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Editorial: Endgame for the Constitution
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
May 2, 2006
The Bush administration has done more damage to Americans and more harm to America's reputation than any other administration in history. Yet, a majority of Republicans still support Bush. This tells much about blind party loyalty.
By encouraging the move offshore of American jobs and manufacturing, Bush has run up tremendous trade deficits that have undermined the world's confidence in the dollar as the reserve currency. Recently, both Chinese and Russian government officials warned of the dollar's shaky status. The fall in confidence in the dollar is evidenced by the sharp run-up in the price of gold. In January 2001 the price of gold was about $240 per ounce. Today the price is $660 per ounce.
The price of gasoline has risen from around $1.30 per gallon to over $3.00 per gallon. Obviously, Bush's war in the Middle East did not ensure the oil supply.
On Bush's watch, three million US manufacturing jobs have disappeared. Tens of thousands of highly qualified US engineers have lost their employment. US job growth has fallen six to seven million jobs behind population growth. Recent college graduates are employed as waitresses and bartenders.
Illegal immigration has continued to explode. While Bush spends $1 trillion and many lives trying to control borders in the MIddle East, America's borders remain undefended and over run. Bush advocates amnesty for the illegals who have invaded America while Bush invades distant countries.
On false pretenses Bush invaded Iraq, a country that comprised no threat to America. American high explosives have devastated Iraq and its infrastructure and killed at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians, people who Bush claims to be bringing freedom and democracy.
All stability has disappeared from Iraq. Iraqis now live in fear of one another as well as fear of American troops. On April 28 Iraqi vice president Adil Abdul-Mahdi said that 100,000 Iraqi families have been uprooted by the sectarian violence unleashed by Bush's overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Not content with the uncontrollable mayhem he has brought to Iraq, Bush hopes to expand the catastrophe by attacking Iran. The US Secretary of State, sounding like the warmonger she is, says the US may ignore the United Nations and attack Iran on its own initiative. This would be the second time that the Bush administration initiated wars of aggression--war crimes under the Nuremburg standard established by the US.
Bush claims that he is higher authority than both US law and international law. In the past, US presidents vetoed laws with which they disagreed. Bush signs the laws and ignores them.
Bush has declared himself to be the sole judge of the limits of his powers--a claim that violates Bush's oath of office to uphold the US Constitution. Bush has set aside the Bill of Rights by detaining people indefinitely without charges, by kidnapping and torturing people, and by spying on Americans without warrants. These are actions that are illegal under law as well as unconstitutional. All of these violations of law and the Constitution are serious impeachable offenses.
Yet. Congress is supine as the Bush regime exercises dictatorial powers. The exercise of these dictatorial powers by the executive is a far greater danger to American liberty than are Muslim terrorists.
Bush's apologists claim that only terrorists have anything to fear. However, unaccountable executive power is inconsistent with free societies. America is no exception. Unless Bush is impeached and turned over to the war crimes court in the Hague, Americans will never reclaim their liberties from an executive branch that has established itself as the sole judge of the limits of its powers.
As Jacob Hornberger, president of the Future of Freedom Foundation wrote last month, "we now live in a nation in which the president has the omnipotent power to ignore all constitutional restraints on his power." Bruce Fein, a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration said that Bush "is moving us toward an unlimited executive power."
The Bush regime's practice of excessive secrecy and denial of information to Congress allows the regime to avoid judicial review of its power claims. Bush ignores Congress and evades the courts.
When President Richard Nixon made excessive claims for presidential powers, principled Republicans revolted and helped to bring down Nixon. Today's Republicans are loyal only to power. They have no principles. By supporting Bush, Republicans are bringing down America.
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Editorial: Success Is Not An Option
Jason Miller
01/05/2006
To the Rogue Tyrants Belong the Spoils
Were America's ruling elites forced to become conscienceless criminals so they could fend off the scimitar-bearing Islamic hordes itching to rape, behead, and eviscerate the entire freedom-loving American population?
Or is it that these avaricious, bellicose de facto rulers of America have treated humanity with contempt for years and are simply targeting their latest scapegoat?
Perhaps the answer lies in Adam Smith's quote, cited by Noam Chomsky in his latest book:
"the vile maxim of the masters of mankind: ...All for ourselves, and nothing for other people."
With the arsenal of weapons of mass destruction at its disposal and the economic influence it wields, the US government subjugates mankind through intimidation, extortion, and military domination. Despite myriad signs of its empire declining, America's ruling class easily qualifies as the "masters of mankind".
Noam Chomsky recently penned Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy, a book in which he provided a powerfully-constructed and heavily documented argument that the United States is a failed state, like many of the nations it has declared to be threats to itself and its allies.
As Chomsky suggested, the Bush Regime and its multiple components (including corporate interests, many of America's wealthy, certain radical segments of the Christian population, AIPAC and its supporters, and those amongst the middle and working class still beguiled by the corporate media) have been quick to label other nations as failed states to achieve their imperialist goals.
Iraq was a failed state and a threat to the United States. Hence the invasion and occupation. Haiti was a failed state and its people were suffering. Enter United States intervention and subsequent Haitian misery.
According to Chomsky, there are three essential components to a failed state:
1. their inability or unwillingness to protect their citizens from violence and perhaps even destruction.
2. their tendency to regard themselves as beyond the reach of domestic or international law, and hence free to carry out aggression and violence.
3. And if they have democratic forms, they suffer from a serious "democratic deficit" that deprives their formal democratic institutions of real substance.
Examples abound to support Chomsky's assertion that the United States is indeed as much of a failed state as those it is so quick to criticize, subvert, and in some cases, invade.
America began to decline seriously under Reagan, continued its precipitous drop under Bush I and Clinton, and has reached disturbing lows under Bush II. Whether Republican or Democrat, successive United States governments degenerated into an entity which is betraying a majority of its people and is a significant threat to the continued existence of the human species: a failed state.
Human Beings are Expendable in our Quest for Money and Power
Under Bush II, the United States launched an invasion against a sovereign nation which posed no threat to the United States or its allies. US-driven UN economic sanctions had neutered Hussein militarily while resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.
It is now common knowledge that significant evidence exists that the Bush Regime took America to war based on what it knew to be false information. To date, at least 250,000 Iraqis and 2,400 Americans have died as a result of the lies of a failed state.
How many more Americans will die as a result of the hatred and furor ignited by US foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East? What will be the extent of the backlash for the US invasion of Iraq and its ongoing support of Israel's genocidal acts against the Palestinians?
Consider Chomsky's take on the obscene hypocrisy of American foreign policy:
"There is a straightforward single standard: Their terror against us and our clients is the ultimate evil, while our terror against them does not exist-or, if it does, it is entirely appropriate."
It is well-documented that the United States has slaughtered millions of innocent civilians (3 million in Vietnam alone) in wars of imperial conquest waged under the guise of "protecting" the American people from grossly overstated threats like Communism. America's elite rulers are so intent on their short-term power and money grab that they fail to realize (or more likely do not care) that they are putting many of their own people in grave danger by severely abusing the rest of humanity.
Want more evidence that the US government lacks the desire or capacity to protect the American people?
Contemplate the refusal to acknowledge the reality of global warming or to participate in the Kyoto Treaty, the perpetuation and expansion of its nuclear arsenal, tax cuts for the wealthy, deep cuts in social programs coupled with increased military spending at an insane clip, the creation of $27,000 worth of debt for each American, increased privatization, and further deregulation of corporations. In the United States, policies and laws hostile to the environment, consumers, the working class, and minorities have become the status quo.
Sadly, Katrina and New Orleans provide a glimpse of the future for the majority of Americans if current social and political trends continue. Such is life in a failed state for those who do not rest comfortably atop the pyramid of wealth and power.
A strong argument exists that global warming is causing increasingly severe hurricanes, like Katrina. Meanwhile, America's elites decided they had better uses for taxpayer money than to strengthen the levees or stop the erosion of the wetlands which buffered New Orleans from severe hurricanes. This despite eerily prescient warnings of a Katrina-like disaster in a 2001 article in National Geographic.
Rendering FEMA impotent, robbing National Guard resources to conquer Iraq, abandoning thousands of poor Blacks to suffer and die, patrolling the streets with heavily armed Blackwater mercenaries, and suspending federal wage protections during reconstruction are clear indications of a state which has failed a majority its people miserably.
Rogue Nation
There is little room for doubt that the Bush Regime places itself above both domestic and international law. A few illustrations include:
1. wiretapping of US citizens without seeking FISA court approval (the FISA court has granted approval to virtually every request it has considered)
2. passing and renewing the Orwellian Patriot Act which seriously violates four of the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights
3. the invasion and occupation of Iraq, a sovereign nation which had not attacked the United States and had posed no imminent threat
4. suspending habeas corpus and posse comitatus
5. defying the Geneva Conventions by arbitrarily arresting, detaining and torturing at least 14,000 alleged "enemy combatants"
6. significant expansion of Executive powers by adding signing statements (which direct the Executive branch to implement laws as the president sees fit rather than as Congress intended) to over 750 laws.
In Failed States, Chomsky provided many examples of America's elites' actions that demonstrate their disregard for domestic and international law, tracing the roots and progression of such behavior back to World War II.
A Hideous Despot Lurks Behind the Facade of Lady Liberty
The most disturbing aspect of Chomsky's treatise defining the United States as a failed state is his exploration of its "democratic deficit".
In stark contrast to our forefathers' blueprint for a constitutional republic in which the Constitution exists to limit government power, the people elect their leaders, and an independent judiciary exists to review the Constitutionality of government actions, America has devolved into a nation governed by the elite for the elite. The Constitution has been reduced to "just a goddamned piece of paper."
Consider Chomsky's analysis:
The reactionary statists who have a thin grip on political power are dedicated warriors. With consistency and passion that approach caricature, their policies serve the substantial people-in fact, an unusually narrow sector of them-and disregard or harm the underlying population and future generations. They are also seeking to use their current opportunities to institutionalize these arrangements, so that it will be no small task to reconstruct a more humane and democratic society.
US corporations contribute greatly to the American democratic deficit. Possessing rights exceeding those of human beings and bearing limited accountability, powerful corporations enable wealthy shareholders and executives to place profits ahead of people and the environment to a sociopathic extent. Corporate moral compasses are consistently drawn off course by the powerful pull of money.
Deregulation leading to decreased environmental and consumer protections , a stagnant minimum wage, skyrocketing pay for executives relative to workers, diminished benefits for the working class, and a significant decline in the power of labor unions are but a few results of corporate power in the United States. Political manipulation through unbridled lobbying combined with a revolving door between corporate suites and government offices ensure that corporate interests supersede those of the poor and working class.
Corporate-controlled media has interests which are closely aligned with those of the "substantial people", as Chomsky called America's elites in Failed States. Chomsky observed that in Nazi Germany, Goebbels used mainstream media's "American advertising methods" to "sell National Socialism". And it worked.
History is repeating itself as mainstream print and broadcast media work tirelessly to sell America's "unsubstantial people" on grossly immoral and illegal government policies detrimental to their well-being, such as concentrating the wealth and power in the hands of a few and fighting for global hegemony. And it is working.
America's mainstream media has two powerful weapons at its disposal, both of which are deeply embedded in the psyche of many Americans.
As Chomsky pointed out in his book, the media wins the hearts and minds of many Americans by reminding them of their "nobility of purpose" in bringing "the Spirit of Civilization" to other peoples and nations, even if it means killing millions in the process.
Americans have also demonstrated a repeated vulnerability to the media manipulating them with fear. Throughout history, America's elite have contrived or grossly exaggerated foes such as Native Americans, Blacks, Communists, Hispanic narco-terrorists, illegal immigrants, terrorists, and street criminals. Manufactured irrational fear has led to compliance, subjugation, and the creation of a host of industries benefiting the "substantial people". Long live the military and prison industrial complexes!
One of Chomsky's most startling and often over-looked observations about America is the chasm between political will and popular will.
Consider that in 1984, Reagan won with 30% of the popular vote. Of those polled, 4% said they voted for Reagan because "he's a real conservative". This equates to 1% of voters stating they were endorsing conservatism with their vote. America's media proclaimed the election "a powerful mandate for conservatism". Polls showed that in 1984 over 80% of Americans supported increases in social spending and a majority favored cuts in military spending over decreased spending on healthcare. Obviously the Reagan and his administration chose to curry the favor of 20% of the population when they implemented policy.
The United States is the only industrialized nation with no universal health care system. 46 million Americans are uninsured and the WHO recently rated the US healthcare system as number 37 in the world. Chomsky cited numerous opinion polls, including those conducted by NBC-Wall Street Journal and the Pew Research Center. Each poll reflected that over 60% of Americans wanted a universal health care system. Yet the privatized system is too great a benefit to the "substantial people". It is politically "untouchable". A nation as wealthy as the United States that does not provide basic healthcare to all of its people is a failed state.
Deceitful manipulation of public opinion for political gain is a specialty of US government elites. As Congress was cutting $20 billion from the Medicaid program, Tom Delay led the charge (made possible by corporate media) to give Terri Schiavo the "chance we all deserve". Where is the duplicity, you ask? Terri Schiavo was a Medicaid patient.
How Can We the People Reclaim the United States?
What measures would restore the American government to its Constitutional mandates to "provide for the general welfare" and to "provide for the common defense", return the US to being a law-abiding member of the world community, and eradicate the "democratic deficit"?
In Failed State, Chomsky suggested:
1. accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and the World Court.
2. Sign and carry forward the Kyoto protocols
3. let the UN take the lead in international crises
4. rely on diplomatic and economic measures rather than military ones in confronting terror
5. keep to the traditional interpretation for the UN Charter
6. give up the Security Council veto and have a "decent respect for the opinion of mankind", as the Declaration of Independence advises, even if power centers disagree
7. cut back sharply on military spending and sharply increase social spending
Beyond Chomsky's suggestions, here are some avenues the poor, working and middle class can pursue to put their state back on a path toward success for them:
1. massive, sustained boycotts of major corporations which engage in egregiously criminal behavior, in the US or abroad.
2. massive and sustained boycotts of the mainstream media
3. America's youth refusing to enlist in the military so long as the United States continues to use its military for purposes other than defense.
4. significant numbers of existing military personnel refusing to fight wars of aggression by following the example of Kevin Benderman and filing for conscientious objector status
5. the formation of a viable third political party (i.e. Populists, Socialists, or Labor) which represents the "unsubstantials" to counter the Democrats and Republicans (both mere vehicles for the wealthy and elite to maintain power)
6. increased unionization and enhanced cooperation amongst existing unions
7. massive numbers of Americans declining to engage in over-consumption
8. American consumers limiting their debt to necessities and expenses for their businesses if they are proprietors
9. wide-spread support of NGO's that support human rights and provide poverty relief
10. individual Americans making a conscious effort to educate themselves and to think critically
11. sweeping efforts to teach America's youth true American history and to use their critical thinking skills to question their failed state
12. wide-ranging grass roots efforts to maintain the alternative media on the Internet, Internet communities and the integrity of the Internet by limiting control by major corporations
13. individuals engaging in civil disobedience when it is sensible and necessary
Noam Chomsky, one of the preeminent scholars and moral philosophers of our time, has been largely ignored by the mainstream media, presumably because of his vehement dissent against US foreign and domestic policy.
Recently, he has also been demonized by a number of his fellow dissenters, scholars, and members of the reality-based community. Some criticize him for his unwillingness to validate the assertion that 9/11 was perpetrated by the US government. Others call him a Zionist who is soft on Israel. Some even believe that Chomsky is actually one the "substantial people" and uses his brilliant dissent to advocate non-violent change as a means of taming potentially violent revolutionaries. Still others label him a hypocrite because of the measure of wealth he has derived from over the course of his career.
Regardless of what one believes about Chomsky or his motives, Failed States is a brilliant dissection of the increasingly inhumane and authoritarian political structure of the United States. Chomsky advances a highly convincing argument that America is indeed a failed state whose de facto ruling elite are engaged in The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy. Like him or not, Chomsky's latest work exposes America's ruling for the world to see them as the ruthless narcissists they truly are.
Jason Miller is a 39 year old sociopolitical essayist with a degree in liberal arts and an extensive self-education (derived from an insatiable appetite for reading). He is a member of Amnesty International and an avid supporter of Oxfam International and Human Rights Watch. He welcomes responses at willpowerful@hotmail.com or comments on his blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, at http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/.
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Editorial: Ponerology: The Science of Evil Now Available!
Preface to the book Political Ponerology: The Science of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Political Ponerology may be the most important book you will ever read; in fact, it WILL be. No matter who you are, what your status in life, what your age or sex or nationality or ethnic background, you will, at some point in your life, feel the touch or relentless grip of the cold hand of Evil. Bad things happen to good people, that's a fact.
WHAT is evil? Historically, the question of evil has been a theological one. Generations of theological apologists have written entire libraries of books in an attempt to certify the existence of a Good God that created an imperfect world. Saint Augustine distinguished between two forms of evil: "moral evil", the evil humans do, by choice, knowing that they are doing wrong; and "natural evil", the bad things that just happen - the storm, the flood, volcanic eruptions, fatal disease.
And then, there is what Andrew Lobaczewski calls Macrosocial Evil: large scale evil that overtakes whole societies and nations, and has done so again and again since time immemorial. The history of mankind, when considered objectively, is a terrible thing.
Death and destruction come to all, both rich and poor, free and slave, young and old, good and evil, with an arbitrariness and insouciance that, when contemplated even momentarily, can destroy a normal person's ability to function.
Over and over again, man has seen his fields and cattle laid waste by drought and disease, his loved ones tormented and decimated by illness or human cruelty, his life's work reduced to nothing in an instant by events over which he has no control at all.
The study of history through its various disciplines offers a view of mankind that is almost insupportable. The rapacious movements of hungry tribes, invading and conquering and destroying in the darkness of prehistory; the barbarian invaders of the civilized world during medieval times, the bloodbaths of the crusades of Catholic Europe against the infidels of the Middle East and then the "infidels" who were their own brothers: the stalking noonday terror of the Inquisition where martyrs quenched the flames with their blood. Then, there is the raging holocaust of modern genocide; wars, famine, and pestilence striding across the globe in hundred league boots; and never more frightening than today.
All of these things produce an intolerable sense of indefensibility against what Mircea Eliade calls the Terror of History.
There are those who will say that NOW this is all past; mankind has entered a new phase; science and technology have brought us to the brink of ending all this suffering. Many people believe that man is evolving; society is evolving; and that we now have control over the arbitrary evil of our environment; or at least we will have it after George Bush and his Neocons have about 25 years to fight the Endless War against Terror. Anything that does not support this idea is reinterpreted or ignored.
Science has given us many wonderful gifts: the space program, laser, television, penicillin, sulfa-drugs, and a host of other useful developments which should make our lives more tolerable and fruitful. However, we can easily see that this is not the case. It it could be said that never before has man been so precariously poised on the brink of such total destruction.
On a personal level, our lives are steadily deteriorating. The air we breathe and the water we drink is polluted almost beyond endurance. Our foods are loaded with substances which contribute very little to nourishment, and may, in fact, be injurious to our health. Stress and tension have become an accepted part of life and can be shown to have killed more people than the cigarettes that some people still smoke to relieve it. We swallow endless quantities of pills to wake up, go to sleep, get the job done, calm our nerves and make us feel good. The inhabitants of the earth spend more money on recreational drugs than they spend on housing, clothing, food, education or any other product or service.
At the social level, hatred, envy, greed and strife multiply exponentially. Crime increases nine times faster than the population. Combined with wars, insurrections, and political purges, multiplied millions of people across the globe are without adequate food or shelter due to political actions.
And then, of course, drought, famine, plague and natural disasters still take an annual toll in lives and suffering. This, too, seems to be increasing.
When man contemplates history, AS IT IS, he is forced to realize that he is in the iron grip of an existence that seems to have no real care or concern for his pain and suffering. Over and over again, the same sufferings fall upon mankind multiplied millions upon millions of times over millennia. The totality of human suffering is a dreadful thing. I could write until the end of the world using oceans of ink and forests of paper, and never fully convey this Terror. The beast of arbitrary calamity has always been with us. For as long as human hearts have pumped hot blood through their too-fragile bodies and glowed with the inexpressible sweetness of life and yearning for all that is good and right and loving, the sneering, stalking, drooling and scheming beast of unconscious evil has licked its lips in anticipation of its next feast of terror and suffering. Since the beginning of time, this mystery of the estate of man, this Curse of Cain has existed. And, since the Ancient of Days, the cry has been: My punishment is greater than I can bear!
It is conjectured that, in ancient times, when man perceived this intolerable and incomprehensible condition in which he found his existence, that he created cosmogonies to justify all the cruelties, aberrations, and tragedies of history. It is true that, man, as a rule and in general, is powerless against cosmic and geological catastrophes, and it has long been said that the average man can't really do anything about military onslaughts, social injustice, personal and familial misfortunes, and a host of assaults against his existence too numerous to list.
This is about to change. Political Ponerology by Andrzej Lobaczewski is going to give you answers to many of the questions about Evil in our world. This book is not just about macrosocial evil, it is also about everyday evil because, in a very real sense, the two are inseparable. The long term accumulation of everyday evil always and inevitably leads to Grand Systemic Evil that destroys more innocent people than any other phenomenon on this planet.
Political Ponerology is also a survival guide. As I said above, this book will be the most important book you will ever read. Unless, of course, you are a psychopath.
"What does psychopathy have to do with personal or social evil?" you may ask.
Absolutely everything. Whether you know it or not, each and every day your life is touched by the effects of psychopathy on our world. You are about to learn that even if there isn't much we can do about geological and cosmological catastrophe, there is a lot we can do about social and macrosocial evil, and the very first thing to do is to learn about it. In the case of psychopathy and its effects on our world, what you don't know definitely can and will hurt you.
Nowadays the word "psychopath" generally evokes images of the barely restrained - yet surprisingly urbane - mad-dog serial killer, Dr. Hannibal Lecter of "Silence of the Lambs" fame. I will admit that this was the image that came to my mind whenever I heard the word; almost, that is. The big difference was that I never thought of a psychopath as possibly being so cultured or so capable of passing as "normal." But I was wrong, and I was to learn this lesson quite painfully by direct experience. The exact details are chronicled elsewhere; what is important is that this experience was probably one of the most painful and instructive episodes of my life and it enabled me to overcome a block in my awareness of the world around me and those who inhabit it.
Regarding blocks to awareness, I need to state for the record that I have spent 30 years studying psychology, history, culture, religion, myth and the so-called paranormal . I also have worked for many years with hypnotherapy - which gave me a very good mechanical knowledge of how the mind/brain of the human being operates at very deep levels. But even so, I was still operating with certain beliefs firmly in place that were shattered by my research into psychopathy. I realized that there was a certain set of ideas that I held about human beings that were sacrosanct - and false. I even wrote about this once in the following way:
...my work has shown me that the vast majority of people want to do good, to experience good things, think good thoughts, and make decisions with good results. And they try with all their might to do so! With the majority of people having this internal desire, why the Hell isn't it happening?
I was naïve, I admit. There were many things I did not know that I have learned since I penned those words. But even at that time I was aware of how our own minds can be used to deceive us.
Now, what beliefs did I hold that made me a victim of a psychopath? The first and most obvious one is that I truly believed that deep inside, all people are basically "good" and that they "want to do good, to experience good things, think good thoughts, and make decisions with good results. And they try with all their might to do so..."
As it happens, this is not true as I - and everyone involved in our research group - learned to our sorrow, as they say. But we also learned to our edification. In order to come to some understanding of exactly what kind of human being could do the things that were done to me (and others close to me), and why they might be motivated - even driven - to behave this way, we began to research the psychology literature for clues because we needed to understand for our own peace of mind.
If there is a psychological theory that can explain vicious and harmful behavior, it helps very much for the victim of such acts to have this information so that they do not have to spend all their time feeling hurt or angry. And certainly, if there is a psychological theory that helps a person to find what kind of words or deeds can bridge the chasm between people, to heal misunderstandings, that is also a worthy goal. It was from such a perspective that we began our extensive work on the subjects of narcissism which then led to the study of psychopathy.
Of course, we didn't start out with such any such "diagnosis" or label for what we were witnessing. We started out with observations and searched the literature for clues, for profiles, for anything that would help us to understand the inner world of a human being - actually a group of human beings - who seemed to be utterly depraved and unlike anything we had ever encountered before. We found that this kind of human is all too common and that, according to some of the latest research, they cause more damage in human society than any other single so-called "mental illness." Martha Stout, who has worked extensively with victims of psychopaths, writes:
Imagine - if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken.
And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools.
Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless.
You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience, that they seldom even guess at your condition.
In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and your unhampered liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world.
You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences will most likely remain undiscovered.
How will you live your life?
What will you do with your huge and secret advantage, and with the corresponding handicap of other people (conscience)?
The answer will depend largely on just what your desires happen to be, because people are not all the same. Even the profoundly unscrupulous are not all the same. Some people - whether they have a conscience or not - favor the ease of inertia, while others are filled with dreams and wild ambitions. Some human beings are brilliant and talented, some are dull-witted, and most, conscience or not, are somewhere in between. There are violent people and nonviolent ones, individuals who are motivated by blood lust and those who have no such appetites. [...]
Provided you are not forcibly stopped, you can do anything at all.
If you are born at the right time, with some access to family fortune, and you have a special talent for whipping up other people's hatred and sense of deprivation, you can arrange to kill large numbers of unsuspecting people. With enough money, you can accomplish this from far away, and you can sit back safely and watch in satisfaction. [...]
Crazy and frightening - and real, in about 4 percent of the population....
The prevalence rate for anorexic eating disorders is estimated a 3.43 percent, deemed to be nearly epidemic, and yet this figure is a fraction lower than the rate for antisocial personality. The high-profile disorders classed as schizophrenia occur in only about 1 percent of [the population] - a mere quarter of the rate of antisocial personality - and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that the rate of colon cancer in the United States, considered "alarmingly high," is about 40 per 100,000 - one hundred times lower than the rate of antisocial personality.
The high incidence of sociopathy in human society has a profound effect on the rest of us who must live on this planet, too, even those of us who have not been clinically traumatized. The individuals who constitute this 4 percent drain our relationships, our bank accounts, our accomplishments, our self-esteem, our very peace on earth.
Yet surprisingly, many people know nothing about this disorder, or if they do, they think only in terms of violent psychopathy - murderers, serial killers, mass murderers - people who have conspicuously broken the law many times over, and who, if caught, will be imprisoned, maybe even put to death by our legal system.
We are not commonly aware of, nor do we usually identify, the larger number of nonviolent sociopaths among us, people who often are not blatant lawbreakers, and against whom our formal legal system provides little defense.
Most of us would not imagine any correspondence between conceiving an ethnic genocide and, say, guiltlessly lying to one's boss about a coworker. But the psychological correspondence is not only there; it is chilling. Simple and profound, the link is the absence of the inner mechanism that beats up on us, emotionally speaking, when we make a choice we view as immoral, unethical, neglectful, or selfish.
Most of us feel mildly guilty if we eat the last piece of cake in the kitchen, let alone what we would feel if we intentionally and methodically set about to hurt another person.
Those who have no conscience at all are a group unto themselves, whether they be homicidal tyrants or merely ruthless social snipers.
The presence or absence of conscience is a deep human division, arguably more significant than intelligence, race, or even gender.
What differentiates a sociopath who lives off the labors of others from one who occasionally robs convenience stores, or from one who is a contemporary robber baron - or what makes the difference betwen an ordinary bully and a sociopathic murderer - is nothing more than social status, drive, intellect, blood lust, or simple opportunity.
What distinguishes all of these people from the rest of us is an utterly empty hole in the psyche, where there should be the most evolved of all humanizing functions.
We did not have the advantage of Dr. Stout's book at the beginning of our research project. We did, of course, have Robert Hare and Hervey Cleckley and Guggenbuhl-Craig and others. But they were only approaching the subject of the possibly large numbers of psychopaths that live among us who never get caught breaking laws, who don't murder - or if they do, they don't get caught - and who still do untold damage to the lives of family, acquaintances, and strangers.
Most mental health experts, for a very long time, have operated on the premise that psychopaths come from impoverished backgrounds and have experienced abuse of one sort or another in childhood, so it is easy to spot them, or at least, they certainly don't move in society except as interlopers. This idea seems to be coming under some serious revision lately. As Lobaczewski points out in this book, there is some confusion between Psychopathy and Antisocial Personality Disorder and Sociopathy. As Robert Hare points out, yes, there are many psychopaths who are also "anti-socials" but there seem to be far more of them that would never be classified as anti-social or sociopathic! In other words, they can be doctors, lawyers, judges, policemen, congressmen, presidents of corporations that rob from the poor to give to the rich, and even presidents.
In a recent paper, it is suggested that psychopathy may exist in ordinary society in even greater numbers than anyone has thus far considered:
"Psychopathy, as originally conceived by Cleckley (1941), is not limited to engagement in illegal activities, but rather encompasses such personality characteristics as manipulativeness, insincerity, egocentricity, and lack of guilt - characteristics clearly present in criminals but also in spouses, parents, bosses, attorneys, politicians, and CEOs, to name but a few. (Bursten, 1973; Stewart, 1991). Our own examination of the prevalence of psychopathy within a university population suggested that perhaps 5% or more of this sample might be deemed psychopathic, although the vast majority of those will be male (more than 1/10 males versus approximately 1?100 females).
"As such, psychopathy may be characterized ... as involving a tendency towards both dominance and coldness. Wiggins (1995) in summarizing numerous previous findings... indicates that such individuals are prone to anger and irritation and are willing to exploit others. They are arrogant, manipulative, cynical, exhibitionistic, sensation -seeking, Machiavellian, vindictive, and out for their own gain. With respect to their patterns of social exchange (Foa & Foa, 1974), they attribute love and status to themselves, seeing themselves as highly worthy and important, but prescribe neither love nor status to others, seeing them as unworthy and insignificant. This characterization is clearly consistent with the essence of psychopathy as commonly described.
"The present investigation sought to answer some basic questions regarding the construct of psychopathy in non forensic settings... In so doing we have returned to Cleckley's (1941) original emphasis on psychopathy as a personality style not only among criminals, but also among successful individuals within the community.
"What is clear from our findings is that (a) psychopathy measures have converged on a prototype of psychopathy that involves a combination of dominant and cold interpersonal characteristics; (b) psychopathy does occur in the community and at what might be a higher than expected rate; and (c) psychopathy appears to have little overlap with personality disorders aside from Antisocial Personality Disorder. ...
"Clearly, where much more work is needed is in understanding what factors differentiate the abiding (although perhaps not moral-abiding) psychopath from the law-breaking psychopath; such research surely needs to make greater use of non forensic samples than has been customary in the past."
Lobaczewski discusses the fact that there are different types of psychopaths. One type, in particular, is the most deadly of all: the Essential Psychopath. He doesn't give us a "checklist" but rather discusses what is inside the psychopath. His description meshes very well with items in the paper quoted above.
Martha Stout also discusses the fact that psychopaths, like anyone else, are born with different basic likes and dislikes and desires which is why some of them are doctors and presidents and others are petty thieves or rapists.
"Likeable," "Charming," "Intelligent," "Alert," "Impressive," "Confidence-inspiring," and "A great success with the ladies". This is how Hervey Cleckley described most of his subjects in "The Mask of Sanity." It seems that, in spite of the fact that their actions prove them to be "irresponsible," "self-destructive," psychopaths seem to have in abundance the very traits most desired by normal persons. The smooth self-assurance acts as an almost supernatural magnet to normal people who have to read self-help books or go to counseling to be able to interact with others in an untroubled way. The psychopath, on the contrary, never has any neuroses, no self-doubts, never experiences angst, and is what "normal" people seek to be. What's more, even if they aren't that attractive, they are "babe magnets."
Cleckley's seminal hypothesis is that the psychopath suffers from profound and incurable affective deficit. If he really feels anything at all, they are emotions of only the shallowest kind. He is able to do whatever he wants, based on whatever whim strikes him because consequences that would fill the ordinary man with shame, self-loathing, and embarrassment simply do not affect the psychopath at all. What to others would be a horror or a disaster is to him merely a fleeting inconvenience.
Cleckley posits that psychopathy is quite common in the community at large. His cases include examples of psychopaths who generally function normally in the community as businessmen, doctors, and even psychiatrists. Nowadays, some of the more astute researchers see criminal psychopathy - often referred to as anti-social personality disorder - as an extreme of a particular personality type. I think it is more helpful to characterize criminal psychopaths as "unsuccessful psychopaths."
One researcher, Alan Harrington goes so far as to say that the psychopath is the new man being produced by the evolutionary pressures of modern life.
Certainly, there have always been shysters and crooks, but past concern was focused on ferreting out incompetents rather than psychopaths. Unfortunately, all that has changed. We now need to fear the super-sophisticated modern crook who does know what he is doing ... and does it so well that no one else knows. Yes, psychopaths love the business world.
"Uninvolved with others, he coolly saw into their fears and desires, and maneuvered them as he wished. Such a man might not, after all, be doomed to a life of scrapes and escapades ending ignominiously in the jailhouse. Instead of murdering others, he might become a corporate raider and murder companies, firing people instead of killing them, and chopping up their functions rather than their bodies."
[T]he consequences to the average citizen from business crimes are staggering. As criminologist Georgette Bennett says, "They account for nearly 30% of case filings in U.S. District Courts - more than any other category of crime. The combined burglary, mugging and other property losses induced by the country's street punks come to about $4 billion a year. However, the seemingly upstanding citizens in our corporate board rooms and the humble clerks in our retail stores bilk us out of between $40 and $200 billion a year."
Concern here is that the costume for the new masked sanity of a psychopath is just as likely to be a three-piece suit as a ski mask and a gun. As Harrington says, "We also have the psychopath in respectable circles, no longer assumed to be a loser." He quotes William Krasner as saying, "They - psychopath and part psychopath - do well in the more unscrupulous types of sales work, because they take such delight in 'putting it over on them', getting away with it - and have so little conscience about defrauding their customers." Our society is fast becoming more materialistic, and success at any cost is the credo of many businessmen. The typical psychopath thrives in this kind of environment and is seen as a business "hero."
The study of "ambulatory" psychopaths - what we call "The Garden Variety Psychopath" - has, however, hardly begun. Very little is known about subcriminal psychopathy. Some researchers have begun to seriously consider the idea that it is important to study psychopathy not as a pathological category but as a general personality trait in the community at large. In other words, psychopathy is being recognized as a more or less a different type of human.
Hervey Cleckly actually comes very close to suggesting that psychopaths are human in every respect - but that they lack a soul. This lack of "soul quality" makes them very efficient "machines." They can write scholarly works, imitate the words of emotion, but over time, it becomes clear that their words do not match their actions. They are the type of person who can claim that they are devastated by grief who then attend a party "to forget." The problem is: they really DO forget.
Being very efficient machines, like a computer, they are able to execute very complex routines designed to elicit from others support for what they want. In this way, many psychopaths are able to reach very high positions in life. It is only over time that their associates become aware of the fact that their climb up the ladder of success is predicated on violating the rights of others. "Even when they are indifferent to the rights of their associates, they are often able to inspire feelings of trust and confidence."
The psychopath recognizes no flaw in his psyche, no need for change.
Andrew Lobaczewski addresses the problem of the psychopath and their extremely significant contribution to our macrosocial evils, their ability to act as the éminence grise behind the very structure of our society. It is very important to keep in mind that this influence comes from a relatively small segment of humanity. The other 90 some percent of human beings are not psychopaths.
But that 90 percent of normal people know that something is wrong! They just can't quite identify it; can't quite put their finger on it; and because they can't, they tend to think that there is nothing they can do about it, or maybe it is just God punishing people.
What is actually the case is that when that 90 some percent of human beings fall into a certain state, as Lobaczewski will describe, the psychopaths, like a virulent pathogen in a body, strike at the weaknesses and the entire society is plunged into conditions that always and inevitably lead to horror and tragedy on a very large scale.
The movie, "The Matrix," touched a deep chord in society because it exemplified this mechanistic trap in which so many people find their lives enmeshed, and from which they are unable to extricate themselves because they believe that everyone around them who "looks human" is, in fact, just like them - emotionally, spiritually, and otherwise.
To give an example of how psychopaths can directly affect society at large: the "legal argument" as explicated by Robert Canup in his work on the "Socially Adept Psychopath." The legal argument seems to be at the foundation of our society. We believe that the legal argument is an advanced system of justice. This is a very cunning trick that has been foisted on normal people by psychopaths in order to have an advantage over them. Just think about it for a moment: the legal argument amounts to little more than the one who is the slickest at using the structure for convincing a group of people of something, is the one who is believed. Because this "legal argument" system has been slowly installed as part of our culture, when it invades our personal lives, we normally do not recognize it immediately. But here's how it works.
Human beings have been accustomed to assume that other human beings are - at the very least - trying to "do right" and "be good" and fair and honest. And so, very often, we do not take the time to use due diligence in order to determine if a person who has entered our life is, in fact, a "good person." When a conflict ensues, we automatically fall into the legal argument assumption that in any conflict, one side is partly right one way, and the other is partly right the other, and that we can form opinions about which side is mostly right or wrong. Because of our exposure to the "legal argument" norms, when any dispute arises, we automatically think that the truth will lie somewhere between two extremes. In this case, application of a little mathematical logic to the problem of the legal argument might be helpful.
Let us assume that in a dispute, one side is innocent, honest, and tells the truth. It is obvious that lying does an innocent person no good; what lie can he tell? If he is innocent, the only lie he can tell is to falsely confess "I did it." But lying is nothing but good for the liar. He can declare that "I didn't do it," and accuse another of doing it, all the while the innocent person he has accused is saying "I didn't do it," and is actually telling the truth.
The truth - when twisted by good liars, can always make an innocent person look bad - especially if the innocent person is honest and admits his mistakes.
The basic assumption that the truth lies between the testimony of the two sides always shifts the advantage to the lying side and away from the side telling the truth. Under most circumstances, this shift put together with the fact that the truth is going to also be twisted in such a way as to bring detriment to the innocent person, results in the advantage always resting in the hands of liars - psychopaths. Even the simple act of giving testimony under oath is a useless farce. If a person is a liar, swearing an oath means nothing to that person. However, swearing an oath acts strongly on a serious, truthful witness. Again, the advantage is placed on the side of the liar.
It has often been noted that psychopaths have a distinct advantage over human beings with conscience and feelings because the psychopath does not have conscience and feelings. What seems to be so is that conscience and feelings are related to the abstract concepts of "future" and "others." It is "spatio-temporal." We can feel fear, sympathy, empathy, sadness, and so on because we can IMAGINE in an abstract way, the future based on our own experiences in the past, or even just "concepts of experiences" in myriad variations. We can "see ourselves" in them even though they are "out there" and this evokes feelings in us. We can't do something hurtful because we can imagine it being done to us and how it would feel. In other words, we can not only identify with others spatially - so to say - but also temporally - in time.
The psychopath does not seem to have this capacity.
They are unable to "imagine" in the sense of being able to really connect to images in a direct "self connecting to another self" sort of way.
Oh, indeed, they can imitate feelings, but the only real feelings they seem to have - the thing that drives them and causes them to act out different dramas for the effect - is a sort of "predatorial hunger" for what they want. That is to say, they "feel" need/want as love, and not having their needs/wants met is described by them as "not being loved". What is more, this "need/want" perspective posits that only the "hunger" of the psychopath is valid, and anything and everything "out there," outside of the psychopath, is not real except insofar as it has the capability of being assimilated to the psychopath as a sort of "food." "Can it be used or can it provide something?" is the only issue about which the psychopath seems to be concerned. All else - all activity - is subsumed to this drive.
In short, the psychopath is a predator. If we think about the interactions of predators with their prey in the animal kingdom, we can come to some idea of what is behind the "mask of sanity" of the psychopath. Just as an animal predator will adopt all kinds of stealthy functions in order to stalk their prey, cut them out of the herd, get close to them and reduce their resistance, so does the psychopath construct all kinds of elaborate camouflage composed of words and appearances - lies and manipulations - in order to "assimilate" their prey.
This leads us to an important question: what does the psychopath REALLY get from their victims? It's easy to see what they are after when they lie and manipulate for money or material goods or power. But in many instances, such as love relationships or faked friendships, it is not so easy to see what the psychopath is after. Without wandering too far afield into spiritual speculations - a problem Cleckley also faced - we can only say that it seems to be that the psychopath ENJOYS making others suffer. Just as normal humans enjoy seeing other people happy, or doing things that make other people smile, the psychopath enjoys the exact opposite.
Anyone who has ever observed a cat playing with a mouse before killing and eating it has probably explained to themselves that the cat is just "entertained" by the antics of the mouse and is unable to conceive of the terror and pain being experienced by the mouse, and the cat, therefore, is innocent of any evil intent. The mouse dies, the cat is fed, and that is nature. Psychopaths don't generally eat their victims.
Yes, in extreme cases of psychopathy, the entire cat and mouse dynamic is carried out. Cannibalism has a long history wherein it was assumed that certain powers of the victim could be assimilated by eating some particular part of them. But in ordinary life, psychopaths don't normally go all the way, so to say. This causes us to look at the cat and mouse scenario again with different eyes. Now we ask: is it too simplistic to think that the innocent cat is merely entertained by the mouse running about and frantically trying to escape? Is there something more to this dynamic than meets the eye? Is there something more than being "entertained" by the antics of the mouse trying to flee? After all, in terms of evolution, why would such behavior be hard-wired into the cat? Is the mouse tastier because of the chemicals of fear that flood his little body? Is a mouse frozen with terror more of a "gourmet" meal?
This suggests that we ought to revisit our ideas about psychopaths with a slightly different perspective. One thing we do know is this: many people who experience interactions with psychopaths and narcissists report feeling "drained" and confused and often subsequently experience deteriorating health. Does this mean that part of the dynamic, part of the explanation for why psychopaths will pursue "love relationships" and "friendships" that ostensibly can result in no observable material gain, is because there is an actual energy consumption?
We do not know the answer to this question. We observe, we theorize, we speculate and hypothesize. But in the end, only the individual victim can determine what they have lost in the dynamic - and it is often far more than material goods. In a certain sense, it seems that psychopaths are soul eaters or "Psychophagic."
In the past several years, there are many more psychologists and psychiatrists and other mental health workers beginning to look at these issues in new ways in response to the questions about the state of our world and the possibility that there is some essential difference between such individuals as George W. Bush and many so-called Neocons, and the rest of us.
Dr. Stout's book has one of the longest explanations as to why none of her examples resemble any actual persons that I have ever read. And then, in a very early chapter, she describes a "composite" case where the subject spent his childhood blowing up frogs with fire-crackers. It is widely known that George W. Bush did this, so one naturally wonders...
In any event, even without Dr. Stout's work, at the time we were studying the matter, we realized that what we were learning was very important to everyone because as the data was assembled, we saw that the clues, the profiles, revealed that the issues we were facing were faced by everyone at one time or another, to one extent or another. We also began to realize that the profiles that emerged also describe rather accurately many individuals who seek positions of power in fields of authority, most particularly politics and commerce. That's really not so surprising an idea, but it honestly hadn't occurred to us until we saw the patterns and recognized them in the behaviors of numerous historical figures, and lately including George W. Bush and members of his administration.
Current day statistics tell us that there are more psychologically sick people than healthy ones. If you take a sampling of individuals in any given field, you are likely to find that a significant number of them display pathological symptoms to one extent or another. Politics is no exception, and by its very nature, would tend to attract more of the pathological "dominator types" than other fields. That is only logical, and we began to realize that it was not only logical, it was horrifyingly accurate; horrifying because pathology among people in power can have disastrous effects on all of the people under the control of such pathological individuals. And so, we decided to write about this subject and publish it on the Internet.
As the material went up, letters from our readers began to come in thanking us for putting a name to what was happening to them in their personal lives as well as helping them to understand what was happening in a world that seems to have gone completely mad. We began to think that it was an epidemic and in a certain sense, we were right. If an individual with a highly contagious illness works in a job that puts them in contact with the public, an epidemic is the result. In the same way, if an individual in a position of political power is a psychopath, he or she can create an epidemic of psychopathology in people who are not, essentially, psychopathic. Our ideas along this line were soon to receive confirmation from an unexpected source: Andrew Lobaczewski, the author of the book you are about to read. I received an email as follows:
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.
I have got your Special Research Project on psychopathy by my computer. You are doing a most important and valuable work for the future of nations.[...]
I am a very aged clinical psychologist. Forty years ago I took part in a secret investigation of the real nature and psychopathology of the macro-social phenomenon called "Communism". The other researchers were the scientists of the previous generation who are now passed away.
The profound study of the nature psychopathy, which played the essential and inspirational part in this macro-social psychopathologic phenomenon, and distinguishing it from other mental anomalies, appeared to be the necessary preparation for understanding the entire nature of the phenomenon.
The large part of the work, you are doing now, was done in those times. ...
I am able to provide you with a most valuable scientific document, useful for your purposes. It is my book "POLITICAL PONEROLOGY - A science on the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes". You may also find copy of this book in the Library of Congress and in some university and public libraries in the USA.
Be so kind and contact me so that I may mail a copy to you.
Very truly yours!
Andrew M. £obaczewski
I promptly wrote a reply saying yes, I would very much like to read his book. A couple of weeks later the manuscript arrived in the mail.
As I read, I realized that what I was holding in my hand was essentially a chronicle of a descent into hell, transformation, and triumphant return to the world with knowledge of that hell that was priceless for the rest of us, particularly in this day and time when it seems evident that a similar hell is enveloping the planet. The risks that were taken by the group of scientists that did the research on which this book is based are beyond the comprehension of most of us.
Many of them were young, just starting in their careers when the Nazis began to stride in their hundred league jackboots across Europe. These researchers lived through that, and then when the Nazis were driven out and replaced by the Communists under the heel of Stalin, they faced years of oppression the likes of which those of us today who are choosing to take a stand against the Bush Reich cannot even imagine. But, based on the syndrome that describes the onset of the disease, it seems that the United States, in particular, and perhaps the entire world, will soon enter into "bad times" of such horror and despair that the Holocaust of World War II will seem like just a practice run.
And so, since they were there, and they lived through it and brought back information to the rest of us, it may well save our lives to have a map to guide us in the falling darkness.
- Order your copy now! -
For more on Political Ponerology, don't miss our podcast entitled The 6% Solution!!
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Global Warming
Ozone layer shows signs of recovery: scientists
By Patricia Reaney
Reuters
May 3, 2006
LONDON - The ozone layer is showing signs of recovering, thanks to a drop in ozone-depleting chemicals, but it is unlikely to stabilize at pre-1980 levels, researchers said on Wednesday.
Depletion of the earth's protective ozone layer is caused by the chemical action of chlorine and bromine released by man-made chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which are used in aerosol sprays and cooling equipment.
Ozone-depleting chemicals were banned by the 1987 Montreal Protocol which has now been ratified by 180 nations.
"We now have some confidence that the ozone layer is responding to the decreases in chlorine levels in the atmosphere due to the leveling off and decrease of CFCs," said Dr Betsy Weatherhead, of the University of Colorado in Boulder.
"Not only is the ozone layer getting better, we feel it is due to the Montreal Protocol," she added in an interview.
The depletion of the ozone layer, which absorbs most of the harmful effects of the sun's ultraviolet radiation, increases the risk of skin cancer and cataracts in humans and may harm crop yields and sea life.
Despite the signs of recovery, Weatherhead, who reported the findings in the journal Nature, said people should still protect themselves from harmful ultraviolet rays.
Weatherhead and Signe Bech Anderson of the Danish Meteorological Institute in Copenhagen analyzed data from satellites and ground stations and information from 14 modeling studies.
They found that ozone levels have stabilized or increased slightly in the past 10 years. But full recovery is still decades away.
The researchers said depletion has been most severe at the poles and to a lesser extent at mid-latitudes covering bands of North America, South America and Europe.
Shifting temperatures, greenhouse gases, nitrous oxide (N20) and atmospheric dynamics, which can influence ozone levels, are going to change in the future, they added.
"Therefore we really don't think ozone is going to stabilize back to its pre-ozone-depleting-substance levels," Weatherhead said.
Volcanic activity on Earth also has an impact. The 1993 Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines caused ozone levels to backslide for several years, according to the researchers.
Comment: Sounds like everything is just peachy... right??
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Global Warming Cited in Wind Shift; Greenhouse Gases an Important Factor
By MALCOLM RITTER
AP Science Writer
May 03 2006
NEW YORK - An important wind circulation pattern over the Pacific Ocean has begun to weaken because of global warming caused by human activity, something that could alter climate and the marine food chain in the region, new research suggests.
It's not clear what climate changes might arise in the area or possibly beyond, but the long-term effect might resemble some aspects of an El Nino event, a study author said.
El Ninos boost rainfall in the southern United States and western South America and bring dry weather or even drought to Indonesia, Malaysia and elsewhere in the western Pacific.
As for the Pacific food chain near the equator, the slowdown might reduce populations of tiny plants and animals up through the fish that eat them, because of reduced nutrition welling up from the deep, said the author, Gabriel Vecchi.
Vecchi, a visiting scientist at a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lab in Princeton, N.J., and colleagues present their results in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.
The slowdown was detected in shipboard and land-based data going back to the mid-1800s. It matches an effect predicted by computer climate simulations that trace global warming to a build-up of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, the researchers report. But simulations that consider only natural influences fail to produce the observed slowdown, Vecchi said.
So, it appears the slowdown is largely due to the man-made buildup of greenhouse gases, the researchers concluded. And the result lends more credibility to computer models that trace global warming to greenhouse gases, at least for their ability to forecast what will happen in the tropics, Vecchi said.
The study focused on what scientists call the Walker circulation, a huge wind pattern that covers almost half the circumference of Earth.
The pattern traces a huge loop. Trade winds blow across the Pacific from east to west. The air rises in the western Pacific and then returns eastward at an altitude of a few miles. Then it sinks back to the surface and starts the loop again.
The new study is based on barometric pressure readings, since differences in air pressure drive winds near the equator. Results suggest the average wind speed in the Walker circulation has weakened by about 3.5 percent since the mid-1800s. It has weakened faster since World War II than in the long-term trend since the mid-1800s, Vecchi said.
Computer simulations say the circulation might weaken another 10 percent by 2100, Vecchi said.
Dennis Hartmann, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, said the study makes a strong case that the Walker circulation has slowed. While such an effect had been predicted as a result of global warming, he said, "it's not been demonstrated before as clearly as they've done here."
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Dutch study sheds light on climate change's threat to birds
AFP
Wed May 3, 2006
PARIS - Environmental scientists in the Netherlands say they have found evidence that climate change can decimate migrating bird species by affecting the date when their main food supply becomes abundant.
A small long-distance migrating bird called the pied flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca) spends the northern hemisphere winter in West Africa, returning to northern Europe in the spring to breed.
Dutch researchers have been following the species for decades, using nestboxes in forests, observations of their arrival and departure and monitoring availability of their staple food, which is caterpillars.
They have found that the earlier arrival of warm weather causes the caterpillars to emerge sooner -- and as a result, the flycatchers may arrive too late to properly feed their young. The birds breed, but without having an adequate food supply for the nestlings.
The team, lead by Christian Both of Groningen University, looked at population numbers and caterpillar availability from 1987 to 2003.
An early food peak caused flycatcher numbers to decline by a stunning 90 percent. But when the caterpillars peaked later, the decline was only 10 percent.
"Mistiming as a result of climate change is probably a widespread phenomenon," says Both. "(The) evidence (is) that it can lead to population declines."
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China: Global Warming Is Melting Glaciers
AP
Tue May 2, 2006
BEIJING - Glaciers in western China's Qinghai-Tibet plateau, known as the "roof of the world," are melting at a rate of 7 percent annually due to global warming, the country's official Xinhua News Agency said.
Xinhua said the figure is drawn from data from China's 681 weather stations over four decades.
Statistics from the Tibet weather bureau show that average temperatures in Tibet have risen by 0.9 degree Celsius (2 Fahrenheit) since the 1980s, Xinhua reported, quoting Han Yongxiang of the National Meteorological Bureau.
The glaciers in the Qinghai-Tibet plateau account for 47 percent of China's total glacier coverage, according to Xinhua.
The melting glaciers will eventually lead to drought, more desertification and an increase in the number of sandstorms, Xinhua quoted researcher Dong Guangrong at the Chinese Academy of Sciences as saying.
The spread of deserts and sandstorms are already pressing problems in China.
The severity of China's sandstorms was highlighted by the onslaught of 300,000 metric tons (330,000 short tons) of dust in capital Beijing two weeks ago. Dust was blown as far away as South Korea and Tokyo.
Beijing has approved programs to reclaim land by planting hardy grasses and shrubs on 30 percent of the country's 700,000 square miles of desert by 2050.
Workers have already planted thousands of acres of vegetation to stop the spread of deserts in China's north and west.
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Money Matters
The Inevitable Collapse of the Greenback
By Mike Whitney
05/03/06
Why is George Bush destroying the dollar?
Or is it Bush? Maybe, it is the Federal Reserve, the privately owned group of 12 central banks that prints our money and sets the policy?
A UK Telegraph article on Tuesday "Dollar Drops as great Sell-Off Looms" explains the current dilemma. The dollar is falling against the euro and the Asian currencies while gold and energy prices continue to skyrocket. "Greenback liquidation comes amid growing concerns that global central banks and Middle East oil funds are quietly paring back their holdings of US bonds.
" David Bloom, a currency expert at HSBC, said the dollar was vulnerable to a steep sell-off as investors begin to refocus on America's yawning current account deficit, now 7% of GDP". (UK Telegraph)
Just to add some perspective to this topic; Argentina's economy collapsed when its trade deficit reached 4% of GDP. The US deficit is at an unprecedented level.
Normally, we could say that these are the predictable effects of market forces, but that's not the case here. After all, we know that Bush insisted that the lavish tax cuts be made permanent even though it was understood that such action would undercut the dollar. So, what is going on here; why does Bush want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg?
There are two ways to weaken the currency; either print more money which dilutes the supply, or create new debt which lowers the value.
Bush has done both simultaneously and with such gusto that it's a wonder the dollar hasn't crashed already. He's expanded government spending by 35% and produced humongous $450 billion per year tax cuts. Add this to the projected costs of a $2 trillion war and the dollar was bound to get hammered.
At the same time Bush has been spending us into oblivion, the Federal Reserve has kept the printing presses humming along at full-throttle doubling the money supply in the last decade. Almost half of all greenbacks are now located outside the country, which means that if the dollar becomes less attractive to investors those greenbacks will come flooding back to America and plunge the country into recession.
Regardless of one's political leanings, there is an obvious and demonstrable attempt to savage the currency by the political and banking establishment.
Why?
The real force behind Bush's actions is the Federal Reserve. No one has any illusion that our paper-mache president, who even boasts about not reading the newspapers, is making complex policy decisions about geopolitics and finance. As a privately owned institution, the Fed has its own agenda which runs contrary to the interests of the American people. Many people fail to realize that it was Greenspan who cooked up the massive increases in Social Security in 1983 to help Reagan reduce the soaring interest rates that were caused by his tax cuts for the wealthy. Ever since then, Social Security payments have gone directly into the general fund; paying for roads, social programs and war. This was the Fed's clever way of creating a flat tax directed exclusively at the poor and middle class.
The Federal Reserve has engineered many similar coups, the most impressive being the huge stock market bubble of the late 1990s. Greenspan kept the cheap money flowing into the Wall Street Casino (and refused to even increase marginal rates on stock purchases) while PE's skyrocketed and the bubble expanded to Hindenburg-proportions.
Following the explosion, which left tens of thousands of Americans stripped of their retirement and savings, Greenspan breezily noted that it is not the task of the Fed to stop bubbles.
Really? The European Central Bank (ECB) takes an entirely different tack intervening whenever it is clearly in the public interest. Greenspan's recalcitrance has nothing to do with principle; he was simply acting on behalf of constituents in the investment community.
Currently, the Fed has created the largest equity bubble of all time; the $9 trillion housing bubble, slapped together over the last 3 years by lowering rates to an unbelievable 1.5% (at one point) and facilitated through shabby lending practices. As rates continue to rise to satisfy America's need for $2 billion cash inflows from foreign lenders every day, the carnage from the housing-bomb is bound to be extensive and agonizing.
The Federal Reserve has always served the singular interests of the ruling class, the only difference now is that the present clash is designed to drive the wooden-stake into the heart of the middle class and create a permanent American oligarchy.
Bush has purposely generated another $3 trillion in debt ensuring that the dollar will fall mightily and working class people be left with a trifling of their life savings.
6 months ago, the Federal Reserve, anticipating the day when the foreign inflows would dry up, eliminated the M-3, their public record of foreign purchases of dollars and securities. It all sounds very abstract, but what it means is that we no longer have any way of knowing how quickly foreign banks are dumping their greenbacks. This means that the American people will be left holding the bag once again; stuck with an inflationary dollar while foreign investors bail out.
The Federal Reserve gave Bush the go-ahead on his "war of choice" just as they cheerily endorsed the budget-busting tax cuts. They've doubled the money supply and done everything in their power to shift middle class wealth to corporate kingpins and American plutocrats.
Still, this doesn't explain why they appear to be intentionally savaging the dollar?
Here's the key: We are not a "capitalistic" system or a "free market" system, that's all just philosophical mumbo-jumbo. In practical terms, we are a "Dollar system" and the greenback must continue to dominate the world oil trade or the Federal Reserve, the IMF, the World Bank and all the privately owned global institutions will crash and burn. That's not their plan; their plan is to perpetuate this debt-pyramid into infinity; integrating dissident states into an expanding and predatory neoliberal network.
The face value of the dollar doesn't matter to the men who print the money. The actual value is constantly manipulated to shift wealth from one class to another. (via bubbles and inflation) What really matters is who controls the system and the means whereby others are coerced to participate. In the last decade the amount of dollars stockpiled in foreign banks has gone from 53% to nearly 70%; this is a monopoly that the US intends to defend by every means possible. To maintain this monopoly, the Federal Reserve has linked arms with the oil industry (and the US military) in its effort to control the world oil market. This has become an "existential" issue for the corporate elites who run American foreign policy. If the dollar is not supported by access to the world's dwindling oil supplies, then there is no incentive for foreign banks to accumulate the anemic dollar. (Oil is sold exclusively in US greenbacks)
By this standard, we can see that Bush's fictitious war on terror is really just a smokescreen for a global resource war that will decide which economic system prevails.
Will it be the dollar system, with its wars and gulags spread across the planet? Or will some other system emerge, some non-ideological incarnation of socialism that redistributes wealth according to people's needs like we see in Venezuela?
The future of the dollar may be decided sooner than any of us had imagined. Iran's Mehr News Agency announced that the long-awaited Iran Oil Bourse (OIB) will open sometime next week on Kish Island challenging head-on America's monopoly on the sale of oil in dollars. Iran's plan is a direct attack on the greenback as the world's "reserve currency". The US must preserve that advantage because it allows it to maintain massive deficits as well as a national debt of $8.4 trillion without fear of economic collapse or hyper-inflation. The opening of the bourse guarantees that central banks around the world will convert some of their reserves into euros precipitating a sharp decline in the dollar's value.
This may be the most serious threat the dollar has ever faced. The fundamental economic law of "supply and demand" ensures that the bourse means hard times for the greenback. This explains why the Bush administration is cobbling together a feeble coalition of European allies (England, France and Germany) to push a resolution through the Security Council expressing their "serious concern" about Iran's alleged nuclear programs.
Washington is looking for international cover to conceal its battle-plans. The hawkish members of the administration want to preempt the opening of the bourse with a unilateral attack (nuclear?) on Iranian facilities.
Even if Washington succeeds in stopping Iran's plans to compete in the oil market, it's still a bumpy road ahead for the greenback. The dollar is under growing pressure from overspending and mismanagement. The prospect of diminishing foreign inflows and a fragile housing market are telltale signs of an inflationary cycle.
America is now facing a slow-motion meltdown that could escalate into a widespread run on the dollar. Attacking Iran will only aggravate the situation and push tenuous states towards new alliances. (China, India, Venezuela and Russia have already expressed support for the new bourse) Military action will do nothing to relieve America's enormous account imbalances or lesson the vulnerability of the ailing greenback.
The problems facing the dollar are purely systemic. The privately owned central banks in the Federal Reserve cannot be trusted to decide monetary policy any more than the oil giants can be trusted to decide foreign policy. When the public interest is excluded from policy-making, catastrophe is inevitable.
Expect the greenback to follow a long-downward spiral.
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When the arch bear turns bull, is it time to start worrying?
By Philip Thornton, Economics Correspondent
The Independent
04 May 2006
The gloomy prognosis for the world economy by Stephen Roach, the chief economist at Morgan Stanley, has been an enduring element of the global macroeconomic debate since the start of the century.
For years Mr Roach has been the Cassandra of global economics, telling anyone who will listen that the imbalance between the US current account deficit and the vast foreign exchange reserves held by Asian central banks risks destabilising the entire financial system.
Two years ago he told fund managers at a leaked private briefing that America had no better than a 10 per cent chance of avoiding economic "armageddon".
Now the great bear has turned into a bull - sort of.
In a research note published this week, Mr Roach said he believed the world was moving in the right direction. "It seems like an eternity since I was last optimistic on the world economy," Mr Roach said, referring to his upbeat reaction to the rebound following the Asian and Russian financial crises of the late 1990s.
He said his optimism had faded rapidly after the cure to the crises - a massive injection of cheap money - in turn led to a multiple asset bubbles and the rebuilding of the imbalances.
But he says now: "While an unbalanced world has yet to shake its hangover from global healing, I must confess that I am now feeling better about the prognosis for the world economy for the first time in ages."
The reason? "The world is finally taking its medicine - or at least considering the possibility of doing so. Central banks are carefully adjusting the liquidity [tap], taking advantage of the luxury of low inflation."
He said the "stewards of globalisation" - the International Monetary Fund and Group of Seven (G7) - were finally determined to tackle the "perils" of global imbalances. A year ago he wrote a research note excoriating the IMF and G7 for using the 2005 spring meetings to issue "vacuous" communiques and "bury their heads in the sand" over the imbalances.
At their meetings in Washington last month the G7 fully accepted the need to tackle the imbalances, while the IMF proposed a new surveillance mechanism to bring together key countries over issues such as deficits and surpluses.
"That finally puts the teeth into the global rebalancing campaign," he says.
"While it doesn't eliminate the possibility of a disruptive adjustment, it does mean that an unbalanced world is now taking its collective responsibility more seriously."
This year has seen several of the bears come out of hibernation. The IMF itself last month said the economy was enjoying a "purple patch" and warned the Federal Reserve might have to take "stronger than expected" monetary policy action.
Mr Roach, a former Federal Reserve economist - he served for three years under the renowned Paul Volcker - said the odds were "shifting away" from a disruptive adjustment and a sudden slump in the dollar.
To be fair, this week's note, entitled World on the Mend, was confirmation of a more benign view that the New York University doctoral graduate has taken in recent months.
There is an obvious parallel in the UK with the record of Tony Dye. In March 1999 he stood down as the head of fund management at UBS Philips and Drew. He left because his famously bearish stance on equity markets had led to underperformance by the funds under his control. Nine months later the UK market embarked on a grisly bear market that saw it lose half its value before it troughed out.
Only a cynic would suggest that Stephen Roach's about-turn after six years of bearishness is a major sell signal for the US economy.
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World oil prices to stay high through 2007: US EIA
Wed May 3, 2006
Reuters
WASHINGTON - World crude oil prices are expected to stay high through 2007 because of strong petroleum demand, limited surplus oil production and refining capacity and concerns about supply disruptions due to geopolitical risks in countries like Iran, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said Wednesday.
The EIA said none of these "forces that contribute to current high crude oil prices will ease significantly in the near future, so our best forecast is that crude oil prices will remain elevated through 2007."
The Energy Department's analytical arm also said in its weekly review of the oil market, "Strong growth in the world economy, and particularly in China and the United States, has fueled the need for more oil, thus putting upward pressure on prices."
U.S. oil prices have stayed above $70 a barrel also due to fear among traders that the West's dispute with Iran over its restarted nuclear program could disrupt that country's oil exports and a large part of Nigeria's oil exports remains halted because of militant violence.
"The situation in Nigeria may continue for many months (and) market concerns about a possible supply disruption from Iran are likely to remain through at least this year if not into next year," the EIA said.
Comment: Let's face it, the U.S. Energy Information Administration should know. With the US government planning an unjustified and immoral attack on Iran, everyone can be sure that oil prices will skyrocket.
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Polish defence minister calls for EU energy integration
www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-04 10:22:30
WARSAW, May 3 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) should integrate its energy sectors as energy security is a crucial element of national security, Polish Defence Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on Wednesday.
Sikorski made the remarks in response to a question about his recent criticism of the German-Russian Northern Pipeline project, the Polish News Agency reported.
Sikorski also announced that his ministry would soon take steps aimed at diversifying Poland's energy sources.
On Sunday, the defense minister criticized the German-Russian project to build a gas pipeline under the Baltic seabed, because it bypasses Poland, describing the move as being "disloyal toward other EU countries."
He implicitly related the envisaged project to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact signed in Moscow in 1939. Sikorski's words have brought criticism from German politicians and media, as well as the European Commission.
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Rome tourist parched after $1,200 beer
Reuters
Wed May 3, 2006
ROME - He had heard Rome was expensive but nothing prepared the Hong Kong tourist for a 990 euro ($1,251) beer.
The unwary visitor received the bumper bar bill for a drink sipped near Rome's most famous street, Via Veneto, where beers usually cost as much as 10 euros, Rome mayor's office said.
The tourist, who was traveling alone, was invited to the bar by a tout who served him a beer and then said it would cost him 990 euros. He bartered it down to 490 euros, but the bar owner ended up taking 990 euros off his credit card anyway.
"When the bill arrived I thought it was safer to pay it. I was scared something could happen to me if I didn't," the man, whose name was withdrawn, told Rome mayor's office that is investigating the crime.
The tourist, who is from Hong Kong but lives in Germany and has a British passport, tried to report the fraud to the police but said he could not make himself understood because no one spoke English.
Tourists to Rome have surged in the past five years -- visitors were up 60 percent in April compared with a year ago -- but the unwary can find the Eternal City's charms obscured by the fight to get a fair price.
Most visitors have tales of rip offs by bar, restaurant and hotel owners but they often pale beside stories of taxi drivers who can charge hundreds of euros for trips from the airport and then dump those who refuse to pay by the side of the motorway.
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Them Dang Foreigners
Sheriff to Start Posse Patrols to Curb Illegal Immigration Flow
CBS 5 News
05.02.06
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced Tuesday that about 100 volunteer posse and Sheriff's deputies will soon begin randomly patrolling the desert areas and main roadways in southwest Maricopa County as apart of an operation to stem the flow of illegal aliens entering the county.
Arpaio made the announcement just as 11 more illegal aliens were being booked in jail after a Ford Windstar with California plates and 16 people packed inside was stopped by a Sheriff's deputy early Tuesday morning on a traffic violation near Gila Bend.
Despite the growing controversy about illegal aliens nationwide, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office remains the only Arizona law enforcement agency willing to enforce a new state anti-smuggling law.
"There are so many illegals trying to make it into the county that it's overwhelming my deputies, so I have called on members of my 3000 member volunteer posse to assist," says Sheriff Arpaio. "It's not only illegals we find and arrest out there, we've also made some recent huge drug seizures involving illegal aliens including nearly 100 pounds of methamphetamine and approximately three pounds of heroin."
Posse member Andrew Ramsammy, who was part of Tuesday's arrest team, says that he believes he represents many of his peers when he says that the posse is anxious to be a part of the Sheriff's solution to the immigration problem.
"As a group of law abiding people, we are fed up with the number of people who come into this county illegally. We're tired of the drugs that some of them bring to sell to our young people and we're ready and willing to assist the Sheriff's deputies in the fight against illegal immigration," says Ramsammy.
Sheriff Arpaio says Tuesday's arrests include two coyotes, one of whom may be charged with a far more serious offense - endangerment.
Virgilio Parra Sabori may face a class 6 felony charge if it is determined that he recklessly left one of his customers to die in the desert.
That customer, who may have paid as much as $1100 to gain entrance into the country, was a 24-year-old Mexican male found near death by deputies who combed the desert earlier Tuesday after being told by other people in the vehicle that one man was left behind. That young man was found lying in the sun on the desert floor and is currently in serious condition in a west valley hospital.
Arpaio says his deputies so far have made seven anti-smuggling cases in the last few weeks alone and that 120 illegals have been arrested and jailed.
Arpaio houses 10,000 prisoners in his jails, including almost 2000 in a tent city he erected in 1993. Tent City is being expanded to hold an anticipated increase in of inmates being incarcerated in the Maricopa County jails.
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'Minuteman' Border Volunteers Take 12-City Trek
Local6.com
May 3, 2006
LOS ANGELES -- The Minuteman Project civilian border patrol group planned to kick off a 12-city tour Wednesday to build support for its get-tough border stance in the wake of pro-immigant rallies around the country.
Organizers said they will use the caravan, which is scheduled to finish on Capitol Hill, to mobilize voters and recruit members. The group is made up of volunteers who patrol the border and strongly oppose illegal immigration.
The group hopes to counter the impact made by the more than 1 million illegal immigrants and their supporters who took to the nation's streets earlier this week. Project officials acknowledged, however, that they would have a hard time mustering the same kind of numbers for a rally of their own. Demonstrations by the Minuteman Project on Monday were scattered and small, often numbering fewer than 100 people per city.
"Our power is not putting a million people on the street, our power is putting 10 million people at the voting box," said Stephen Eichler, the group's executive director. "Their voice is accompanied by a lot of bodies, but our voice is accompanied by even more bodies who aren't going to go out in the street."
The caravan is scheduled to leave from Los Angeles and arrive on Capitol Hill for a May 12 rally as senators rush to pass an immigration reform bill before a Memorial Day deadline set by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.
Federal lawmakers must then reconcile the Senate bill - which will likely include a guest worker program and a potential path to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants - with a House bill that would criminalize them.
The caravan will include about 100 staff members and supporters, said Eichler. It will stop in President Bush's vacation haven of Crawford, Texas, as well as in Phoenix, Ariz.; Albuquerque, N.M.; Abilene, Texas; Little Rock, Ark.; Memphis and Nashville, Tenn.; Montgomery, Ala.; Atlanta; and Richmond, Va.
One supporter, Penny Magnotto of Upland, Calif., said she and a friend were planning to follow the caravan in their RV and visit seven additional states on their return to recruit more members.
"If one in 100 people that we meet up with kind of get it and see that we're nice family people I will be thrilled," said Magnotto, founder of the Minuteman spin-off Minutewomen on the Road.
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Growing Unease for Some Blacks on Immigration
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
The New York Times
May 4, 2006
WASHINGTON - In their demonstrations across the country, some Hispanic immigrants have compared the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s struggle to their own, singing "We Shall Overcome" and declaring a new civil rights movement to win citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.
Civil rights stalwarts like the Rev. Jesse Jackson; Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia; Julian Bond and the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery have hailed the recent protests as the natural progression of their movement in the 1960's.
But despite some sympathy for the nation's illegal immigrants, many black professionals, academics and blue-collar workers feel increasingly uneasy as they watch Hispanics flex their political muscle while assuming the mantle of a seminal black struggle for justice.
Some blacks bristle at the comparison between the civil rights movement and the immigrant demonstrations, pointing out that black protesters in the 1960's were American citizens and had endured centuries of enslavement, rapes, lynchings and discrimination before they started marching.
Others worry about the plight of low-skilled black workers, who sometimes compete with immigrants for entry-level jobs.
And some fear the unfinished business of the civil rights movement will fall to the wayside as America turns its attention to a newly energized Hispanic minority with growing political and economic clout.
"All of this has made me start thinking, 'What's going to happen to African-Americans?' " said Brendon L. Laster, 32, a black fund-raiser at Howard University here, who has been watching the marches. "What's going to happen to our unfinished agenda?"
Mr. Laster is dapper and cosmopolitan, a part-time professor and Democratic activist who drinks and dines with a wide circle of black, white and Hispanic friends. He said he marveled at first as the images of cheering, flag-waving immigrants flickered across his television screen. But as some demonstrators proclaimed a new civil rights movement, he grew uncomfortable.
He says that immigrant protesters who claim the legacy of Dr. King and Rosa Parks are going too far. And he has begun to worry about the impact that the emerging immigrant activism will have on black Americans, many of whom still face poverty, high rates of unemployment and discrimination in the workplace.
"I think what they were able to do, the level of organization they were able to pull off, that was phenomenal," said Mr. Laster, who is also a part-time sociology professor at a community college in Baltimore. "But I do think their struggle is, in fundamental ways, very different from ours. We didn't chose to come here; we came here as slaves. And we were denied, even though we were legal citizens, our basic rights."
"There are a still lot of unresolved issues from the civil rights era," he said. "Perhaps we're going to be pushed to the back burner."
This painful debate is bubbling up in church halls and classrooms, on call-in radio programs and across dining room tables. Some blacks prefer to discuss the issue privately for fear of alienating their Hispanic allies. But others are publicly airing their misgivings, saying they are too worried to stay silent.
"We will have no power, no clout," warned Linda Carter-Lewis, 62, a human resources manager and the branch president of the N.A.A.C.P. in Des Moines. "That's where I see this immigrant movement going. Even though so many thousands and thousands of them have no legal status and no right to vote right now, that day is coming."
Immigrant leaders defend their use of civil rights language, saying strong parallels exist between the two struggles. And they argue that their movement will ultimately become a powerful vehicle to fight for the rights of all American workers, regardless of national origin.
"African-Americans during the civil rights movement were in search of the American dream and that's what our movement is trying to achieve for our community," said Jaime Contreras, president of the National Capital Immigration Coalition, which organized the April 10 demonstration that drew tens of thousands of people to Washington.
"We face the same issues even if we speak different languages," said Mr. Contreras, who is from El Salvador and listens to Dr. King's speeches for inspiration.
Mr. Jackson, who addressed the immigrant rally on Monday in New York, echoed those views. He noted that Dr. King, at the end of his life, focused on improving economic conditions for all Americans, regardless of race. And he said the similarities between African-Americans and illegal immigrants were too powerful to ignore.
"We too were denied citizenship," Mr. Jackson said. "We too were undocumented workers working without wages, without benefits, without the vote. "We should feel honored that other people are using tactics and strategies from our struggle. We shouldn't say they're stealing from us. They're learning from us."
Mr. Jackson said corporate employers were fueling the tensions between blacks and immigrants by refusing to pay a living wage to all workers. John Campbell, a black steel worker and labor activist from Iowa, agreed.
"This is a class issue," said Mr. Campbell, who has been disheartened by black critics of the immigrant marches. "We need to join forces. We can't improve our lot in life as African-Americans by suppressing the rights of anyone else."
But blacks and immigrants have long had a history of uneasy relations in the United States.
W.E.B. DuBois, a founder of the N.A.A.C.P., and other prominent black leaders worried that immigrants would displace blacks in the workplace. Ronald Walters, director of the African-American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland, said blacks cheered when the government restricted Asian immigration to the United States after World War I. And many Europeans who came to this country discriminated against blacks.
Blacks and Hispanics have also been allies. In the 1960's, Dr. King and Cesar Chavez, the Mexican-American farm labor leader, corresponded with each other. And when Mr. Chavez was jailed, Dr. King's widow, Coretta Scott King, visited him in jail, Mr. Walters said. In recent years, blacks and Hispanics have been influential partners in the Democratic Party.
A recent poll conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center captured the ambivalence among blacks over immigration. Nearly 80 percent said immigrants from Latin American work very hard and have strong family values.
But nearly twice as many blacks as whites said that they or a family member had lost a job, or not gotten a job, because an employer hired an immigrant worker. Blacks were also more likely than whites to feel that immigrants take jobs away from American citizens.
Mr. Walters said he understood those conflicting emotions, saying he feels torn himself because of his concerns about the competition between immigrants and low-skilled black men for jobs. In 2004, 72 percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20's were jobless, compared with 34 percent of white and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts.
"I applaud them moving out of the shadows and into the light because of the human rights issues involved," Mr. Walters said of illegal immigrants. "I've given my entire life to issues of social justice as an activist and an academic. In that sense, I'm with them.
"But they also represent a powerful ingredient to the perpetuation of our struggle," he said. "We have a problem where half of black males are unemployed in several cities. I can't ignore that and simply be my old progressive self and say it's not an issue. It is an issue."
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Russian racism 'out of control'
BBC
Thursday, 4 May 2006
Racist killings in Russia are "out of control", according to a report by international human rights watchdog Amnesty International.
The report into violent racism shows that at least 28 people were killed and 366 were assaulted in 2005.
This year there have already been a number of high-profile cases, including the death of a Senegalese student.
Amnesty condemns discrimination by the authorities and a failure to properly record or investigate racist crimes.
Attacks that stain Russia
The Amnesty report, entitled "Russian Federation: Violent racism out of control", includes examples of police and prosecutors routinely classifying murders and serious assaults by skinhead extremists as lesser crimes of "hooliganism".
Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said racist killings and violent attacks against foreigners, visible ethnic minorities and anti-racist campaigners in Russia were out of control.
"Some Russian authorities are turning a blind eye," she said. "Instead of seeing only 'hooliganism' in vicious organised attacks on students from African, south-east Asian countries and non-Slavic Russians from Chechnya, Russia's police and prosecutors need to tackle head-on the growing scourge of violent racism in Russia."
She said President Vladimir Putin's government should adopt a comprehensive "plan of action" to combat racism and anti-Semitism.
Protests
Cases highlighted in the Amnesty report include the killing of nine-year-old Tajik girl Khursheda Sultonov.
She was attacked with other members of her family in St Petersburg in February 2004 by a gang. Khursheda was stabbed nine times in the chest, stomach and arms and died at the scene.
Another victim was Vu Anh Tuan, a 20-year-old Vietnamese student, stabbed to death in October 2004 by a gang of 18 skinheads near a metro station in St Petersburg.
Dmitri Krayukhin, head of anti-racist organisation United Europe, told Amnesty he had received threats to "cut off your head".
He has repeatedly been denied protection from the authorities in Orel, western Russia.
The report also heard from members of the Roma community who have stopped travelling into St Petersburg city centre, having been the victims of attacks.
Russian citizens and foreigners living in the big cities have led demonstrations against the attacks and the authorities' failure to tackle the problem.
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Business as Usual
U.S. Mass Transit on Alert
Richard Esposito
The Blotter
May 03, 2006
ABC News has learned that the Department of Homeland Security has alerted U.S. mass transit officials to "suspicious videotaping" of European rail systems that point to a continuing terrorist interest in targeting mass transit and "possible surveillance or pre-operational planning."
According to a short unclassified infrastructure security "private sector note" released Tuesday, May 2nd, DHS says a 17 minute hand held videotape by one foreign national detained in November in a major European city included footage of several stations, two routes and the interior of one "subway car." None of the footage was of tourist attractions. Information from a second suspicious videotaping, also in November 2005, was factored into the one page private sector note.
"Two incidents of suspicious videotaping of a European mass transit system in the last 120 days provide indications of continued terrorist interest in mass transit systems as targets, and potentially useful insight into terrorist surveillance techniques," DHS said.
The contents of the 17 minute tape that appeared suspicious included the recording of station signs from inside a moving train, shooting footage of the rail car and station platform ceilings and recording trash can and stairwell locations. This footage seems to mesh with known techniques and elements of prior casing reports of planned and executed terrorist plots including the London bombing and plots against the New York City subway system.
The Department of Homeland Security stresses that there is no specific or credible threat information at this time to suggest an an attack on U.S. rail systems, a spokesman said.
Comment: A reader of The Blotter posted the following comment:If they discovered this in November 2005, why are they just now releasing the information?
Seems pretty irresponsible . . .
There is a very simple answer: fear.
Judging from some of the other reader comments, it seems to be working.
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Moving puppy-bag sparks bomb alert in Italy
Reuters
Wed May 3, 2006
MILAN - A moving bag apparently abandoned on a tram in Italy sparked panic among passengers who thought it was a bomb -- but turned out to contain four puppies.
Passengers, alarmed by movement in the large bag left on a seat on Tuesday evening, warned the driver, a witness said.
"The driver stopped the tram and started walking up and down, trying to find out why the bag was left in the middle of the carriage," the witness told Reuters. The transportation company in the northern city of Milan confirmed the report.
"People started moving away from the bag and some old ladies started murmuring about a possible bomb attack," the witness added.
But just as the driver prepared to raise the alarm by calling transport headquarters, the owner of the bag -- a homeless man sitting on the other side of the coach -- stood up and opened the bag, revealing the puppies.
"They were just puppies, but these days you never know," the driver said.
Italy has been on alert for possible attacks since the March 11, 2004 bombings in Madrid and the attacks on London's transportation network last July.
Comment: Yup these days, you just never know when you could be blown to pieces. That's why we need our wonderful governments to enact fascist legislation to protect us. See?
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Indian Military Rehearse Pakistans Dissection In Mock Battles
AFP
May 04, 2006
New Delhi - India's top military strike force backed by aircraft were practicing lightning attacks aimed at slicing arch-rival Pakistan in half in the event of actual war, officials said Wednesday.
"The manoeuvres are being held in stages and they will culminate on May 19 in a theatre of 10 to 15 square kilometres (about four to six square miles)," Indian army spokesman Colonel S.K. Sakuja told AFP in New Delhi.
The mock battles, codenamed Sangha Shakti (Joint Power), involve more than 40,000 soldiers from India's 2nd Strike Corps which accounts for almost 50 percent of the million-plus army's cross-border strike capability, Sakuja said.
He said the three-week exercises were being conducted near Pakistan's borders in northern Punjab state's Jullandhar district.
Military commanders said India had alerted Islamabad in advance about the exercises as part of a bilateral military accord.
The spokesman said a "mixed compliment" of transport and strike aircraft of the Indian Air Force were backing Sangha Shakti, one of the biggest wargames in recent years on Pakistan's militerised borders.
On Wednesday, the 2nd Strike Corps, backed by troops from the army's 14th Rapid Division, practiced dry runs with T-90 Russian battle tanks in Punjab's deserts with temperatures reaching 42 Celsius (107 Fahrenheit).
"This will put to test our 2004 war doctrine to dismember a not-so-friendly nation effectively and at the shortest possible time but since my statement is not politically-friendly I would not like to be identified," a commander told AFP.
The comments were an obvious reference to Pakistan which went to war with India in 1947, 1965 and 1971.
The neighbors conducted tit-for-tat nuclear weapons tests in 1998 and four years later came dangerously close to a fourth war when India blamed Pakistan for an armed attack on its parliament by Muslim gunmen.
The wargames coincided with an agreement Wednesday between India and Pakistan to launch a truck service as well as a second passenger bus route this summer linking the parts of disputed Kashmir held by each country.
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Malaysia Rules Out Foreign Control Of Water Industry
AFP
May 04, 2006
Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia will not allow its water industry to be controlled by foreign corporations, reports said Wednesday as the sector prepares to undergo a major revamp.
"The government is firm that Malaysia will not liberalise the water industry as it is considered a basic utility and should not be opened for international market forces to determine," Energy, Water and Communications Minister Lim Keng Yaik was quoted as saying by the official Bernama news agency.
Two new water-related bills to be debated in parliament next week will provide a new regulatory framework, with the federal and state governments to share responsibility for the sector.
Lim was responding to concerns from civil society groups who said that once water supply and services are provided on a commercial basis, foreigners could be drawn into the sector and lead to rising prices.
"The rationale for introducing the bills is to ensure quality and reliability where water supplies are concerned," Lim told The Star newspaper, after a spate of complaints over tainted and muddy water.
"We want to ensure the industry is regulated and that consumers enjoy better services," he added.
But the Coalition Against Water Privatisation (CAWP), one of the key groups lobbying against the legislation, said on Wednesday Lim's comments meant little, given Malaysia's international trade obligations.
"In the real politics of negotiations, trading off the competitive advantage of one country for another is a key feature. So Lim's nice statements don't carry any weight," CAWP's coordinator Charles Santiago told AFP.
Malaysia has obligations under the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) to liberalise a number of service sectors, and Santiago said this could put Malaysia under pressure to open up water services.
"Commitments have to be made at the WTO," he said. "The EU has already requested the opening up of water services under WTO GATS negotiations."
The CAWP is expected to meet with Malaysian parliamentarians Thursday to discuss amendments to the legislation.
Comment: The privitisation of water companies is one of the ways that US corporations have controlled some countries. See the June 13, 2005 Signs page for more on the Cochabamba Water War in April 2000, which involved U.S.-based Bechtel.
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Venezuela decides to recall ambassador from Lima
www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-04 13:22:29
CARACAS, May 4 (Xinhua) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Wednesday that in view of the rifts between Venezuela and Peru, he decided to recall his country's ambassador to Lima, Cruz Martinez, local media reported.
Chavez announced the decision after meeting with Bolivian President Evo Morales during a visit to Bolivia.
The Peruvian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on April 29 that the Peruvian government decided to withdraw its ambassador from Venezuela "with immediate effect due to its persistent and flagrant interference in Peru's domestic affairs."
Peru on Tuesday accused Venezuela of meddling in Peru's election campaign. Venezuela's permanent representative to the Organization of American States, Jorge Valera, rejected Peru's accusations.
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American official hails 'strong ties' with France
PARIS, May 2, 2006 (AFP)
France and the United States -- bitterly divided over the US-led war in Iraq -- have put the rift behind them to work as close partners on international affairs, a top US diplomat said Tuesday.
"I can tell you in Washington we have no better partner right now on most of these issues that occupy the Security Council... than the French government," Nicholas Burns, US Undersecretary for Political Affairs, told reporters in the French capital.
"We're so pleased at the strength of the relationship between France and the United States," he said, stressing that Paris and Washington shared a common position on Iran, Syria and the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region.
Burns was US ambassador to NATO at the start of the Iraq war, when Washington had vowed to scale back its contacts with Paris to "punish" it for its opposition to the conflict.
He referred to "the disaffection, and misunderstandings and disagreements between France and the United States" as firmly rooted in the past.
The US official was in Paris to take part in talks between Security Council members on Tehran's nuclear programme, which the West fears could be hiding a drive for the atom bomb.
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Council of Europe aims to decriminalise libel
AFP
May 2, 2006
STRASBOURG, France - The Council of Europe called on Tuesday, the eve of World Press Freedom Day, for the abolition of laws that threaten journalists with heavy penalties for libel.
The council's secretary general, Terry Davis, said libel - which he called "a particularly insidious form of intimidation" - should be decriminalised because such laws are "often used to stifle criticism."
"No one can suppress the truth forever, but some people never stop trying. It is the journalists who pay the price," Davis said in a statement.
He noted that more than two thirds of the council's 46 member states "maintain criminal sanctions for defamation," and he called on those nations to abolish criminal provisions and heavy damages in civil cases against journalists.
He also said that last year more than 150 journalists around the world died while carrying out their profession, more than half of them murdered.
In the council's member states journalists "are no longer tortured or killed, but that does not mean that they are always free to do their work," Davis said.
He added that the European Convention on Human Rights is often ignored by governments that interfere with the freedom of expression.
"Some journalists may be silenced through intimidation, others may be bought into compliance, but the end result remains the same because democracy cannot properly function without media which is genuinely free of governmental interference and control," Davis said.
"Progress in the protection of journalists is the only credible way to mark the World Press Freedom Day" on Wednesday.
Comment: So, even though libel is a "particularly insidious form of intimidation", it should be decriminalised because laws that ban libel are often used to stifle criticism. If libel is decriminalised, however, the problem is not solved since journalists will be able to insidiously intimidate whomever they wish...
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With Liberty and Justice For All
Moussaoui : the final act
AFP
May 4, 2006
ALEXANDRIA, United States - Zacarias Moussaoui will strut center stage for the last time, before he is incarcerated in the US "supermax" top security jail where he will waste away for the rest of his days.
One day after a jury spared the Al-Qaeda plotter from execution over the September 11 attacks, Judge Leonie Brinkema is due to formally sentence Moussaoui to life in prison with no possibility of release.
The jury on Wednesday rejected the US government's bid to enforce the death penalty against the only man tried in the United States over the murderous 2001 attacks on New York and Washington which killed nearly 3,000 people.
In Thursday's hearing Moussaoui, 37, is expected to be offered the chance to make a statement -- and he is sure to seize a final platform, for what he has described as Al-Qaeda "propaganda."
True to his stormy and unpredictable character, Moussaoui shouted "America you lost ... I won," as he was led from court.
Relatives of September 11 victims, more than 40 of whom testified for the prosecution, and 12 for the defense had mixed reactions. Many were just happy that the trial was over.
"I am glad to see this will be the last day that Mr Moussaoui is in the headlines," said Carrie Lemack, whose mother, Judy Larocque, was a passenger on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.
"He deserves to rot in jail," she added.
Prosecutors signalled they will not make a new attempt to secure a death penalty. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty said "the jury has spoken and we respect and accept this verdict and we thank them for their service."
President George W. Bush issued a statement however in which he said the United States would "stay on the offensive" in its global "war on terror."
"The end of this trial represents the end of this case, but not an end to the fight against terror," he said.
The jury reached their decision after more than 40 hours of deliberations spread over seven days.
The jury did not "unanimously find a sentence of death should be imposed on the defendant," Judge Brinkema said after opening the large orange envelope containing the verdict.
Moussaoui, a Frenchman, had pleaded guilty to conspiring to hijack planes for Al-Qaeda and flying them into prominent US buildings.
He was detained in August 2001 but prosecutors had argued that his "lethal lies" while in detention had helped the Al-Qaeda hijackers go ahead with the September 11 attacks unhindered.
The jury agreed in the first phase of the trial that Moussaoui had contributed toward the deaths and so was eligible for the death penalty.
But it did not come up with the unanimous verdict needed to recommend execution. Court documents did not indicate how many jurors favoured death, if any. But three jurors inserted a paragraph in the verdict form stating that they believed Moussaoui had "limited" knowledge of the September 11 plan.
In court, Moussaoui refused an order to stand for the verdict. He sat calmly in his chair as Brinkema said the jury had ruled for life in prison.
Moussaoui gave a 'V' for victory sign to the defence lawyers he refused to cooperate with throughout the hearings.
After the jury had gone and he was being led out of the court, Moussaoui shouted: "America you lost, David Novak (the prosecutor) you lost ... I won."
Moussaoui stunned the trial by claiming that he knew the World Trade Center was a key target and that would have flown a hijacked jet into the White House on September 11, had he not been arrested weeks earlier.
His statements conflicted with all previous accounts of the strikes, as well as with Moussaoui's own earlier admission that he was to have been part of a second wave of attacks.
His lawyers said Moussaoui's claims were overblown, that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, that he was only involved in the plot "in his dreams," and that he wanted to become an Al-Qaeda "martyr."
Moussaoui is expected to go to the "supermax" prison -- short for super maximum security -- in Florence, Colorado where a number of other Al-Qaeda followers serving life terms are held.
Though the defence won, the lawyers expressed their frustration, almost anger, at Moussaoui for his obstructive attitude.
"I haven't spoken to Mr Moussaoui in a long time and that's fine with me," said Ed MacMahon, one of the court appointed defence lawyers.
He said Moussaoui would soon be in an "abysmal" condition in the Colorado prison. "He's going to wake up with nobody to hate but himself."
"Moussaoui came to our country to die and now he's going to have to wait for a long time to do it," MacMahon declared.
The prosecution brought dozens of survivors of the September 11 attacks and the families of the victims to court to portray the horror of the day. Heart-wrenching evidence was read and shown to the jury.
"Personally I'm disappointed. My son didn't see his 33rd birthday," said David Beamer, father of Todd Beamer, a passenger on United Airlines Flight 93 which crashed in a Pennsylvania field on September 11.
"Among other things, he is a coward," Beamer told Fox News television. However, he said the jury fairly performed its duty.
Abraham Scott, whose wife Janice died when one plane hit the Pentagon in Washington, said he agreed with the jurors' decision and that it would bring him closure and help him move on with his life.
The French embassy said in a statement that the trial had been carried out in "exemplary fashion," while also revealing that Moussaoui has refused to meet French diplomats.
Comment: "Abraham Scott, whose wife Janice died when one plane hit the Pentagon in Washington, said he agreed with the jurors' decision and that it would bring him closure and help him move on with his life."
It will bring him closure even though Moussaoui wasn't even directly involved in the attacks that killed his wife?? It seems the show trial of Moussaoui has done its job."The French embassy said in a statement that the trial had been carried out in "exemplary fashion," while also revealing that Moussaoui has refused to meet French diplomats."
So, Moussaoui's mother says he was drugged and not acting normally, Moussaoui himself refused to cooperate with his own defense lawyers, and he allegedly also refused to meet French diplomats. Isn't that all just a bit odd?
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Bush says after Moussaoui verdict that 'evil will not have the final say'
19:56:46 EDT May 3, 2006
TERENCE HUNT
WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. President George W. Bush said Wednesday a federal jury that spared the life of al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui did "something that he evidently wasn't willing to do for innocent American citizens."
Bush declined to say whether he was satisfied with the jury's decision to reject the death penalty in favour of a sentence of life imprisonment. The government had sought the death penalty.
The president commented on the case during a brief question and answer session in the Oval Office. He also issued a written statement in which he said the verdict "represents the end of this case but not an end to the fight against terror."
Moussaoui was the only person charged in this country in the four suicide jetliner hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001. Three jurors decided Moussaoui had only limited knowledge of the Sept. 11 plot and three described his role in the attacks as minor, if he had any role at all.
Without commenting directly on the jury's decision, Bush declared in the statement, "Evil will not have the final say. This great nation will prevail."
Bush was asked about the verdict after a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
"Mr. Moussaoui got a fair trial," Bush said. "The jury convicted him to life in prison, where he will spend the rest of his life. In so doing, they spared his life, which is something that he evidently wasn't willing to do for innocent American citizens."
"As I think about the trial, I can't help but think about the families who lost a loved one on September the 11th," Bush said. "I think about the rescuers who tried to save lives in the burning buildings."
"And I know that it's really important for the United States to stay on the offence against these killers and bring them to justice," he said. "And those are my thoughts about the Moussaoui trial."
In his written statement, Bush said that "our thoughts today are with the families who lost loved ones."
Bush said the nation continues to grieve for the victims of Sept. 11.
"We are still deeply touched by the memory of rescuers who gave all, the passengers who ran a hijacked plane into the ground to prevent an even greater loss of life and the frightened souls who comforted one another during their final moments on earth."
Bush said, "The end of this trial represents the end of this case but not an end to the fight against terror."
"The enemy that struck our shores on September 11th is still active and remains determined to kill Americans," the president said. "We will stay on the offensive against the terrorists. We will end their ability to plot and plan. We will deny them safe haven and the ability to gain weapons of mass murder."
"In these four and a half years, with good allies at our side, the United States has killed or captured many terrorists, shut down training camps, broken up terror cells in our own country, and removed regimes that sponsored terror," the president said. "We have many dedicated men and women fully engaged in this fight in the military, intelligence and homeland security; law enforcement personnel; and federal investigators and prosecutors who gather the evidence, make the case and ensure that justice is done. They are doing superb work every day to remove this danger and to protect our country."
"We have had many victories, yet there is much left to do, and I will not relent in this struggle for the freedom and security of the American people," Bush said. "And we can be confident. Our cause is right, and the outcome is certain: Justice will be served. Evil will not have the final say. This great nation will prevail."
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US denies CIA ran thousands of illegal prisoner flights
AFP
May 4, 2006
BRUSSELS - The legal advisor to US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice dismissed as "absurd" allegations that the
CIA had illegally transferred thousands of prisoners to third countries, where some of them might risk torture.
"These allegations that there have been thousands of flights with the implication that they all have got detainees on them ... is simply absurd," the legal advisor, John Bellinger, told reporters in Brussels.
"The suggestion that these flights ... are even up to anything that is improper is also, I think, a dangerous suggestion," he said.
Last week, Italian MEP Claudio Fava said that the US
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had carried out more than 1,000 secret flights in Europe since 2001 without any EU governments raising questions.
The United States has come under intense fire over the last year following press reports about numerous CIA flights suspected of carrying undeclared prisoners across European airspace since the September 11, 2001, attacks.
The prisoners were reported to have been transitted through Europe en route to third countries in a process known as "rendition".
On Wednesday, US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said that the United States has the right to send prisoners to other countries but also the legal obligation to ensure it is not a place where the captives will be tortured.
"We all know renditions in and of itself is nothing extraordinary," he said.
The Council of Europe, a largely human rights watchdog organisation, has been investigating the allegations, as has a European Parliament special committee.
Comment: "We all know renditions in and of itself is nothing extraordinary," he said.
Sorry Alberto, but "we all" don't know that there is nothing extraordinary about rendition. That's why Gonzalez was being asked about it: because it concerns people around the world, people who are NOT convinced that the Bush administration is telling the truth about its "terrorist" captives.
In fact, rendition IS extraordinary. How else would you describe the "beacon of freedom and democracy" in the world shipping off alleged terrorists to other countries - specifically to be tortured or disappeared - instead of trying them in a court of law???
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CIA row hits US-Europe intelligence work: US lawyer
Thu May 4, 2006 06:21 AM ET
By David Brunnstrom
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Allegations that CIA flights through Europe carried detainees bound for ill-treatment are damaging transatlantic intelligence cooperation, a lawyer acting for the State Department said on Thursday.
Speaking before heading the defense of U.S. practices at the U.N. Committee against Torture in Geneva, John Bellinger reiterated Washington's position that it does not outsource torture or transfer suspects abroad expecting torture.
Bellinger was responding to a European Parliament probe which, while producing no firm evidence, concluded last month that more than 1,000 CIA flights had transited the EU and that the CIA had been responsible on several occasions for kidnapping and illegally detaining alleged terrorists on EU soil.
"The suggestion that intelligence flights are somehow engaged in illegal activity really undermines the cooperation between the United States and Europe," he told a news briefing.
EU lawmakers are due in Washington next week to probe allegations of secret detention centers and flights in Europe for terror suspects. Bellinger is among those they will meet.
Bellinger said he did not have any information as to how many flights there had been, but the suggestion that a large number had detainees aboard was "absurd."
"Someone needs to challenge that," he said. "It's not possible for the United States to prove a negative, but responsible European governments or responsible European officials simply need to say this has gotten out of hand."
"There is no evidence for the suggestion or implication that however many flights there have been that they have all got detainees on them or that an intelligence flight is engaged in some sort of improper activity."
RENDITION CASES RARE
He said there had been "very few" cases of renditions, or the transfer of terrorism suspects from one country to another, but declined to provide details.
So many allegations about intelligence flights were incorrect that the U.S. government had decided not to respond to specific charges, nor to give details of the purpose of every flight, given operational security requirements, he said.
"Intelligence activities by their very nature are simply carried out in secret because you don't want to tell the al Qaeda people that you may have captured their material or you are engaged in cooperation," he said.
Bellinger said there was "understandable uncomfortableness" about the holding of al Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, but there were not many suggestions as to an alternative.
"There have been a number of voices recently calling for closure of Guantanamo, but none of those who have called for closure of have suggested an alternative," he said.
A Washington Post report last year that the CIA had run secret prisons in Europe and flown suspects to states where they would have been tortured unleashed a spate of investigations, but none have so far produced a "smoking gun," or solid proof.
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Hitchens the Hacker; And, Hitchens the Orientalist
And, "We don't Want Your Stinking War!
Juan Cole
04/05/2006
Christopher Hitchens owes me a big apology.
I belong to a private email discussion group called Gulf2000. It has academics, journalists and policy makers on it. It has a strict rule that messages appearing there will not be forwarded off the list. It is run, edited and moderated by former National Security Council staffer for Carter and Reagan, Gary Sick, now a political scientist at Columbia University. The "no-forwarding" rule is his, and is intended to allow the participants to converse about controversial matters without worrying about being in trouble. Also, in an informal email discussion, ideas evolve, you make mistakes and they get corrected, etc. It is a rough, rough draft.
Hitchens somehow hacked into the site, or joined and lurked, or had a crony pass him things. And he has now made my private email messages the subject of an attack on me in Slate. (I am not linking to the article because it is highly unethical and Slate does not deserve any direct traffic from my site for it.) Moreover, he did not even have the decency to quote the final outcome of the discussions.
I'd like to take this opportunity to complain about the profoundly dishonest character of "attack journalism." Journalists are supposed to interview the subjects about which they write. Mr. Hitchens never contacted me about this piece. He never sought clarification of anything. He never asked permission to quote my private mail. Major journalists have a privileged position. Not just anyone can be published in Slate. Most academics could not get a gig there (I've never been asked to write for it). Hitchens is paid to publish there because he is a prominent journalist. But then he should behave like a journalist, not like a hired gun for the far Right, smearing hapless targets of his ire. That isn't journalism. For some reason it drives the Right absolutely crazy that I keep this little web log, and so they keep trotting out these clowns in amateurish sniping attacks. It is rather sad, that one person standing up to them puts them into such piranha-like frenzy.
The precise reason for Hitchens' theft and publication of my private mail is that I object to the characterization of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as having "threatened to wipe Israel off the map." I object to this translation of what he said on two grounds. First, it gives the impression that he wants to play Hitler to Israel's Poland, mobilizing an armored corps to move in and kill people.
But the actual quote, which comes from an old speech of Khomeini, does not imply military action, or killing anyone at all. The second reason is that it is just an inexact translation. The phrase is almost metaphysical. He quoted Khomeini that "the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time." It is in fact probably a reference to some phrase in a medieval Persian poem. It is not about tanks.
Since Mr. Hitchens wants to splash my private mail all over the internet against my will, as though he were himself an agent of the Bush Administration's electronic spying on the private conversations of Americans, I'm glad to share the message that encapsulates the results of our deliberations at Gulf2000.
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Guantánamo Britons lose high court challenge
Press Association
Thursday May 4, 2006
Two Britons detained without trial at Guantánamo Bay today failed in a high court bid to force the British government to seek their release.
Judges upheld a decision by the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, not to petition the US government on behalf of Jamil el-Banna and Omar Deghayes.
The two judges backed the government's claim that it had no obligation to act because the men are foreign nationals and therefore have no legal right to assistance.
However, during the hearing it was revealed that Mr Straw had decided to "reconsider separately" the case of the Iraq-born businessman Bisher al-Rawi, who is also being held at Guantánamo.
Mr al-Rawi, who came to Britain in 1985, has been held by the US for three years but is reported to have cooperated with British security services prior to his arrest in Gambia.
The judges were told there were facts in his case, which could not be discussed in open court, that meant "a specific, security-related request" would be made to the US government on his behalf.
There were currently no plans to make "general requests" on behalf of Mr el-Banna and Mr Deghayes.
Jackie Chase, a spokeswoman for Save Omar, the campaign for the release of Mr Deghayes, expressed disappointment at today's judgment.
"We are disappointed with this ruling because, while Guantánamo is condemned in general terms, the British government is not compelled to protect British residents held there indefinitely without trial or hope of justice," she said.
"It makes no legal or moral sense because Jack Straw has already agreed to make representations on behalf of one of the men, Bisher-al Rawi.
"It has been well documented in the press that Mr al-Rawi had been co-operating with MI5. Is this the price of release from Guantánamo? This is a terribly long way from justice."
Mr al-Rawi and his business partner Mr el-Banna, a Jordanian who was granted refugee status in 2000, were alleged to have been associated with al-Qaida through their connection with the radical Muslim cleric Abu Qatada.
Timothy Otty, representing the detainees, said Mr al-Rawi had been in contact with the cleric with the "express approval and encouragement of British intelligence", to whom he supplied information about him.
Intelligence operatives assured Mr al-Rawi that, should he get into trouble, they would intervene and assist him.
However, the British government was unwilling to make material available to him when a hearing on his case was held at Guantánamo.
Mr el-Banna was accused of being in possession of "a home-made electronic device" at the time of his arrest. His lawyers say it was a battery charger bought from Argos and cleared by the UK authorities before he went to Gambia.
They said Mr el-Banna has lost almost 100lb in weight and "has been traumatised by the fact that he is unable to see his children".
Mr Deghayes was detained in Pakistan, and his name was said to be on the FBI's "most wanted" list. However, his lawyers say the photograph in his file is of a "totally different individual".
They say he has been left virtually blind in one eye by the use of pepper spray and the gouging of his eye but is still being constantly subjected to high light levels.
The judges, Lord Justice Latham and Mr Justice Tugendhat, admitted that their decision might be "uncomfortable and unsatisfactory", but said the court could not require the government "to make a formal request" to the US over the detainees.
In a joint written judgment, they said: "That would be an interference in the relationship between sovereign states which could only be justified if a clear duty in domestic or international law had been identified ... there is no such duty in the present case."
They also said it was impossible for the court to properly evaluate what was happening at Guantánamo, but added that UK foreign policy was clearly to secure closure of the detention facility.
Christopher Greenwood QC, appearing for the foreign secretary, told the judges the government was "attaching considerable weight" to a denial by the US that torture or inhuman treatment had taken place at Guantánamo.
Nine British nationals who had been detained there have been flown back to the UK and released without charge.
Mr Otty said it did not seem too much to ask, considering those details, that all three of the Britons at Guantánamo should receive assistance from the Foreign Office.
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Switzerland announces new accord with U.S. against terrorism
www.chinaview.cn
2006-05-04 08:47:18
GENEVA, May 3 (Xinhua) -- The Swiss government announced on Wednesday a new cooperation accord with the United States on the fight against terror, Swiss Radio International (SRI) reported.
The new accord, which will go before parliament for approval, is to replace a secret judicial aid agreement signed between the two countries in 2002, following the terrorist attacks of September 2001 in New York.
That secret agreement, known as the "Operative Working Arrangement", was never presented to parliament because some parts of it were considered too favorable to the U.S.
In June 2005, the Swiss government felt it was high time to have cooperation with the U.S. authorities in a more defined manner.
So it asked the Justice and Police Ministry to come up with a new text, which was finally put together after negotiations with Washington.
"The issue of making this accord public proved a stumbling block during the negotiations but the Americans finally accepted it," said Swiss Justice and Police Minister Christoph Blocher.
The agreement of 2002 had been signed "in great emotion" to help in the fight against the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation, he added.
The new accord will be more precise and clear about cooperation in the fight against terrorism and its financing, according to SRI.
It foresees the exchange of law enforcement officials to create joint teams of investigators, who will only act when a criminal procedure has been opened in the two countries and given to a prosecutor.
The government also said that the new accord would contain severe restrictions on the use of information gathered by the investigators.
The new accord will have to be debated in the two houses of the Swiss parliament before it can come into operation.
The House of Representatives will discuss it first before the end of the year, SRI said.
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AVID Developing New UAV Concept For Homeland Security
SPX
May 04, 2006
Blacksburg VA - A potential terrorist slips across the U.S. border under the cover of darkness. Unchallenged, he disappears into the night - or so he thinks. Unknown to this intruder, he's been detected all along - from 20,000 feet. And now, as he rests behind a rock, he's being watched by a 2-foot-wide unmanned aerial vehicle hovering quietly a few feet away.
Moments later the suspect is captured by federal agents alerted to his location. Mission completed; the UAV lands nearby, where it is picked up and readied for the next assignment.
This scenario is envisioned by AVID, a leading designer of unmanned aerial vehicles that is developing an innovative new, patent-pending UAV concept to fulfill two strategic homeland security missions with one platform.
The Virginia company is designing a 20-foot-long flying wing-shaped UAV - propelled by eight ducted fan engines - capable of high-endurance surveillance missions at cruise altitude. Once a target is detected from above, the UAV could release one of its engine pods in flight. This engine pod, now transformed into its own self-propelled, hover-capable vehicle, could track a target anywhere on the ground, over water, or even under bridges while the flying wing stays aloft to look for threats from the sky.
"This exciting and unconventional configuration has the potential tsurveillance is conducted," said Paul Gelhausen, chief technical officer and co-founder of AVID. "Our concept will provide an effective and reliable tool to help the Department of Homeland Security monitoour borders for people and materials that pose a threat to the security of the United States."
Each engine contains its own thrust, electrical power, aerodynamic controls and sensors in a compact package attached to the trailing edge of the flying wing. If an engine is not needed for power or for a surveillance mission, the engine could detach as a way to reduce weight and drag on the flying wing and therefore increase fuel efficiency on long-endurance missions. Just as it could descend to track suspicious activity on the gthe engine could land at a base, where it would be serviced independent of the flying wing and prepared for the next mission immediately.
"While both strategic and practical, we've also designed this vehicle to be reliable and easy to maintain," Gelhausen said. "The UAV's minimal flight controls and basic electrical system will pEach engine would essentially be a line replacement unit that can easily be serviced one at a time before the next mission rather than all engines at once like other designs. Overall, the system is expected to achieve better reliability and on-station performance than more conventional systems suchas Predator or Global Hawk."
The Department of Homeland Security is evaluating several UAVs for border security, Coast Guard and maritime missions, transportation security and protection of critical infrastructure. AVID currently is developing this unmanned airborne platform phase in partnership with NASA's Langley Research Center to meet these needs and provide a significant improvement in homeland defense capabilities through dedicated vehicles and associated sensors.
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Target: Iran
France, Britain propose binding UN resolution against Iran
AFP
May 4, 2006
UNITED NATIONS - France and Britain circulated a draft resolution in the UN Security Council that would legally oblige Iran to comply with UN demands that it freeze uranium enrichment but does not call for sanctions.
The text, worked out in close consultations with Germany and the United States, invokes Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which can authorize economic sanctions or even as a last resort the use of force in cases of threats to international peace and security.
It says "Iran shall suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, to be verified by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), and suspend the construction of a reactor moderated by heavy water".
It was submitted to the 15-member council during closed-door consultations on the report delivered last Friday by IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei, which concluded that Tehran had failed to comply with UN demands.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Thursday Iran insists on developing nuclear energy and hopes the
United Nations Security Council will not politicise this "essential right."
"The member states of the NPT should enjoy... their right, which is peaceful nuclear technology. We are insisting on that," Mottaki said, referring to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Mottaki called on the international community not to violate "the essential rights of countries".
"We hope that will not happen in the Security Council," he said.
The Franco-British text does not call for sanctions at this stage but said the council would "consider such further measures as may be necessary to ensure compliance with this resolution and decides that further examination will be required should such additional steps be necessary".
It stresses that "full verified compliance by Iran, confirmed by the IAEA Board, would avoid the need for such additional steps".
Britain's UN envoy Emyr Jones Parry pointed out that "in terms of the next stage, this is a calibrated approach ...This process is reversible if Iran complies."
The draft also calls on "all states to exercise vigilance in preventing the transfer of items, materials, goods and technology that could contribute to Iran's enrichment-related and reprocessing activities and missile programs".
It says ElBaradei will be given an unspecified number of days to report on Iranian compliance both to the IAEA Board of Governors and the Security Council.
France's UN Ambassador, Jean-Marc de La Sabliere, however told reporters that Iran was expected to comply "no later than early June".
His US colleague, John Bolton, also spoke of a "very short period of time" for Iran to comply, adding "the key lies in Iran's hands".
But there was no sign that veto-wielding council members China and Russia, which are close trading partners of Tehran, were prepared to lift their opposition to sanctions or to the reference to Chapter 7.
Chinese ambassador Wang Guangya said Beijing remained opposed to Chapter 7.
Asked if Moscow would be ready to accept the draft if it was amended to address its concerns, Russia's new UN envoy Vitaly Churkin replied: "Of course, we participated in taking the decision that we should go ahead with the resolution."
"We have some things we feel very strongly about," he said. "If people agree with those things, then as far as we are concerned it could be a very quick process. If not then it will probably take some time."
But Churkin also made clear that his government did not favor the use of force or sanctions to resolve the crisis.
"We do not believe that the matter can be resolved by the use of force," he said.
The draft emerged a day after senior officials of the council's five veto-wielding permanent members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- plus Germany failed to agree on a united response to Iran's defiance at a meeting in Paris.
Bolton said he hoped the council would vote on the Franco-British text before Monday when foreign ministers of the same six powers are due to revisit the issue at a meeting in New York.
Bolton said the ministers were meant to concentrate on "the broader picture".
Nicholas Burns, the number three at the US State Department, said after the Paris meeting that "all agreed that the Iran nuclear program should be suspended."
But he also voiced frustration with Russia and China, saying: "It's time for countries to take responsibilities, especially those countries that have close relationships with Iran."
Bolton also voiced impatience Tuesday and threatened to form a coalition of allies to impose sanctions on Iran outside the UN framework.
If the Security Council is unwilling or unable to impose sanctions on Iran, then "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.
Iran retorted by accusing the United States of using bullying tactics.
The United States, backed by Britain, France and Germany, alleges that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapons capability under the cover of its civilian atomic program.
But Tehran argues that it has the right as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to conduct enrichment.
Comment: This time around, "Old Europe" is cooperating quite nicely with the Neocon gang in the White House...
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Military action won't solve Iran conflict: French PM
Thu May 4, 2006 06:09 AM ET
PARIS (Reuters) - Military action is not the solution to the Western powers' standoff with Iran over its nuclear program, French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said on Thursday.
"My conviction is that military actions is certainly no solution," Villepin told a monthly news conference.
"We should collectively prove our firmness. The international community must assume all of its responsibilities. We must draw the consequences of a refusal by Iran -- if that were confirmed -- to cooperate. It is essential to maintain the unity of the international community," he said.
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Iran military plays down threats to strike Israel
Reuters
May 4, 2006
Summary: The Iranian military played down threats by a top Revolutionary Guards commander that Israel would be the Islamic state's first target if attacked by U.S. forces over its nuclear plans, a newspaper said on Thursda
"What he said was his personal view and has no validity as far as the Iranian military officials are concerned," the Kayhan newspaper quoted Afshar as saying.
TEHRAN - The Iranian military played down threats by a top Revolutionary Guards commander that Israel would be the Islamic state's first target if attacked by U.S. forces over its nuclear plans, a newspaper said on Thursday.
The United States, which accuses Iran of seeking nuclear weapons, says it wants the standoff solved diplomatically but has refused to rule out military action. Iran says it is pursuing only nuclear power generation.
Revolutionary Guards Rear Admiral Mohammad-Ebrahim Dehqani, said on Tuesday that Israel would be Iran's first target in response to any "evil" act by the United States.
But Alireza Afshar, deputy chief of the military staff, dismissed the remarks.
"What he said was his personal view and has no validity as far as the Iranian military officials are concerned," the Kayhan newspaper quoted Afshar as saying.
The 120,000-strong Revolutionary Guards corps, formed shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution and inspired by then supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, is independent of the regular army. It answers directly to Khomeini's successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The Islamic Republic has refused to recognize Israel and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the Jewish state to be "wiped off the map."
Dehqani also told the student news agency ISNA that large-scale naval wargames, held in the Gulf last month, "carried the warning to those countries that threaten Iran, including America and the Zionist regime."
Experts said the wargames, in which Iran said it had tested new missiles and torpedoes, were a thinly veiled threat that it could disrupt vital Gulf oil shipping lanes if attacked.
The United States, Britain and France have circulated a
U.N. Security Council resolution demanding that Iran curb its nuclear ambitions and said they will push for targeted sanctions if it does not.
But Russia, which has veto power in the council, made clear on Wednesday it would not support any sanctions or the new resolution without modifications. The Western draft did not impose punitive measures.
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Once more unto the breach
Scott Ritter
May 2, 2006
UK Guardian
The current 'crisis' regarding Iran's nuclear ambitions is nothing more than a facilitator for war.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has just released a report concerning Iran's nuclear programme, in which it notes that Iran has failed to comply with the UN security council's demands to cease its nuclear enrichment programmes. The IAEA report finds that Iran has, in defiance of the security council, in fact carried out a successful test to enrich uranium to the low levels needed in the production of nuclear energy. The IAEA also found that Iran had failed to provide a level of cooperation and transparency necessary for the IAEA to exclude the possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapons programme being carried out under the guise of civilian nuclear energy activities.
While the IAEA's report has underscored Iran's disturbing disregard for responding to the concerns of both the IAEA and the UN security council, it does not certify Iran as a clear and present danger, requiring a strong and immediate response from the international community. And yet the IAEA report has generated rhetoric from both the United States and Europe that seems well beyond that which the content of the report seems to merit. The British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, has joined US officials in condemning the Iranian government for its failure to halt its nuclear enrichment efforts, and has called for the UN security council to "increase the pressure on Iran". Many officials in Europe have echoed the UK position, believing, it seems, that such action represents a manifestation of President George Bush's stated objective of resolving the Iranian matter "diplomatically and peacefully".
Just how naive can Europe be? While public sentiment against the US-led invasion (and ongoing occupation) of Iraq remains high, manifesting itself in the reduction of the original "coalition of the willing" to pathetic levels, Europe ("old" and "new") continues to behave as if the current conflict with Iraq and the potential of future conflict with Iran remain two separate and distinct issues.
It is shocking to see European officials, skilled in the heavily nuanced world of EU diplomacy, accept without question the sophomoric equivocation by the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice that "Iran is not Iraq". This phrase has been used repeatedly by Rice to deflect any query as to whether or not there are any parallels between the current US "diplomatic" stance on Iran and the "diplomacy" undertaken in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, which has widely been acknowledged as representing little more than a smokescreen behind which the Bush administration prepared for a war already decided upon.
Iran may not be Iraq, but these two nations are inextricably linked through the Machiavellian machinations of a US national security strategy that not only embraces the legitimacy of pre-emptive war, but also the notion of America's inherent right to pursue a policy of "regional transformation" in the Middle East, a policy that has as its core operational thematic pre-emptive military action to remove the regimes of so-called "failed" and "rogue" states. In the 2006 version of this national security strategy, Iran is named 16 times as the leading threat to the national security of the United States. I would hope every European diplomat has read this document, and takes its contents to heart. The national security strategy of the United States, circa 2006, can leave no doubt as to what the true intent of the Bush administration is regarding Iran: regime change. The current "crisis" regarding Iran's nuclear ambitions represents nothing more than an emotionally-charged facilitator for war.
Europe continues to act as if the American policy objective of regime change is nothing more than the irresponsible blathering of rightwing media pundits. The self-delusion that encompasses this way of thinking holds that Europe's stance vis-á-vis Iran serves more as a brake toward conflict, than the accelerant it actually is. As such, the European nations taking the lead on the Iranian issue - the UK, France and Germany - will meet on May 2 in Paris with representatives from Russia, China and the United States as a precursor for a meeting of the security council on May 3. The United States has already made clear its intent to introduce a draft resolution under Chapter VII of the UN charter, elevating Iran's obstinacy to the level of a clear and present danger to international peace and security, and paving the way for the imposition of stringent economic sanctions against Iran. The United States will be lobbying quite hard for such a resolution, and is looking to a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Paris group in New York on May 9 as the time and place for bringing this issue to a head.
While such measures appear on the surface to represent sound, measured diplomatic responses, the reality is that once the United States introduces a Chapter VII resolution, even in draft form, war with Iran is all but assured. Russia and China, both permanent members of the security council with veto powers, have made clear their collective objection to any Chapter VII action against Iran. However, by endorsing the transfer of the Iranian issue from the International Atomic Energy Agency to the security council, as well as the original security council "warning" against Iran, both Russia and China have played into the hands of US policy-makers, who have and will continue to use these actions as a clear endorsement of their position that Iran and its nuclear programme represents a threat to international security.
If the Russians and Chinese balk over the imposition of Chapter VII-linked measures against Iran, as they have indicated they will, then the Bush administration will simply declare that the security council has become impotent and irrelevant in dealing with threats that it has itself declared to exist, and, as such, the United States, not wanting to have its own national security interests so hijacked, will have no choice but to move forward void of any security council endorsement or authorisation. This model of action directly parallels that undertaken by the US and UK regarding Iraq, and has been strongly alluded to in recent statements made by Vice-President Cheney, the US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, and Rice.
The United States has positioned itself masterfully in this regard. But the sense of urgency being pushed by the Bush administration does not match the reality painted by its own director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, who recently testified before the US Congress that Iran was, at best, 10 years away from having a nuclear weapons capability. As such, there is no need for the security council to pursue this matter under the guise of a Chapter VII resolution. In fact, there is no need for the security council to be engaged on this issue at all, at least at this time.
The one real hope of side-stepping this mad rush towards war with Iran lays in a statement made by the Iranian government, offering to deal openly and transparently with the concerns listed in the IAEA's report within a matter of weeks, if the Iranian nuclear issue is transferred away from the security council and back to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The best thing the Europeans could do at this time would be to join ranks with the Russians and Chinese to take up the Iranian offer, defusing a very tense and dangerous situation that, as it currently stands, seems to be spinning close toward yet another needless war in the Middle East.
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This high-octane rocket-rattling against Tehran is unlikely to succeed
By Tariq Ali
05/03/06
The Guardian
Ringed by nuclear states, Iran's atomic programme is scarcely unreasonable. So why has Washington manufactured this crisis?
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 - tariq.ali3@btinternet.com
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Bolton Refuses To Answer Kucinich's Questions About US Troops In Iran
05/03/06
By Doug Gordon
States That US Is Prepared To Act With or Without The UN
Despite numerous public reports stating that US troops are currently conducting operations within Iran, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) refused to answer repeated questions by Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH) about US troops in Iran, today at a House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations.
Kucinich, the Ranking Member on the Subcommittee, repeatedly questioned Ambassador Bolton on the effect that US troops operating within Iran will have on diplomatic negotiations already underway, including those at the UN.
Recently, Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker magazine that US troops are already operating in Iran. Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner (Ret.) has made similar statements on CNN. In addition, Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counter-terrorism chief, told the Guardian newspaper that special forces are operating within Iran identifying targets and aiding dissident groups.
While Ambassador Bolton refused to answer questions about US troops in Iran, Ambassador Bolton did state that the US was prepared to move against Iran, with or without the UN Security Council.
"I find it hard to believe that the United States Ambassador to the United Nations does not know about ongoing military activity in one of the world's most volatile regions, and in a country at the heart of current debate before the UN," stated Kucinich after the hearing. "Congress has a Constitutional role to play in providing checks and balances of this Administration. Ambassador's Bolton testimony today, and his refusal to answer even the most basic questions about Iran, is just another example of this Administration's contempt of Congress."
"This Administration has set our nation on the path to war against Iran," continued Kucinich. "It has done so without consulting the Congress, and without proper Congressional oversight. Today's hearing could have been an important moment to educate the public and the Congress about this Administration's policy towards Iran, and the role US military is already playing in implementing that policy. Unfortunately, Ambassador Bolton's stonewalling prevent this from happening."
"This Administration has set our nation on a very dangerous path with Iran. Congress must intervene before this Administration begins a wider, and far more dangerous war in the Middle East," concluded Kucinich.
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Iran, US share Afghan goals
By David Montero | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
HERAT, AFGHANISTAN - The smooth blacktop roads and 24-hour electricity of Herat set this Afghan commercial capital apart as a model of stability in a country still struggling to get on its feet. Much of the wealth in this western city, with its tree-lined streets and handsome shops, is credited to the largesse of Iran.
The Shiite republic, one of Afghanistan's greatest trading partners, has a visible hand here, building roads and schools, and keeping shops afloat with electricity and goods. What's more, these projects represent only a fraction of the $204 million Iran has spent in aid, ranking it among the top donors to post-conflict Afghanistan.
Even though the US and Iran are locked in an international struggle over Iran's alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons, the long-time foes have worked together well in Afghanistan, a place where they have common ground. Pushing Iran against the wall through sanctions or war could deal a setback to the recovery here, the first battlefield in the war on terror, some observers say.
"The disagreements we have with the international community do not have a place in Afghanistan," says Mohammad Reza Bahrami, Iran's Ambassador to Afghanistan. "Our understanding for Afghanistan is that it can be a good model for cooperation among the international community."
Iranian influence is certainly nothing new in Afghanistan. The two countries share centuries of history, thousands of miles of porous borders, and a common language. Nearly 2,000 people commute across the border every day.
But as tensions rise between Tehran and Washington, some speculate that Iran could use its leverage in Afghanistan to cause problems for the US.
"They do have the capacity to cause trouble here. If they were to perceive that the government is siding with the West ... or they felt that the US military based in Afghanistan could be damaging to the internal situation in Iran ... we could expect problems here," cautioned one Western diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the issue.
Cement is a popular example of Iran's oversized influence. Iran once enjoyed a virtual monopoly on cement in Afghanistan, but it recently stopped exporting here, opting for Iraq instead. Prices nearly doubled according to local sources. For many Afghans, the incident exposed Iran's capability to disrupt reconstruction with the flip of a switch.
"If Iran decides to stop exporting goods, it can create a big problem for us," says Alhaj Qulam Qader Akbar, the head of Herat's Chamber of Commerce. "A lot of projects have been suspended because of the price [of cement] going up."
Such disruptive powers are not limited to the market, some say. Journalists talk of Iran's growing involvement in terrorist attacks here. Rumors also abound that Iran's Revolutionary Guard is secretly camped out in Herat.
Syed Ahmed Ansari, a police chief for Shindad, a town in Herat Province, told the Associated Press in February: "From Iran they are bringing explosive material to Afghanistan. They don't want Afghanistan to be at peace because they are at war with the United States."
So far, though, there is no direct evidence of such meddling, and Iran has never been directly implicated in any attacks. "We don't have evidence of that, but that is something we hear. If we want to comment on something, we should have evidence," says Gen. Ayub Salangi, Herat's chief of police.
Mr. Bahrimi, the Iranian ambassador, insists his country's role in Iran has always been a positive one. But he suggests that action taken against Iran could change that role.
"If new circumstances are imposed on us, in proportion to these circumstances, we'll make up our mind," he says, adding, "If [the Americans] control their behavior in Afghanistan, there isn't any reason for concern."
Even in the US, those closely watching Iran are hard pressed to find evidence of misconduct in Afghanistan. Instead, some have found themselves admitting that Iran, despite its activities elsewhere, has proved to be a good neighbor here.
Such was the case during a March congressional hearing on progress in Afghanistan. A panel of experts working on Afghanistan unanimously highlighted Iran's contribution to stability.
"I do not believe Iran is a major, negative player in Afghanistan," Seth Jones of the Rand Corporation told the panel. "If anything, the Iranian government's role in relationship with the Afghan government is actually fairly decent."
Barnett Rubin, a professor at New York University, went a step further, saying: "[W]e should be wary of anyone who is trying to sell intelligence or reports that Iran is trying to destabilize Afghanistan. It is not."
In fact, such are the contributions of Iran here that forcing it to pull out, either through sanctions or war, could hamper reconstruction, particularly by destabilizing the economy, many speculate.
"The tensions that Iran has with the international community are a deep cause of concern for us. If there are sanctions, or other means of exerting pressure, it will have its implications on Afghanistan. And that's the last thing we need," says Naveed Ahmad Moez, spokesperson for the foreign ministry.
Iran's support of the Karzai government stems in part from its antipathy toward the Taliban regime, which killed nine Iranian diplomats in 1998. Tehran supported the Northern Alliance and the US in ousting them.
Many say it's simply not in Iran's interest to make waves. Cross-border business is booming and the western border is stable. But there are those who say the US would be foolish to completely rule it out.
"The Americans should be concerned about Iranian influence," says Najibullah Fahim, professor of political science at Kabul University. "You know that Iran is hostile to America and will create enmity towards Americans here."
Sen. William Delahunt (D) of Massachusetts, who attended the March congressional hearing, seemed to think likewise. But when he pressed Maureen Quinn from the State Department, her retort was short but to the point.
"Iran participated in the London conference," she said, referring to an international donor meeting held in January. "They have contributed to road construction, electricity."
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Iran arrests former U of T professor
Last Updated Wed, 03 May 2006 18:54:48 EDT
CBC News
Iranian officials have confirmed they've arrested former University of Toronto professor Ramin Jahanbegloo.
The philosopher and writer has been in a jail in Tehran since last week.
An Iranian judiciary official says charges won't be announced until after he has been interrogated.
Jahanbegloo has criticized the country's leadership in recent weeks and challenged Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's controversial comments about the Holocaust.
Jahanbegloo holds dual Iran and Canadian citizenship.
He was a professor at U of T from 1997 to 2001.
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War Pimps
A little noted victim of Bush's tyranny: the individual conscience
by Len Hart
OpEdNews.com
May 3, 2006
Among Bush's many crimes is one that few have written about. Bush has required of our soldiers that they violate their own consciences. And, at the end of the day, it is either a strong individual or a hopeless kiss up who can say that they served Bush in Iraq without violating every moral law known to man. On the home front, support for Bush on any front is a Faustian bargain. At stake is your very soul, or, less theologically, the individual conscience.
George W. Bush: An American Hitler
By DOUG THOMPSON
In George W. Bush's petty, pathetic, partisan world, laws he doesn't agree with don't have to be obeyed, Congressional actions that differ from his political agenda can be ignored and the Constitution of the United States is just a "goddamned piece of paper."
Charlie Savage of The Boston Globe brought this point home Sunday when he revealed Bush has chosen to ignore more laws passed by Congress than any President in history, appending more than 750 laws with "signing statements" that say, in effect, that he doesn't give a damn what the law says because he will do whatever he pleases as a "wartime president" and "commander-in-chief."
Of course it doesn't matter to him that he became a "wartime president" because he lied out his ass to justify an illegal invasion on Iraq based on fake intelligence and a determined policy of ignoring facts that disproved his lies. ...
As I had written earlier: the Bush administration is no longer a "presidency", it's a criminal conspiracy. It is also a tyranny. And the first victim of tyranny is the individual conscience.
As individuals act upon what they believe to be true, a people does so collectively. American hubris, self-importance, and self-appointed moral superiority is, like all falsehoods, the source of much evil throughout the world. Those evils are manifested recently in the worst American presidency in our history.
Aggressive war, torture, duplicity, deliberate deceptions, the abrogation of the very instruments by which Americans instituted the rule of law - all are hallmarks of this Bush "administration", best described as a criminal conspiracy to undermine the Constitution, democracy, and the rule of law.We Americans have long been guilty of these crimes. On the eve of our entry into World War I, William Jennings Bryan, President Woodrow Wilson's first secretary of state, described the United States as "the supreme moral factor in the world's progress and the accepted arbiter of the world's disputes." If there is one historical generalization that the passage of time has validated, it is that the world could not help being better off if the American president had not believed such nonsense and if the United States had minded its own business in the war between the British and German empires. We might well have avoided Nazism, the Bolshevik Revolution, and another 30 to 40 years of the exploitation of India, Indonesia, Indochina, Algeria, Korea, the Philippines, Malaya, and virtually all of Africa by European, American, and Japanese imperialists.
We Americans have never outgrown the narcissistic notion that the rest of the world wants (or should want) to emulate us. ...
-Exporting the American Model
Of course, Bush KNOWS that making the middle east safe for Democracy is absolute, right wing crap! A party that has to resort to election theft in its own country is hardly in a position to propose "free elections" in another.
A ruthless dictator who abjures the Constitution in America is hardly in a position to demonize Saddam Hussein.
A lawless bigot in the White House is hardly in a position to talk about the blessings of democracy if they could but wipe out those mean ol' "turrsts" in Iraq!
As more and more is learned about Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, the torture flights and cold blooded murders of civilians by U.S. troops, I've concluded that the war against Iraq was not even about oil, though Bush's base - the robber barons of big oil - have profited exponentially!
NO! There are no rational explanations for continuing to perpetrate counter productive policies of bluster, aggressive war, war crimes, torture, and ghastly, perverted tortures and murders. Therefore, Bush's real reasons for attacking and waging an ongoing war crime in Iraq are personal. Bush, a known alumnus of the super secretive Illuminati society called Skull and Bones, apparently just wants to get his jollies by murdering folk by proxy. For Bush's base of oil oligarchs, it's about the plunder of oil; but for Bush it's about the psychotic perversions of an out of control maniac in the White House.
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Beating About The Bush? Not With Hersh
By Robert Fisk
05/03/06
The Independent
LONDON: Sy Hersh is an ornery, cussed sort of guy, not one to suffer fools gladly. As the man who broke the My Lai story and the atrocities at Abu Ghraib, I reckon he has a right to be ornery from time to time - and cussed.
He's dealing with powerful folk in Washington, including one - George W Bush - who would like to cut him down. And when Hersh wrote - as he did in The New Yorker this month - that "current and former American military and intelligence officials" have said Bush has a target list to prevent Iran obtaining nuclear weapons and that Bush's "ultimate goal" in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change - again! - you can see why Bush was worried. "Wild," he called the Hersh story. Which must mean it has some claim to veracity.
So when I cornered Hersh at Columbia University in New York and dropped him a note during a Charles Glass presentation asking for an interview, I expected a stiff reply. "Anything you ask," he scribbled obligingly on a piece of paper.
His own lecture was frightening. Bush has a messianic vision - and intends to go down in history (probably he has chosen the right direction) as the man who will have "saved" Iran. "So we're in a real American crisis ... we've had a collapse of congress ... we have had a collapse of the military ... the good news is that when we wake up tomorrow morning, there will be one less day (of Bush). But that is the only good news."
Hersh might have said that we'd also had a "collapse" of the media in the United States, a total disintegration of the Ed Murrow/Howard K Smith/ Daniel Elsworth/Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward school of journalism. The greying, bespectacled, obscenity-swearing Hersh is about all we have left to frighten the most powerful man in the world (save for the jibes of Maureen Dowd in The New York Times).
So it's good to know he's still doing some fighting, including other journalists on his target list. "I know some serious generals," he says. "I can't urge them to go public. They'd be attacked by Fox (TV), and the (New York) Times and The Washington Post would wring their hands. It's a mechanism. You don't get rewarded in the newsroom for being a malcontent." Journalists on the mainstream papers are largely middle-class college graduates - not reporters who came up the hard way like Hersh's street reporting in Chicago in his early days. They have largely no connection to the immigrants' society. "They don't know what it's like to be on social welfare. Their families weren't in Vietnam and their families are not in Iraq." The BBC, too, has "fallen off the way".
So what is the Hersh school of journalism? "In my business, I get information I check it out and I find it's not true - that's what my business is. Now there is (also) stuff in the military from people I don't know - I don't touch it ... I was seeing (President) Bashar (Assad of Syria) at the time of the assassination of (former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq) Hariri. There was obviously bad blood between Bashar and Hariri. Bashar was saying that Hariri wanted to take over the cell-phone business in Damascus. To this day I don't know what happened. I saw Bashar from 11am until 1pm (on February 14, 2005). He talked about what a thief Hariri was. I didn't write it."
And there goes a scoop about bad blood, I said to myself. But on Iran, it was something different for Hersh. He was talking to a contact. "I brought up Iran. 'It's really bad,' he said. 'You ought to get into it. You can go to Vienna and find out how far away (from nuclear weapons production) they are.' Then he told me they were having trouble walking back the nuclear option with Bush. People don't want to speak out - they want the shit on my head."
As Hersh said in his New Yorker report, nuclear planners routinely go through options - "we're talking about mushroom clouds, radiation, mass casualties, and contamination over years," he quotes one of them as saying - but once the planners try to argue against all this, they are shouted down. According to another intelligence officer quoted by Hersh, "The White House said, 'Why are you challenging this? The option came from you'." In other words, once the planners routinely put options on the table, the options become possibilities to be considered rather than technical reports.
"That whole Johns Hopkins speech," Hersh goes on, referring to the address in which Bush attacked Hersh's own article, "he talked about the wonderful progress in Iraq. This is hallucinatory - and there are people on a high level in the Pentagon and they can't get the President to give this up. Because it's crazy.
"In the UK, you might have some crazy view - but you knew it was. But these guys (in Washington) are talking in revelations. Bush is a revelatory at bedtime - he has to take a nap. It's so childish and simplistic. And don't think he's diminished. He's still got two years ... he's not diminished. We've still got a Congress that can't articulate opposition. This is a story where I profoundly hope, at every major point, that I'm wrong."
Hersh has also been casting his wizened eye on the Brits. "Your country is very worried about what Bush is going to do - your people" - Hersh means the Foreign Office - "are really worried. There are no clearances ... no consultations."
In Washington, "advocating humanity, peace, integrity is not a value in the power structure ... my government are incapable of leaving (Iraq). They don't know how to get out of Baghdad. We can't get out. In this war, the end is going to be very, very messy - because we don't know how to get out. We're going to get out body by body. I think that scares the hell out of me."
It's all put neatly by one of Hersh's sources in the Pentagon: "The problem is that the Iranians realise that only by becoming a nuclear state can they defend themselves against the US. Something bad is going to happen." What was that line from Bogart as Rick Blaine in Casablanca, when he asked Sam, his pianist, what time it is in New York? Sam replies that his watch has stopped, and Bogart says, "I bet they're asleep in New York. I'll bet they're asleep all over America." Except for Hersh.
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Cheney rebukes Russia
Thu May 4, 2006 08:31 AM ET
By Matt Spetalnick
VILNIUS (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney accused Russia on Thursday of backsliding on democracy and urged it to stop using energy supplies for "blackmail" in one of Washington's sharpest rebukes to Moscow.
"Russia has a choice to make," Cheney told Baltic and Black Sea leaders at a summit in Vilnius, calling on Moscow to return to democratic reform at a time of increasingly chilly relations between the United States and Russia.
Cheney also took specific aim at Moscow's use of its vast energy supplies for what Washington says is sometimes the bullying of neighbors.
"No legitimate interest is served when oil and gas become tools of intimidation or blackmail, either by supply manipulation or attempts to monopolize transportation," he said.
Russia, which is trying to harness its position as an energy giant, drew international criticism earlier this year when it briefly turned off its gas taps to Ukraine in a pricing dispute that disrupted supply to Europe.
Moscow has also warned Europe the Russian state gas monopoly Gazprom -- the world's top gas producer -- could divert its supplies to Asia if it is barred from the European retail gas market.
Cheney's harsh remarks could further antagonize Russia, which holds a veto in the U.N. Security Council where Washington intends to push for a resolution demanding Iran curb its nuclear ambitions. Russia opposes any sanctions.
He said opponents of reform in Russia were "seeking to reverse the gains of the last decade" by restricting democratic rights and warned President Vladimir Putin some of Moscow's actions could hurt relations with other countries.
But Cheney told leaders of post-communist nations with a history of domination by the former Soviet Union: "None of us believes that Russia is fated to become an enemy."
He said G-8 members planned to make clear at a summit in St. Petersburg in July Moscow had "nothing to fear and everything to gain from strong stable democracies on its borders."
The address by Cheney, a powerful, independent-minded vice president known for a hard line on Russia within the administration, marked an intensification of U.S. and European Union criticism against Moscow for its record on democracy.
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana also addressed the conference and, like Cheney, referred to diplomatic tensions with Russia.
Russia suspects the U.S. policy of promoting global democracy is really an instrument to establish itself as the dominant power in the post-Soviet states.
In the past two years, peaceful revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia have brought pro-Western governments to power.
Solana made clear Europe hoped Belarus, a key Russian ally, would follow suit. "The European Union will continue to support the aspirations the people of Belarus," he said. "One day, I'm sure, they will see a democratic breakthrough in their country."
Cheney called Belarus the last dictatorship in Europe and urged the immediate release of opposition leader Aleksander Milinkevich as well as other opposition members.
"Peaceful demonstrators have been beaten, dissidents have vanished and a climate of fear prevails under a government that subverts free elections... there is no place in a Europe whole and free for a regime of this kind."
He also said Russia had restricted human rights.
"In many areas of civil society -- from religion and the news media, to advocacy groups and political parties -- the government has unfairly and improperly restricted the rights of the people," he said.
Cheney was on six-day trip billed as a pro-democracy tour. Lithuania, which regained independence in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, was the first stop. He also planned to visit oil-rich Kazakhstan and the former Yugoslav republic of Croatia.
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Rice says free countries must influence others to remove press restrictions
20:14:49 EDT May 3, 2006
WILLIAM C. MANN
WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that free countries must try to influence governments who restrict press freedom and named five countries that she said do that, including Russia and China.
In a statement marking World Press Freedom Day, Rice said actions against the journalists include physical mistreatment as well as reinforced libel laws, media ownership in the hands of too few people, Internet restrictions and dwindling press outlets.
"We hail the courageous sacrifices made by journalists around the world to report the facts, even at the cost of their lives and their freedom," Rice said in a statement read by State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
"Every day brave men and women risk harassment, beatings, detention, imprisonment and even death simply for seeking to share the truth with others around the world."
Besides China and Russia, Rice mentioned Zimbabwe, Venezuela and Iran as examples of societies that have cracked down on press freedom in recent times.
"While the United States will continue working to advocate for greater global press freedom, all free societies carry the responsibility to press restrictive governments to allow an open press," Rice said. "Independent media empowers people, exposes corruption, encourages transparency and prompts participation in the political process. Without it, society as a whole suffers."
Rice's statement hit China for its Internet policies, saying 62 cyber dissidents are being held in prison and specifying Zhao Yan, a researcher for The New York Times.
He was charged with revealing state secrets in a 2004 story in the Times about changes within China's leadership, but the charges were dropped on March 17. Three days later, his lawyer said a new investigation had begun, and Zhao remains in jail.
In Russia, Rice said, "the government continued to weaken media independence, particularly of major television networks."
The statement also spelled out different kinds of press repression in Zimbabwe, Venezuela and Iran.
Rice alleged that Zimbabwean security forces "selectively harassed, beat and arbitrarily arrested members of the media."
For Venezuela, she cited "new laws governing libel and broadcast media content, legal harassment against journalists and physical intimidation" as government actions that result in "limitations on press freedoms and a climate of self-censorship."
"In Iran, press freedom has eroded," Rice said. Journalists have been harassed and imprisoned, she said, and she cited the January closure by the Iranian Culture Ministry of the daily newspaper Asia and banning of a planned women's publication, Nour-e-Banovan.
Iran's hardline judiciary began in 2000 a press crackdown that has led to the closure of more than 100 pro-democracy publications on vague charges of insulting religious sensibilities or top clerics.
The Bush administration has been accused by some of being the most dismissive of the press since that of president Richard Nixon in the 1970s.
President George W. Bush has ordered investigations to find leakers whose information led to disclosures of questionable government activities, mostly involving Bush's campaign against terrorists. He also has tightened declassification rules for papers from previous presidencies.
Comment: Does this include in the United States itself? Where are all those brave journalists willing to take on corruption, lies, and an ever more tyrannical Bush Reich?
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Rice wants to discuss Lebanon with Douste-Blazy
AFP
May 4, 2006
WASHINGTON - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hopes to meet with her French counterpart next week in New York to discuss the situation in Lebanon, State Department spokesman said.
"We're trying to arrange a meeting between the two of them," spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.
Rice and French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy are scheduled to attend a meeting in New York on Monday of top diplomats from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia to weigh a response to Iran's disputed nuclear program.
A separate meeting on the Middle East with envoys from the
European Union, Russia, the United States and the
United Nations is set for Tuesday. That session could allow for a possible dinner meeting between Rice and Douste-Blazy, according to a State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
A report by the UN envoy tasked with settling of the Syrian-Lebanese dispute, Terje Roed-Larsen, has prompted interest in fresh measures by the UN Security Council, McCormack said.
"Certainly in the wake of Terje Larsen's report, we think that some other measure through the Security Council might be merited," he said.
"We're going to talk to the French government about that. We've worked very well together on this issue, and we look forward to doing so in the future."
France said last week that it was preparing a draft resolution that would urge Syria to respond to Lebanon's call for establishment of formal diplomatic ties between the two neighbors and for a demarcation of their common border.
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Iraqi Freedom
In the chaos of Iraq, one project is on target: a giant US embassy
Daniel McGrory in Baghdad
04/05/2006
THE question puzzles and enrages a city: how is it that the Americans cannot keep the electricity running in Baghdad for more than a couple of hours a day, yet still manage to build themselves the biggest embassy on Earth?
Irritation grows as residents deprived of air-conditioning and running water three years after the US-led invasion watch the massive US Embassy they call "George W's palace" rising from the banks of the Tigris.
In the pavement cafés, people moan that the structure is bigger than anything Saddam Hussein built. They are not impressed by the architects' claims that the diplomatic outpost will be visible from space and cover an area that is larger than the Vatican city and big enough to accommodate four Millennium Domes. They are more interested in knowing whether the US State Department paid for the prime real estate or simply took it.
While families in the capital suffer electricity cuts, queue all day to fuel their cars and wait for water pipes to be connected, the US mission due to open in June next year will have its own power and water plants to cater for a population the size of a small town.
Officially, the design of the compound is supposed to be a secret, but you cannot hide the giant construction cranes and the concrete contours of the 21 buildings that are taking shape. Looming over the skyline, the embassy has the distinction of being the only big US building project in Iraq that is on time and within budget.
In a week when Washington revealed a startling list of missed deadlines and overspending on building projects, Congress was told that the bill for the embassy was $592 million (£312 million).
The heavily guarded 42-hectare (104-acre) site - which will have a 15ft thick perimeter wall - has hundreds of workers swarming on scaffolding. Local residents are bitter that the Kuwaiti contractor has employed only foreign staff and is busing them in from a temporary camp nearby.
After roughing it in Saddam's abandoned palaces, diplomats should have every comfort in their new home. There will be impressive residences for the Ambassador and his deputy, six apartments for senior officials, and two huge office blocks for 8,000 staff to work in. There will be what is rumoured to be the biggest swimming pool in Iraq, a state-of-the-art gymnasium, a cinema, restaurants offering delicacies from favourite US food chains, tennis courts and a swish American Club for evening functions.
The security measures being installed are described as extraordinary. US officials are preparing for the day when the so-called green zone, the fortified and sealed-off compound where international diplomats and Iraq's leaders live and work, is reopened to the rest of the city's residents, and American diplomats can retreat to their own secure area.
Iraqi politicians opposed to the US presence protest that the scale of the project suggests that America retains long-term ambitions here. The International Crisis Group, a think-tank, said the embassy's size "is seen by Iraqis as an indication of who actually exercises power in their country".
A State Department official said that the size reflected the "massive amount of work still facing the US and our commitment to see it through".
BEHIND SCHEDULE
# A US Inspector General's report into reconstruction found that although $22 billion had been spent, water, sewage and electricity, infrastructure still operated at prewar levels
# Despite "significant progress" in recent months, less than half the water and electricity projects have been completed
# Only six of the 150 planned health centres have been completed
# US officials spent $70 million on medical equipment for health clinics that are unlikely ever to be built. More than 75 per cent of the funds for the 150 planned clinics have been allocated
# Task Force Shield, the $147 million programme to train Iraqi security units to protect key oil and electrical sites failed to meet its goals. A fraud investigation is under way
# Oil production was 2.18 million barrels per day in the last week of March. Before the war it was 2.6 million
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Reason for Their Death Is Known
By Dahr Jamail
05/03/06
Know what it is like when scores of your fellow citizens are being killed every single day while the world proceeds unheedingly on? As a journalist I've had but a taste of that poison during my eight months in Iraq. Try it out: be an Iraqi for a day, into your fourth year of being occupied, humiliated, tortured and killed, doing all you can just to survive.
All communication with my Iraqi friends is punctuated by and smattered with their use of the words "praying," "God," and "Insha'allah" (God willing). Perhaps there is need to invoke something else altogether?
And all the dead air is alive. With the smell of America's God. - Harold Pinter, "War With Iraq"
On one of the days when multiple car bombs drained the blood and souls of scores in Baghdad, my closest friend wrote from there: "Dahr, This is a very sad letter I'm writing you as a friend. My tears are coming down due to the humiliation, suffering, frustration, thwarting defeat and discomfiture we the Iraqi are living in. Please let people know some of the news of what is happening to my country, my people and my religion."
Death lurks everywhere in Iraq today. Keeping up with the numbers of dead is impossible. A doctor working at one of the larger hospitals in Baghdad recently called it a "camp" because the courtyard of the hospital is constantly filled with members of the Shia Badr militia, who continue to carry out their death squad activities of killing Sunnis and rival Shia. "The Badr are all over the hospital, looking for people," said the doctor. "The injured brought here sometimes die before even reaching the ward, because the Badr are being obstacles for us. One of the men running our morgue was killed by the Badr. My friends are warning me to be careful, to keep my mouth shut."
The numbers are being hidden … and the Badr, operating out of the Ministry of Interior, which is funded by the US, are making sure the numbers remain shrouded.
Yet on Tuesday of this week, a spokesman at that same hospital, speaking on condition of anonymity of course, announced that in the last 48 hours alone Yarmouk Hospital had received 65 bodies, most of them slaughtered by death squads in execution-style murders. That day they had received 40 bodies, and Monday, 25.
Iraqis are at far greater risk when they speak out about the true number of the dead than western journalists. Those who speak out jeopardize their lives, like Faik Bakir, the director of the Baghdad morgue. Bakir fled Iraq fearing for his life in early March, after reporting that over 7,000 people had been killed by death squads in recent months. In an article in the Guardian on March 2nd, it was made clear by John Pace, a UN official who worked in Iraq until February, that "The vast majority of bodies showed signs of summary execution - many with their hands tied behind their back. Some showed evidence of torture, with arms and leg joints broken by electric drills." He said that the killings had been ongoing long before the rampant bloodshed that followed the bombing of the Shia shrine in Samarra. The article added, "Mr. Pace, whose contract in Iraq ended last month, said many killings were carried out by Shia militias linked to the interior ministry run by Bayan Jabr, a leading figure in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri)."
This past Saturday I received information from the main morgue in Baghdad from a doctor there, name withheld for security reasons. "Yesterday we received 36 bodies from the police pickups. All of them are unknown, without IDs, and we don't have refrigerators to put them in since all of ours are completely full already. So we had to keep them on the ground. 12 of them were handcuffed, most of them received between 2 and 10 bullets, some many more than 10. We are not going to put them into biopsy. Reason for their death is known. Most of them are between 20 to 30 years … This is the number that was brought directly to us in one day, plus there are the dead who are sent to the hospitals. They will be put in the hospitals' morgues. We don't receive bodies from hospitals nowadays, because we don't have a place to keep them. I can't tell the exact number of killed people now, but it depends on the situation. But what I can assure you of is that since the shrine explosion, deaths have almost doubled. Daily, we receive between 70 to 80 bodies … you can see within these 40 minutes that I've talked with you, we received 9 bodies. Nearly every morning the count will be doubled twice this number, for the police find them at night. Most are either found in the streets or killed without sending them to hospitals. Four days ago we received 24 bodies in just 2 hours."
At this same morgue back in June 2004, I interviewed the aforementioned director, Dr. Faiq Bakir, who had to flee for his life. He said that their maximum holding capacity with the freezers was 90 bodies, and since January 2004 an average of well over 600 bodies each month had been brought there. The cause of death for at least half of these were gunshots or explosions. He also pointed out that those numbers did not include the heavy fighting areas of Fallujah and Najaf.
In addition, he told me, "We deal only with suspicious deaths, not deaths from natural causes. And so many bodies are buried that never go to a morgue anywhere."
According to Dr. Bakir, the rate of bodies brought to the Baghdad Morgue even back then was 3-4 times greater than it ever was during the regime of Saddam Hussein. "I am sure that not all of the bodies that should come here do," he continued before very diplomatically adding, "Because our legal system has some problems right now."
Before the invasion, there was a coordinated system between Baghdad and the other governorates, which allowed his morgue to track deaths throughout the country, but this too had been smashed along with the rest of the infrastructure of his country.
More recently, a doctor at another hospital shared information which puts this in clearer perspective.
This past Sunday, a doctor from al-Numan hospital in the al-Adhamiya district of Baghdad reported to my source in Baghdad: "Every major hospital has either one or two refrigerators, depending on the population of the area. As for Adhamiya we have one refrigerator that holds a maximum of 10 bodies. Meanwhile there are two refrigerators in the Shula hospital. We have not less than 18 major hospitals inside Baghdad, in addition to the main morgue, which has 6 refrigerators that contain 20 bodies each. In the emergencies we use refrigeration trucks to put bodies inside - this is very familiar to the main morgue. I went there a week ago. I have seen three refrigeration trucks inside the yard. They were filled with bodies. They keep the bodies in the main morgue for not more than 15 days, and if no one asks for them, they send the bodies to the cemetery administration to deal with them. This administration hands the bodies to some individuals who will bury them, mostly in Najaf or in the cemeteries around Baghdad."
Reuters recently ran a story titled, "In Baghdad, some killings get noticed, some don't." The story read, "When gunmen killed a sister of an Iraqi vice president on Thursday, it grabbed world headlines. A few streets away, however, another slaying, typical of hundreds in Baghdad in recent weeks, went all but unnoticed. Indeed it might never have been recorded had 73-year-old Khatab al-Ani not been shot outside the home of a journalist." The only part of this I would amend is "in recent weeks," because I know for a fact that random unreported killings have been the norm in the capital city of Iraq for over two years now.
Another Iraqi source of mine works for an Iraqi relief NGO in Fallujah. He told me that from the April and November 2004 US assaults on Fallujah there were a minimum of 4,500 dead or missing (most of them dead), and "killings in Fallujah and Ramadi are a daily reality for us." According to this source, "Doctors in Fallujah estimate that an average of 3.5 people are being killed in Fallujah every day during 2006, while doctors we know in Baghdad estimate that the number there is between 150 and 200 per day."
He went on to say, "The Lancet reported over 100,000 killed over a year ago. This was even before many of the crimes committed by US troops, the Iraqi so-called Army and the Government militias, who are all first class killers, came to light. This brings the number to over 200,000 at the least. On the other hand, those people (Bush and those claiming less than 100,000 dead) not reporting the correct number of civilian casualties - that is a major crime in itself. It looks like they don't give a damn how many Iraqi people get killed."
Even the UN Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) humanitarian news agency reported on April 26 that "More than 90 women become widows each day due to continuing violence countrywide, according to government officials and non-governmental organizations devoted to women's issues."
Another extremely telling point in the IRIN report is that "Although few reliable statistics are available on the total number of widows in Iraq, the Ministry of Women's Affairs says that there are at least 300,000 in Baghdad alone, with another eight million throughout the country." The report said that at least 15 police officers' wives are widowed every day, and that local NGOs in Iraq said the situation had become much worse since the 2003 US-led invasion of the country, which has brought horrific violence on a level not seen before.
"Saddam Hussein was responsible for killing thousands of men during his 25 years of brutal rule," said Ibtissam Kamal in the IRIN report. Kamal, a member of a local organization that works on the issue but prefers anonymity of the organization for security reasons, added, "But more people have died during the past three years, most of them men …"
The vast majority of deaths in Iraq are not being counted. Anyone who has spent any time there knows this. It was and remains common knowledge amongst my colleagues who worked on the streets, rather than those "embedding" or conducting "hotel journalism."
Several of my colleagues who have reported from Iraq feel the number of Iraqis killed during the occupation far exceeds 100,000.
"If one counts excess mortality from collapsed healthcare, polluted water, poverty and the like - at least 100,000 Iraqis have died since the US invaded Iraq," Christian Parenti, author of the book The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq wrote me this week. Parenti, who has reported for over 5 months from Iraq and is a regularly contributor to The Nation magazine, added, "How many people have been killed by US troops? How many in sectarian violence? It's impossible to say, but the point is this: Iraq has been destroyed by the US invasion and the process of its disintegration will go on for years. It is a horror no matter what the numbers are."
David Enders, an American freelance journalist who has spent 18 months reporting from Iraq and author of the book Baghdad Bulletin, told me yesterday, "I visited the Baghdad morgue, and they were receiving between 30-40 bodies every day. That didn't include car bombs and people who'd died for obvious reasons. That was more than a year ago, and that was just for Baghdad. I think it's probably safe to say that well over 100,000 Iraqis have died during the occupation."
Veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk writes for the Independent in the UK and has reported from the region for over 30 years. He had this to say in a piece written on March 20th titled, "The Iraq War: Three Years On - The march of folly that has led to a bloodbath":
"The Iraqis? Well, they are lesser beings whose casualties cannot be revealed to us by the Iraqi ministry of health, on orders from the Americans and British; creatures whose suffering, far greater than our own, must be submerged in the democracy and freedom in which we are drowning them; whose casualties "more or less" [mocking the infamous quote from George W. Bush] are probably nearer to 150,000. After all, if 1,000 Iraqis could die by violence last July - in Baghdad alone; and if they are being killed at 60 or 70 a day, then we have a near genocidal bloodbath on our hands. Iraqis, however, are now our Untermenschen for whom, frankly, we do not greatly care."
By far and away the survey that comes closest to the true number of dead in Iraq to date was the one conducted for the Lancet. Yet even Les Roberts, the lead author of that report and one of the world's top epidemiologists with the Center for International Emergency Disaster and Refugee Studies at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said this February that there might be as many as 300,000 Iraqi civilian deaths generated by the US invasion and occupation. So as not to skew the results, it is important to note that the survey did not include areas where major combat had occurred such as Fallujah, Najaf, and Sadr City - home to roughly three million Iraqis.
Any news agency, government, or other organization reporting anything less are actively attempting to hide the level of slaughter and mayhem and thus aiding and abetting the ongoing war crimes in Iraq.
My aforementioned friend in Fallujah is both frustrated and angry that most news agencies choose not to report the number of dead in Iraq more accurately. "I know there are some organizations who claim that they have an accurate count, which is less than 40,000 dead Iraqis," he wrote me recently. He went on to reference Bush Junior, "And as if that number itself isn't shameful enough for the US and the whole world to see. Anyone claiming that low number who calls himself a humanitarian is a shameful guy."
we leave civilian dead
as litter in the streets
ignored by us their numbers
unmarked as are their names
- Labi Siffre
Anyone who's been in a war zone knows what it feels like to lie in bed at night listening to the cracking of gunfire, or the sound of thudding bombs. Knowing that each report means death or maiming. It is true that the dead do not talk, but each shot fired or bomb detonated means someone is dead, and the killers know and must live with that knowledge forever - that they have killed a human being.
And we cannot escape that knowledge either.
Not hearing the sounds of death, but knowing that somewhere this instant in Iraq is a family that will have to suffer a loss in perpetuity.
Your silence will not protect you ...
- Audre Lorde
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IEDs Still Plague US Troops
by Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst
May 04, 2006
Washington - The main thrust of the Iraq insurgency is not currently aimed at U.S. forces, but it shows no signs of diminishing either. In the 20 days from April 13 to May 2, 47 U.S. soldiers were killed or died in Iraq at an average rate of 2.35 per day, according to official figures issued by the U.S. Department of Defense.
The number of U.S. troop fatalities in April was 73, of whom 61 were killed by hostile action. This marked rises of more than 200 percent from the 34 fatalities in March, of whom 29 were killed by hostile action, according to official U.S. figures.
These figures reversed the previous positive trend in falling U.S. military fatalities in Iraq from mid-January through March
The latest wave of casualties confirms another grim trend we have been tracking for more than half a year in this column: The failure of U.S. coalition and allied Iraqi security forces to be able to come up with an effective counter-tactic to neutralize the effectiveness of improvised explosive devices or IEDs.
According to the Iraq Index Project of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, IEDs have been responsible for more than 38 percent of all U.S. deaths in Iraq, including those from non-hostile causes, for every month since May 2005. In April, they were responsible for the deaths of 43 U.S. troops, or 59.7 percent of all those who died in Iraq that month ether in accidents or by hostile action.
In all, IEDs have been responsible for the deaths of 779 U.S. soldiers, or 32.5.7 percent of all fatalities in Iraq including non-combat ones from the start of military operations in March 2003 through April 30, the Iraq Index Project said.
The total number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq through April 30 since the start of U.S. operations to topple Saddam Hussein on March 19, 2003, was 2,407, according to official figures issued by the Department of Defense.
The 2.35 per day fatality average over the 20 days from April 13 to May 2 marks a rise of 30 percent on the rate of 1.65 U.S. troop fatalities per day in the previous 68 day period from Feb. 4 to April 12.
However, the 2.35 per day figure is still a vast improvement on the 33 U.S. soldiers killed in only seven days from Jan. 11 through Jan. 17, an average of 4.7 soldiers killed per day and on the figure of 28 in the Jan. 4-10 period when the average death rate was four U.S. soldiers killed per day.
The rate at which U.S. soldiers are being injured in Iraq also remains high. As of April 30, 17,874 U.S. soldiers have been injured in Iraq since the start of hostilities to topple Saddam Hussein on March 19, 2003. That was an increase of 325 wounded in 20 days at an average rate of 16.25 per day. This rate marked a significant increase on the figure of 943 wounded in the previous 68 days, at an average rate of just below 13.9 wounded per day, according to figures issued by the DOD.
The rate art which U.S. soldiers have been wounded per day in Iraq has therefore been slowly but inexorably rising since the end of January. The average rate was 11.6 per day injured from Jan. 30 through Feb. 3, when 58 U.S. soldiers were injured, according to the DOD figures. The latest figure is more than twice as high as the rate of 7.4 U.S. soldiers injured per day during the Jan. 11-17 period. And it is even worse than the very high figure of 91 U.S. soldiers wounded during the Jan. 4-10 period at an average rate of 13 per day.
As of April 30, 8,194 of those troops were wounded so seriously that they were listed as "WIA Not RTD" in the DOD figures. In other words: Wounded in Action Not Returned to Duty, an increase of 136 such casualties in 20 days at an average rate of 6.8 per day. This marks a rise of more than 20 percent in this figure from the previous 68 day period when U.S. forces suffered 375 such casualties at an average rate of 5.5 per day.
The March and April figures also reverse the positive trend of October through January when the number of U.S. troops wounded in action per month steadily fell. It dropped from 618 in October, through 466 in November and 408 in December to 309 in January. But the total number of U.S. troops wounded per month in Iraq reached 355 in February and 443 in March. It fell, however, to 366 -- still unfortunately above the February figure - in April.
The casualty figures suggest that the insurgency is not dramatically increasing the scale of its attacks on U.S. forces, but that it is growing more proficient than ever with its employment of IEDs, and that despite the priority Pentagon planners have certainly given to combating the problem, U.S. combat vehicles in Iraq remain vulnerable to them.
The cumulative impact of all these figures is that the conclusion we drew in our Jan. 18 analysis remains unchanged: The Sunni Muslim insurgency in Iraq has not so far shown signs of dramatically metastasizing in recent weeks, but it has been able to return to and maintain its old formidable levels following a lull for the Iraqi parliamentary elections in December. And it has remained remarkably impervious to both the broad political strategies and the tactical military initiatives that U.S. political leaders and military commanders have sought to apply against it.
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Germany accused of paying large ransom for release of hostages
Luke Harding in Berlin
The Guardian
Thursday May 4, 2006
Two German hostages kidnapped in Iraq arrived home yesterday as Iraq's ambassador to Germany claimed a "load of money" had been paid to secure their release.
Alaa al-Hashimi, said the German government had handed over a "large amount" to the kidnappers of René Bräunlich and Thomas Nitzschke, who were freed on Tuesday after 99 days in captivity. "Regarding the payment of ransom, I don't know. But I assume it was a large amount of money," the ambassador told Germany's ARD public television station. The Iraqi government had no part in the release, he said.
The claim is likely to provoke fresh debate over whether western governments should pay for the release of hostages or refuse to negotiate with kidnappers - the official policy of Britain and the US. Italy and France are believed to have paid million-dollar sums for the release of kidnapped nationals.
Two British hostages, Margaret Hassan and Ken Bigley, were executed by their captors.
Mr Bräunlich, 32, and Mr Nitzschke, 28, arrived at Tegel airport in Berlin yesterday looking pale and exhausted but apparently unharmed. "We are very happy to be alive. It was something we didn't take for granted," said Mr Bräunlich. He thanked the German government for getting him out, adding: "We are happy to be here again. We had a difficult time."
The engineers, from Leipzig in east Germany, were seized on January 24 outside their workplace, an Iraqi-owned detergent factory in the industrial town of Baiji, 110 miles north of Baghdad. German officials swiftly established that their captors were not holding them for political reasons. Instead they wanted to make money, diplomats said.
Asked yesterday whether Germany had paid a ransom, the foreign minister, Franz-Walter Steinmeier, said: "We will of course say nothing about the concrete details regarding their release." He thanked the US, Britain, France and "other partners in the region" for helping to get the men out after three months in "inhuman conditions".
Although the release is a success for Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, who last night held talks with the US president, George Bush, in Washington, there are questions about the wisdom of paying large ransoms to Iraqi gangs.
Yesterday, Rolfeckhard Giermann, who spent five years in Baghdad as east Germany's trade attache, said it was a signal to potential kidnappers "that you can earn good money with German hostages". He told the Sächsische Zeitung newspaper: "This simply strengthens Iraq's kidnapping industry."
When the men were taken hostage, there was speculation that Germans were being targeted because Berlin, unlike Washington or London, had a habit of paying ransoms. Their kidnapping came a month after Susanne Osthoff, a German woman working in Iraq, was freed from captivity. German diplomats admitted the government paid $5m (£2.7m) for her release.
High-profile examples include a case in 2003 when at least €5m (£3.4m) was paid to secure the release of 14 tourists kidnapped in the Sahara desert.
The release is good news for Mr Steinmeier, who has emerged as a skilled crisis manager since he became foreign minister in November.
More than 200 foreigners and thousands of Iraqis have been kidnapped since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Most foreign hostages have been released. But 55 foreign hostages have been reported executed by their Iraqi captors - 41 in 2004, 13 last year, and one so far this year.
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HealthWatch
U.S. flu plan warns of 2 million deaths, severe disruption
Last Updated Wed, 03 May 2006 13:34:44 EDT
CBC News
The White House has announced new plans to prepare the U.S. for the possibility that avian influenza will become easily transmissible among humans and spur a pandemic that could kill as many as two million Americans.
The U.S. preparedness implementation report outlines more than 300 "critical actions" that would have to be taken in the case of a bird flu pandemic. Many of the precautionary steps are already in place, according to the plan released Wednesday.
The Bush administration has requested $7.1 billion to prepare for such a pandemic.
In the worst-case scenario, the report said, 30 per cent of all Americans could come down with the disease - for a total of 50 million cases.
As well, 40 per cent of the U.S. workforce could be off the job for weeks at a time because of illness or quarantines.
The H5N1 form of bird flu has killed 113 people around the world, most of them children or young adults, since the current outbreak began in 2003. So far, almost all of the cases have occurred where humans live in close proximity to infected birds such as domestic poultry.
Flight restrictions not ruled out
Shutting the border to Canada is an "impractical" way to stop the spread of the disease because people can be contagious for 24 to 48 hours before they start to show symptoms, the report said.
However, Fran Townsend told reporters in Washington, D.C., that the government is not ruling out banning or quarantining flights from flu hotspots to slow spread of the disease.
"We recognize that we cannot make these decisions in a vacuum and must consult with our international partners," said Townsend, who is President George W. Bush's homeland security adviser.
"We cannot forget that a pandemic occurs because of the spread of the disease from one person to another," Townsend added, stressing that individuals can play a role in keeping the country healthy by observing good rules of hygiene.
Businesses asked to change practices
Among the recommendations in the report are some aimed at businesses throughout the country.
Managers will be asked to hold more teleconferences if a pandemic starts spreading around the globe, restrict corporate travel and keep workers at least a metre apart from each other to reduce close contact that could speed the flu's spread.
The report also suggests that authorities might divert flights with possibly infected passengers on board, order flight crews to wear face masks and impose quarantines.
The plan says the National Guard would contain any violence if civil unrest breaks out as a result of a pandemic.
Townsend said the blueprint for action is silent on some issues, including the kind of people who might get preferential access to vaccines and anti-viral medications in case of a pandemic.
Development of a specific vaccine would have to wait until a human-to-human form of the disease is confirmed to be spreading and scientists can gather samples.
Comment: From the people that brought you the Hurricane Katrina Disaster plan! More thrills! More excitement! More death! More fear!
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Missing anthrax samples found in N.J.
UPI
May 3, 2006
TRENTON, N.J. -- Two samples of potentially deadly anthrax bacteria missing from a Trenton, N.J., laboratory were mislabeled and have been found, a report said Wednesday.
"There was a transcription error in the numbers when labeling them for storage," state Deputy Health Commissioner Eddy Bresnitz told the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger.
"We pulled the two samples from the negative racks and retested them. Those two were positive, confirming our suspicions that they were mislabeled," Bresnitz said.
The mislabeled samples had been put among 19,000 others taken from a U.S. Post Office center near Trenton, N.J., that processed anthrax-laced letters in October 2001.
State Assemblyman Kevin O'Toole, R-Essex, said his fears would ease once the FBI completes its investigation.
"I'm not about to believe 'The dog ate my homework,'" O'Toole said.
Comment: The most important thing, of course, is that the populace is sufficiently terrified of absolutely everything...
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Bausch confirms eye infection cases in Europe
Reuters
Thu May 4, 2006
NEW YORK - Eye care company Bausch & Lomb Inc. for the first time confirmed its ReNu contact solution has been linked to a "handful" of eye infection cases, according to a report on the Wall Street Journal's Web site on Thursday.
The cases "will be fully evaluated," Margaret Graham, a spokesman for Bausch told the Journal. Graham did not specify where or how many cases are known.
Graham was not immediately reachable for further comment on Thursday.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday released a report on late Tuesday that suggested an outbreak of Fusarium keratitis, a rare fungal infection that can lead to blindness and potential eye loss, related to its products may be more widespread than first thought.
Shares of Bausch & Lomb fell nearly 10 percent on Wednesday.
Cases have already been identified in Asia and the U.S., where the company has pulled its ReNu with MoistureLoc product off store shelves.
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"World's oldest person" celebrates 128th birthday
Reuters
Thu May 4, 2006
SAN AGUSTIN, El Salvador - Friends and relatives of Cruz Hernandez's gathered on Wednesday to celebrate her 128th birthday, a milestone that might make her the world's oldest person.
Hernandez, who relatives say spends most of her time dozing and no longer speaks, was surrounded by some 200 people at her party, some bearing a cake and others dressed as Salvadoran mythological heroes.
According to national records, Hernandez was born on May 3, 1878, in one of the country's central provinces, where she gave birth to 13 children. She now has 60 grandchildren, 80 great-grandchildren and 25 great-great grandchildren.
National birth registry officials sent Hernandez's documents to the Guinness World Records organization last year but have yet to hear whether the case was accepted.
Guinness claims Ecuadorean Maria Esther de Capovilla is the world's oldest living woman at age 116.
According to the organization, the longest any woman has ever lived is 122 years. The oldest man was 120 when he died in 1986.
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Rock and Roll, Dudes!
Huge Pacific earthquake sparks tsunami panic
AFP
May 4, 2006
WELLINGTON - A massive earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 rocked the island nation of Tonga, triggering a panic evacuation in a New Zealand town after tsunami warnings were briefly issued for the South Pacific.
Although the warnings were withdrawn within two hours, hundreds of people in the New Zealand coastal town of Gisborne, more than 2,200 kilometres (1,375 miles) from the quake's epicentre, fled their homes.
"Most of the coastal communities in Gisborne evacuated," regional civil defence controller Richard Steele told national radio.
"Things got a bit out of control."
But while there was panic in New Zealand, the 110,000 residents of Tonga were unaware a tsunami warning had been issued.
"Due to a breakdown in an internal communications' system, the Tonga authorities received no warning at all. Also, there seemed to be no internal mechanism for warning," said Kevin Vang of the Australian-Pacific Centre for Emergency and Disaster Information.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) said a "great" quake, initially measured at magnitude 8.0, struck at 4:26 am (1526 GMT Wednesday) in the middle of the islands that make up Tonga.
The epicentre was recorded 160 kilometers (100 miles) northeast of Tonga's main island of Nuku'Alofa and 16 kilometers below the Earth's surface, a relatively shallow distance which increases the likelihood of a tsunami.
It was the largest earthquake recorded by the USGS since a 8.6 temblor off the Indonesian island of Sumatra in March 2005, and immediately sparked fears of a repeat of the 9.0 Asian tsunami which killed 220,000 people in December 2004.
But despite the ferocity of the quake and aftershocks of magnitude 5.4 and 5.1, there were few reports of injury or damage in Tonga.
One hotel guest, identified as South Korean national Song Sang Hoon, hurt his leg when he jumped from a third-floor window.
"He was the only tourist injured. He jumped from his room, maybe he was afraid," said William Vea, the night receptionist at the Pacific Royale Hotel.
Once they assessed the damage was minimal, mainly broken glass and stock tipped from shop shelves, Tongans went back to bed. But in Gisborne, on New Zealand's east coast, residents packed what they could in the middle of the night and headed for higher ground.
Russell Beazley, a worker at a 24-hour petrol station, said it was inundated with people stocking up before heading out of town.
"It was pretty scary stuff looking at all the locals come in, and they were all frightened and grabbing all the supplies they could get," he said.
Kelly Cullen said she and her husband drove their children towards the nearest hill but, hearing it was too crowded, they kept driving. "I'm actually due to have a baby so we thought we better be organised," she said.
The flight from Gisborne sparked a row over how residents were misled.
Many blamed authorities for not correcting news reports when they knew there was no tsunami, but Civil Defence Minister Rick Barker blamed the BBC and other media.
"If the BBC, which is a reliable news outlet... says there is a tsunami heading to New Zealand, which it wasn't, and said it was aimed at Gisborne, which it wasn't, and said that there was a police alert, which there was not, and people accept the value of that news report, then the BBC is at fault," he said.
New Zealand's Geological and Nuclear Sciences department said the earthquake was felt in much of the North Island of New Zealand.
The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center initially called on New Zealand and Fiji to take immediate action against a possible giant wave, but New Zealand civil defence officials said it was evident within 30 minutes there would be no significant tsunami.
In Fiji police advised residents of villages in low-lying areas to move to higher ground, while tourists in resorts were told to stay on higher floors where possible.
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Flash floods kill 18 in cyclone-hit Myanmar
Reuters
May 4, 2006
YANGON - Flash floods triggered by Cyclone Mala killed 18 people in central Myanmar, state media reported on Thursday, sharply raising the death toll from last week's storm.
Another 14 people were still missing after the storm swept inland on April 29 and struck Kyangin Township, 130 miles northwest of the capital, Yangon, the Kyemon newspaper said.
"The flash floods occurred after the storm caused heavy rainfall in the mountains," the newspaper said, quoting government officials in the area.
Earlier media reports had confirmed four deaths after the storm battered coastal areas of western Irrawaddy Division and Southern Rakhine state, damaging 2,500 homes.
Five factories in Hlaing Thar Yar Township, 10 miles west of Yangon, were destroyed by hurricane-force winds.
Myanmar's secretive military government has allowed U.N. agencies and the Red Cross to survey the damage and provide some emergency relief.
The agencies said on Wednesday there was a need for shelters, food, blankets, clothing and mosquito nets.
"The national authorities rapidly started providing relief to affected households. They have not requested international assistance, but welcome it," they said in a joint statement.
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Bulk carrier sinks off S.African coast, 27 missing
Reuters
May 4, 2006
JOHANNESBURG - A bulk carrier reportedly ferrying iron ore from Brazil to China has sank off South Africa's eastern coast and 27 crew members were still missing by Thursday, rescue officials said.
Six of the ship's 33 crew were rescued on Wednesday night, shortly after the vessel went down off Port Alfred after taking in water, the officials said.
It was not immediately clear where the 980-foot bulk carrier was registered, and officials provisionally gave its name as Alexandros T.
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Bomb in SE Turkey injures 11 children, 6 adults
Reuters
Thu May 4, 2006
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey - A bomb exploded beside a minibus carrying soldiers' children home from school on Wednesday in a town in southeast Turkey, injuring 17 people including 11 children, a local security chief said.
The bomb, in Hakkari in the mainly Kurdish southeast, is part of an escalation of violence in the region, where soldiers have also stepped up operations against the outlawed guerrilla group, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
Yasar Agdere, Hakkari's security chief, said none of the injured -- including 5 soldiers and a passerby -- were in a serious condition.
"The investigation continues, we still do not know what kind of bomb it was," he told reporters.
The PKK launched a campaign for an independent homeland in 1984 and Ankara, which considers it a terrorist organization, blames it for more than 30,000 deaths since then.
The increase in violence in the southeast has coincided with a series of bomb attacks in Istanbul, and Turkey said last month it was sending reinforcements to the southeast to deal with expected incursions from northern Iraq, where it says thousands of rebels are based.
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Israel and Palestine
Israel must take Iranian threats seriously: Olmert
By Dan Williams
Thu May 4, 2006 07:38 AM ET
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel needs to take seriously Iranian threats to wipe out the Jewish state and can defend itself against a country the West suspects of seeking nuclear weapons, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Thursday.
Olmert's strongly worded remarks to parliament before the ratification of his new coalition government came as Western powers sought action by the United Nations to curb Iranian uranium enrichment and other key nuclear processes.
"We must not ignore what the president of Iran says -- he means everything he says," Olmert told the Knesset, referring to repeated calls by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for Israel's elimination.
"The State of Israel, which the evil leaders in Tehran have turned into a target for annihilation, is not helpless and it has the ability to defend itself against any threat," he said.
Iran, the world's fourth-biggest oil exporter, says it seeks nuclear energy, not bombs. Iranian officials have argued that Ahmadinejad's comments on Israel did not constitute a threat.
The United States, Britain and France this week drafted a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding Iran curb its nuclear ambitions and threatening sanctions if it does not. Fellow council members Russia and China have balked at sanctions.
Believed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, Israel backs the diplomacy but, like its U.S. ally, has refused to rule out military action as a last resort.
In 1981, Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor at Osiraq in Iraq, driving Saddam Hussein's quest for nuclear weapons underground until it was uncovered by U.N. inspectors.
Israel says Iran could be months away from building a nuclear bomb, though Western intelligence agencies put it at several years.
"Only a determined and uncompromising international stance in the face of Iran will be capable of stopping this threat and safeguarding the entire world," Olmert said.
His remarks were quickly endorsed in the Knesset by opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who has called for an Osiraq-style preemptive strike on Iran.
Tehran has said its armed forces would retaliate for any attack. An Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander said this week that Israel would be the first target, a comment later played down by the deputy chief of military staff. Foreign analysts believe Iran could also hit U.S. interests in the Gulf.
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Hamas willing to match Israeli peace moves: Meshaal
Wed May 3, 2006
Reuters
DAMASCUS - Hamas could reciprocate Israeli moves toward peace if the Jewish state agrees to withdraw from all lands occupied in 1967 and acknowledges Palestinian rights, the group's political leader Khaled Meshaal said on Wednesday.
But Israel's president reiterated that talks with the Hamas-led Palestinian government could not commence unless it renounced violence, recognized the Jewish state and interim Palestinian peace deals with it.
"If Israel withdrew to the 1967 borders, including Jerusalem, acknowledges the right of return, lifts its siege, dismantles the settlements and the wall and releases the prisoners, then it is possible for us as Palestinians and Arabs to make a serious step to match the Zionist step," he said.
Meshaal, who is in exile in Syria, told a packed auditorium at Damascus University that there was "no chance for a compromise" unless Israel fulfilled such conditions and because it was unlikely to do so in the near future, the Palestinians had no option but to resist occupation.
Hamas, an Islamist militant group sworn to destroying Israel, carried out nearly 60 suicide bombings against it since a Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000. Hamas won Palestinian elections in January and formed its first government in March.
"What do we have to talk about with them?" Israeli President Moshe Katsav told Israel's NRG Maariv Web site. "They do not recognize our right to exist and are unwilling to talk to us."
UNDER PRESSURE
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh told reporters in Gaza that "ending the occupation and returning Palestinian rights" was a condition for any ceasefire or peace agreement.
Hamas, which has largely abided by a ceasefire for more than a year, has been under increasing Western and Israeli financial pressure to recognize the Jewish state, abandon armed struggle and accept interim Israeli-Palestinian peace deals.
"If (the Palestinian leadership) accepts the terms ... then we will conduct a political negotiation with it," said Katsav, whose position is largely ceremonial and does not dictate diplomatic policy.
Meshaal slammed international pressure on the Palestinian Authority that has left some 165,000 civil servants without pay as "an international crime" and said Palestinians have the right to resist Israeli occupation.
Comment: So, why no peace? Ask yourself, who has most to gain from peace in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and who has most to lose. The one with the most to lose is obviously the one that will do everything to avoid peace from ever "breaking out"
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Hamas trying to restore order amid security chaos
www.chinaview.cn
2006-05-04 02:51:52
Two weeks ago, the Interior Ministry announced a decision to form a new force that will help security apparatuses restore order and discipline and end security chaos.
GAZA, May 3 (Xinhua) -- Two Palestinian police jeeps with a dozen of policemen holding guns and wearing helmets on board, drove fast one behind the other in Gaza City main street Omer al-Mukhtar, with police sirens sounding.
The two jeeps were heading to Daraj, one of poor overcrowded neighborhoods in the city, after police was told that two clans were fighting one another.
Another two civilian cars full of masked militants followed the two jeeps.
Exchange of fire between two families is usual in the Gaza Strip as security chaos has mounted since the beginning of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in late September 2000. Soon after the policemen arrived, the militants from the civilian cars also deployed in the area.
The policemen and 10 masked militants managed to control the situation and end the fighting 10 minutes later. There was no injury. Five men from the two families, who carried guns, were nabbed.
Local residents welcomed the police action that was supported by militants who came from different armed wings, mainly Hamas and the Popular Resistance Committees.
"This is exactly what we need. We need a strong police force that gains support from militants as well as from the community," said Husam al-Ashi, 45-year-old resident of Daraj neighborhood. Khaled Abu Hilal, new spokesman for the Interior Ministry of the Hamas-led government, said that the force to support police in restoring order and discipline had started its mission early this week.
Two weeks ago, the Interior Ministry announced a decision to form a new force that will help security apparatuses restore order and discipline and end security chaos.
"This force would include about 3,000 militants, who are members of six different armed wings that belong to several
political factions and its mission would be for six months only," said Abu Hilal.
He went on to say that the idea of forming this security force came after crimes, attacks on government properties and abduction of foreign visitors dramatically increased in the Gaza Strip. "Before we decided to form this security force, we met with celebrities from different big clans and tribes, and we also met with leaders of political factions and commanders of militants. All of them blessed the idea," said Abu Hilal.
But such a decision was strongly condemned and rejected by Fatah officials of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), mainly by President Mahmoud Abbas who hurried up in issuing a decree saying that this force can never be formed.
"We sent a letter to Abbas and told him that this force will never be an alternative to all police and security apparatuses, nor will it be another apparatus. We told him that this force is just to aid police," said Abu Hilal.
The decision was also rejected by some other militant groups, mainly those belonging to the Fatah movement, Hamas' rival which had ruled the Palestinians for the past 10 years and was defeated by Hamas in the January 25 legislative election.
Abu Hilal and Prime Minister Ismail Haneya insisted that nothing stop them from keeping this force to end the current security chaos that has led to disasters in the Palestinian community over the last few years. Abu Mujahid, spokesman of the Popular Resistance Committees in the Gaza Strip, told Xinhua that his group had informed Abu Hilal that it would join the force.
"We believe that if this government really wants to end corruption and end chaos that has been here for several years, we are ready to help it," said Abu Mujahid.
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Odds n Ends
'Everywhere I turned, I ran into sexual abuse'
Thursday May 4, 2006
The Guardian
The real conspiracy in the Catholic church has nothing to do with the Da Vinci Code, says Patrick Wall - it's the cover-up of paedophile priests. Mark Honigsbaum meets the former monk who is leading a crusade to hunt down the perpetrators and bring them to justice
Patrick Wall, or Brother Wall as he used to be known, is feeling a little jetlagged. He has just arrived in London on the red-eye from Los Angeles and has two hours before he has to catch a train to Cardiff - in pursuit of a special sort of criminal.
"I can't tell you much about the perpetrator until I get to Wales and sue his ass," he says, fixing me with a look that could stop the Vatican bells. "Let's just say that there are in excess of 20 victims - boys and girls - and that the alleged abuse dates back to the late 1970s."
Wall is a former Benedictine monk turned international clerical sleuth, and this is his 200th case since joining the LA law firm of Manly, McGuire & Stewart. His job is to hunt down Roman Catholic priests retired by the Vatican in the wake of the sexual abuse scandals that erupted in Boston and other north-American dioceses in 2002. Many of those priests have effectively gone to ground.
Wall's job is to find them, verify their identities, and then serve them with affidavits setting out their alleged involvement in abuse, as the first stage in bringing suits for damages on behalf of their victims in the US courts. It's a tricky job, one that requires a close familiarity with clergymen - and the cunning of Philip Marlowe.
"You want to build up some sort of rapport with the perp [perpetrator] before you serve them, but it can be a little scary because you don't know if they'll have a Smith & Wesson or holy water," he says. "I guess you could call what I do clerical reconnaissance. The point is, I have to be absolutely certain we have the right guy. If we sue the wrong priest, I'm done."
Dressed in a loose-fitting shirt and jacket, Wall, who stands 6ft tall and weighs 18∫ stone, looks like an overfed American tourist. In fact, he's an ex-high school American football star, and before he became involved in trying to stamp out sex abuse in the church, his only ambition was to be a good priest, to teach theology and coach college football. That plan began to unravel in 1992 when, within weeks of taking his vows for the priesthood, Wall was invited to join the church's "sexual abuse response team".
"My job was to firefight cases of sexual abuse - basically, take the place of the perp and calm the waters," he says. "Our definition of success was that no one ever found out about it."
Over the next five years, Wall found himself being shuttled from parish to parish to replace other, similarly failing priests - including one who had abused more than 30 altar boys. "Everywhere I turned, I was running into perpetrators," he says. "In one month alone, we had seven cases against monks go public."
By 1998, Wall had had enough and resigned from the priesthood. Later, he went on to give expert testimony in other sexual-abuse cases. For this, he was accused by his former monastic employers of being "headstrong" - a charge he readily admits - and forging church documents, which he strongly denies.
Now Wall, along with two other former priests turned whistleblowers, has written a book called Sex, Priests and Secret Codes: the Catholic church's 2,000-year paper trail of sexual abuse. The book, he says, contains previously unpublished documents detailing the Vatican's longstanding awareness of the problem of sexual abuse. Its conclusion is that the recent scandals in the US, Ireland and Britain are nothing new, but simply the latest chapter in a story that stretches right back to the founding of the church. And the authors say they have found evidence of deliberate cover-up by the church.
Exhibit A is a hitherto secret document called Crimen Sollicationis - Latin for "the crime of solicitation" - issued in 1962 by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), an office attached to the Vatican. Described as a "blueprint for deception and concealment" by lawyers investigating the worldwide sex-abuse scandals, Crimen Sollicationis contains strict instructions for dealing with what the Vatican calls the "worst crimes" - such as allegations of paedophilia and bestiality. Rather than report these offences to the civil authorities, the CDF instructs bishops to investigate them "in the most secretive way" or face the "penalty of excommunication".
Then, in 2001, the CDF followed this document up with a second directive, which ordered bishops to send their reports directly to Rome, where they would be kept safely under lock and key along with other so-called Pontifical Secrets. Wall and his co-authors argue that it is this and not the Da Vinci Code that is the "real conspiracy" at the heart of modern Catholicism. They say it is no coincidence that the person responsible for the promulgation of the second document was none other than the head of the CDF, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.
According to Wall and his co-authors, if early church documents are a guide, then the sexual abuse of minors by the clergy has been an "open wound on the body of Christ" for centuries. They say that, as early as AD309, the Council of Elvira, a gathering of bishops and priests from all over the Iberian peninsula who met to discuss theological issues and set canon law, signalled its concerns over paedophilia by ruling that any bishop, priest or deacon caught offending should be denied holy communion even at the time of death. By the eighth century, The Penitential of Bede, a medieval handbook of penances usually ascribed to the Anglo-Saxon theologian and early English historian Bede, had refined the punishments according to rank. Thus laymen caught sodomising children were to be excommunicated and made to fast for three years, while deacons and priests were similarly excommunicated but made to fast for seven and 10 years respectively (bishops were given 12 years of penance).
But the clearest evidence that the early church had the same problem with paedophilia as today comes from the Book of Gomorrah, an 11th-century tract written by St Peter Damian which, while condemning all forms of "immoral" sexual behaviour, holds priests who defile boys in special contempt. Such clerical offenders should not only be publicly flogged but also, writes St Peter, their tonsures should be "shorn" and their faces "foully besmeared with spit". Next, he recommends six months of imprisonment and fasting, followed by a further six months of prayer in solitary confinement. Even after their release, St Peter writes, offenders should never again be allowed to "associate with youths in private conversation or in counselling them".
It was not the only time that church insiders would make such a recommendation - one that contrasts starkly with the more recent practice of transferring priests to neighbouring parishes where they have been free to reabuse. In 1954, Father Gerald Fitzgerald, the founder of the Servants of the Paraclete, an order specialising in the counselling and care of priests with psychiatric problems, recommended that any priest who, as he put it, "tampered with the virtue of the young" should be reduced to lay status. Needless to say, his recommendation to bishops was ignored and, by the late 1960s, the Paracletes were providing psychotherapeutic services to so many priests with paedophiliac tendencies that they coined a shorthand term for the offence: "code 3".
For Wall and his colleagues, the clearest example of the breach of St Peter Damian's injunction to keep priests out of the way of temptation came at the trial in 1998 of Father Oliver O'Grady, a prolific abuser who had been moved from one northern California parish to another in an attempt to avoid scandal. O'Grady eventually admitted abusing 23 children between the ages of four months and 12 years and served seven years in a Californian state penitentiary. Despite repeated instances of sexual abuse, says Wall, the church has been reluctant to take responsibility and root out the problem.
"All the church cares about is keeping the scandal under control, so they can continue to raise money and grow the institution," says Wall. "If they truly had the interests of children at heart, they would never put that priest back into a ministry that could cause him to reoffend."
Meanwhile, the scandals continue to mount: in 2004, 1,092 new allegations were lodged against priests, and in California alone, there are currently 750 cases pending in the courts. Moreover, despite the US Bishops National Review Board's own estimates that there are some 5,000 abusive priests in the US, to date only 150 have been successfully prosecuted - a reflection, in large part, says Wall, of a lack of cooperation from the church. In California, for example, the archdiocese has sought to block the disclosure of confidential counselling records on two priests saying it violates their First Amendment right on religious protection; in other sensitive cases, the Vatican has simply refused to accept the jurisdiction of the US courts.
Although Wall no longer has any faith in Roman Catholic institutions, he and his coauthors do not believe the church is beyond redemption. They dedicate their book to "all the people of God". Today, Wall is happily married to a therapist in California; together, they have a five-year-old daughter, Erin.
"I believe we will be tested by how we treat the widow, the orphan and the alien," says Wall. "In other words, if you have to choose between protecting the institution or protecting children, Christ would have chosen the children."
And with that, Wall, having long since made his choice, rises to his feet and, gripping my hand in his huge fist, announces he has a train to catch. A week later, I email him in Los Angeles to ask whether his mission to Wales was successful. As you would expect from someone whose job it is to keep the Vatican guessing, Wall's reply is somewhat cryptic.
"The first part of the trip was enjoyable and the priest study was not," he replies. I email him back: "So you didn't find the alleged perpetrator?"
"Not yet," he replies, "but I will"
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Bible's profile at the Capitol touches a chord
By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON - Bible reading wasn't on the itinerary. But when Hun Jang stepped off a Washington tour bus this week and heard scripture coming from the west lawn of the US Capitol, he walked over to see what was going on.
Volunteers at the 17th Annual US Capitol Bible Reading Marathon invited the South Korean soldier to the podium. He began at Proverbs 5 - "My son, attend unto my wisdom ..." - using a Korean Bible, one of 84 translations on hand. "I feel really good when I am reading the Bible," he says. "I feel something full in my mind."
The 90-hour marathon, which will include readings by about two dozen members of Congress and their staffers, is a lead-up to Thursday's National Day of Prayer. President Harry Truman signed the day into law in 1952 as an interfaith event. But in recent years, evangelical Christian groups have taken the lead in organizing activities around the day, especially those located near seats of government. And in Washington, as in real estate, location counts.
Critics say that evangelical groups and their allies in Congress are staging events like the Bible Marathon near centers of power as a bid to link secular Washington to Christian ideals. Supporters say they're simply trying to remind people of the important role that faith played in America's founding.
It's important to have the event so close to the Capitol, says co-director Terry Shaffer Hall, citing Biblical accounts of the reading aloud of sacred texts at times of national renewal. "Most of the foreign visitors who join us for the reading can't read the Bible from the seat of their own government. It's precious to do it here," she says.
Starting with the book of Genesis, the Marathon will end with the reading in unison of the last two chapters of the book of Revelation. Organizers extended hours for this year's event, "so that the children who participate don't have to read so fast," Ms. Hall adds.
The marathon comes at a time of heightened debate about the role of religion in public life.
"The Congress is always under tremendous pressure to give some kind of official role to religion, and in an election year that gets even more intense," says the Rev. Barry Lynn, director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
GOP leaders are gearing up to bring a number of issues on the Christian conservative agenda to the floor of the House and Senate in the next few weeks, including gay marriage, broadcast decency, the 10 Commandments Act, a cloning ban, and laws protecting "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.
"There's going to be some trouble down the road if they don't get on the ball," said Dr. James Dobson, in an interview with the Fox News Network on May 1. He's the chairman and founder of Focus on the Family, a Christian organization based in Colorado Springs, Colo., which is helping to organize some 40,000 events for the National Day of Prayer.
Inside the Capitol, lawmakers and historians are winding down their debate over how prominent the Bible should be in the text and displays on the history of the Congress in the $522 million Capitol Visitors Center, slated to open in 2007.
For more than five years, staff from the Capitol Preservation Commission, the National Archives, the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, and staff of the leadership of the House and Senate have met almost weekly on Monday afternoons to make decisions on the Capitol Visitors Center, including the text and displays for the exhibition gallery on the history of the Congress.
"I'm concerned that the Capitol not be presented as a purely secular building," says David Barton, the founder of WallBuilders, a Texas-based group committed to "educating the nation concerning the Godly foundation of our country." Also the No. 2 in the Texas Republican Party, Mr. Barton drafted a 20-page memo refuting points in the draft text for the Capitol Visitors Center. Circulated by then-majority leader Tom DeLay, the memo became a flashpoint in the final deliberations over the language of the exhibition.
"The Bible had a huge impact on the signers of the Constitution," says Barton, who says he has led hundreds of members of Congress on his Spiritual Heritage Tour of the Capitol. With the change in House leadership from Tom DeLay to Rep. John Boehner (R) of Ohio, "I'm not sure how many of our ideas will be included," he adds.
Striking a balance between a glowing personal faith and respect for the beliefs (or nonbeliefs) of others is a theme of much current scholarship.
"For American politics, the KJV, either quoted directly or as a model of discourse, could not be more significant," said conservative theologian Mark Noll, in Washington last month for a talk at the Library of Congress on "The King James Version of the Bible in American History."
"When the language of the KJV was everywhere the common public language, it was very easy to bestow a sacred aura on public discourse," he says. "Politicizing the Bible can be a risk both for politicians and the faithful," he adds. But "if the Bible gets out of the public square, it's left entirely to the Internet and movies and TV - the lowest common denominator."
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Ark's Quantum Quirks
Ark
Signs of the Times
May 4, 2006
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