room in your hotel, even if you ordered a halal or kosher meal. And the US authorities wanted to keep it all for 50 years.

At first, the European Commission argued that surrendering such information would be in breach of European data protection law. Eventually, however, in the face of huge fines for airlines and cancelled landing slots, it agreed that 34 items from PNRs could be handed over and kept by the US for three and a half years.

Capps II was superseded by a new system called Secure Flight in August 2004. Later, in October last year, the BCBP demanded that airlines travelling to, or through, the US should forward "advance passenger information", including passport number and date of birth, before passengers would be allowed to travel. It called this the advance passenger information system, or APIS. This is the information that Laurie and I had accessed through the BA website.

"The problem here is that a commercial organisation is being given the task of collecting data on behalf of a foreign government, for which it gets no financial reward, and which offers no business benefit in return," says Laurie. "Naturally, in such a case, they will seek to minimise their costs, which they do by handing the problem off to the passengers themselves. This has the neat side-effect of also handing off liability for data errors.

"You can imagine the case where a businessman's trip gets delayed because his passport details were incorrectly entered and he was mistaken for a terrorist. Since BA didn't enter the data - frequent flyers are asked to do it themselves - they can't be held responsible and can't be sued for his lost business."

By the time I found the ticket stub and went to Laurie, he had already reported his suspicions about a potential security lapse to BA (on January 20) by email. He received no response, so followed up with a telephone call asking for the airline's security officer. He was told there wasn't one, so he explained the lapse to an employee. Nothing was done and he still has not been contacted.

Three months ago, after further objections in the US, but before our investigation, Secure Flight was suspended after costing the US taxpayer $144m. At the time, Kip Hawley, transportation security administrator, said: "While the Secure Flight regulation is being developed, this is the time to ensure that the Secure Flight security, operational and privacy foundation is solid."

The TSA said it would continue its passenger pre-screening programme in yet another guise after it had been audited and added that it had plans to introduce more security, privacy and redress for errors - confirming critics' suspicions that no such systems were yet in place. To the consternation of privacy activists in Europe, the TSA also spelled out plans for its desire for various US government departments to share information, including yours and mine.

Dr Gus Hosein, a visiting fellow specialising in privacy and terrorism at the London School of Economics, is concerned about where the whole project will go next.

"They want to extend the advance passenger information system [APIS] to include data on where passengers are going and where they are staying because of concerns over plagues," he says. "For example, if bird flu breaks out, they want to know where all the foreign travellers are. The airlines hate this. It is a security nightmare. Soon the US will demand biometric information [fingerprints, retina scans etc] and they will share that around.

"But what the BA lapse shows is that companies cannot be trusted to gather this information without it getting out to criminals who would abuse it. The potential for identity theft is huge, but the number of agencies among which it will be shared is just growing and growing."

And that is where concern comes in over the UK's proposed ID cards, which may one day be needed to travel to the US. According to the Home Office, the identity cards bill currently going through Parliament allows for up to 40 pieces of personal information to be held on the proposed ID card, with digital biometric details of all of your fingerprints, both your irises and your face, all of which can be transmitted to electronic readers. The cards will contain a microchip the size of a grain of sand linked to a tiny embedded antenna that transmits all the information when contacted by an electronic reader.

This readable system, known as Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, has recently been installed in new British passports. The Home Office says the information can be transmitted across a distance of only a couple of centimetres because the chips have no power of their own - they simply bounce back a response to a weak signal sent from passport readers at immigration points.

However, the suspicion is that the distance over which the signal can be read relates only to the weakness of the signal sent out by the readers. What if the readers sent out much stronger signals? Potentially, then, criminals with powerful readers could suck out your information as you passed by. The Government denies that this scenario is viable, but, in January, Dutch security specialists Riscure successfully read and de-encrypted information from its country's new biometric passports from a distance of about 30ft in just two hours.

"The Home Office says British passport information is encrypted, but it's a pretty basic form of encryption," says Hosein. "Everyone expects the ID cards to be equally insecure. If the government insists they won't be cracked, read or copied, they're kidding themselves and us."

BA has now closed its security loophole after being contacted by the Guardian in March, but that particular lapse is beside the point. Because of the pressure being applied to airlines by the US, breaches will happen again elsewhere as our personal data whizzes around the globe, often without our knowledge or consent.

Meanwhile, accountability remains lamentable. Several calls to the US Transportation Security Administration were not returned.

Perhaps the last word should go to Mark Broer, the man whose boarding pass stub started off this virtual paper chase. He is aged 41 and is a successful executive with a pharmaceutical recruitment company. When I told him what we had done with his boarding pass stub, he was appalled.

"I travel regularly and, because I go to the US, I submitted my personal information and passport number - it is required if you are a frequent flyer and want to check yourself in," he says. "Experienced travellers today know that they have to give up information for ease of travel and to fight terrorism. It is an exchange of information in return for convenience. But as far as I'm concerned, having that information leaked out to people who could steal my identity wasn't part of the deal."



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FBI buying cell phone records online

MSNBC
01/05/2006

Net sellers tell Congress they supply law enforcement officials with call lists

A congressional panel investigating the fraudulent acquisition and sale of mobile phone records by Internet Web firms has collected evidence that indicates law enforcement officials at the local, state and federal levels use the Internet-based services as an investigative short-cut, MSNBC.com has learned. At least one Web-based data seller has told Congress that the FBI is a client.

The phone records are generally acquired by the resellers through fraudulent means and would not be admissible in court as evidence, but they are still helpful as an investigative tool, say officials familiar with the investigation.

The alleged use of the customer records by law enforcement officials could raise legal and ethical questions, as it would circumvent due process and years of established laws protecting consumers from random eavesdropping on electronic communications.

The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee and its Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee are looking into the fraudulent acquisition of consumer cell phone records by private investigators and online data sellers - an issue that exploded into the public sphere earlier this year after a blogger was able to purchase cell phone records of former presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark. But the business was thriving online long for years before that, with hundreds of Web sites advertising that they could obtain anyone's cell phone records for about $100.

The committee is attempting to learn who's selling the cell phone records, and who's buying.

FBI says it looks to private firms for help
As part of its inquiry, the committee has asked dozens of Web sellers to reveal their customers lists. MSNBC.com has viewed one such list, and spoken with several other data sellers.

One seller, Advanced Research Inc., which operates ADVSearch.com, told the committee that it has sold data to the FBI.

"On occasion, ARI (Advanced Research) has done work for municipalities, banks, mortgage and insurance companies, private companies, foreign governments, law enforcement, even the FBI," ARI's letter to Congress said.

FBI spokesman Richard J. Kolko said Sunday he could not confirm or deny whether the bureau had received mobile phone records from Advanced Research, but acknowledged that the FBI sometimes buys or receives data from private companies to help with investigations. But he said agents would never break any laws to obtain such evidence.

"The FBI, in pursuit of its investigative priorities, at times gets information from private companies that provide information to the public, or at least to others outside of the government," Kolko said. "This investigative technique is used to support investigations or other aspects of our missions. When this is done, we adhere to all established DOJ guidelines, FBI policy and the law."

Kolko also said he could not comment on processes the FBI may have in place to ensure that data it receives from private companies has been acquired legally by intermediaries.

Congress is now investigating how Web phone records sellers obtain their data; officials at state and federal agencies have said acquisition of customer mobile phone records without their consent is a criminal act.

Many buyers involved in debt collection
The dozens of Web sites now being investigated by Congress sell to a wide cross-section of customers buying data. Evidence gathered so far suggests many purchasers are involved in debt collection. But a steady stream of evidence also implicates law enforcement officials, who occasionally use the services as a shortcut, avoiding the need for court orders generally required to see phone records.

The phone records are often obtained by private investigators through a tactic known as "pretexting." Investigators call mobile-phone companies posing as legitimate customers and trick service representatives into delivering copies of records.

Many Web site sellers maintain the practice is legal, but cell phone companies, the Federal Communications Commissions and numerous state attorneys general have said impersonation of consumers is fraud. Several states also have sued data brokers over the acquisition and sale of phone records in recent months.

Just this week, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill making acquisition of cell records through pretexting explicitly illegal. Those who obtain such records could face up to 20 years jail time under the bill that passed by a vote of 409-0 on Tuesday.

In its response to an inquiry by congressional investigators, Texas-based PDJ Investigations - which runs several look-up sites - stated that it provide records to law enforcement officers.

"On numerous occasions a wide variety of law enforcement officials on a federal, state and local level have asked for investigative assistance, which PDJ has provided free of charge," the company wrote.

The lawyer for another firm that's being questioned by Congress - IEI Investigations, also known as BestPeopleSearch.com - said he believed his client also has provided services to law enforcement for free and said the practice is common in the industry.

"It's a much easier and cheaper path to gather information," said the company's Los Angeles-based lawyer, Larry Slade. "But when law enforcement uses it, it raises other issues."

Civil liberties attorneys say the use of illegally obtained cell phone records as part of a criminal investigation raises serious questions.

'Established legal procedures' circumvented
"There are established legal procedures for obtaining phone records that provide checks against improper access," said Chris Hoofnagle, an attorney at the Electronic Privacy Information Center who complained to the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission last year about the availability of cell phone records online. "These legal procedures allow fast access to phone record for law enforcement and provide accountability. That's what missing here, the accountability."

A publicly elected official caught up in the congressional inquiry also has said publicly that he obtained phone records for law enforcement officials. Colorado state Rep. Jim Welker, owner of Universal Communications Co., told the Rocky Mountain News earlier this month that he sold phone records to law enforcement officials, as well as debt collectors and financial companies.

"I look at it (the business) as helping the good guys find the bad people," he told the paper. Welker -- an enigmatic figure in Colorado politics who recently said at a press conference that legalizing gay marriage would eventually lead to inter-species marriage -- did not return phone calls from MSNBC.com seeking comment.

One potential customer of MPIS Inc.'s PublicPeopleFinder.com service was the Ruston, La., Police Department. In January, Ruston Police Chief Randal Hermes told MSNBC.com that he sent an e-mail to MPIS asking about the Web site's ability to locate cell phone calling records.

"We are finding the need more and more often to search cellular telephone records," the letter said. "It's unbelievable to me how difficult it is in this day and time to identify the subscriber of a cell phone."

In reply, MPIS's Jodi Leatherman wrote, "We're always looking to help law enforcement," Hermes said.

When asked about the e-mail exchange, Hermes said his department was investigating a string of cell phone thefts, and had "run into some pretty rough road blocks" trying to get records from cell phone companies. Up-to-the minute calling records are the best way to find a thief after a cell phone is stolen, but the records can be hard to get, he said. [...]



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Ark's Quantum Quirks

Ark
Signs of the Times
May 3, 2006

Ark

Mass Media




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