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Editorial: Congress Critters Lament NSA Snoop Agenda
Thursday May 11th 2006, 8:16 am
Kurt Nimmo
Another Day in the Empire
Naturally, it is the job of the corporate media to paper over the real reasons for the NSA snoop database, described as "the largest database ever assembled in the world," according to a source quoted by USA Today. Leslie Cauley of the daily newspaper tells us "the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity," and attributes this excuse to shadowy sources, as usual, and yet not a single nine eleven terrorist, with the exception of the nut job Zacarias Moussaoui, has faced a jury or suffered a conviction.
Instead of alleged terrorists, the NSA is running its super-sophisticated algorithms on the telephone, email, and web traffic data of average Americans with the help of multinational telecoms such as AT&T, Verizon, Qwest, and BellSouth. "The three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the sources said. The program is aimed at identifying and tracking suspected terrorists, they said."
Actually, this is not only misleading, it is completely disingenuous. Back in May of 1999, well before "everything changed" on September 11, 2001, the NSA was using Echelon to poke through the private communications of Americans.
According to the New York Times, at the time "the House Committee on Intelligence requested that the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency provide a detailed report to Congress explaining what legal standards they use to monitor the conversations, transmissions and activities of American citizens." In fact, there are no "legal standards" and all such activity is strictly a violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. "Although Echelon was originally set up as an international spy network, lawmakers are concerned that it could be used to eavesdrop on American citizens," Niall McKay wrote for the Times. So threatening was Echelon, the European Parliament in May 2001 urged its citizens to use cryptography in their communications to protect their privacy, thus revealing the network was not intended to ferret out spies and terrorists but rather underwear drawer snoop average citizens, who are, of course, the real threat to government. It can be accurately stated that "signals intelligence" (snooping private communications) has posed a threat since the creation of the UKUSA Community, a snoop and subvert alliance of English-speaking nations led by the United States and United Kingdom and formalized in 1947 or 1948 with the signing of the secret UKUSA SIGINT.
If not for the director of Australia's Defense Signals Directorate spilling the beans in 1999, we would know little about the UKUSA Agreement. No "government or intelligence agency from the member states had openly admitted to the existence of the UKUSA Agreement or Echelon. However, on a television program broadcast ... in Australia, the director of Australia's Defense Signals Directorate acknowledged the existence of the agreement" and thus massive and Constitutional-busting snooping. According to a report issued by the European Parliament (Development of Surveillance Technology and Risk of Abuse of Economic Information, an appraisal of snoop technologies)
Echelon is just one of the many code names for the monitoring system, which consists of satellite interception stations in participating countries. The stations collectively monitor millions of voice and data messages each day. These messages are then scanned and checked against certain key criteria held in a computer system called the "Dictionary." In the case of voice communications, the criteria could include a suspected criminal's telephone number; with respect to data communications, the messages might be scanned for certain keywords, like "bomb" or "drugs." The report also alleges that Echelon is capable of monitoring terrestrial Internet traffic through interception nodes placed on deep-sea communications cables.
In the current context, it is more likely words such as "impeach Bush" or "Bill of Rights" are searched and pegged for inclusion in this dictionary than "bomb," "drugs," or even "Osama bin Laden." Again, for a government responsible for war crimes and massive financial corruption, the enemy is naturally the people, not mythical and illusory terrorists, the latter usually conceived to scare the short pants off a semi-somnolent public.
In a futile effort-as worthless as the 1999 "investigation" into Echelon-to get to the bottom of all this snooping, "Arlen [Magic Bullet] Specter, R-Pa., the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would call the phone companies to appear before the panel 'to find out exactly what is going on,'" reports the Associated Press. "Are you telling me that tens of millions of Americans are involved with al Qaida? These are tens of millions of Americans who are not suspected of anything ... Where does it stop?" asked a clueless or disingenuous Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont.
It doesn't stop, Mr. Leahy. In fact, it has gone on for more than fifty years, unopposed and unchecked. As Christopher Pyle revealed in January 1970, the U.S. Army has long spied on the American public. Pyle's revelations resulted in the empanelling of the Church Committee (the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church) in 1975. Church summarized that government snooping and subversion, most notoriously COINTELPRO, "exceeded the restraints on the exercise of governmental power which are imposed by our country's Constitution, laws, and traditions.... The Constitutional system of checks and balances has not adequately controlled intelligence activities. Until recently the Executive branch has neither delineated the scope of permissible activities nor established procedures for supervising intelligence agencies. Congress has failed to exercise sufficient oversight, seldom questioning the use to which its appropriations were being put. Most domestic intelligence issues have not reached the courts, and in those cases when they have reached the courts, the judiciary has been reluctant to grapple with them" (see the Church Committee's Final Report, Book II).
Over the last three decades, not only has the judiciary been "reluctant to grapple" with the ongoing destruction of the Constitution, they have facilitated this process. It is not the job of Congress-the lamentations of Patrick Leahy not withstanding-to "exercise sufficient oversight, seldom questioning the use to which its appropriations were being put," but rather to stay out of the way of a bellicose executive, bent on tracking down domestic enemies and destroying them or at minimum rendering them impotent to exercise their rights, as granted by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. As the nomination of Michael Hayden to head up the CIA (or oversee its dismemberment) reveals, the executive branch, essentially an autocratic office operating under a state of exception, as delineated by the orchestrated events of nine eleven and amplified by the Patriot Act. Carl Schmitt and the Nazis would approve.
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Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: Comments On David Sirota's New Book - Hostile Takeover
by Stephen Lendman
May 10, 2006
I'd like to begin my commentary on David Sirota's important new book Hostile Takeover with my strong endorsement of his fine work. Everyone should read it to learn what's really going on around us that affects us all in the most important ways I know and which most people at best only vaguely understand on many if not most of the major issues. Those who read it will learn in stunning and graphic detail how large corporations in league with government at all levels serving their interests and not ours are destroying the democratic pillars of our society. The result now evident when we know the facts David presents is a great irreversible harm to the great majority unless we can collectively act in time to reverse the destructive path and economically downward trajectory we're now on - all planned and implemented by our elected officials in service to their generous corporate benefactors. In his important book, David lucidly explains the problem in detail and gives us an action plan to fight back.
Introduction
When I first heard about David's new book, I was very eager to read it. I had to be as earlier I wrote and got published a long article by the same title. David's approach and mine covered some of the same ground but differed as well including the subtitles we chose. My approach was to concentrate on the economic consequences of corporate size and dominance to ordinary people. David did the same, but as was clear from his subtitle, he did it by documenting in powerful detail "how big money and corruption" control the political process for their own gain. He also goes further to show how we can fight back to regain the essential rights we've lost. I covered some of that myself in an earlier article I wrote called Democracy in America - It's Spelled C-O-R-R-U-P-T-I-O-N. It's posted on my blog site - sjlendman.blogspot.com. In his book, David gives more than just an account of how our government was bought. He presents the evidence in "handbook" form, exposing the lies and myths politicians and corporations tell us, and gives us an action plan to fight back and win.
David and I both know that corporations exist for one purpose only - to make a profit. I explained in my writing that corporate law mandates that publicly owned corporations serve only the interests of their shareholders and do it by working to maximize the value of their equity holdings by increasing sales and profits. They have to do this and don't have a choice. Should they do otherwise, the companies would likely face legal consequences and their top executives dismissal. But David explains that in a democratic society, government is supposed to serve the people and act as a counterweight to unrestrained corporate power which left on its own could destroy society. At times in the past, our elected government actually passed laws and did that, if imperfectly. But that was then, and this is now - a brave new world order. It's one with giant corporations literally running amuck in charge of everything: writing the laws, making the rules, deciding who governs and how and who serves on our courts. They even have to sign off on it before the nation goes to war. Those wars have nothing to do with national security threats (we've had none since WW II), making the world safe for democracy or deposing tyrants. I've explained this in other writing also on my blog site including exposing the sham of the so-called "war on terror" which is nothing more than a bogus scare tactic to get the public to go along with bad policy. That policy includes waging war, although they're only fought as a last resort when less extreme methods don't work.
Why resort to war? They're fought to control markets, vital resources like oil and cheap labor to help those same corporations make more profits. In that kind of world, there's nothing to stop them from operating as legalized private tyrannies (with their own armies we pay for through taxes) exploiting us (and the planet) for their gain and doing it as another author explained in his book called The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Those who can pay can play, and those who can't have no say and don't get their way. Money not only talks, it rules the world.
It all means that the political game is rigged by and for corporate America to enrich them and do it at our expense. And they're aided and abetted by the big government they bought and paid for to do their bidding - a kind of incestuous relationship for mutual gain. It's a democracy all right, but only for the privileged few and no one else. Voters at one time may have thought they had a say when they went to the polls, and to some degree they did. But today, about half of them understand they're powerless and don't even bother showing up. Why do it when they know that on election day the real game is big business and big government playing "let's make a deal" - "you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours." But to play, you better have lots of "scratch." It's an arena where only powerful interests have a say and well paid lobbyists (aka influence-peddling "bagmen") "grease the wheels" of big government to make it work for big business in a "snatch and grab" all you can enterprise that leaves the public largely out in the cold. It's the same story at the federal, state and local levels although the higher up in the bureaucracy it takes place, the bigger the stakes are.
The pubic to some degree knows what's going on and how it's interests have been ignored. At times it's stood by, watched, likely felt overwhelmed and helpless and done little to fight back. But maybe because the pain of bad policy has begun to bite deeply in recent years, David feels that's changing and people are beginning "to demand answers about why our government is selling us out." That's why he wrote the book - to give everyone left out of the political process a way to fight an unfair system and win back the rights and benefits they've lost. He explains the book's intent is to do more than just tell the story of how our government was bought like a commodity available to the highest bidder. It does that and then goes on in "guidebook" fashion to give us the tools we need to fix the system so it works for us.
Hostile Takeover Counts and Documents the Ways the Political Process Has Become Corrupted
David then divides the rest of his book into explaining the enterprise of government as a wholly-owned business subsidiary in 10 separate chapters. In each one, he explains how our so-called elected officials have corrupted their high office to allow their corporate benefactors to exploit us for their benefit. The evidence in each chapter shows no matter how you slice and dice the political system, it always comes out the same way - they win and we lose: more and more until it's down to the nub, and we've lost it all unless we can fight back to recoup and save ourselves before it's too late. David thinks we can do it. First he explains what we've lost, and then he lays out an action plan to win it back. And throughout the book, David gives copious and powerful anecdotal corroboration to make his case for the abuses being committed against us that need redress.
As I explained above, I've also written about these abuses and understand how our corrupted system works. I'm a bit less sanguine than David on the public's insight into the problem or its readiness to act - yet. But David and I are on the same page, and for me he's preaching to the choir. I believe most others, however, don't know or understand enough about how they're being abused, let alone what to do about it. This book is for them and is essential reading. I endorse and recommend it strongly. And I'll go a step further and call it a survival manual and a call to arms. I believe things are even more dire than David explains. I think it essential that the public en masse must begin to act in its own interest and defense and do it soon and effectively. Unless it does, what little remains of our tattered republic and democracy in name only will be lost entirely, and it will be too late to regain it.
Chapter One: Our Tax System - Call It Robin Hood in Reverse
Also call it the great tax scam. David quotes the now indicted and disgraced former Republican House Majority Leader Tom Delay saying on the eve of the Iraq war in 2003 that "Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes." I wonder what he was inhaling just before he said that or how stuffed his pockets were with corporate cash. It's hard deciding whether absurd or outrageous better characterizes such an outrageous statement. When Lyndon Johnson was president and needed revenues for his illegal war in Vietnam, he had to raise taxes and still couldn't get enough to pay for it without running up debt and adding to inflation which sent the economy into decline in the 1970s.
David then explains that in today's world as seen through the eyes of Republican ideologues and most Democrats willing to go along with them, cutting taxes has become a religion with no regard for the common sense notion that the revenues only gotten through taxes pay for all the essential services we rely on like schools, infrastructure and everything else. So it only makes sense that when government takes in less revenue, it has less available to provide us with the things we need, expect and rely on in a modern society.
But that's hardly the end of the story. Under the Bush administration, not only have there been large tax cuts, but the ones enacted have caused the "tax structure (to be) flipped on its head." Call it the great transformation of a once-progressive system inverted to take from the poor and middle class and give to the rich. It's a process that began during the Reagan years. But under George Bush it's exploded to become greed writ large and has now even been replicated at the state level. The most well-off who don't need it have benefitted hugely according to the nonpartisan Citizens for Tax Justice. They report that by 2010 after the Bush tax cuts have been fully implemented as they now stand, the top 15% of income earners will have gotten two-thirds of the benefits with the top 1% getting a $600 billion dollar bonanza. On the other end, the bottom 60% will have gotten an illusory less than 18% of the benefits.
That's so because to help offset this handout to the rich, the Bush administration imposed user fees on various services amounting to billions of dollars that affect low and middle income people the most. Also, federal grants to states have been cut and new obligations imposed on them without the proper funding to cover their cost creating what's called "unfunded (or underfunded) mandates." To comply, states have had to raise taxes and fees which again fall disproportionately on lower income people. For these same people, the result has been "now you see 'em, now you don't" tax cuts that amount to a net tax increase and effective loss and lower standard of living for the great majority of the public.
And to make things even worse, Corporate America has made out like thieves from big tax cuts in various forms and their ability, especially under this administration, to exploit legal loopholes and take advantage of lax tax law enforcement. So although the official corporate tax rate is supposed to be 35%, most corporations never pay close to that amount. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), 94% of major corporations pay less than 5% of their income in taxes, and corporate tax payments are the lowest they've been in 60 years. In addition, many of the wealthiest companies often pay no tax at all and some of them actually get large rebates. They're added to the already large subsidies most large companies get, otherwise known as corporate welfare or socialism for big corporations and the rich and "free market capitalism" for the rest of us. That's also apparently called "the American way."
The bottom line of Bush administration fiscal policy has been huge budget deficits caused by these unfair tax cuts plus big spending increases (off the books) to fund two ongoing illegal wars plus the new Office of Homeland Security that alone costs $40 billion a year that we know about. So far these policies have fueled overall economic growth and big corporate profits as it did in the 60s and early 70s. But at some point the bills come due and must be paid, although apparently there's no plan to do it. This is a recipe for economic trouble or worse down the road. The lesson is always the same that the price for good times (however gotten or for whose benefit) that were too good or for reckless (or fiscally irresponsible) behavior that was too reckless has always been the same: the day comes when you "gotta pay the piper." Herb Stein, Richard Nixon's chief economic advisor, said the same thing in his memorable dictum that "Things that can't go on forever won't." It's called a day of reckoning but those least able to cope when it comes (which it will) will be the same ones cheated by this administration's tax policies.
Because of the length of my review and eagerness to cover as much of the book as possible, I won't list David's solutions that he enumerates at the end of each chapter. I'll just say, he's on the mark and that a government working for the people and not the privileged few and corporate giants would carefully consider them all and implement most or all of them. Sadly, today and under this administration there's little chance of that happening unless we force them to.
Chapter Two: Wages - Rising for the Well-Off but Stagnation or Worse for the Rest of Us
The minimum wage in this country is $5.15 an hour, hasn't been raised since 1997, and is now at the lowest point it's been since 1949. The people earning it and no more might get along fine if they have no dependents, don't mind not eating much, enjoy camping out year round, love old tattered clothes, never get sick and are able to educate themselves. For the rest of us, that income level is well below the officially stated poverty line that no one can live on but which is artificially kept low for political reasons. That situation is a metaphor for the average working person in the US who, adjusted for inflation, now earns less than 30 years ago even with modest annual increases.
David points out the widening gap between low wage earners and the affluent. In my article I had slightly different data than David and will share it with readers. In 2004, I wrote the average CEO earned 431 times the income of the average working person. That was up from 85 times in 1990 and 42 times in 1980 at the beginning of the Reagan years and the Republicans rise to dominance. David and I also used a different figure on what the average CEO now earns annually. He noted $9 million a year and my number was $14.4 million (mine likely included bonuses and/or stock option benefits not in David's figure) in 2001 and rising - plus huge supplemental benefits from SERPS (Supplemental Executive Retirement Plans) that effectively increased their income by half again and all the other special perks corporate executives get but the average working stiff never does. Some companies even pay the income tax for their top executives. I described all this in one section as the US being the unthinkable and unmentionable - a rigid class society and one becoming more extreme all the time.
But along with stagnating wages, essential social services are being cut, especially since Bush took office in 2001. That too is part of the plan to transfer wealth to the rich from the rest of us. It's created a crisis in some areas like vital health insurance needed at all times but crucial to have in the face of the rising cost of health care services and less of them being provided for the needy (and to those of us like myself on Medicare) by a government intent on fighting wars, helping the rich get even richer and destroying the social safety net including the pillars of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
So-called "free trade agreements" like NAFTA and CAFTA have just made it worse. These and the alphabet soup of other trade agreements were sold to the public in the countries adopting them as a way to grow their economies and increase jobs. The result years after implementation has been hundreds of thousands of jobs lost and the realization that these plans were never intended for that purpose in the first place. They were and still are plans for the US and dominant Global North nations to be able to craft a set of binding trade rules overriding the sovereignty of all member states to benefit giant corporations at the expense of working people in those countries. It's worked like a charm, and the terrible carnage it's caused is proof positive. Instead of creating jobs in the US and other Global North countries as promised, jobs have been outsourced or exported to low wage countries including many thousands of higher-paying manufacturing and high tech ones. Even a low-wage country like Mexico has suffered as jobs once sent there have since been lost to even lower-wage paying countries like China, Bangladesh and Haiti. And Mexico's small farmers have been devastated by US heavily subsidized agribusiness that's driven many thousands of them out of business and has done the same thing in India and elsewhere.
The result in the US is services, like jobs at Walmart and McDonalds, now account for nearly 80% of all business while manufacturing has declined to about 14% and total manufacturing employment is half the percentage of total employment it was 40 years ago and falling. Our low unemployment rate the Labor Department reports monthly only disguises the damage done. In the view of some economists, if the rate today was calculated the same way it was during The Great Depression when it rose to a peak of 25% of the working population, the true current figure would be about 12% instead of the most recently reported 4.7%. The current calculation method includes part-time workers who work as little as one hour during the monthly reporting period. It also excludes discouraged workers who wish to work but who've stopped looking because they can't find jobs.
As he does in all his chapters, David goes on to note and explain the myths and lies the public is told to hide a bad and deteriorating situation concluding again with a set of sensible solutions unlikely to be adopted unless the public fights for them.
Chapter Three: Jobs - The Good Ones Are Vanishing and the Poor Ones Don't Pay Enough or Provide Needed Benefits
In this chapter David goes into more detail on what he discussed in the previous one under wages. He provides lots of ammunition to show how much trouble we're really in. One example was from University of California researchers who estimated in 2004 that "up to 14 million American jobs are at risk to outsourcing." An even more stark assessment came from Gartner Research that predicted as many as "30% of high-tech jobs could be shipped overseas by 2015." If they're right, does that mean that formerly high-paid software engineers will now be ringing up the few purchases most people will be able to afford at the Walmarts of the world. Not a pretty picture nor one most readers of David's book or this review would wish to look forward to - unless they love the idea of living in a nation heading for third-world status and run by a government aiding and abetting the downward trajectory.
David also goes on to explain that our government ignores the plight of good jobs being lost and, in fact, effectively endorses the loss through the large subsidies it makes available to the companies doing the exporting. In addition, the safety net of unemployment insurance has been gutted through budget cuts so fewer of the unemployed now receive benefits they need which are available for a shorter period of time. Besides that, the budget for job training to help the unemployed has been severely cut over the past 25 years. Currently 84% of what was available back then no longer is. David documents it all with powerful and graphic anecdotal examples of the terrible damage done and a government that allows it to happen showing it no longer cares about ordinary working people.
Chapter Four: Debt - It's High, Rising, and Becoming a Great Burden for Ordinary Working People
Many of us may know something about how the Bush administration turned a budget surplus into huge deficits with little if any relief in sight for years to come. They also should know a good bit more about mounting private debt, especially if they're one of the many millions burdened with their own debt obligations and have a hard time figuring out how to repay them while simultaneously adding more.
The problem stems from a society weaned on the notion that we should buy now and pay later regardless of whether our debts from borrowing must be serviced which means paying high interest carrying charges. That's especially true in the case of the main way consumers run up debt - on their credit cards where David explained that the predatory credit card industry makes out like mega-thieves pocketing $24 billion in 2004 from late usury-level penalty fees alone which made up the bulk of their $30 billion in profits. Like all other major industries, this one has friends in high places, and it freely "scratches their back" with lots of "scratch" to get legislation favorable to its interests - namely, letting them get away with grand theft. The result, as David reports, is the tragedy of US consumers being $2 trillion in debt with the average household carrying and servicing through monthly interest payments an unpaid credit card balance of about $7,500. That's debt hell for these afflicted consumers, but profit heaven for the credit card bandits. I personally know how these companies work and always have. As a result, I pay my monthly bills in full and have never paid the few credit card companies whose cards I carry one cent in interest since getting my first credit card about 40 years ago. I'm also sensible and restrained in my spending so my monthly balance is never onerous. My advice to others on how to beat these thieves who thrive on your excesses is do as I do, and they'll never know what hit them until it does.
Making matters far worse for the public, already plagued by stagnating wages and good jobs exported to cheap labor countries, is the new bankruptcy legislation. It gutted consumer protection making it much harder to get that protection when it's most needed. The new law gives the predatory credit card companies license to steal even more than they're now doing by making it much harder for ordinary people to seek the bankruptcy protection they used to have. The law was passed through lies and deceit about consumer abuse of the system that needed correcting. In fact, Harvard University researchers found that 90% of personal bankruptcies result from illness, unaffordable medical bills for people without insurance to cover them, job loss, death in the family or divorce - hardly conniving people trying to rip off the credit card companies or lending agencies.
David then once again goes on to explain in detail the lies and myths about who benefits and who loses under the new law, the economic conditions for most people making them more vulnerable when trouble strikes, and much more including his sensible solutions to the problems now created.
Chapter Five: Pensions - Workers Actually Could Count on Them Once - But That Was Then, and This Is Now
A major part of the American dream is that after a lifetime of work we can look forward to a comfortable retirement and secure future. Long ago, things turned out that way for most ordinary working people who had good, high-paying jobs with essential benefits, like those in manufacturing now lost. They also had strong union protection which won them the rights they were able to enjoy while still working and after they retired. No longer in today's hostile world where our government officials in league with big corporations are rewriting sacred rules allowing these companies the ability to evade their obligations to workers once thought to be inviolable.
So even though these companies once agreed in union negotiations to legally binding contract obligations regarding worker benefits to be paid to retirees, they're now seeking legal protection through the courts to back out of them. The courts today are stacked with corporate-friendly judges, but even when companies have no justification for redress, they're able to drag out legal cases for years through appeals so that even if they end up losing, many retirees will have died off waiting and the companies will save millions even after legal expenses which aren't cheap.
Besides fraudulent corporate lawsuits to welsh on their obligations, companies are ingenious in coming up with new ways to cheat their employees. The AP reported one such way in 2002 which was the quiet conversion of the retirement plans of eight million workers to so-called "cash balance" schemes by hundreds of companies. As David explained, these new plans were and are nothing more than a con to let these companies back out of their guarantee to give their workers a lifetime monthly pension and instead offer them one lump-sum payment. The companies getting away with this scam are able to save many millions of dollars because that payment amounts to far less than the original promised benefits which is why they devised this scheme in the first place.
Even the Bush administration tried getting into this act by rolling out what David rightly calls "the granddaddy of all pension rip-off schemes : privatizing Social Security." I've called it the grandest of grand thefts if they're ever able to pull it off. It hardly matters to this administration that this magnificent plan has been "the most successful government initiative" ever in our history and which has lifted many millions of working people out of poverty and made it possible for them to have a decent retirement that otherwise wouldn't have been possible. What the Bush administration proposed doing was to turn this program over to the sharks on Wall Street and let them run it and be able to skim off a bonanza in big fees from retirees who would be their victims and end up with less than they now receive. A University of Chicago economist did the math and estimated that Wall Street would earn between $400 billion and $1 trillion in broker and administrative fees under the Bush mega-ripoff scheme. Thankfully the public balked strongly enough, and for now at least, the administration has backed off. But you can bet they're likely plotting their next move to resurrect what will be their dream scheme if they ever do pull it off. And when they launch their next attempt, it's almost certain they'll again try using the canard that the system is in danger of going bankrupt and only privitizing it can fix it. So far the public hasn't bought this deceit and hopefully won't the next time they try selling it. But David makes it very clear that the future security of millions of working people is in jeopardy through pension and Social Security "reform" (meaning scamming the public to steal our future for corporate gain) unless we the people are vigilant and take steps to fight back. David shows us how.
Chapter Six: Health Care - Present Plans or Lack of Them Are Hazardous to Our Health
Although the government may ignore and deny it, it's beyond dispute this country has a major and unforgivable health care crisis that continues to get worse. Presently 46 million or more people here have no insurance coverage at all, millions more have far too little, and David dramatically points out that 82 million Americans had no health insurance for some period of time between 2003 and 2004. This is happening in a country that spends almost 2.5 times the median average for the industrialized world, and yet the World Health Organization (WHO) ranked the US 37th in the world in "overall health performance" and 54th in the fairness of health care. Moreover, every developed country in the world except the US and South Africa provide free health care for all its citizens paid for though taxes.
David dramatically points out that we may have the best doctors and most advanced medical facilities in the world, but what good is it if they're unavailable to a vast number of the people living here because they can't afford to use them. David goes on to detail much more, explaining that despite the inadequacy of our health care system, the providers of it are some of the most profitable companies in the country - such as the HMOs, the other big insurers and the big drug companies. He also explains that a key reason why we spend so much and get back so little overall is that 15 cents of every dollar we spend on health insurance is skimmed off for "administrative expense." That's just code language for private industry very high profits. Compare that to our government run programs like Medicare which only spends 4 cents of every dollar on these expenses. I'm on Medicare and am very pleased with it except that recipients are being forced to pay an increasingly greater amount for it. The idea is to enable the government to welsh on its obligation to us to divert even more funds to its corporate allies - our loss for their continuing gain.
At the end of WW II, Harry Truman unsuccessfully tried to get Congress to pass a universal health care government run program. He never had a chance to get it through the Congress as the dominant health care industry companies and the legislators shot down his proposal and every new one that came along later to extend universal coverage to everyone. It's not because of the cost, although we were told that's the reason. It's because government owes its allegiance to its big corporate benefactors that won't do anything to deny themselves the right to control the health care delivery process and be able to charge whatever prices they wish for their products and services. They certainly have taken full advantage of that, and the result is the dismal state of our health care system and the high industry profits resulting from it.
As in his other chapters, David does a fine job exposing the lies and myths the public is told to justify a bad system. And he ends the chapter again by offering the kind of common sense solutions a responsible government serving the people would have jumped on and enacted long ago. It's now up to the public to rise up and demand they do it.
Chapter Seven: Prescription Drugs - The Best Advice Is to Stay Well and Not Need Them - Their Cost May Make You Sicker
Here are some of the facts David reports on what I like to call Big Pharma. This industry is one of the most profitable in the country making about 18 cents profit on every dollar of sales; it's aided by government using our tax dollars to fund about one third of all research on new drugs the industry gets at no charge; the industry spends about twice as much on advertising, promotion and administrative costs as they do on R & D to develop new drugs; the prices charged for prescription drugs in the US are inordinately high compared to the rest of the world and are rising at about four times the rate of inflation; these rising costs plus those for most all health services are rising so fast, companies are forcing their employees to pay a greater share of them or are reducing overall health care benefits; and the industry has one of the most powerful and effective trade associations representing their interests (PhRMA - that I spelled a different way above to refer to the companies and not the association) seeing to it that elected officials are well lubricated with campaign contributions and more personal benefits to assure that any legislation hostile to their interests never sees the light of day.
The bottom line is a Congress acting like a "wholly owned subsidiary" of the drug industry and consumers paying dearly for it. And just like other industries covered in the book, the drug giants try to justify their consumer-unfriendly policies with deceit and lies like claiming charging lower prices would mean less innovation and fewer new drugs. They also never mention that easier regulations have allowed them to come to market more quickly with new drugs that later turned out to be unsafe and in some cases resulted in deaths. One drug giant's Vioxx is a stark case in point and one in which the company is now involved in large class-action litigation on behalf of 10,000 consumer plaintiffs plus a second class-action suit on behalf of insurers and HMOs.
The drug industry will also profit handsomely from the new Medicare legislation that is so bad it could only be passed in the middle of the night and then only after enough lawmakers who first voted against it were coerced or bribed to change their mind - a testimony to this industry's influence. Under the plan, Medicare's bulk purchasing power was neutered so the drug companies could charge full, undiscounted prices for their products. The hidden details of this prescription plan for seniors are bad enough to make it worthless for many on Medicare like myself. But the plan is a likely bonanza for the industry and may net them hundreds of billions of dollars including about an extra $139 billion because the government can't negotiate lower prices.
David goes on to list other abuses the drug industry is allowed to get away with by our government that should be working for us but isn't. I'll mention just one more which is an attempt by the industry to prevent consumers from buying their drugs from other countries like Canada on the false pretext they're unsafe - even though they're the same drugs. So much for honesty and fairness. Once again David shows us how we can fight back and win.
Chapter 8: Energy - Try to Think of Another Industry with Closer Ties to Those Now in the Administration
The Bush administration is run by a cadre of high level officials formerly involved with energy companies before they came to government including the president and vice-president. Now try to think of another industry that will be better treated by those in government than this one. There is none, although there are lots of others who get their full share and aren't complaining.
There are good reasons why energy prices are high today, and we either don't hear about them or enough about them. The main reason is we're a profligate nation with 5% of the world's population that consumes 26% of the world's daily oil production and about 23% of total natural gas production. The reason we're so wasteful is the industry wants it that way and the government, in full support of the energy giants, encourages consumption and discourages conservation. The reason is obvious. Our bad habits are good for business.
David's book didn't have some industry figures I now have to show how good business really is in a time of sky-high oil prices. I'll do it by citing the operating results of the oil giant I most like to pick on because they make it so easy for me to do it - Exxon-Mobil. In 2005, this company showed it's currently the largest corporation in the world. In its annual report to shareholders and Wall Street investors, it reported the highest annual profit ever earned by a publicly traded company. It was a breathtaking $36 billion on sales revenue of $371 billion. But that's not the end of the story. The good times just keep rolling for this oil giant as it recently reported its operating results for its 2006 first quarter, and they're better than ever: profits were up 7% from last year to 8.4 billion (their highest ever for a first quarter) and sales were up as well by 8.4% to $89 billion. Now to put all that in perspective, based on its 2005 sales volume, Exxon-Mobil is so large that if this company were a country it would rank in size ahead of nearly 75% of all countries in the world. They can thank the Bush administration for a lot of their success. Guess who their top executives will be voting for in November and the top officials of the other energy giants as well.
High energy prices (and specifically oil prices) are also the result of at least two other factors which David discusses. One is the effect on competition by massive consolidation in the industry, especially among refiners. He noted the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved 413 mergers during the Clinton years and another 520 in the first three years of the Bush administration. Fewer companies mean less competition, and that's led to higher prices. David also reported that Consumers Union in 2004 found that higher prices were mostly from higher charges at refineries. And those increases were the result of lax federal regulation which allowed refiners to create artificial bottlenecks in supply driving up the cost of gasoline at the pump. There's a nasty word for this never used. It's called price fixing, and our government watchdogs are allowing it with their winks and nods to their oil giant friends. The consuming public is forced to pay the price and is lied to by the government and industry trying to justify it.
To top it all off, it's well known, especially by those who try to deceive us, that energy supplies are finite. With that in mind, you'd think the government would be encouraging or even mandating the industry to make a determined effort to find alternative sources to replace our dwindling resources that won't last forever. And you'd also think laws would be passed requiring conversation especially by raising fuel efficiency standards for vehicles and enacting other measures to lower energy consumption. But if you thought that, you'd be wrong. Although the need is urgent, doing these sensible things are bad for business. And as we see repeated industry after industry, our government will even pursue reckless policies to support their corporate friends and funders, and in the process ignore the needs of the public. Nothing will ever change until we demand it, and that's what David is trying to convince us to do.
Chapter 9: Unions - They Once Were Strong and Won Great Benefits for Their Members - No Longer
David observes, and I strongly concur, that there's no clearer expression of corporate America's hostile takeover of government than how elected officials treat ordinary working people. Above all, that means their right to organize and be represented by strong unions that will fight for their rights. Large corporations especially hate unions and always have. But a golden age of worker rights emerged during The Great Depression in the 1930s when economic conditions became so dire the Roosevelt administration and enlightened business leaders knew they had to make big enough concessions, like it or not, to avert a possible worker's revolution similar to what happened in Russia in 1917. The key legislation enacted for workers was the passage of the Wagner Act that established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that guaranteed labor the right to bargain collectively on equal terms with management.
Things began to change in the post WW II era beginning with the 1947 passage of the Taft-Hartley Act that was the first major shot across the bow by corporate America to curb the power of organized labor. But things really picked up steam adversely during the Reagan years when that administration showed its contempt for working people. It began in 1981 with the firing of 11,000 striking air traffic controllers, jailing its PATCO leaders, fining the union leaders millions of dollars and finally "busting" the union. The Reagan administration also used federal tax dollars to finance strike-breaking, worked to reduce worker health and safety protections and campaigned to change federal statutes guaranteeing worker rights to organize and bargain collectively.
From Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush, things have gotten progressively worse as the social contract the government once had with the people has been systematically dismantled. It's been done program by program, year after year with the ultimate goal of the Bush administration and all politicians beholden to business to make all ordinary working people "self-sufficient" with little or no safety net for protection and the power of union representation effectively neutered. We see the result in how union membership has declined through the years. Whereas in 1958 about one third of the work force belonged to unions, today it's under 13%. That shameful figure is the lowest in the industrialized world to the detriment of all ordinary working people here.
Corporate America in league with government has shamelessly campaigned against unions in an effort to demonize them to discourage workers from understanding how membership benefits them. The rhetoric used is hostile, deceitful and contrary to the facts which David lists: average union workers earn about one-third more in total compensation than nonunion members; 89% of union members have employer-paid health care benefits compared to 67% of nonunion members; employers pay a greater share of union member health care premiums than they do for nonunion members; over two-thirds of union members have short-term disability insurance compared to about one-third of nonunion workers; and, union members receive about 26% more vacation time and 14% more total paid leave (vacations and holidays) than nonunion members. Also, strong unions benefit nonunion workers according to the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute. They reported union influence resulted in an 8.8% wage increase for the average nonunion high school graduate. And another key fact came out of the influential Council on Foreign Relations. They reported that the decline in union membership "is correlated with the early and sharp widening of the US wage gap" between the well-off and ordinary working people.
Again David goes on to list and debunk the many myths and lies government and business try to use to attack and destroy organized labor. Without it or in weakened form, big corporations especially can exploit their work force, hold down wages and benefits and increase their profits. So far their plan is working like a charm as noted earlier in the section under wages. Ordinary working people today earn less than 30 years ago when adjusted for inflation, and the gap between rich and poor has widened to obscene levels and it's getting worse. It's unlikely this trend will be reversed unless a way is found to revive the union movement so that working people again have a strong voice fighting for their rights. Again, David offers solid solutions.
Chapter Ten: Legal Rights - This Means the Right of Ordinary People to Have Their Day in Court and Be Treated Fairly Because the Law Assures It - It's Called the Right of "Due Process" Guaranteed Under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution
Fair treatment under the law in a democratic society serving us all is the way things should be, but they're not, Fourteenth Amendment notwithstanding. That's because corporate America in collusion with their government benefactors have stacked the legal deck to prevent it. So instead of equity and justice we have "tort reform." That's code language meaning limiting the legal rights of ordinary individuals including their ability to file lawsuits against corrupt companies and be able to get fair redress for the harm caused them.
David shows how government has pandered to corporate wishes. In 1995, Congress passed a bill limiting shareholders' rights to sue company officials and get proper restitution when they cooked the books or violated the law in other ways. Then in 2005, Congress enacted legislation limiting our right to file class-action lawsuits. And the same thing is happening at the state level, so that power and influence is stripping ordinary people of their legal right of protection against corporate abuse that seems to become greater as corporations grow larger and get cozier with elected officials. The 2005 federal legislation requires most class-action suits to be filed only in federal courts which are more heavily stacked with business-friendly justices than the state ones. Also, many state laws are tougher and federal courts are so overburdened many cases never get heard and those that do must wait far longer to be placed on the court docket. When justice is delayed under this kind of an unfair system, it's denied.
Once again David shows how big corporations and their government lackeys have gamed the system and rigged the legal rules so they win and ordinary people suffer for it and are denied justice. One more time David shows us how to fight back and win.
The Sum of It All for Ordinary People
David sums up his thoughts in a final chapter asking when "will this downward spiral ever end?" He then goes on to tell us the good news and the bad. As if we didn't know it, he stresses the bad news is both major political parties are complicit with their corporate allies and willingly aid them in their hostile takeover. So any time we're able to throw the bums out, we're just likely to get new bums. David adds more bad news explaining "the media" largely ignore what's going on. I'd go much further than David and say the "media" are the dominant corporate media, and they're in on the scam as they too benefit from it. The reporters and pundits they have on air or in print have little latitude beyond what their employers expect them to do. If they want to keep their jobs, they'll support corporate-friendly policies because they're good for business including the companies they work for.
But David also gives us some good news. Americans are smart he says. They know corporations and the rich have too much power, and government is there to serve them. We also have new avenues to connect with each other and become better informed. The growth of alternative media, the internet, weblogs (I have my own) and more are attracting growing numbers and over time may weaken the corporate media's stranglehold on us as our main source of information - which is no information at all. It's the party line designed and intended to "keep the rabble in line" so they can continue their wicked ways at our expense.
I must briefly add an update to David's reported good news on alternative media sources. It seems when things are getting too good for consumers, corporate America mounts an offensive to regain the offensive and grow their profits handsomely in the process. That's what the telephone and cable companies are now doing in Congress with their attempt to make the Web a gated community. They want to destroy net neutrality by gaining the right to charge their Web site customers based on the amount of their traffic. Their plan is to be able to offer a new tier of broadband service to companies using their networks to make them pay more for speedier access. There's lots more they want as well, if they can get it, that will benefit them but hurt consumers. There's now momentum building on Capitol Hill to head off this intrusion to rewrite the rules and hurt our internet freedoms. We won't know the outcome for a while, but the stakes for the public are very high and the adversary we face is very powerful and committed to beat us.
Overall on all the issues he discussed in his book, David admits we face a tough struggle and that "for every victory.....there are many more defeats." But he ends the book with his final prescription on how we can fight back, and I'll list the ones he's chosen:
1. Reject the idea that we can't bring about change. History shows we can if we're fully committed.
2. Get informed on what's going on and how it's harming us. It's not that hard if we try, but you won't get it on TV or in your morning paper.
3. Fight back at the grass roots. That's how Republicans began their rise to power back when Democrats controlled the White House for 20 years and the Congress for much longer. It starts at the local level and goes up from there. In my city of Chicago, it's called the city council and various boards that run the functions of government.
4. Don't get co-opted by the system. Instead, organize ordinary people for political action where you live. Remember how former Democrat and House Speaker Tip O'Neill characterized the system when he said "all politics is local." His grammar may have been bad, but his wisdom was sound.
5. Campaign and fight for public funding of elections. As long as private money rules, they win and we lose.
David ends on a very upbeat note, and I'll add my own after his from my article on the same subject. He cites our history of an active population that in the past fought back and won major victories - ending slavery, women's rights including to vote, the right to organize, civil rights and lots more. We've always fought injustice when it got bad enough and those affected wouldn't take it anymore. David concludes he's confident our outrage will grow enough to make us fight back again and lead us to a better future. And I'll end this section with a quote by famed Chicago community organizer Sol Linowitz who understood and preached that "the way to beat organized money is with organized people." He proved it.
My Own Summation of David's Important Book
I loved the book, especially because I wrote about the same subject using the same title as I stated at the outset. I also said up front and will repeat again that everyone should read David's book as a starting point to learning what's wrong that's harming us and getting worse and then learn how we can fight back and win.
That said, I have some suggestions for David in future editions of this book. I covered a few issues David didn't in my "Hostile Takeover" article, the earlier companion one to it I called "Democracy in America - It's Spelled C-O-R-R-U-P-T-O-N" and other writing. I'll list three important ones briefly and end.
l. Obscene levels of military spending that benefit the defense contractors and all other companies serving the military - industrial complex have hurt the public enormously. I wrote that the Center for Defense Information reported that since 1945 over $21 trillion dollars has been sucked out of the economy for military spending largely to benefit US corporations even though the country had no real enemies all through those years - and we were lied to all that time to make us believe we did. The public paid for this largesse through our taxes that should have been spent on essential social services we never got.
2. The state of public education in the country has been degraded by a combination of neglect and a deliberate effort to produce new generations of young people only fit for low-paying service jobs - because many of the good ones (especially in manufacturing and high-tech) are being exported to low-wage countries. George Bush's "no child left behind" education program is just another fraud to enrich corporations at the expense of school children.
3. The prison population in the country has grown to over 2.1 million with about 900 new inmates being added each week. It's now the largest in the world, even greater than China's with four times our population and a government that has no compunction about locking people up. I wrote a major article on this I called "The US Gulag Prison System", and I was referring to the one at home. This is an outrage and should be a national scandal as is the state of what I call our criminal-injustice system. All of it is an outgrowth of a society benefitting wealth and power and doing it at the expense of ordinary people who naturally become more restive as their lives become more intolerable. So we've chosen to solve the problem by locking up as many of them as we can on any pretext instead of providing essential services and correcting corporate abuses which is how a government serving us would do it. This one (Republican or Democrat) doesn't and won't unless we make it do it.
I urge David to consider adding these topics to a future edition of his wonderful book. But I applaud him for his important contribution. It's his first book, and I certainly hope not his last.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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Editorial: Reshuffling the cards in Iraq
By Ghali Hassan
05/10/06 "IICH"
The recent installing of a puppet government in Iraq under U.S. Occupation shows that America's messianic mission of "spreading democracy" is flawed. The fraudulent electoral "law" imposed by the Occupation, and the U.S. addiction to violence to protect its imperialist and corporate interests at the expense of the Iraqi population provide compelling evidence against the U.S. imperialist agenda in Iraq.
Contrary to the myth played and promoted by the Western so-called "Left" and "Right" and the corprorate media that the "US failed [in Iraq] because of poor planning" and "incompetence," the U.S. planned the war and the occupation (military and economic) of Iraq months before the illegal invasion took place. The U.S. failed in Iraq for the following reasons: 1) the U.S. is serving its own imperialists and corporate interests in Iraq, not the interests of the Iraqi people. The overwhelming evidence shows that since the invasion, the Bush administration and their cronies have benefited immensely from looting Iraq's wealth; 2) the U.S. aim was to destroy Iraq; 3) the anti-imperialist, anti-Occupation consciousness of the Iraqi people; and 4) the undeterred Resistance of the Iraqi people to the U.S. imperialist agenda.
Three months after the 1991 U.S. war on Iraq, which devastated the country's infrastructure and killed hundreds of thousand of innocent Iraqi civilians, the government of Saddam Hussein was able to restore basic services and provided the population with food, water and electricity. Iraq was a very safe and united nation. This was achieved despite the illegal interference of the U.S. and Britain in Iraq's affairs and the criminal genocidal sanctions imposed by the UN and enforced by the U.S. and Britain.
Three years after the U.S. invasion, Iraq is a destroyed country under a fascist Occupation. Iraqis have no water, no electricity, no jobs (unemployment at 70 percent), and lack basic health care services. Iraqis, at all levels, are far worse off than before the invasion and Occupation. There are no security and no human rights. Hundreds of thousand of Iraqis, mostly women and children, have been killed by U.S. forces. Iraqis continue to be arrested without charge, tortured, and abused by U.S. forces and their trained militias and death squads.
Long before the invasion, the U.S. and Britain trained, armed and financed expatriate Iraqi criminal elements in the U.S., Britain and Iran. Once they entered Iraq on the back of U.S. tanks, the expatriates and their minders embarked on a criminal process of "de-Baathification," which implied the liquidation of anyone associated with the Ba'ath Party, as well as anyone with anti-Occupation nationalist views. "De-Baathification" is simply a murderous tool for inciting violence and destroying Iraqi society. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed in cold blood by the U.S.-trained and armed militias, and others have simply disappeared. None of these daily mass murders of innocent civilians were committed under the previous regime of Saddam Hussein.
The label of "Sunnis" and "Shiites" is a U.S. creation to provide a smokescreen and divert people's attention from the crimes of the Occupation. The relationships between the armed militias and the Occupation can only be described as symbiotic relationships. It is a campaign of terror financed and implemented with the full force of the U.S. and its agents.
If one examines those expatriates who the U.S. piggybacked to Iraq and placed them in higher positions to serve its imperialist-Zionist agenda; one will have great difficulty in finding anyone with anti-Occupation, nationalist views. The U.S. administration continues to reshuffle the expatriates like cards. In other words, they are recycled for the same purpose. From the first day they arrived in Iraq, they settled with the occupying forces completely isolated -- in the fortified "Green Zone" -- from the Iraqi population. They have one thing in common with the Bush administration: looting Iraq's wealth and destroying Iraq's unity. It is consistent with the U.S. effort to colonise Iraq and create a dependent subordinate Iraq.
During the 2005 U.S.-staged Iraqi elections, there were no candidates or political parties with political ideologies, just religious and ethnic slates brought into Iraq with the invading forces. In addition to the illegitimacy of the elections -- conducted under foreign military Occupation -- the U.S.-imposed electoral "law" or the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) denies Iraqis their rights to "one person-one vote." The TAL is designed to serve U.S. interests and to limit the power of the newly "elected" assembly. TAL gives the Kurds effective veto power, and hence creates stalemate, as seen lately. In addition, the U.S.-drafted constitution was there to cement and legitimise these various ethnic and sectarian divisions. One wonders why Britain and the U.S. do not have the same "democratic" system at home.
The Bush administration needs this propaganda of "turning point(s)" to show the world that its imperialist policy remains on course -- something positive out of Iraq -- and that is "spreading democracy." The reality is that the U.S. spreading hate and violence. What the U.S. brought to Iraq is not "democracy," but bloodshed, gross abuses of human rights and a culture of corruption unheard of in Iraq. The country is continues to be occupied militarily by more than 200,000 U.S. forces and their mercenaries and economically by U.S. corporations.
At the same time, the U.S. administration continues its unwillingness to allow Iraqis (under Occupation) to govern themselves through the democratic process, which shows that the Bush administration's aim is to rule Iraq behind a group of criminals capable only of subjecting the Iraqi population to daily terror. After three years of Occupation-generated violence and looting, Iraqis have given up on the U.S. version of democracy. It is now called America's democracy of looting Iraq. In a word, the U.S.-imposed government is just a thin veil to shield the Occupation.
In his chronicle of America's past criminal attacks against defenceless nations, Stephen Kinzer sees the parallels between the U.S. invasion of the Philippines and U.S. invasion of Iraq were identical. In Overthrow (Times Books, 2006), Kinzer writes: "Early in the twenty-first century, ten decades after the United States invaded the Philippines and a few years after it invaded Iraq, those two countries were among the most volatile and unstable in all of Asia." Both nations remain poor, exploited and undemocratic. Indeed, the Bush administration is in the process of ruling Iraq based on the Philippines model.
Anyone familiar with the U.S. legacy in the Philippines has no difficulty in identifying the criminal role played by the U.S. administration in terrorising the civilian population of the Philippines, since it was invaded by U.S. forces more than a hundred years ago. The Occupation of Iraq is reminiscent to that of the Philippines. Like the Occupation of Iraq, the occupation of the Philippines was defended as a war for "civilization" and "freedom." U.S. forces treated the civilian population with brutality. They used brute force, including the burning of entire villages, tortured and abused of prisoners and detainees.
After decades of military occupation, the U.S. continues to have massive military basing rights and military agreements with the Filipino government. Today, the U.S. rules the Philippines behind a façade of a de-facto civilian-military alliance -- re-shuffling the same oligarchs -- since "independence" from the U.S.
Under the dictator Ferdinand Marcos (1972-1986), the civilian population of the Philippines was terrorised by state-sponsored terrorists. The terror campaign of the military and death squads in the Philippines has all the hallmarks of the current terror campaign in Iraq. Furthermore, the Philippines continue to lag behind in economic development. Poverty and unemployment are ranked amongst the highest in the world. The common slogan in the Philippines to day is: "Better to die working in Iraq, than to stay home and watch your family starve." Will the Iraqi people accept the Philippines' model? Not likely.
The U.S. administration has become so obsessed with war and violence that it has increased the danger for all life on the planet. The U.S. use of democracy as a tool to serve its imperialist and corporate interests has increased the perils of both poverty and violence by creating and supporting an elitist system of corruption and greed. It fosters and rewards criminals and criminal behaviour.
Unless the U.S. is forced to withdraw from Iraq immediately, no re-shuffling of the same cards will change the situation on the ground in Iraq. The only remaining option for people around the world is to provide moral support for the Iraqi people
Ghali Hassan lives in Perth, Western Australia. He can be contacted on: G.Hassan@exchange.curtin.edu.au.
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Enough Already!
Bush says brother would make great president
10/05/2006
US President George Bush (pictured) today suggested that he would like to see his family's White House legacy continue, perhaps with his younger brother Jeb as the chief executive.
US President George Bush today suggested that he would like to see his family's White House legacy continue, perhaps with his younger brother Jeb as the chief executive.
The president said Florida Governor Jeb Bush is well-suited for another office and would make "a great president."
"I would like to see Jeb run at some point in time, but I have no idea if that's his intention or not," Bush said in an interview with Florida reporters, according to an account on the St Petersburg Times website.
The president said he had "pushed him fairly hard about what he intends to do," but Jeb has not said.
"I have no idea what he's going to do. I've asked him that question myself. I truly don't think he knows," Bush said.
Jeb Bush, 53, will end his second term as governor in January.
His brother George ends his second presidential term in January 2009. Neither can seek re-election because of term limits.
Comment: We totally agree. Jeb proved his Presidential credentials when he played a key role in stealing the election for his brother in 2000, so he is surely well-equipped to continue that legacy. Go for it Jeb! Do it for Democracy and Free Iraq!
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Bush's low ratings worry Republicans
By Linda Feldmann | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON - President Bush's job-approval ratings have sunk so low - to 31 percent in two major polls - that it's time to pull out the history books.
Not only has he hit all-time lows for his own administration in both the Gallup and CBS/New York Times polls, he is also working his way up (or down) the all-time list of lowest job-approval scores. In the Gallup records, which go back to President Franklin Roosevelt, only Presidents Truman, Nixon, Carter, and George H.W. Bush hit lower points.
Perhaps most disturbing to Mr. Bush is that he is losing Republicans. The Gallup poll, released Monday, showed a 13-point drop in one week among self-identified Republicans, from 81 percent to 68 percent. Frank Newport, Gallup's editor in chief, cautions against overinterpreting those numbers, given the size of the Republican sample (about one-third of those polled) in any single survey. That number has dipped before and bounced back. But polling experts agree that the overall trend is evident.
"Clearly, he's lost ground among Republicans; all the pollsters are seeing that," says Karlyn Bowman, an expert on polls at the American Enterprise Institute. "Now he is just holding onto his base ... the people who are with you when you're wrong or with you when things are going terribly."
It's difficult to pinpoint exact causes week-to-week for a change in support. Overall, voters cite the Iraq war most often as the decisive issue. In recent news, Mr. Newport points to the immigration debate, the new CIA director, and gas prices as other "logical suspects." And of course, some polls show slightly better numbers; this week CNN had Bush going up from 32 to 34 percent.
Still, Republicans are quietly worrying that Bush could even dip below the psychologically significant threshold of 30 percent in a major poll. And while Bush is bringing fresh faces into the White House - so far, a new chief of staff and press secretary - to try to reinvigorate his team, some analysts suggest it's getting to be too late to significantly alter the nation's sour mood going into the November midterm elections.
On individual issues, such as the new Medicare prescription drug benefit, the White House sees signs of improvement. This week, as Bush tours Florida to tout the program, in advance of the May 15 sign-up deadline, aides say the program is gaining popularity. Indeed, the latest CBS/New York Times poll shows 42 percent of respondents say their prescription drugs expenses have gone down versus 19 percent who say they have gone up.
But the dominant tone among Republicans focused on November remains one of concern that the low public opinion of Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress could affect local races throughout the country. In other words, analysts say, some discouraged Republican voters might not turn out - and that, matched with a highly motivated Democratic electorate, could bring some upsets of GOP-held congressional seats. With only a 15-seat margin of GOP control in the House of Representatives, enough upsets could hand Congress to the Democrats.
And so Republicans are trying to devise messages that will drive turnout, regardless of how Bush is doing. One theme is impeachment: Elect a Democratic House, and Bush could be impeached. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, who would become speaker of the House if the Democrats win control, denies that there would be a quick move to impeach Bush, but she has promised a series of investigations into the Bush administration.
"We're certainly going to do all we can to motivate our base to turn out by highlighting what our members have done in their districts," says Sarah Chamberlain Resnick, executive director of the moderate Republican Main Street Partnership (RMSP). Then "we will point out what it really means to throw out the Republicans. Do you really want a Nancy Pelosi in there [as speaker]?"
Ms. Resnick notes that a lot of RMSP members represent swing districts, which are critical to maintaining overall GOP control.
Among social conservatives, an important part of the GOP base, another turnout motivator will be a new wave of anti-gay marriage measures on state ballots. So far, measures providing for a state constitutional ban have qualified for the ballot in six states: Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Activists in five other states - Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, and Massachusetts - are also working to get measures on their ballots. In addition, Illinois may have a nonbinding referendum question on same-sex marriage in November. It would not have the effect of law, but it could still drive turnout.
Gary Bauer, a religious conservative activist who ran for president in 2000, says he and other leaders, James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, are planning a series of rallies around the country in places with close races to try to stimulate turnout.
"Certainly through my political action committee and others there will be a great deal of advertising on Christian and conservative talk radio to explain what's at stake in the election," Mr. Bauer says.
In addition to the impeachment threat and the prospect of a Speaker Pelosi, whose San Francisco-liberal image is anathema to many Republicans, Bauer says, "We'll remind them that one more vacancy on the Supreme Court could tilt the court in their direction."
Supreme Court nominations require approval by the Senate, which is generally seen as a greater long shot for Democratic takeover than the House, but not impossible.
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Getting Past the Watergate Fixation
By Russ Baker, TomPaine.com. Posted May 11, 2006.
The ongoing GOP corruption scandals are just the tip of the iceberg. The real problem is how business is done every day in Washington.
We knew this was big back in March, when a court sent ex-Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif. -- convicted of taking $2.4 million in bribes from military contractors -- off to serve eight years in prison, the most severe sentence ever handed out to a member of Congress. From then on, the sleaze chain has been metastasizing. More members of the House might be implicated -- and even top CIA officials. Now it is being described as the largest federal corruption scandal in a century. With stories of prostitutes and all-night poker games at the Watergate hotel, it is one scandal that truly is deserving of the "-gate" suffix that has become such a dreary journalistic cliché.
No matter how big the affair grows, though, it is likely to follow in the path of so many of its predecessors -- distracting public attention from a larger and more important reality: Today, "the largest corruption scandal in a century" is not WatergateGate -- it is the everyday performance of the U.S. government. The worst sleaze in Washington is mainly legal, as the old saying goes; and that includes the sorry state of the entire intelligence apparatus -- beyond whether the #3 CIA official improperly participated in those late-night, high-stakes card games.
Too many in the media treat a juicy mess like the Cunningham Affair as a shocking aberration. Consider the wording in a New York Times article on Sunday, which described "a growing suspicion among some lawmakers that corrupt practices may have influenced decision-making in Congress and at executive-branch agencies."
Who would have thought? Don't the editors read their own paper? It's been clear for some time that corruption in the Bush administration has exceeded a Washington standard that already was pretty tawdry. Some of the stories are known already, especially to TomPaine.com readers: White House procurement chief taken out in handcuffs in connection with a sprawling lobbying corruption investigation; the vice president's chief of staff indicted for perjury; the unseemly setup between Bush's first FEMA director and Brownie, the incompetent neophyte who replaced him.
But many of the larger misdeeds have gone unreported, in part because -- technically illegal or not -- they represent business as usual in Republican Washington today. Virtually every federal agency is now captive to the corporate interests it is supposed to regulate. The reach of corporate influence has even compromised the science agencies on whose fact-finding and truth-telling crucial questions of national safety and even survival depend.
And then there is Congress. A quick comparison of committee activity and floor votes with campaign finance reports tells the story. Never mind the now-controversial "earmarks," in which legislators secretly slip goodies at the last minute into larger bill packages. The real scandal is going on in plain sight. The entities that give the most get the most -- and the goodies keep on coming. That outfits like Halliburton can survive a never-ending series of contracting horror shows with their federal contacts intact says a lot about Congress's willful abrogation of fiduciary duty on behalf of the taxpayer.
The main mistake Randy Cunningham made was accepting the goodies while he was still in Congress. There is no crime involved in doing the exact same favors for government contractors, and later joining the company's board or getting hired as a highly-paid lobbyist, or getting payback on a more indirect basis. That's the deal all over town, and some of the most "well-respected" names in America have such arrangements -- and not all of them are Republicans. The whole thing stinks, but what to do about it? That's the rub.
Speaking of a rub, besides the careless greed, in the Cunningham Caper we are blessed by the emergence of a sexual angle worthy of a British tabloid, with the congressman alleged to have enjoyed the favors of big-league prostitutes in return for military contracts. Sexual peccadilloes always get the public's attention in a way that other misdeeds, like accepting bribes from defense contractors, cannot. That Cunningham and his buddies may have preferred presumably-discreet professional company over out-of-wedlock friends of the Gennifer Flowers ilk, makes perfect sense in an atmosphere where holier-than-thou sanctimony cannot bear scrutiny. That might take the story to a new level, since these sins would have been committed by the staunchest defenders of the "sanctity of marriage."
Those who care about the ever more brazen sellout of the public interest over the last five years have no choice but to take these revelations in whatever garb they come -- and if they're scantily clad, so be it. Meanwhile, consorting with prostitutes -- the thing that will get perhaps get the most attention -- is the one thing that matters least to the future of our body politic.
With this new WatergateGate, we must at all costs beware the Woodward Fallacy -- that sanitation is a substitute for politics and ideas. It is the conceit of the reigning elite. But in fact we can get rid of Cunningham and his cronies and the rot will continue, unless change goes much deeper to the root.
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Why Hayden is a 'Perfect' Pick
By Robert Scheer, AlterNet. Posted May 10, 2006.
It makes perfect sense for President Bush to nominate Gen. Michael V. Hayden as CIA director, no matter what the critics, including a surprising number of normally housebroken Republicans, have to say.
True, Hayden was in charge of the National Security Agency during the run-up to Sept. 11, a massive terrorist attack that intelligence agencies are built to prevent. But remaining unflappably confident while getting it all wrong is a vital credential for the head of the CIA under this administration.
Recall that former CIA Director George Tenet was honored by Bush with the Medal of Freedom for dutifully pretending that the case for WMD in Iraq was a "slam-dunk" and politely taking the hit on Bush's infamous "16 words" State of the Union lie about that African uranium.
The Bush administration long ago abandoned the idea that intelligence should ever be permitted to curb this president's imperial hubris or political agenda. Were it otherwise, the president would not be turning over control of the CIA, long presumed to be a civilian check on the military, to an active-duty general whose loyalty to the president was proved by his eagerness to conduct illegal wiretapping of unsuspecting Americans.
Hayden passed that test superbly while head of the NSA, proudly defending Bush's illegal eavesdropping on the same citizenry whose freedom the president is sworn to preserve, while stonewalling the probes of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, who considers the wiretaps illegal.
"Now, with Gen. Hayden up for confirmation, this will give us an opportunity to find out" more about the eavesdropping program, Specter told Fox News, probably over-optimistically -- especially since Hayden will be confirmed by a Bush-friendly committee.
Hayden headed the NSA from 1999 until last year, when John D. Negroponte appointed him as his top deputy upon assuming the newly created position of director of national intelligence. And therein lies the real reason for Hayden's appointment; his proven loyalty to Bush and his man, Negroponte, who by forcing out Porter Goss as head of the CIA and replacing him with Hayden now assumes unprecedented control of the vast U.S. intelligence apparatus.
Hayden's track record does not otherwise justify this appointment. It was on Hayden's watch that the NSA, after all, failed to properly alert the president to the Al Qaeda threat. Of course, it is possible that the agency did alert the president of an imminent threat and that the information was ignored as the president traipsed off to his lengthy summer vacation on his ranch; we already know that the system, as Tenet has said, was "blinking red." But if that is the case, Hayden has not said so.
Unfortunately, Hayden has other disasters besides Sept. 11 on his resume. While at the NSA, he tried to implement the expensive, ambitious "Trailblazer" program, aimed at upgrading NSA's technology, but analysts have deemed the outcome a multibillion-dollar bust. Meanwhile, even a number of prominent Republicans have attacked his bypassing of laws protecting our civil liberties, under Bush's direction--conducting unauthorized taps on the e-mail and phone conversations of at least 5,000 Americans.
"You need someone who will stand up to pressure from the president," James Bamford, author of two books on the NSA, told the New York Times. "Instead, he's shown he's willing to throw out his own principles on civil liberties to please the president."
This ability to accommodate totalitarian values in exchange for career advancement is viewed as a terrific asset by Negroponte, who handpicked Hayden for this new job within hours of Goss' abrupt resignation. Negroponte, after all, is most infamous for his tenure as ambassador to Honduras during the Reagan years, when he exemplified that administration's see-no-evil approach to monitoring the malleable military dictatorship's human rights violations -- which included everything from the army's torture and slaughter of nuns to the regime's arming and protecting the United States-created Contra guerrillas who were terrorizing civilians in next-door Nicaragua.
No doubt, Negroponte also won the admiration of the Bush honchos through his role during the Reagan years in supplying arms to the Contras in violation of a congressional prohibition on such sales.
The inescapable conclusion here is that Negroponte was picked by Bush to be the intelligence czar because of, rather than despite, this unsavory past. Negroponte, with a history of disastrous foreign adventures and contempt for the checks on power required for democratic governance, is an all-too-perfect Bush appointee. So, too, his deputy Hayden, nominated by Bush to head the CIA.
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Rumsfeld is a pathological liar
By Mike Whitney
11/05/2006
The American people have been ripped off big-time by Rummy. From the onset, it's been one wretched excuse after another. Nothing is ever his fault; not the occupation; not the lack of soldiers; not the looting in Baghdad, not the faulty-armor, not the resistance, nothing. Ever!
Nothing he says can be trusted. In 6 years, he's never uttered a completely reliable statement, just convoluted pronouncements that have to be parsed by experts. That's why it was so satisfying to see him skewered by Ray McGovern's questions. McGovern had Rumsfeld backpedaling like he'd just been harpooned. Honesty has that kind of effect on people like Rumsfeld; that's why they surround themselves with goons like a Mafia kingpin. They need a human-shield to protect them from the truth.
The American people have been ripped off big-time by Rummy. From the onset, it's been one wretched excuse after another. Nothing is ever his fault; not the occupation; not the lack of soldiers; not the looting in Baghdad, not the faulty-armor, not the resistance, nothing. Ever!
Every errant bomb, every wayward missile, every downed helicopter, every dead soldier, is someone else's fault.
Teflon Don; the biggest buck-passing narcissist the country has ever produced.
When the photos showed up from Abu Ghraib, Rumsfeld feigned surprise. "A few bad apples", he moaned. Now we know he did everything except fit the prisoners with women's underwear.
Nice touch, eh?
Now he's deployed troops in the United States and has a regional headquarters in Colorado (NorthCom) to spy on American citizens; all part of a sick plan to militarize the country and show everyone what a smart guy he is.
That's what it's all about isn't it? An egomaniac trying to show everyone how brilliant he is? The only problem is he's failed at everything he's tried. Every part of the occupation has been so badly botched it's totally beyond repair. Now, the London-based Senlis-Council is reporting that Afghanistan is unraveling, too.
Should we be surprised?
Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti; flop, flop, flop, one failure after another.
"We know where the weapons are...they're in the area around Tikrit".
What a joke; it's like a carnival huckster pitching snake-oil to farm boys; nothing but smoke and mirrors; nothing but intellectual flatulence.
Or this:
"As we know, there are known knowns. And there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know, but there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know."
What type of flim-flam is that? Just more smart-ass, circuitous bullshit meant to impress and confuse; the clever blabbering of confidence man.
Is that what passes for honesty at the Pentagon?
This is what the truth sounds like:
"The decision to invade Iraq, was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions - or bury the results." Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold
That's right; "or bury the results".
Here's another Rumsfeld gem describing the war on terror:
"Things will not be necessarily continuous. The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous ought not to be characterized as a pause. There will be some things that people will see. There will be some things that people won't see. And life goes on" (Oct. 12, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing)
More tortured language; more oblique banter; more meaningless gibberish.
Now, compare that to the candor of one of his strongest critics:
(Rumsfeld is) "incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically" he has "put the Pentagon at the mercy of his ego, his Cold-Warrior's view of the world, and his unrealistic confidence in technology to replace manpower." Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton.
Bull's-eye!
So what's Rumsfeld's reward for 6 years of bungling?
Now, he's trying to suck the CIA into the War Department so he'll have control over the entire intelligence budget. That way he can carry out his criminal renditions and deploy his global paramilitaries in complete secrecy. It's another giant step towards a military dictatorship.
Here's a short-list of Rumsfeld's more memorable lies.
A month before the invasion of Iraq Rumsfeld boasted on PBS' News Hour that Americans would "be welcomed by the majority of the civilian population of Iraq...There's no question but that they will be welcomed".
Lie. No candy, no flowers, no cakewalk.
Here's the Pollyanna-way he characterized the "success" in Afghanistan, where the countryside is still 100% controlled by warlords and drug-dealers and where Bush's Marshall Plan has never materialized:
"Go back to Afghanistan. The people were in the streets playing music, cheering, flying kites, and doing all the things that the Taliban and Al Qaida would not let them do."
"Flying kites"? What baloney.
Here's Rumsfeld on Saddam's weapons programs:
6 months before the invasion, he testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2002, and said, "His regime has amassed large clandestine stockpiles of biological weapons" as well as "large clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons".
Wrong again.
He insisted that Saddam had stockpiles "of VX nerve agent, sarin, mustard gas, anthrax, botulism and possibly smallpox". Later he would claim that Saddam produced, "38,000 liters of botulism toxin, 500 tons of sarin, and upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical weapons" as well as mobile biological-weapons labs.
What utter nonsense. These numbers were picked out of mid-air with no factual basis whatsoever. The intelligence community had no part in this charade; it was all cooked up by Rumsfeld's stooges in the OSP (Office of Special Plans) so they could drag the country to war.
In 2002 Rumsfeld addressed the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and told them he had "bulletproof" evidence linking Saddam to Al Qaida; another lie designed to connect Saddam to 9-11.
When Rumsfeld was challenged about his claim, he protested,
"Never said that...never did. You may remember it well, but you're thinking of someone else. You can't find anywhere me saying anything like either of those two things you just said. I may look like someone else."
No, Rumsfeld does not "look like someone else"; he's the same unctuous, medicine man whose been pedaling his claptrap from the Pentagon-platform for 6 years. He piggy-backed the nation to war on a pack of lies and now he's leading the charge to attack Iran.
It's all been lies; Iraq, Iran, 9-11, Katrina, the war on terror; "a vast tapestry of lies" as Harold Pinter noted. Not a speck of truth to any of it.
The American people are being set up for the next big performance; another terrorist attack on the "homeland". Rumsfeld will undoubtedly spearhead the crackdown on Muslims, leftists, intellectuals, political enemies, union leaders and anyone else who might pose a threat to his crackpot master-plan. His scheme is bound to fail just like everything else, but not before thousands are either "disappeared", brutalized or dumped in a land-fill somewhere. Destruction is the only thing for which Rumsfeld has shown any particular aptitude. I expect he will continue to perfect this one, solitary talent.
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Rumsfeld says Russia, China policies worrying
Thu May 11, 2006 04:54 AM ET
PARIS (Reuters) - The United States is concerned about Russia's use of its energy resources as a political weapon and China's lack of transparency over military spending, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was quoted as saying.
In an opinion piece printed in France's Le Figaro daily on Thursday, Rumsfeld said the U.S. focus was currently on Iraq and Afghanistan but that in the future, its policies would be determined by choices made by other powers such as China and Russia.
"Russia, a country with vast natural resources ... is a partner of the United States on security," Rumsfeld said.
"But on certain issues, Russia has not been very cooperative and has used its energy resources as a political weapon."
Vice President Dick Cheney provoked an angry reaction from Russia earlier this month when he told Baltic and Black Sea leaders that Russian President Vladimir Putin was backsliding on democracy and using energy reserves to "blackmail" Moscow's neighbors.
Russia drew international criticism earlier this year when it briefly turned off its natural gas taps to Ukraine in a pricing dispute that disrupted supplies to Europe.
Rumsfeld said China's lack of transparency over military spending complicated the relationship between the two countries.
"Some aspects of the Chinese attitude are worrying and complicate our relations," he said.
"A notorious lack of transparency (on military spending) is of course worrying for China's neighbors."
China says it has been open about its military spending and says that as a share of gross domestic product and the government budget it is fairly low by international standards.
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All of Us Participate in a New Iraq
By Dahr Jamail
10/05/2006
It is only when more people in the US begin to fathom the totality of the destruction in Iraq that one may expect to hear the public outcry and uprising necessary to end the occupation and bring to justice the war criminals responsible for these conditions. Until that happens, make no mistake: all of us participate in a new Iraq, our hands dyed in the blood of innocents.
Last Friday I was at the University of Texas, Austin, giving a presentation on Iraq. After dumping an hour's worth of horrible "real news" about Iraq, I was asked the question I have by now learnt to expect: "Is there anything good happening there at all?" I understand why people ask this. There must be some hope, somewhere, right?
I suggested that there are always the military press releases folks can go to, for an "upper" about Iraq. Here I recounted one of these bogus "news" reports. Released during my second stint in Iraq, a report of May 21, 2004, stated: "The Coalition Provisional Authority has recently given out hundreds of soccer balls to Iraqi children in Ramadi, Karbala, and Hilla. Iraqi women from Hilla sewed the soccer balls, which are emblazoned with the phrase, All of Us Participate in a New Iraq."
THEM
That same evening after my presentation, I received an email from a doctor friend in Baghdad. The email pertains to the question I was asked, so I quote it here:
"Dear Mr. Dahr, I am wondering why? Americans and coalition forces were supported by pro-Iranian Militias, like the Badr Organization! The support and help of Iraqi Shiites at first helped to somewhat stabilize and maintain the occupation. Death squads trained by the coalition forces are working day and night under cover of the Ministry of Interior, attacking innocent people: both Sunnis and Shiites!!!! In spite of knowing very well who is doing what, we still see no improvement in the security situation. On the contrary, the situation is getting worse. I have many colleagues, doctors and other professionals, who are now begging for help to get out of Iraq for their lives and for their families' lives! The only losers are the Iraqis. The only Iraqis who are benefiting from this war are those who spend all their life outside Iraq and are now living in their big castle, the green zone!!!!! Everyone now knows that the invasion of Iraq was carried out upon falsified testimonies and lies!!!! What is going on on the ground differs a lot from what the media tells!!!!! I mean that."
As bad as things are in Iraq today, it may come as a surprise to many people in the US, including many who never supported the illegal invasion and occupation to begin with, that Iraq has been a disaster from the first day of the invasion.
Each time I hear this question, several scenes from my time there flash through my mind, and I am left pondering whether anything good has happened in Iraq since the beginning of the US-led invasion.
THEN
I recollect my experience of May 22, 2004, the day after the soccer ball report. This was weeks after news of American soldiers torturing detainees at Abu Ghraib had hit the corporate media. The first mock-court martial had just convicted one of the soldiers complicit in the atrocities, when I decided to go to Abu Ghraib. I wanted to meet and interview the family members who were attempting to get into the prison to see and talk to their loved ones detained there.
Prior to this trip, my interpreter and I had interviewed a man who had been tortured horrifically in Abu Ghraib. He had laughed, "The Americans brought electricity to my ass before they brought it to my house!" At the dusty, dismal, heavily guarded razor wire-ensconced area outside Abu Ghraib, many more horror stories awaited us. Despair and hopelessness pervaded the atmosphere as grieving family members waited, hoping against hope to be granted their chance to visit a dear one inside that gruesome compound.
Congregated on that patch of barren earth were men and women and wailing children. Their anguish matched their outrage as they remained unable to gain access to their loved ones held in the prison, or to procure any information about them.
Sitting on the hard packed dirt in his white dishdasha, his head scarf languidly flapping in the dry, hot wind, Lilu Hammed stared at the high walls of the nearby prison. It was almost as if he were attempting to see his 32-year-old son Abbas through the tan concrete.
He sat alone, his tired eyes fixed unwaveringly upon the heavily guarded Abu Ghraib. When my interpreter asked him if he would speak with us, several seconds passed before Lilu slowly turned his head to look up at us. "I am sitting here on the ground now, waiting for God's help."
His son had been in Abu Ghraib for 6 months, following a raid on his home that produced no weapons. The young man had never been charged with anything. Lilu held a crumpled visitation permission slip in his hand that he had just obtained, which allowed for a brief reunion with his son on the 18th of August, still three months away.
A pack of Humvees drove past, leaving us engulfed in a cloud of dust. A woman standing near us exclaimed, "We hope the whole world can see the position we are in now!"
I scan my memory further and recall November 11, 2004. My interpreter showed up at my hotel in a very somber mood. The previous night, after the curfew began at 9:30 pm, US military helicopters had been circling his neighborhood until 3 am. "How can we live like this," he asked, holding up his hands. "We are trapped in our own country." He confessed, "You know, Dahr, everyone is praying for God to take revenge on the Americans. Everyone!"
Later that night, another Iraqi friend showed up at my room with a wild look in his eyes, sweat beads on his forehead. "My friend has just been killed, and he was one of my best friends. I can't imagine that he is dead, really, but I guess it is okay." He told me about his friend's family. "They are so poor, they live 21 people in a house with three bedrooms, and they are good people."
This wasn't all. A relative of his had been missing for six days. That day, his body was brought to his family by someone who found it on the road. The body, which showed visible signs of torture, had two shots in the chest and two in the head. The four bullet shells that had killed him had been placed in his trouser pockets.
"I am crazy today with this news Dahr," my friend exclaimed, his hands up in the air, "The number of people killed here is growing so fast everyday, it is shit." He hung his head back and took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled. He reminisced how his whole life had been the same in Iraq but never as bad as at that point. "When I was a child, it was common to have some family member or the other killed in the war with Iran," he said, "but now, everyone is dying every day."
On 12 November 2004, following this grim discussion with my two interpreters, I remember meeting with Dr. Wamid Omar Nadhme, a Senior Political Scientist at Baghdad University. An older, articulate man who vehemently opposed the regime of Saddam Hussein, he had by then grown critical of the US policy that was responsible for the violence and chaos devouring his country.
Commenting on the current situation, he told me: "I can assure you, it is well over 75% of Iraqis who cannot even tolerate this occupation. The right-wing Bush administration is blinded by its ideology, and we are all suffering from this, Iraqis and soldiers alike." I cannot forget his concluding remarks to me. "Iraq is burning with wrath, anger and sadness."
Another telling instance of how nothing good happens in Iraq reached me on November 19th, exactly a week after my meeting with Dr. Nadhme. I received a call from one of my interpreters, who at the time was in his mosque for the Friday prayers. I could hear the deafening roar of hundreds of people chanting, "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest). The sound reverberated in the confined area behind his panicking voice: "I am being held at gunpoint by American soldiers inside Abu Hanifa mosque, Dahr." His incredulous bewilderment was palpable as he yelled, "Everyone is praying to God because the Americans are raiding our mosque during Friday prayer!"
He kept making short calls, updating me on the atrocity. After a few sentences of information he would hang up. His intermittent running commentary from within the mosque where he was trapped remains one of my most eerie experiences of Iraq. In the gap between his calls I would quickly type in the last bit of information before he would call back with more.
"They have shot and killed at least 4 of the people who were at prayer and at least 20 are wounded now! I cannot believe this! I can't let them see me calling you. I am on my stomach now and they have guns aimed at everyone. There are so many people inside the mosque, and it is sealed. We are on our bellies and in a very bad situation."
I could hear the screaming in the background amidst gunfire. The soldiers eventually released the women and children along with the men who were related to them. It was sheer luck that my interpreter escaped that day. He was released because a boy approached him asking him to act as his father.
When later he came to my hotel, he was distraught and crying. "I am in a very sad position. I do not see any freedom or any democracy. If this could lead into a freedom, it is a freedom with blood. It is a freedom with emotions of sadness. It is a freedom of killing. You cannot gain democracy through blood or killing. You do not find the freedom that way. People were going to pray to God and they were killed and wounded. There were 1,500 people praying to God, and they went on a holiday where people go every Friday for prayers. And they were shot and killed. There were so many women and kids lying on the ground. This is not democracy, neither freedom."
He had recorded the entire thing on the small tape recorder that we used while interviewing people.
These memories are but a glimpse of the horrible reality that the Iraqi people are suffering on a daily basis under US occupation. The only change that occurs is a worsening of conditions; it's a pattern I have witnessed from the beginning.
NOW: For Us and Them
At least 122 Iraqis died over the last weekend. These were only the reported deaths. The total number of Iraqis killed thus far as a result of the occupation is most likely close to a quarter of a million.
Also last weekend, a British military helicopter was shot down in Basra, killing five soldiers. This sparked a confrontation between British troops and Basra residents, who pelted the occupation troops with petrol bombs and stones while shouting profanities at them. Two British tanks and a Land Rover were set ablaze. In the first week of May, 20 occupation soldiers have been killed in Iraq, bringing the total number to at least 2,420.
At one point during that presentation in Austin, I attempted in vain to describe to the audience what life in Baghdad is like. It was in vain, because how can anyone in the United States begin to imagine what it is like to be invaded, to have our infrastructure shattered, to have occupying soldiers photographing detained Americans in forced humiliating sexual acts and then to have these displayed on television, to have our churches raided and worshippers therein shot and killed by occupation troops?
It is only when more people in the US begin to fathom the totality of the destruction in Iraq that one may expect to hear the public outcry and uprising necessary to end the occupation and bring to justice the war criminals responsible for these conditions. Until that happens, make no mistake: all of us participate in a new Iraq, our hands dyed in the blood of innocents.
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Putin chastises U.S. on democratic ideals
JUDITH INGRAM
Associated Press
Wed, May. 10, 2006
MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin took a swipe at the United States in his state of the nation address Wednesday, bristling at being lectured by Vice President Dick Cheney and comparing Washington to a wolf who "eats without listening."
During an emotional moment in the nationally televised speech, Putin used the fairy-tale motif on the need to build a fortress-like house and to illustrate Russia's need to bolster its defenses. He also suggested that Washington puts its political interests above the democratic ideals it claims to cherish.
"Where is all this pathos about protecting human rights and democracy when it comes to the need to pursue their own interests? Here, it seems, everything is allowed, there are no restrictions whatsoever," Putin said, smiling sarcastically in the address to both houses of parliament.
"We are aware what is going on in the world," he said. "Comrade wolf knows whom to eat, he eats without listening, and he's clearly not going to listen to anyone."
Political analyst Alexei Makarkin told Ekho Moskvy radio the "wolf" reference was a response to the "United States, its actions in Iraq and plans toward Iran, its games on the territory of the CIS (former Soviet territory) and its criticism of Russia."
Putin's speech came nearly a week after Cheney on May 4 took a verbal slap at the Russian leader, saying the government sought "to reverse the gains of the last decade."
In another apparent barb aimed at the United States, Putin said countries should not use Russia's World Trade Organization membership negotiations to make unrelated demands.
"The negotiations for letting Russia into the WTO should not become a bargaining chip for questions that have nothing in common with the activities of this organization," Putin said.
In April, U.S. senators visiting Moscow said Russia's democracy record and its stance in the Iranian nuclear crisis would influence Congress as it considers Moscow's bid to join the global trade body.
Nationalist legislator Alexei Mitrofanov told reporters in the Kremlin that Putin's Russia was in no way looking for a confrontation with the West, "but we want to be a politically and economically independent state."
Putin pointed out that Russia's military budget is 25 times lower than that of the United States. Like the U.S., he said, "we also must make our house strong and reliable."
"We must always be ready to counter any attempts to pressure Russia in order to strengthen positions at our expense," he said. "The stronger our military is, the less temptation there will be to exert such pressure on us."
Putin said the government would work to strengthen the nation's nuclear deterrent as well as conventional military forces without repeating the mistakes of the Cold War era, when a costly arms race with Washington drained Soviet resources.
He said Russia would soon commission two nuclear submarines equipped with the new Bulava intercontinental ballistic missiles - the nation's first since Soviet times - while the land-based strategic missile forces would get their first unit of mobile Topol-M missiles.
The new missiles and warheads, which can foil defenses by changing direction in flight, would allow Russia to preserve a strategic balance without denting the nation's economic development goals, he said, adding that Russia needs a military that is capable of answering all modern challenges.
Two-thirds of the army will be professionals instead of conscripts by 2008, he said, allowing the state to reduce the length of obligatory service from two years to one, and nearly 600 rapid-response units will be formed by 2011.
"We need a military that is able simultaneously to carry on battle in global, regional and, if need be, several local conflicts," he said.
The military should be able to guarantee Russia's territorial integrity, he said - a reference to the threat of Islamic extremists in southern regions surrounding Chechnya. He said the threat of terrorism remained significant, and that "extremists of all stripes" feed off of local and religious conflicts.
"I know that someone very much wants Russia to get bogged down in these problems and, as a result, to be unable to solve a single one of its problems of full-scale development," he said darkly without identifying the foe.
Turning to health care issues, Putin called the demographic slide that has shrunk Russia's population by millions since the 1991 Soviet collapse "the most acute problem of contemporary Russia," and he encouraged legislators to budget for more generous birth bonuses, childcare support subsidies and educational benefits for mothers to encourage women to have children.
"I am convinced that with such an approach, you will earn words of gratitude from millions of mothers, young families, all the citizens of our country," Putin said.
He also called on more Russians to take in foster children from institutions where about 200,000 orphans and abandoned children are interned.
Most Russian families are small, with couples usually having only one or two children. Putin and his wife have two daughters.
Russia's population dropped by about 4 percent to 142.7 million between 1993 and 2006, according to the Health Ministry. Experts attribute the plunge to post-Soviet economic turmoil that has badly hurt the state health care system, leading to a drop in birth rates and life expectancy. Increased poverty, alcoholism, soaring crime and emigration have also taken their toll, leading to an average life expectancy of just 66 years - 16 years lower than Japan and 14 years lower than the European Union average.
The ITAR-Tass news agency reported that the comments on reversing the population decline prompted 27 bursts of applause and that listeners in all applauded 47 times - more than in any of Putin's other state of the nation addresses.
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12 Boys Accused In Sexual Assault Of Girl, 8
KMBC-TV
May 9, 2006
ST. LOUIS -- Twelve boys in the first and second grade at a St. Louis elementary school are accused of sexually assaulting a second-grade girl during recess, authorities said Tuesday.
One teacher who was supposed to be supervising the recess has been fired, and another suspended with pay, St. Louis schools superintendent Creg Williams said. The boys, ages 6 to 8, have been suspended for the rest of the school year. Names of the teachers and students were not released.
The girl, who is 8, is physically OK but will not return to school for the rest of the school year. "We don't know what type of emotional scars it will have on the young lady," Williams said.
"In my mind it's unconscionable that it happened and in my mind people have to be held accountable," Williams said. "How is it this kind of thing is even in the minds of young men?"
The incident happened Friday at Columbia Accelerated Community Educational Center, a school with 400 students in pre-kindergarten through sixth grade on the city's north side.
Shortly after lunch, three classes of first- and second-graders were outside for recess. A student saw several boys huddled around the girl who was on the ground, and alerted a teacher.
School district spokesman Tony Sanders said details of the assault are not yet clear. Police were initially called and turned the investigation over to juvenile authorities.
The boys could face misdemeanor charges of first-degree sexual misconduct and third-degree assault, said Kathryn Herman, administrator of the city's Juvenile Court. She said one of the boys is age 6, seven are age 7, and four are age 8.
"These are really young kids," Herman said. "I can't think of many other cases at this age with this type of incident."
Williams said his office received "sketchy" information about the incident Friday, but he wasn't alerted to the seriousness of it until Monday. He immediately went to the school, then contacted the girl's mother.
The district's crisis team is trying to determine if any other girls were also assaulted, Williams said. A letter was going out to district parents on Tuesday, alerting them to the incident. Counselors were also available to students at the school.
Williams said the district will also consider counseling or other efforts for the boys accused of the crime. They will not return to Columbia but will likely be sent to different schools next school year, he said. The girl may also be transferred to a different school.
"We'll get help for the boys, too, then decide what to do with them," Williams said.
Williams said other adults at the school could also be reprimanded if an internal investigation determines they failed to supervise the recess or swiftly address the incident once it came to light.
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Around the World
British agents knew of lead bomber: report
Last Updated Thu, 11 May 2006 08:30:03 EDT
CBC News
British intelligence agents had the ringleader of last summer's London bombings on their radar before the attacks, but their limited resources were focused elsewhere, a parliamentary report said.
British agents decided not to concentrate on Mohammad Sidique Khan, from West Yorkshire, because other threats were deemed a higher priority, the Intelligence and Security Committee report said.
On July 7 last year, Khan led a group of suicide bombers who blew themselves up on London subways and a bus, killing 52 people.
Agents had become aware of Khan and Shazad Tanweer, another of the bombers, as peripheral characters in other investigations and surveillance operations.
People detained in other countries had referred to men from Britain known only by pseudonyms who had travelled to Pakistan in 2003 and sought meetings with al-Qaeda figures, said the report, which was released Thursday.
However, British agents hadn't been able to confirm their identities before the attacks.
Instead, intelligence agents focused on more pressing cases, including "known plans to attack the U.K.," the report said.
"When resources became available, attempts were made to find out more about these two and other peripheral contacts, but these resources were soon diverted back to what were considered to be higher investigative priorities."
The report said the involvement of al-Qaeda in the attacks was unclear, and it had found no links between the July 7 bombers and the men who failed in their attempt to bomb the London transit system two weeks later.
The report also concludes that security services could not have stopped the attacks.
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Tories blast 'waste' as McConnell takes on 12th adviser
Scotsman
11/05/2006
THE First Minister, Jack McConnell, came under Tory fire last night following the appointment of another special adviser.
Douglas Trainer, a former student leader, takes the number of special advisers in the Executive to a record 12, the maximum permitted.
Mr Trainer was president of NUS Scotland and the NUS nationally in the 1990s, and later worked in financial public relations in London.
His salary was not disclosed but is said to be in the pay band of £37,365 to £48,354.
The appointment pushes the total pay bill for the special advisers - nine for Mr McConnell and three for Nicol Stephen, the deputy first minister - to nearly £750,000 a year.
Comment: Around the world, already corrupt politicians appear to be cashing in at the expense of the docile taxpayers. All of it seems to suggest that the rats are looting the pantry before the ship sinks.
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Attack in Canada 'now probable': CSIS report
Last Updated Wed, 10 May 2006 12:45:28 EDT
CBC News
It is "now probable" that an Islamic extremist group will try to launch an attack on Canadian soil, the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service warns in a report just made public.
"During the past year, Canada and Canadian interests abroad continued to be under threat from al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups,'' Jim Judd said in his 2004-05 report to the public safety minister.
The Canadian Press obtained a copy of the report on Tuesday through an access to information request.
"While the threat remains concentrated overseas, an attack on Canadian soil is now probable," Judd wrote.
The annual report was top secret when it was hand-delivered in November to Anne McLellan, the Liberal MP who held the public safety portfolio at the time.
A declassified copy of Judd's report was handed over to the Canadian Press.
Both McLellan and her government were defeated in the Jan. 23 election, and Conservative Stockwell Day is now the public safety minister.
Canada appeared on two different lists of target countries prepared by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, in November 2002 and March 2004.
Canadian soldiers have recently taken on a higher-profile role in Afghanistan, trying to eradicate remnants of the former Taliban government, which gave shelter to bin Laden before and after the attacks against the United States in September, 2001.
Conservatives aware of warning
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's acting national security adviser told the Canadian Press Tuesday that the Conservatives are aware of Judd's warning and the continued threat.
"We're just trying to increase the level of sophistication as to how we refine that consideration of the threat, where it might come, how it might come,'' said Stephen Rigby.
Last week's budget set aside $95 million for a fund to let rail and public transit operators pay for measures designed to protect passengers from the kind of carnage caused in 2005 when militants bombed the transit system in London, England.
The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, which handles airport security across the country, is also getting more money for its operations -- $133 million this fiscal year.
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Australian Teacher Held On Terrorism Charges
Sydney Morning Herald
11/05/2006
JOHN HOWARD AMUNDSEN said it was all a misunderstanding: that the explosives he stockpiled in the home he shares with his elderly mother were to be used as special effects in a TV production.
But the discovery of four homemade bombs, one packed with razor blades and nails, had police puzzled last night.
Counter-terrorism officers around the country were conferring on how Amundsen was able to buy 53 kilograms of the mining explosive Powergel.
The high school teacher, 40, told a Brisbane magistrate he made the bombs for use in an unnamed television production.
Police bomb squad experts had spent the previous night removing the explosives and the crude bombs from his home at Aspley, a northern suburb of Brisbane.
Amundsen, a metalwork and woodwork teacher at Ferny Grove High and former teacher in media studies, emphatically denied he was a terrorist. The former television cameraman said he held one of the country's highest security clearances, granted by ASIO after heavy background screening. He claimed to have access to secure areas of Brisbane Airport.
The magistrate, Lindy Bradford-Morgan, refused Amundsen bail on the basis he was a risk to public safety and adjourned the case until today.
Police will not rule out the possibility that four bombs and 10 detonators allegedly found at Amundsen's home were being stockpiled for a terrorist attack.
Police also allegedly found a book entitled Bin Laden: Behind the Mask of a Terrorist.
According to the charge laid yesterday, Amundsen allegedly "dishonestly obtained explosives and detonators" from Orica Quarries, at Yatala near Movie World on the Gold Coast between April 11 and May 10 this year.
Ferny Grove High was closed for most of yesterday morning as police with sniffer dogs checked classrooms, before declaring it safe for students and staff to resume lessons.
Explosives experts and counter-terrorism sources said last night that Powergel was specifically designed for use in moving large rocks and earth in the mining industry.
Amundsen's neighbours spoke yesterday of a man who had become agitated in recent weeks and who loved to hoard things.
Some spoke of seeing him in the past month carrying large plastic barrels in his car, raising their suspicions.
One neighbour, Sharyn Sneddon, said she and her husband had seen Amundsen transport five large plastic barrels in his car about eight weeks ago.
Lilly Boccalatte, who lives across the road, said her husband saw the man walking down the street with rubber gloves on at the weekend "but didn't take much notice of it".
A 69-year-old neighbour who did not want to be named said Amundsen, who is single and has no children, had appeared agitated recently. "He was getting around the place a bit, just marching up and down the street," she said.
Comment:
A few interesting things to note:
The man's name is "John Howard" the same as the Australian PM.
He claims to have a high-level security clearance from the Australian intelligence agency, the ASIO.
The above story exentuates the fact that a bin laden book and a book on the Nazis were found in his home - well, case closed then!
The Bin laden book found in his home, "Bin Laden - Behind the Mask", written by Adam Robinson. An amazon reviewer had this to say about the contents:
[Osama's father] grows in both wealth and wives and political power to the degree that he acquires a vast fortune, many wives and about fifty children, Osama being the last.
Osama's Syrian mother, Hamida, too assertive for Mohammed's taste is more or less banished to a faraway household where she will not cause Mohammed to lose face among his fellows. The author develops a psychological profile of a sad youngster, Osama, growing up under this cloud of subtle rejection. Osama's sometimes ridiculed by some of his fifty or so other siblings.
The picture emerges of a poor little rich schoolboy vying for his father's attention by excelling in Islamic teachings. But when Osama is aged ten, his successful father is killed in a Texas helicopter crash.
Whatever excellence in Islam Osama possesses is only skin deep, and Osama becomes the complete un-Islamic libertine while he continues his education at an exclusive university in Lebanon. Osama is depicted as a guided missile of lust in his pursuit of prostitutes and women in general; he's also something of a boozehound as he breaks every rule of Islamic law in his pursuit of earthly pleasures.
Osama's an uglier American than anyone America has to offer, squiring his cronies and conquests about in a fleet of Mercedes, complete with driver-servants. On Osama's tab, he and his cronies eat in the finest restaurants, enjoy the casino gambling which is forbidden in their home country, and pickle themselves in the finest whiskies.
Which calls to mind alleged chief 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, who also enjoyed boozing, gambling and prostitutes.
What seems to be the case is the alleged members of al-Qaeda were hand-picked many years ago by Western intelligence agencies for their obvious deep interest in Western culture and rejection of fundamentalist Islam, and then manipulated to become the patsies for the modern bogus wave of "Islamic terror".
Given the Australian school-teacher's claim that he worked for Australian intelligence, it is very possible that his arrest is evidence of an Australian false flag terror operation in the planning that went awry, perhaps due to the fall-guy going losing the plot in some way, perhaps due to mental instability. In such cases, the most that can be salvaged from the likely considerable time and effort invested in the operation is to publicly arrest the pasty and thereby provide more grist for the fake reality of the home-grown terror threat mill.
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Asian, Western defence chiefs to hold security meeting in June in Singapore
04:11:27 EDT May 10, 2006
SINGAPORE (AP) - The rise of China and India will be on the agenda when defence ministers and military chiefs from nearly two dozen Asian countries and major Western powers hold an annual security conference next month in Singapore, organizers said.
The three-day Shangri-La Dialogue - named after the Singapore hotel where it's held - begins June 2, and will involve delegates from at least 22 countries including the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Japan, China and India.
Issues to be addressed include U.S.-Asia security relations, the rise of India and China, maritime security co-operation, counterinsurgency and regional security concerns, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said in a statement Wednesday.
Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will deliver the conference's keynote address, after which defence ministers will hold bilateral discussions and round-table meetings.
U.S. defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld attended the security forum last year, when he challenged China's military buildup and urged political change in the world's fastest growing economy.
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Putin: arms race with US is not over
10/05/2006
UK Telegraph
Vladimir Putin has pledged to build up Russia's military to rival "fortress" America, and insisted the Cold War arms race is far from over.
In an unexpectedly belligerent state of the nation address on Russian TV, the Russian president accused the US of putting its own interests before its democratic ideals, and compared the country to a voracious wolf.
"We are aware what is going on in the world," he said.
"Comrade wolf knows whom to eat, he eats without listening, and he's clearly not going to listen to anyone."
He added: "It is premature to speak of the end of the arms race. It is in reality rising to a new technological level."
Mr Putin's combative speech comes days after Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, accused Moscow of rolling back democracy and threatening its ex-Soviet neighbours.
Last month US senators visiting Moscow said Russia's slide towards authoritarianism and stance on the Iranian nuclear crisis may undermine the country's bid to join the World Trade Organisation.
In his speech, Mr Putin said the government would strengthen the nation's nuclear deterrent as well as conventional military forces without repeating the mistakes of the Cold War era, when a costly arms race against the US drained Soviet resources.
Russia's military budget is 25 times lower than that of the US.
"We need a military that is able simultaneously to carry on battle in global, regional and, if need be, several local conflicts," he said.
The president also pledged action to counter Russia's acute demographic crisis, calling on members of parliament to vote money for more generous birth bonuses and childcare subsidies.
He said: "I am convinced that with such an approach, you will earn words of gratitude from millions of mothers, young families, all the citizens of our country."
Russia's population dropped by 4 per cent to 142.7 million between 1993 and 2006, according to the Health Ministry.
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Aid workers 'using under-age African girls for sex'
The Independent
08 May 2006
Girls as young as 12 in Liberia are regularly having sex with men - often humanitarian workers and peace-keeping soldiers - in return for money or food, a British charity revealed today.
The girls "sell sex" or get involved in "man business" to gain essential goods to help their impoverished families survive.
Often the men they are having sex with are the very people to which such exploitation should be reported, it was claimed.
The report, entitled From Camp to Community: Liberia Study on Exploitation of Children, was carried out by Save the Children.
A total of 315 people were interviewed, 23% were boys and 26% were girls while 27% were men and 24% were women.
Half were refugees living in camps within their own troubled country (internally displaced people or IDPs) while the other half had returned to their homes after years of conflict to live in makeshift communities.
The study found that girls aged from eight to 18 were involved in sexual activities with men but that girls of 12 and upwards were providing sex regularly.
"They are between 10 and 15 years; as soon as they see their 'tete' (breasts) coming up then they jump in this man business," one interviewee said.
Reasons for having sex with the men - aged on average between 30 and 60 - varied from economic deprivation, pressure from peers and parents, seeing other children with material goods and boredom.
Many more young women were found to be having sex with adult men in the hope of payment than mature women.
The report said: "The over-riding reason cited for this is that men can have sex with young girls for very little in return, sometimes nothing."
Save the Children found numerous groups of men were guilty of exploiting young girls including businessmen, police officers, teachers and peace-keeping soldiers.
Humanitarian workers and those running the camps were also guilty.
"All focus groups and individual interviewees without exception mentioned NGO workers," the study claimed.
"In all the IDP camps where discussion groups were conducted, the Camp Management Committee (CMC) and block leaders were implicated."
Another interviewee told Save the Children: "In the camp, most camp officials were loving to (seeking sex with) children.
"During distribution (of food and goods), when these people have interest in some of the girls, the authorities serve them very fast.
"After the distribution they would arrange an appointment with these girls."
Sex takes place in distribution centres, entertainment area, bushland and even latrines and washing areas.
The study found that many parents knew that sex was going on but "accept it because of poverty and the dire situation in the camps".
Among the underage girls having sex, most were afraid to report it because by implicating NGO staff, for example, could lead to NGO support being withdrawn.
"They would not know where to report it as the Camp Management Committee and block leaders were themselves involved in it," the report said.
Save the Children's UK chief executive Jasmine Whitbread called on the Liberian government, the UN and international NGOs to do more to fight the problem.
"This cannot continue," she said. "It must be tackled.
"Men who use positions of power to take advantage of vulnerable children must be reported and those who are taking advantage of their position must be fired.
"More must be done to support children and their families to make a living without turning to this kind of desperation."
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21 die as Egyptian bus plunges into canal
11/05/2006
A bus carrying Egyptian workers plunged into a canal today, killing 21 people and injuring 22 others.
The accident happened near the Mediterranean port city of Damietta, 100 miles north-east of Cairo, a police official said.
The victims, who were employed by a weaving company, were travelling to work when the accident took place.
Road accidents are common in Egypt because of bad roads and poor enforcement of traffic laws.
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Zionism in Action
Israel to free millions in funds for Palestinians
The Associated Press
THURSDAY, MAY 11, 2006
JERUSALEM Israel, pressured by international alarm over a brewing Palestinian humanitarian crisis, has agreed to release millions of dollars in funds it has withheld from the Palestinians and is considering easing restrictions on the transport of goods between Israel and the Gaza Strip, officials said Thursday.
Senior members of the rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah, meanwhile, forged a joint platform calling for a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
It was unclear whether the program would be supported by Hamas, which until now has resisted international demands to renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept peace agreements.
Israel stopped transferring about $55 million in tax and customs revenues it collects monthly on behalf of the Palestinians shortly after Hamas militants won January parliamentary elections.
The withholding of those funds, coupled with a cutoff in aid from Washington and the European Union, has left the Hamas government broke and unable for the past two months to pay salaries to its workers.
People's savings are rapidly dwindling, merchants are forced to buy and sell on credit, gas stations have no fuel to pump and schoolteachers have started striking for back wages.
International aid workers and government officials say the Palestinian health care system is verging on disaster and that sanitation and sewage systems are liable to crash if money is not found soon.
International Mideast negotiators, worried by the reports, agreed at a meeting Tuesday in New York to release humanitarian aid to the Palestinians and to set up a special fund to administer the transfer.
With the West softening its stance, Israel followed suit. On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told Channel 10 TV that Israel, too, was willing to release withheld tax and customs revenues "for humanitarian needs such as medicines and health needs."
Livni said Israel would not agree to let the funds be used to pay salaries of Palestinian government employees. Israel has not decided how much money would be released, or when, officials said.
Israel's dovish new defense minister, Amir Peretz, was considering easing restrictions on the passage of goods between Israel and Gaza, as international mediators urged Tuesday.
Israel has kept the main Karni cargo crossing closed for much of the year. The Israeli military cites security concerns, but Palestinians say they are being penalized for electing Hamas as their rulers.
Outside UN headquarters in Gaza City, about 40 schoolchildren set up a tent to protest the economic siege. Several stripped to their underclothes and stood on U.S. and Israeli flags to dramatize the destitution taking hold across Palestinian areas.
"The world should act to end this collective punishment," the protest organizer, Raouf Barbakh, said.
The Hamas-Fatah document, formulated by senior members who are imprisoned by Israel, was presented to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, Wednesday.
Abbas, the moderate leader of Fatah, said he backed the draft, which also authorizes him to lead peace talks with Israel. "I adopt the position of those heroes," he said, referring to the prisoners.
Senior Hamas officials were not immediately available for comment.
A Hamas legislator, Salah Bardawil, said that he had not seen the document, but that the views of the Hamas prisoners were considered important.
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Israel to try to alleviate Palestinian crisis
11/05/2006
Israel, pressured by international alarm over a brewing Palestinian humanitarian crisis, has agreed to release millions of pounds in funds it has withheld from the Palestinians and is considering easing restrictions on the transport of goods between Israel and the Gaza Strip.
Israel stopped transferring some €43.1m in tax and customs revenues it collects monthly on behalf of the Palestinians after the Hamas-dominated parliament was sworn in three months ago.
The withholding of those funds, coupled with a cut-off in desperately needed aid from the US and European Union, has left the Hamas-led government broke and unable to pay salaries for the past two months to workers who provide for about one third of the people in the West Bank and Gaza.
People's savings are rapidly dwindling, merchants are forced to buy and sell on credit, petrol stations have no fuel to pump and schoolteachers have started striking for back wages.
International aid workers and government officials say the Palestinian healthcare system is verging on disaster, and that sanitation and sewage systems are liable to crash if money is not found soon.
International Middle East negotiators, worried by the reports, agreed at a meeting on Tuesday in New York to release humanitarian aid to the Palestinians and to set up a special fund to administer the transfer.
Israel worries that easing the pressure on Hamas, which is sworn to Israel's destruction, would be counterproductive to Western efforts to force it to renounce violence and recognise Israel's right to exist.
But with the West softening its stance, Israel followed suit. Yesterday, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told Channel 10 TV that Israel, too, was willing to have withheld tax and customs revenues used "for humanitarian needs such as medicines and health needs".
Livni said Israel would not agree to use the funds to pay salaries of Palestinian government employees. Officials said the sums of money, and when it would be released, must still be decided.
Separately, talks to resolve the Palestinian fuel shortage were under way today with the sole provider of fuel to the Palestinians, Israel's Dor Energy, and Israeli authorities, said Mujahid Salame, head of the Palestinian fuel authority.
Filling stations dried up after Dor suspended deliveries to the Palestinians earlier this week because of unpaid bills. Speaking to Voice of Palestine radio, Salame said he expected an agreement soon.
Israel's dovish defence minister, meanwhile, is considering easing restrictions on the passage of goods between Israel and Gaza, in keeping with a call from the international mediators at the meeting on Tuesday.
Israel has kept the main Karni cargo crossing closed for much of the year. The Israeli military cites security concerns, but Palestinians say they are being penalised for electing Hamas as their rulers.
Because the closures have choked off the flow of goods, compounding the misery caused by the economic boycott, Defence Minister Amir Peretz is considering showing greater flexibility at Karni, security officials said.
Comment: Nothing is said here of the Palestinians who are dying every day in hospitals in Palestine because Israel refuses to allow medicine to get through. The world is entirely unaware of the complete indifference that the Israeli government displays towards the suffering of innocent Palestinians, and the utter inhumanity which defines its deliberate attempts to increase the suffering and untimely deaths of the 1.3 million inhbaitants of the Gaza strip. Such acts are known under international law as "collective punishment" and are illegal, but no one seems to care.
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Patients die as doctors run out of drugs to treat them
Chris McGreal in Gaza City
The Guardian
05/10/06
Ahmed Ayad was unfortunate to fall sick under what Israel and its allies in the west are defining as the "ministries of terror".
The 42-year-old Palestinian father of five began kidney dialysis at a hospital in Gaza City six weeks ago at just about the time Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip and international sanctions against the Hamas government began to bite in the health ministry.
The resulting shortages of drugs and others supplies have forced Shifa hospital to cut back Mr Ayad's dialysis treatment.
"The day they reduced my treatment I was so so tired. I'm afraid they will reduce it more. Look at my face. I feel like a dead person," he said.
But Mr Ayad has been lucky. Shifa hospital says four people receiving dialysis have died over the past three weeks because of the shortages. It is the same in the cancer ward, where there is a diminishing supply of chemotherapy drugs, and other parts of the hospital where even basic antibiotics have not arrived for a month.
Mr Ayad is also fortunate that there is someone to treat him. None of the medical staff at Shifa has been paid for the past two months. It is the same for the rest of the Palestinian Authority's 160,000 workers whose wages usually come from a mix of foreign aid and customs duties now frozen by Israel with increasingly serious consequences for the 1 million Palestinians - one in four of the population - supported by government salaries.
The World Bank warned this week that its earlier predictions of a 50% rise in poverty in the occupied territories this year, driven by a sharp fall in personal income and a 23% increase in unemployment, may have been "too rosy", because it underestimated the extent of western sanctions against Hamas and the Israeli blockade.
"The recession has already begun, with March and April's public sector salaries so far unpaid and with signs of food and gasoline shortages manifesting in Gaza," the Bank said.
"If the Palestinian Authority remains unpaid/minimally paid for several months, it may cease to function ...
"A protracted period in which the PA is disabled might result in the unravelling of a dozen years of donor efforts to build the responsible, accountable institutions needed for a future Palestinian state."
Dr Nasser al-Atar still goes into Shifa's dialysis unit every day.
"I was last paid two months ago but I still come to work. It's my duty as a human being," he said.
But he is disturbed at what lies ahead. New filters for the dialysis machines finally arrived on Monday but they are designed for use on children and only provide for a part of the treatment required by other adults.
The blockade and aid cuts mean there are still none of the required drugs, forcing a cut back on treatment for the 160 outpatients, including 24 children, from three times to twice a week.
"Before long we will have to cut back the number of treatments again. Some more patients will die," said Dr Atar. "Look at the patients now. They look sick. Reduction in treatment means more anaemia. They are weaker."
Physicians for Human Rights - Israel, an independent medical charity, warned yesterday that the Palestinian health system faced collapse if aid continued to be withheld.
"Ending the funding to the health system will lead to the death of thousands of people in the short term and to extensive morbidity in the long term," it said.
Mr Ayad is one of those whose life may depend on what western governments decide.
"Please save my life. I have three boys and four girls. If you do not want to save my life for me, save it for my children," he said.
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Palestinian pain, one kid at a time
By Fareed Taamallah
May 6, 2006
EVERY DAY, world leaders think of new ways to punish the Palestinians for electing Hamas. But the people who suffer most are children like my daughter, Lina.
Lina was less than 1 year old when she caught a virus that gave her a high fever and caused diarrhea and vomiting. We live in a small West Bank village in the occupied territories. In the winter of 2003, when Lina got sick, Qira was under curfew, and we couldn't reach a doctor. We tried to take her to the hospital in the nearby city of Nablus. But Nablus was also under curfew. The Israeli soldiers manning the checkpoint on the outskirts of Nablus refused to let us in.
Eventually, on a rainy, cold day, my wife, Amina, carried Lina three miles on mountainous roads into Nablus to reach a doctor. One year later, we learned that the infection had caused renal failure and that Lina would eventually need a kidney transplant to survive.
For 16 months, Lina underwent dialysis every four hours. She spent many days in hospitals because of the kidney failure's side effects, including hypertension and hernia. Her limbs became as thin as toothpicks.
Tests showed that neither her mother nor I was a compatible kidney donor for Lina. In the spring of 2005, a South African friend named Anna offered to donate a kidney to save Lina's life. I had met Anna in 2003 during a peaceful protest campaign against the wall Israel is building in the West Bank
Anna was a compatible donor. We raised $40,000 for the surgery. Hadassah Hospital in West Jerusalem agreed to perform the operation at a discount.
But the next obstacle was obtaining a visa for Anna, who was blacklisted from entering Israel because of her activities - all completely nonviolent - protesting the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Anna fought for a visa - and only received one after the Israeli hospital administrator called the Israeli Interior minister.
For the transplant, the hospital helped me and my wife get permits to enter Israel for a full month - an exceptional feat. We considered ourselves lucky. But is anyone really lucky who needs special permission to be with one's child at a hospital? Imagine that, if you needed to be at your child's hospital bedside, you had to wait in line at a military base for hours or even days to plead for an entry permit.
Despite the difficulties, the transplant was successfully performed in October 2005 in Jerusalem. Unfortunately, this was not the end of Lina's difficulties. After Hamas won the elections in Palestine, the Israeli government tightened restrictions on Palestinians entering Israel. For a while it looked as if we would not get permission to enter for further treatments, but with difficulty we finally got approval to go to Lina's appointment scheduled for next week. We fear we will not get future permits.
Additionally, the U.S. and Europe have decided not to continue aid to the Palestinian government, which offered Palestinians free healthcare. As the Palestinian Authority grows poorer and poorer, our benefits will almost certainly disappear, and Lina may not be able to get her very expensive medications. Her life might be in serious danger.
Israel claims it needs to restrict Palestinian movement in response to the new Hamas-led government. But the reality is that Israel first established its system of permits and closures in 1991, and we have been living under these difficult conditions ever since.
My wife, daughter and I are active in a nonviolent movement that includes many Israelis, Palestinians and foreigners. Although we received our permits this time, others who need them have not. Denying permits to innocent men, women and children does not make Israelis safer. It destroys the hopes of Palestinians.
FAREED TAAMALLAH is coordinator of the Palestinian Elections Commission for the Salfit region. He lives in the West Bank village of Qira.
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Whose human rights?
May 10, 2006 03:19 PM
Ali Abunimah
Palestinians are being deprived of life-saving medicines, but the talk is all of Israeli academics being denied their privileges.
Suppose I were to leave my office here in Chicago and walk the short distance to the kidney dialysis unit down the road and pull out the tubes to which four elderly patients were attached, making them seriously ill or killing them. Suppose I said I did this because I disagreed with the Bush Administration's invasion and occupation of Iraq, its use of torture, and its countless other profoundly undemocractic and illegal policies. What would that make me? A murderer for sure, a monster and a new vicious, kind of terrorist. Such an action would be unconscionable in any moral system.
And yet this is what the so-called "international community," a few powerful governments, feel entitled to do to Palestinians because those governments disagree with the policies of the elected Hamas authority. Ha'aretz reported yesterday that "At least four people suffering from kidney diseases died in the Gaza Strip in April, after the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority Health Ministry cut the Shifa Hospital's budget for the necessary dialysis treatments."
The Palestinian Authority is near to collapse due to a decision by the European Union, the largest donor to Palestinians under occupation to cut off vital aid. At the same time, the United States has moved aggressively to threaten anyone who tries to render assistance to suffering Palestinians, scaring banks from allowing cash transfers to the Palestinian Authority (a position they have had to review overnight in the face of the impending catastrophe threatening thousands of Palestinians).
According to Dr. Juma al-Saka, 300 of Gaza's 650 kidney patients are treated at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, and due to the sanctions, their treatments were cut from a required three per week to just two. Four have already died, others are sure to follow unless the EU-US sanctions against the Palestinian people end.
Ha'aretz adds that, "Kidney ailments are not the only diseases going untreated, according to the doctor, who said that some cancer patients have stopped receiving chemotherapy and other vital drugs due to money and equipment shortages."
All of this is a flashback to the years after the 1991 Iraq war, when international sanctions killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, starting with the oldest, the youngest and the sickest. In US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's immortal words, this holocaust was "worth it" if it helped the US achieve its policy objectives. I naively thought the lesson had been learned. Now the Palestinians are to have their turn.
Meanwhile, Israel continues to build a comprehensive system of apartheid, to kill Palestinian civilians and to steal their land with total impunity. On Saturday, 65-year-old Mousa Salim Mousa al-Sawarka, was killed by shrapnel to the head, when Israel shelled the area in the northern Gaza Strip where he was grazing his animals. The next morning, Hassan Hussein Khader al-Shaf'ei, 55, was killed by shrapnel throughout the body, while he was farming his land near the same area, and a woman, Fatima Mohammed Sahweel, 59, was wounded with shrapnel to right the eye. Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert announced plans to build thousands of new Jewish-only housing units in the occupied West Bank. Within Israeli society, the dehumanization of Palestinians continues to advance: a new poll by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 62 percent of Israelis support "government-backed Arab emigration" - in other words ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
As Israel's onslaught goes unchallenged by the US, the UN leadership, European and Arab governments, I am delighted to see that the UK's largest university and college lecturers union, the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (Natfhe), is about to vote again on a resolution to recommend that its 67,000 members boycott Israeli lecturers and academic institutions that do not publicly declare their opposition to Israeli policy in the occupied territories.
Ronnie Fraser, a Nafthe delegate who heads a group called Academic Friends of Israel, objected that "Academic work should not be blocked on political grounds." The UK Ambassador to Israel reacted to the boycott plan saying, "we do not believe that such academic boycotts are productive - far more can be obtained through dialogue and academic cooperation." Israeli professors should never be deprived of their ability to enjoy conferences in Oslo, London or Florence no matter how bad things get in Palestine, no matter how imprisoned Palestinians are in their ghettos and no matter how complicit major Israeli institutions are with the apartheid system. Will the UK government argue as loudly that kidney dialysis to the elderly should not be blocked on political grounds and demand that the EU stop collaborating with the Israeli siege?
The EU is now trying to deflect criticism by putting together a plan to channel aid to the Palestinians without going through Hamas. This palliative of yet another example of the EU stepping in to subsidize the occupation and mitigate its most pernicious effects so as to avoid the embarassment of actually having to confront Israel and roll back its colonialism.
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Israeli petrol company halts supply to Palestine
10/05/2006
Dor Energy, the Israeli company that provides fuel to the Palestinian areas, is cutting off supplies due to growing debts, Israel and Palestinian officials said today.
Palestinians warned the move would deepen a humanitarian crisis brewing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The head of the Palestinian petrol commission, Mujahid Salame, said he expected petrol supplies to run out tomorrow.
"If this happens, there will be a humanitarian crisis," he said.
He said Palestinian officials were in touch with American and European diplomats in hopes of pressuring Israel to reverse the move by Dor Energy.
Asaf Sharif, a top aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, confirmed that Dor has decided to halt the shipments.
In the past, Israel paid the debt from tax revenues it collects for the Palestinian Authority.
However, Sharif said Israel would not do so again.
Israel has frozen the €43m in monthly tax transfers to the Palestinian Authority as part of its boycott of the new Hamas-led government.
The tax money has been placed in escrow, and Israel used some of the money last month to pay the fuel debt, preventing a fuel crisis.
Comment: With hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians already suffering terribly as a result of food and medicine shortages imposed by Israel, this new move is nothing but a gratuitous and deliberate exacerbating of the situation merely for the delight experienced by Israeli politicians at the sight of suffering Palestinian children. You think I exaggerate? Just wait and watch what the future holds.
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Palestinian petrol crisis 'over'
hursday, 11 May 2006, 14:47 GMT 15:47 UK
A Palestinian official has said the fuel crisis threatening the occupied territories has been resolved.
The head of the Palestinian Petroleum Agency told the BBC an agreement had been reached with the Israeli supplier.
Dor Energy is the only company supplying petrol and cooking gas to Gaza and the West Bank.
On Thursday, petrol stations in the West Bank were forced to close and supplies of cooking gas were reported to be running low.
In the Gaza Strip petrol station owners expect to exhaust their supplies by the end of Thursday, news agencies reported.
Mujahed Salameh, head of the Palestinian Petroleum Agency, said the fuel supply would be resumed on Friday.
On Wednesday, Dor cut off supplies to the Palestinian areas because of mounting Palestinian Authority debts amounting to about $26m.
It is not yet clear how an agreement was struck, but Mr Salameh had said earlier on Thursday that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would be contacting Dor to arrange for payment of the debt from the Palestinian Investment Fund.
Doctors in Gaza and the West Bank had warned that a petrol shortage could be disastrous for their work, crippling the ambulance service and preventing employees from reaching clinics.
Financial crisis
The PA has faced financial crisis since foreign aid was frozen after Hamas - regarded as a terrorist movement by the US and EU - won elections in January.
A plan to channel donor aid directly to the Palestinians, bypassing the Hamas-led government, was agreed on Tuesday.
The EU, UN, Russia and the US said they would set up a "temporary international mechanism" to channel the money for an initial three-month period.
The US also said it would separately give $10m (£5.4m) in aid to the Palestinians through medical and children's charities.
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Ambassador Ayalon: We'll oppose paying PA workers
Ran Dagoni, Washington 10 May 06 10:12
Israel will oppose paying salaries to Hamas government employees in the Palestinian Authority (PA), via the humanitarian mechanism that the Quartet (the US, UN, EU and Russia) announced yesterday, Israel Ambassador to the US Daniel Ayalon told "Globes" last night.
The future mode of operation of this mechanism, and, in particular, the identity of the potential beneficiaries of its grants, became a bone of contention on the organization's first day. The founding document states that the mechanism will manage funds intended solely for basic humanitarian needs. However, US and European diplomats said that, at some point, the mechanism's funds might be used to pay the salaries of doctors, teachers, or other workers to maintain services that the Hamas government would be providing were it not for the aid boycott imposed on it.
"I hope that the Quartet mechanism doesn't plan to finance the salaries of PA workers under the Hamas government," said Ayalon. "It is known that the Quartet wants to promote humanitarian aid for the Palestinians, just as Israel wants to promote this. But paying the salaries of civil servants isn't the way. External financing of salaries will only strengthen Hamas, intensify violence, and block any chance of a solution."
Sources in Washington said EU representatives in the Quartet lobbied to include the payments of salaries as one of the goals of the mechanism, but US representatives strongly objected.
Ayalon said that if the payment of PA civil service salaries is put on the agenda, "Israel will know how to deal with this." He stressed that Israel would definitely not agree to paying salaries of education system employees, who poison the minds of Palestinian children with anti-Semitic texts.
The consent of the US to the establishment of the mechanism signals flexibility on the part of the Bush administration, which until now adhered to a rigid policy of preventing all aid to the PA, except for urgent cases of humanitarian distress. European and Russian representatives on the Quartet said in the discussions that 165,000 people paid by the PA government supported a third of Palestinian families in PA territories. A World Bank representative also participated in the talks; the World Bank will coordinate the practical aspects of the mechanism's operation.
At a press conference at the UN building in New York, Quartet representatives emphasized yesterday that the mechanism would be fully transparent, and bypass the Hamas government when distributing aid. The Quartet again called on the Hamas government to recognize Israel, reject terrorism, and honor all agreements between the PA and Israel.
The US has not made a final decision on how and to whom to distribute the mechanism's funds. These issues will be on the agenda when President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert meet later this month.
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'Israel Lobby' bad for Israel, the U.S.
BY RABBI BRUCE WARSHAL
Oh my God, someone has publicly outed the "Israel Lobby." For those readers who do not closely follow the machinations in academia, let me explain. John Walt, the academic dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and John Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, have written a blistering critique of the Jewish lobby, focusing primarily on AIPAC.
Their main complaint is that "the thrust of US policy in the region (the Middle East) derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the 'Israel Lobby'." There is much with which to disagree in the paper, including their assertion that Israel is not a vital strategic asset (there are many generals who would challenge that assertion). But there is also much truth, if we would only be honest with ourselves.
The usual suspects have jumped on the bandwagon, not merely to criticize but to condemn the paper in vitriolic words. Rep. Eliot Engel, a Democrat who represents the Bronx, declared it "anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist drivel." This is somewhat ironic since one of the complaints of Walt and Mearsheimer is that anyone who criticizes Israel is automatically labeled anti-Semitic. The ubiquitous Alan Dershowitz accused the authors of cribbing from neo-Nazi Web sites, which was a sophisticated way of tarnishing them as anti-Semites without using the phrase. The right-wing New York Sun called it a "scandal" and warned that if Harvard is not careful, "the Kennedy School will become known as Bir Zeit on the Charles."
The Forward was most responsible. Before writing an extensive critical analysis of the paper it acknowledged that "the authors are not fringe gadflies but two of America's most respected foreign-affairs theorists. ... Though it's tempting, they can't be dismissed as cranks outside the mainstream. They are the mainstream."
I agree with Walt and Mearsheimer that AIPAC controls our American government policy toward Israel. But in their paper the two political scientists point out that, "In its basic operations, the Israel Lobby is no different from the farm lobby, steel or textile workers' unions, or other ethnic lobbies. There is nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway US policy; the Lobby's activities are not a conspiracy of the sort depicted in tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion."
Coming from South Florida, I am acutely aware that our government policy toward Cuba is dictated by the Cuban Lobby. Why else would we have such an absurd opposition to Castro? If we can make peace with Red China and the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union, why do we continue an embargo against an obscure Communist island, if it were not for domestic political pressure? So it is with the Jewish domestic lobby. My complaint is that the self-appointed Jewish leaders who control AIPAC and other positions of power within the Jewish community do not represent the best interests of Jews, Israel or the United States in the long run.
Let's zero in on AIPAC. It is controlled by right-wing, rich Jewish neo-conservatives. As one manifestation of the truth of this assertion one merely has to look at its annual meeting this past month. At a time when Vice President Cheney's popularity has dropped below 20 percent, the 4,500 delegates to the AIPAC convention gave him a standing ovation for almost a minute before he even opened his mouth and then proceeded to give him 48 rounds of applause in a 35-minute speech. (As my colleague Leonard Fein pointed out, that's once every 43.7 seconds). Considering that 75 percent of American Jews voted for Kerry, it is obvious that these people are out of the mainstream of Jewish thought.
At the same conference, preceding the recent Israeli elections, these delegates were addressed by Ehud Olmert (Kadima), Amir Peretz (Labor) and Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud) by video link from Israel. Olmert and Peretz received polite applause. The AIPAC delegates cheered enthusiastically for Netanyahu, especially when he presented his hard line that was overwhelmingly rejected by the Israeli electorate. Once a great organization, today AIPAC does not even represent the feelings of the average Israeli, let alone the average American Jew.
This American Jewish neo-conservatism is unhealthy not only for America but for Israel as well. A prime example: The Israeli press reports that Israel is trying to find a way to deal with the Palestinians while not dealing with Hamas. Official public statements aside, they realize that they cannot cut off all contacts with the Palestinians and that the world cannot discontinue financial help; otherwise Israel will find a million starving Palestinians on its border, and this will not lead to peace or security for Israel. Privately, the Israeli government was against the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act (the Ross-Lehtinen-Lantos bill) which recently passed the House of Representatives. It would cut off all American contacts with the Palestinian Authority, even with its president Mahmoud Abbas, who is a moderate seeking peace. Despite Israel's private reservations, AIPAC not only pushed this bill, it was instrumental in writing it. Even though the AIPAC candidate lost in Israel, he won in the U.S. House of Representatives. Hopefully, the Senate and the White House will correct this.
Beware that you are reading treasonable material. If you "out" the Israeli lobby and you are Gentile, you're branded an anti-Semite; if you are Jewish, you're obviously a self-hating Jew. The Jewish establishment abides no criticism of Israel. You don't agree with me? Take this example: Last month a pro-Palestinian play entitled My Name is Rachel Corrie was to open at the New York Theatre Workshop, a "progressive" company on East Fourth Street. The play is based on the writings of a young British [sic] girl who was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer when she was protesting the demolition of Palestinian homes in Gaza two years ago. Although the play was widely praised in London last year, it never opened in New York. The theater producers spoke to the ADL and other Jewish leaders, including big-money Jews on its board, and that was the end of that. But, of course, we don't "censor" discussion concerning Israel. We just politely give our opinions and the voice of the other side disappears.
Another example: 400 rabbis, including myself, signed a letter sponsored by Brit Tzedek v'Shalom that appeared in the Forward this past month. It was a mildly liberal statement that proclaimed that "we are deeply troubled by the recent victory of Hamas," but went on to urge "indirect assistance to the Palestinian people via NGO's, with the appropriate conditions to ensure that it does not reach the hands of terrorists." Pretty mild stuff. Yet pulpit rabbis across this country who signed the letter have reported a concerted effort to silence them. The letter has been branded a "piece of back-stabbing abandonment of the Jews of Israel." Synagogue boards have been pressured to silence their rabbis by that loose coalition called the "Israel Lobby."
Just another example of the Jewish establishment stifling any discussion of Israel that does not conform to the neo-conservative tenets of AIPAC and its cohorts. Beware of these self-appointed guardians of Israel and Jewish values. In the end they will destroy everything that makes Judaism a compassionate religion, and if in their zeal they do not destroy Israel, they certainly will not make it more secure.
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Big Brother vs. "Terrorism"
Government Monitoring About 200 Million Americans' Calls
May 11, 2006
As controversy continues to swirl around the National Security Agency program that taps the phones of suspected terrorists within the United States, a USA Today story reveals another piece of the president's NSA spying program.
Today, the newspaper says that the spy agency has been collecting information on every phone call made in this country.
"Chances are that your cell phone calls, as well as your home phone calls, have been tracked," said Leslie Cauley, the reporter who broke the story. She said there was a "high likelihood" that this information was being passed on to the FBI and CIA.
The paper reports that three of the nation's largest phone companies - AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth - have been turning over detailed call histories of all their customers since Sept. 11, 2001, to help the NSA compile what they hope will be "the largest database ever assembled in the world."
About 200 million people have had their call records monitored, Cauley said. This means the NSA keeps track of the outgoing and incoming calls, but not the callers' Social Security numbers or addresses.
"This is referred to as data mining. They slice and dice these numbers a thousand different ways," Cauley said. "They analyze patterns. If you're NSA, you look for suspicious patterns."
In all their comments about the eavesdropping program, U.S. officials never revealed that they were involved in this massive collection of telephone data. Instead the president has described the NSA surveillance program this way: "The program applies only to international communications. In other words, one end of the communication must be outside the United States."
The NSA responded to the report with a statement.
"Given the nature of the work we do, it would be irresponsible to comment. Therefore, we have no information to provide," the statement read. "However, it is important to note that the NSA takes its legal responsibility seriously and operates within the law."
Gen. Michael Hayden, the president's pick for the next CIA director, has defended the eavesdropping program, saying it goes after al Qaeda operatives.
"This is targeted and focused," Hayden said. "This is not about intercepting conversations between people in the United States."
Hayden is likely to be grilled on the NSA surveillance programs during his confirmation hearings next week.
According to USA Today, this massive NSA data collection program is used to analyze calling patterns that may be helpful in tracking down terrorists. This part of the spy program does not include listening to or recording Americans' conversations. The data NSA gathers are so private that phone companies would normally face steep fines for divulging the information.
According to USA Today, one phone company, Qwest, has refused to turn over its records, citing legal concerns. So far, the White House has not responded to this report.
In the past, it has told ABC News that the NSA's terrorist surveillance program is within the law, and is essential to keeping Americans safe.
"Qwest had concerns about the legality about handing over customer information without having court warrants," Cauley said. "It wasn't that they wanted to participate."
Comment: See the next article for an example of the NSA's abiity to tell bare-faced lies.
Note that the idea of "the law" is, under Bush, whatever Bush decides is the law. He's the Decider, and if he decides that his need to spy overeraches the provisions of the US Constitution, thn he can inteprret the Constitution to his needs.
That has nothing to do with "the law", and everything to do with a dictaorship where one man has the final say.
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Security Issue Kills Domestic Spying Probe
Associated Press
Wed May 10 2006
WASHINGTON - The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter.
The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax to Rep. Maurice Hinchey (news, bio, voting record), D-N.Y., on Wednesday saying they were closing their inquiry because without clearance their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers' role in the program.
"We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program," OPR counsel H. Marshall Jarrett wrote to Hinchey. Hinchey's office shared the letter with The Associated Press.
Jarrett wrote that beginning in January, his office has made a series of requests for the necessary clearances. Those requests were denied Tuesday.
"Without these clearances, we cannot investigate this matter and therefore have closed our investigation," wrote Jarrett.
Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the terrorist surveillance program "has been subject to extensive oversight both in the executive branch and in Congress from the time of its inception."
Roehrkasse noted the OPR's mission is not to investigate possible wrongdoing in other agencies, but to determine if Justice Department lawyers violated any ethical rules. He declined to comment when asked if the end of the inquiry meant the agency believed its lawyers had handled the wiretapping matter ethically.
Hinchey is one of many House Democrats who have been highly critical of the domestic eavesdropping program first revealed in December. He said lawmakers would push to find out who at the NSA denied the Justice Department lawyers security clearance.
"This administration thinks they can just violate any law they want, and they've created a culture of fear to try to get away with that. It's up to us to stand up to them," said Hinchey.
In February, the OPR announced it would examine the conduct of its own agency's lawyers in the program, though they were not authorized to investigate NSA activities.
Bush's decision to authorize the largest U.S. spy agency to monitor people inside the United States, without warrants, generated a host of questions about the program's legal justification.
The administration has vehemently defended the eavesdropping, saying the NSA's activities were narrowly targeted to intercept international calls and e-mails of Americans and others inside the U.S. with suspected ties to the al-Qaida terror network.
Separately, the Justice Department sought last month to dismiss a federal lawsuit accusing the telephone company AT&T of colluding with the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program.
The lawsuit, brought by an Internet privacy group, does not name the government as a defendant, but the
Department of Justice has sought to quash the lawsuit, saying it threatens to expose government and military secrets.
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Proposed rule changes would tangle the Web
By Michael Socolow
The Baltimore Sun
May 9, 2006
Congress wants to change the Internet.
This is news to most people because the major news media have not actively pursued the story. Yet both the House and Senate commerce committees are promoting new rules governing the manner by which most Americans receive the Web. Congressional passage of new rules is widely anticipated, as is President Bush's signature. Once this happens, the Internet will change before your eyes.
The proposed House legislation, the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act (COPE), offers no protections for "network neutrality."
Currently, your Internet provider does not voluntarily censor the Web as it enters your home. This levels the playing field between the tiniest blog and the most popular Web site.
Yet the big telecom companies want to alter this dynamic. AT&T and Verizon have publicly discussed their plans to divide the information superhighway into separate fast and slow lanes. Web sites and services willing to pay a toll will be channeled through the fast lane, while all others will be bottled up in the slower lanes.
COPE, and similar telecom legislation offered in the Senate, does nothing to protect the consumer from this transformation of the Internet.
The telecoms are frustrated that commercial Web sites reap unlimited profits while those providing entry to your home for these companies are prevented from fully cashing in. If the new telecom regulations pass without safeguarding net neutrality, the big telecom companies will be able to prioritize the Web for you. They will be free to decide which Web sites get to your computer faster and which ones may take longer - or may not even show up at all.
By giving the telecoms the ability to harness your Web surfing, the government will empower them to shake down the most profitable Web companies. These companies will sell access to you, to Amazon.com, Travelocity.com and even BaltimoreSun.com, etc. What if these companies elect not to pay? Then, when you type in "amazon.com," you might be redirected to barnesandnoble.com, or your lightning-quick DSL Internet service might suddenly move at horse-and-buggy speed.
It might appear that the direct ramifications of this bill are somewhat obscure. Why should you care, if your Internet fee isn't altered? Or if your Web surfing will (possibly) be only minimally disrupted? (The telecoms understand that completely barring access to certain sites - especially the most popular ones - would be counterproductive.)
You should care because any corporate restriction on information gathering directly counters the original purpose of the World Wide Web.
"Universality is essential to the Web," says its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee. "It loses its power if there are certain types of things to which you can't link."
If calling up the Web site of your favorite political commentator takes far longer than surfing to a commercial site, the new laws will have a direct impact on the Web's democratic utility. The proposed laws also facilitate future steps toward corporate censorship. Do you think that the telecoms, under the proposed regulations, would make it easy to visit the Web sites of their disgruntled - or possibly striking - employees?
The proposed new rules have received surprisingly sparse media coverage. The new laws have economic, political and social ramifications. There are several explanations for the silence.
The most probable is simply that because the laws have strong bipartisan support in both houses of Congress, they do not appear particularly newsworthy. COPE has been promoted vigorously in the House by both Texas Republican Joe L. Barton and Illinois Democrat Bobby L. Rush. While a few legislators are attempting to preserve net neutrality - most notably Democratic Rep. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and Republican Sen. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine - they are clearly outnumbered.
The history of American telecommunications regulation does not offer a promising model for the future of net neutrality. In the late 1800s, Congress approved of Western Union, America's telegraph monopoly, censoring the Associated Press. The 1934 Communications Act resulted in political discussion over the national airwaves being tightly moderated by CBS and NBC.
Most telecom laws are sold to the public as the "natural evolution" of communications technology. Yet there is no truly natural evolution to our telecommunications laws. Only very rarely is regulation completely ordained by physics or technological limits. More commonly, it emerges from the political process. This is news to many Americans unaware of their own media history.
Many people believe the Internet's decentralized structure guarantees that no company or oligopoly could control it. Internet censorship - whether by corporate or state interests - simply sounds impossible. Yet not only is it theoretically possible, but the history of telecommunications regulation tells us it is probable. By the time the telecoms start changing what you see on your screen, it will be too late to complain.
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As Freedom Shrinks, Teens Seek MySpace to Hang Out
Thursday, 11 May 2006, 07:20 CDT
By Jill Serjeant
LOS ANGELES -- They paper their virtual walls with kittens and cartoon characters, give their address as Candyland, their age as 103 and announce they are yearning for true love.
Welcome to the secret, yet very public, world of young teens who are flocking to social-networking Internet sites both to chill with friends and to figure out the timeless adolescent question "Who am I?"
Although originally aimed at 20-somethings interested in independent music, Web sites like MySpace.com, which is owned by News Corp, have attracted an enormous following among middle school students, and cultural theorists say it's not hard to see why.
As the real world is perceived as more dangerous with child abductors lurking on every corner, kids flock online to hang out with friends, express their hopes and dreams and bare their souls with often painful honesty -- mostly unbeknownst to their tech-clumsy parents.
"We have a complete culture of fear," said Danah Boyd, 28, a Ph.D student and social media researcher at the University of California Berkeley. "Kids really have no place where they are not under constant surveillance."
Driven to and from school, chaperoned at parties and often lacking public transport, today's middle-class American kids are no longer free to hang out unsupervised at the park, the bowling alley or to bike around the neighborhood they way they did 20 years ago.
"A lot of that coming-of-age stuff in public is gone. So kids are creating social spaces within all this controlled space," said Boyd.
LIFE SUPPORT
The ranks of Santa Monica, California-based MySpace.com has swollen to more than 73 million members in two years, making it the second-biggest Web domain after Yahoo in terms of page views. Other popular teen sites are Friendster.com, Tagged.com, Xanga.com and Orkut.com.
Most MySpace members live in the United States but a British version was launched this year and Australia will be next.
More than half of 15- to 20-year-olds who are online are using MySpace, according to the company's research. They use the site's design technology to create personal "spaces" that resemble a cross between a high school locker and a secret diary.
Researchers say older teens and 20-somethings use the site more for friendship, sharing music and arranging meetings and parties.
The younger set use it to chill with known friends and work out their own identity. Some construct fantasy lives of vast wages, luxury cars and say they are searching for "live-in pimps." Others confess touchingly to being geeks, loving uncool movies like "The Sound of Music" or list their puppy as their lover.
"Building identity is a lot of what a teen-ager is. The majority feel they don't fit in," said networking consultant Ross Dawson, chairman of Future Exploration Network.
"This is the first generation for which it is entirely natural to socialize in a digital environment. Mobile phones, instant messaging, texting and being online really are their life support," Dawson said.
ADULT ALARM
Under-14s are not supposed to use MySpace but tens of thousands ignore that stipulation, inventing ages and high school careers still beyond their reach, and sometimes posting sexually precocious pictures.
To meet concern over possible sexual exploitation of children, MySpace hired a safety czar in April and requires under-18s to review safety tips before registering. It also restricts the profiles of under-16s to users they know.
It says it has deleted more than 250,000 profiles of under-14-year-olds since 2004 on the basis of tips by parents and algorithms that search the site looking for keywords and phrases that identify very young users.
"We are now deleting something like 5,000 under-age profiles a day," said Shawn Gold, head of marketing for MySpace.
Gold said the dangers should be kept in perspective. "If MySpace were a state it would be twice the size of California, but the crime associated with it would be a five-block area of New York City."
For all the adult alarm over the coarse language and provocative poses often seen on such sites, Boyd said teens are doing just what they have always done.
"Adults are not normally privy to these teen-age expressions. But when teens hang out in public they do these stupid things and they always have.
"Teens are trying to figure out their sexuality for better or worse. It's a problem for parents to pretend like it doesn't exist. If parents have an open mind and can hear their teens expressing themselves in all their ridiculousness, they can make sense of it and it stops being so scary," she said.
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Donnie Darko director investigated for terrorist links
Staff and agencies
Thursday May 11, 2006
According to his official biography, Richard Kelly is the director of the acclaimed Donnie Darko, the writer of the less acclaimed Domino and a contender for the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes film festival. According to the Department of Homeland Security he is a suspected terrorist who may now be prevented from travelling to Cannes next week.
Kelly, 31, appears caught in bureaucratic limbo after his passport was reportedly "held under review" by the US government. Sources suggest that the film-maker has been confused with another man, "James Kelly", who is on the terrorist watch list. Kelly's full name is James Richard Kelly.
Born in Virginia, the son of a NASA technician, Kelly made his feature debut in 2001 with the black comedy Donnie Darko, starring Jake Gyllenhaal. His latest picture, Southland Tales, is set in a dystopian Los Angeles paralysed by economic and environmental collapse. Ironically, the film is implicitly concerned with security measures taken by the US government after the events of September 11 2001.
"The paranoid conspiracy freak inside me is starting to think this has something to do with the film," Kelly admitted yesterday. In the meantime he has enlisted his mother to hunt for documents that prove his American citizenship.
The Cannes film festival runs May 17-28.
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US rejects calls for Guantánamo closure
David Fickling
Thursday May 11, 2006
The US state department today rejected Lord Goldsmith's calls for the Guantánamo Bay detention camp to be closed down.
Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Washington would "like nothing better than to close down Guantánamo", but that it could not be done at present.
"The fact of the matter is that the people there are dangerous people and ... one thing we don't want to do is release people now who might at some point in the future end up on the battlefield facing our troops ... or committing acts of terrorism," he told reporters.
He said prisoners in the Cuban military base had access to judicial review and there was a "process" for trying to move people through the camp.
In a speech in London last night, Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, said Guantánamo was a "symbol of injustice" and should be shut down.
"It is time, in my view, that it should close," he said. "Not only would it, in my personal opinion, be right to close Guantánamo as a matter of principle, I believe it would also help to remove what has become a symbol to many - right or wrong - of injustice."
As the British government's highest-ranking official in legal issues, Lord Goldsmith's opinions carry considerable weight.
He was careful to stress that his remarks were personal views rather than those of the government, but they are the strongest British condemnation of Guantánamo yet.
Tony Blair has not gone beyond describing the camp as an "anomaly", and the former foreign secretary Jack Straw echoed the US line of looking forward to an unspecified date when the camp would be able to close.
Mr McCormack yesterday said detainees were being sent back to their home countries so long as the US was confident they wouldn't "go in the front door and head out the back".
"The president has talked about the fact that we'd like nothing better than at some point in the future to close down Guantánamo," he said. Nobody wants to be a jailer for the world."
Four British citizens held at the camp were released without charge last January.
Last week, the high court ruled that the government was not obliged to lobby for the release of two British residents detained at Guantánamo.
Appeals over the rights of Australian inmate David Hicks to British citizenship are ongoing.
Around 750 people have passed through the camp since it opened in 2002.
Last month, US reporters acquired a list of around three-quarters of the detainees, the majority of whom came from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
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62 suspected human smugglers arrested in US
www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-11 11:44:27
WASHINGTON, May 10 (Xinhua) -- A multi-agency task force arrested 62 people on charges of human smuggling after a two-month crackdown operation, authorities of the U.S. city of Phoenix said on Wednesday.
Police, customs and immigration enforcement agents also detained 528 illegal immigrants in the crackdown along the border of Arizona, the biggest U.S. entry point for illegal immigrants coming across the U.S.-Mexican border.
A total of 11 weapons, 62 vehicles and six real estate locations valued at 1.7 million dollars were seized. Some 4.8 million dollars in cash, 5 kg of cocaine and more than 1 kg of marijuana were also found in the operation.
Authorities said those arrested ranged from members of small-time organizations to operators of criminal syndicates who make money bringing mostly Mexican immigrants across the desert.
Arizona passed a state law that makes human smuggling, already a federal felony in the U.S., a state crime last August.
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Iran 'n Iraq
The Threat from Iran Is to Israel: Bush Spins His Iran Attack Plans
by Gary Leupp
www.dissidentvoice.org
May 10, 2006
I read again in this morning's Boston Globe a matter of fact reference to Iran's threat to "wipe Israel off the map." This echoes the repeated allegation by President Bush and other top administration officials that Iran's President Ahmadinejad has issued such a call. "We are talking about a specific threat on a partner of the U.S. and Germany," Bush told the German newspaper Bild last week. But is this not just more neocon disinformation, designed to inspire fear that Iran's nuclear program, which heads the long list of Washington's charges against Iran, is really designed to annihilate Israel?
It turns out that Ahmadinejad never said what is being routinely attributed to him. Juan Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at University of Michigan who reads Persian, explains that he actually stated (quoting the late Ayatollah Khomeini): "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)."
Now, some might say, "So he didn't say, 'wipe off the map,' he said 'erase from the page.' What's the difference? Anyway he's saying he wants to get rid of Israel." But Cole explains why the mistranslation significantly distorts the Iranian leader's words. "Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope -- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government. Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that 'Israel must be wiped off the map' with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time."
How would it sound if Bush kept repeating: "The Iranian president has quoted Ayatollah Khomeini, who died seventeen years ago, as saying 'the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time'"? Pretty lame huh. Or if he were to say, "In ten years, Iran might be able to build a nuclear weapon to use against Israel, which itself has had a couple hundred nukes for quite awhile?" Pretty lame too. You can be sure that employees in the current incarnation of the Office of Special Plans aren't being paid to churn out that kind of stuff. They're paid to produce effective propaganda to justify the planned attack on Iran.
"This is how we'll spin it," some wise neocon must have suggested as soon as the Iranian leader made his statement. "We'll say Ahmadinejad has stated publicly that he wants to wipe Israel off the map, and since we know that Iran is trying to produce nuclear weapons, clearly Iran plans to nuke Israel at the earliest opportunity. People will say, 'That's crazy, Israel would respond to an attack by destroying Iran.' But we'll say, 'Ahmadinejad is indeed crazy. And he's as bad as Hitler!'"
There are risks in this spin. In the build-up to war on Iraq, the security of Israel was only referenced marginally. The suggestion that the war was "for Israel" was roundly pooh-poohed and those arguing this were and are tarred with the brush of anti-Semitism. But here the president is all but declaring that he will attack Iran rather than allow the country to acquire the ability to produce nuclear weapons which might someday be deployed against nuclear Israel. On March 20 Bush declared specifically, "The threat from Iran is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our strong ally Israel. That's a threat, a serious threat. It's a threat to world peace. I made it clear, and I'll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally Israel." Not, "One of the threats from Iran," but "The threat from Iran." The problem with Iran (which has never in modern times attacked another country) is that it threatens, not the U.S., but Israel! That's the pretty clearly stated position of the administration. And if it's actually unlikely that Iran plans military action against Israel, the administration will doctor the intelligence as it has in the past, and ensure that the press hypes the threat. "Vanish from the page of time" becomes "wipe off the map." Ahmadinejad becomes Hitler. A legal nuclear program once promoted by U.S. administrations becomes a cause of inherent suspicion because Iran with all its oil has no reason for nuclear power. A design on a stolen laptop becomes confirmation of a military nuclear program. Iran's withdrawal from a voluntary non-binding agreement between Europe and Iran becomes a violation of international law. The U.S. eager to effect regime change in Iran becomes the "international community" supposedly "losing patience" with Iran.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that the real reason behind the manufactured "crisis" is Washington's concern about the state of Israel. It may be the primary concern of some of the neocons who have played key roles during the last few years; Douglas Feith, for example, seems to view the invasion of Iraq (which his OSP marketed before the war) as the "answer to the Holocaust." But Israel isn't the reason that Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Rice have embraced the neocon program.
The war planners can hype any slight shred of evidence for Tehran-al Qaeda contact, emphasizing reports that some Taliban fighters fleeing Afghanistan were given safe passage through Iran. But anyone paying attention knows that Iran almost went to war with the Taliban, supported the Northern Alliance, and as a Shiite nation is despised by bin Laden and his crowd. Iran has close ties with the Shiite political parties in Iraq. So "for bureaucratic reasons" as Wolfowitz would say, the administration's selling its regime change plans for Iran as a response to a nuclear program threatening the Jewish state (and hence "world peace").
Surely there are risks in saying, "The real threat is to Israel, and we will use military force to protect Israel." True, AIPAC has Congress in its pocket, the Christian Zionist contingent can be counted on to support military action against Iran, and those asking questions may be silenced by the charge of anti-Semitism. Even so people will ask, "Why don't we let the Israelis take care of themselves? Why our boys instead of theirs?" And there could be a big ugly backlash against "the Lobby" as ongoing legal investigations and scandals proceed. But what's the alternative to making Israel the issue, as the president has done?
They could say, honestly, "This has more to do with acquiring geopolitical control over Southwest Asia and encircling rising China than fighting terrorism or establishing the security of the Jewish state." But they can't say that without validating chapter and verse Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism and calling into question the whole logic of the system. So they lie, make up quotes, plant scary stories in the press, doing so more recklessly as the president's poll figures drop. All so they can wipe their enemies off the map, using their own nukes to do so.
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Iran president accuses West of double standards about nuclear proliferation
23:29:36 EDT May 10, 2006
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Iran's president said Thursday he is ready to negotiate with western powers about Tehran's nuclear program but warned threats would make any talks more difficult.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his comments after key UN Security Council members agreed to present Tehran with a choice of incentives or sanctions in deciding whether to suspend uranium enrichment.
The Iranian leader told Indonesia's Metro TV station he is unconcerned about the possibility of UN sanctions, saying the West would be the big loser if his country was isolated from the world community.
"We do not need to be dependent on others," he said, adding international isolation would serve only to "motivate" the country's nuclear scientists.
He also said western countries with large stocks of nuclear weapons are practising "double standards" in pressing Iran to stop its peaceful nuclear program.
Asked what it would take to begin talks with the United States to resolve the standoff, he said the country would talk to anyone except Israel, which Iran does not recognize.
"There are no limits to our dialogue," he said.
"But if someone points an arm (a weapon) at your face and says you must speak, will you do that?"
While Washington has said it favours a diplomatic end to the dispute, it hasn't ruled out military force and is pushing at the United Nations for economic sanctions against Iran.
Despite Ahmadinejad's hardline rhetoric, there were hints of a possible solution to the escalating international crisis from other quarters.
In a letter to Time magazine published on its website Wednesday, a representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei offered new possibilities for solving the impasse with the United States and its allies on the issue.
Hassan Rohani, Iran's former top nuclear negotiator, said Tehran would consider ratifying an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) protocol that provides for intrusive and snap inspections and would also address the question of preventing a pullout from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
The current Iranian negotiator, Ali Larijani, said Tuesday that Tehran has no intention of withdrawing from the treaty and promised to co-operate if the UN atomic watchdog agency, rather than the Security Council, dealt with the issue of its nuclear program.
Iran ended all voluntary co-operation with the IAEA in February, including allowing snap inspections of its nuclear facilities.
At a meeting Tuesday, representatives of the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany agreed to tell Iran the possible consequences of its refusal to halt its enrichment program and the benefits if it abandons it.
The move will delay a U.S.-backed draft UN resolution that could lead to sanctions and possible military action if Iran does not suspend uranium enrichment.
U.S. State Secretary Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday she and her counterparts on the UN Security Council agreed to give Iran another two weeks to reconsider its position.
"We agreed to continue to seek a Security Council resolution but that we would wait for a couple of weeks while the Europeans design an offer to the Iranians that would make clear they have a choice that would allow them to have a civil nuclear program, if that is indeed what they want," Rice said on ABC's Good Morning America.
The Chinese and Russians have balked at the British, French and U.S. efforts to put the resolution under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. Such a move would declare Iran a threat to international peace and security and set the stage for further measures if Tehran refuses to comply. Those measures could range from breaking diplomatic relations to economic sanctions and military action.
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ElBaradei urges compromise in Iran nuclear row
Thu May 11, 2006 08:23 AM ET
By Emma Thomasson
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog welcomed on Thursday moves to avert possible U.N. sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear program and appealed for compromise as Iran's president said he was ready to talk.
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said he was pleased the U.N. Security Council was holding off from sanctions against Iran as Europeans work on a package of benefits to induce Tehran to cooperate.
"I'm very optimistic. I hope both sides will move away from the war of words, I hope the pitch will go down, I hope people will adopt a cool-headed approach," he told a news conference at Amsterdam airport. "We need compromises from both sides."
"I hope that at this stage we will use more carrots before we think of using sticks," he said. "It is a very good idea that the Security Council is holding its horses."
Washington and its European allies have been seeking a U.N. Security Council resolution that would oblige Iran to halt all uranium enrichment work or face possible sanctions.
But Russia and China have resisted the move and Washington agreed this week to let Europeans first devise a package of benefits for Iran in return for cooperating, putting back a decision on a possible resolution for about two weeks.
Tehran says it only wants to produce low-grade enriched uranium to use in atomic power reactors, not the highly enriched uranium needed to make bombs.
During a visit to Indonesia, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran was "ready to engage in dialogue with anybody."
He was responding to a question on a letter he sent to President Bush this week, the first by an Iranian president to his U.S. counterpart since Washington cut ties with Iran in 1980 following Iran's 1979 revolution.
Washington has dismissed the letter as a diversionary tactic that did not address the problem of Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
In the interview broadcast on Indonesia's Metro television, Ahmadinejad said of Iran's nuclear program: "It has nothing to do with nuclear weapons, or military purposes."
ElBaradei, in The Netherlands to receive an award, said the Iran crisis could only be solved by addressing issues like security and trade as well as the question of nuclear energy.
"The only solution to the Iran situation is a comprehensive package through dialogue, through negotiation. The more we can go back to the negotiating table, the more we can address grievances from both sides," he said.
"Iran owes it to the international community to make sure that its program is exclusively for peaceful purposes. They have work to do with (the) IAEA to clarify outstanding issues. They have confidence building measures to take," he said.
Ahmadinejad defended Iran's nuclear policies in a speech at the University of Indonesia and called Israel a creature of Europe that had no place in the Middle East. He has previously said Israel should be eliminated.
After talks with Ahmadinejad on Wednesday, Indonesian President Susilio Bambang Yudhoyono said Jakarta had offered to help mediate in the dispute. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, is on good terms with Iran and other Middle East countries as well as with the West.
Ahmadinejad is due to fly to Bali on Friday for a meeting of the Developing Eight group that also includes Indonesia, Nigeria, Malaysia, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
A leading Iranian opposition politician said Tehran should scrap uranium enrichment to avoid dragging itself deeper into a nuclear crisis and should not rely on China or Russia to veto any U.N. action on the Islamic state.
Ebrahim Yazdi, head of the banned Freedom Movement, also said Ahmadinejad was in no position to sermonize in his letter to the U.S. president.
Yazdi told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday that China and Russia, which both have energy interests in Iran, would not jeopardize their economic or other ties with the United States if Iran refused to back down from enriching uranium.
"If Iran insists on its stand, we are afraid that the Russians and the Chinese would give up the resistance to the United States and then there would be a consensus on how to treat Iran," he said.
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UK, Paris and Berlin offer Iran new deal
May 10 2006
Financial Times
France, Germany and the UK yesterday decided to make Iran a fresh offer to resolve the dispute over its nuclear programme, less than 24 hours after foreign ministers from the world's big powers failed to agree a common stance on the issue.
Senior diplomats meeting in New York agreed that the three European Union countries would negotiate a package of benefits to offer Iran if it chose to comply with international demands to cease nuclear enrichment, a process that can generate weapons-grade material.
The move came after a letter from Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad to President George W Bush had seemed to highlight the divisions between the big powers by indicating that Iran was more willing to negotiate than was the US.
A western diplomat said EU foreign ministers would discuss the new package at a meeting in Brussels on Monday, adding that debate on the contentious issue of whether to invoke the UN's Chapter 7 enforcement powers would wait until later.
The decision comes after Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, insisted at this week's meeting with his counterparts from the permanent members of the UN Security Council that Iran needed to be offered clear benefits for cooperating.
Iran rejected a previous EU compromise last August, but the new package - which has yet to be formulated - is expected to offer more technical aid for Iran's nuclear programme, perhaps including help building reactors.
Washington had argued in recent weeks that the focus of the international community needed to be on pushing Iran to comply rather than providing new inducements. But diplomats said that after repeated failures to convince Russia to sign up to a tough draft Security Council resolution on Iran, Washington had not raised any opposition to the idea of a new offer.
The development marks a small-scale success in the Europeans' attempts to bolster their bargaining position with Iran by developing both threats of sanctions - which Russia had opposed - and incentives - which the US had rejected.
EU diplomats hope that the new offer will also open the way to Russia's endorsement of a Security Council resolution under Chapter 7.
Moscow has proposed invoking only certain articles of Chapter 7, leaving out those that might authorise sanctions or military force. A senior western diplomat suggested that was still on the table, as was the possibility of invoking article 41, which allows sanctions, but not article 42, which can authorise force.
The five permanent Security Council members have all called on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment. Tehran, which insists its purposes are purely peaceful, has accelerated its programme.
After the meeting Frank-Walter Steinmeier, German foreign minister, said it could take another two weeks to agree a resolution. That would still leave time to set a month-long deadline for Iran ahead of July's summit of the Group of Eight leading industrial nations in St Petersburg, Russia.
Comment: Diplomacy was never an option with Iran. Having started the rhetoric and lies that will lead to an Israeli attack on Iran, there is no way that Israel was ever going to not go through with it. Germany, France and the UK must surely be aware of this. As such, all of the overtures for a diplomatic solution is simply designed to keep the world's population complacent up until the time is deemed right to go ahead and murder thousands, or hundreds of the thousands, of Iranian civilians.
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Have 200,000 Ak47s Fallen Into The Hands Of Iraq Terrorists?
UK Mirror
10/05/2006
Fears Over Secret U.S. Arms Shipment
SOME 200,000 guns the US sent to Iraqi security forces may have been smuggled to terrorists, it was feared yesterday.
The 99-tonne cache of AK47s was to have been secretly flown out from a US base in Bosnia. But the four planeloads of arms have vanished.
Orders for the deal to go ahead were given by the US Department of Defense. But the work was contracted out via a complex web of private arms traders.
And the Moldovan airline used to transport the shipment was blasted by the UN in 2003 for smuggling arms to Liberia, human rights group Amnesty has discovered.
It follows a separate probe claiming that thousands of guns meant for Iraq's police and army instead went to al-Qaeda
Amnesty chief spokesman Mike Blakemore said: "It's unbelievable that no one can account for 200,000 assault rifles. If these weapons have gone missing it's a terrifying prospect." American defence chiefs hired a US firm to take the guns, from the 90s Bosnian war, to Iraq.
But air traffic controllers in Baghdad have no record of the flights, which supposedly took off between July 2004 and July 2005. A coalition forces spokesman confirmed they had not received "any weapons from Bosnia" and added they were "not aware of any purchases for Iraq from Bosnia". Nato and US officials have already voiced fears that Bosnian arms - sold by US, British and Swiss firms - are being passed to insurgents. A Nato spokesman said: "There's no tracking mechanism to ensure they don't fall into the wrong hands. There are concerns that some may have been siphoned off." This year a newspaper claimed two UK firms were involved in a deal in which thousands of guns for Iraqi forces were re-routed to al-Qaeda.
One arms broker's lawyer is said to have admitted that nearly all of a shipment of 1,500 AK-47s went missing. And a US official said £270million of equipment could not be traced.
Meanwhile, Aerocom, the Moldovan air firm at the centre of the 200,000 missing AK47s, was stripped of its licence by its national authorities a day before the first shipment.
Two other companies in the complicated sale claim to have papers proving the guns were delivered in Iraq but refuse to show them.
Amnesty has now called on Britain to clamp down on the arms trade.
Spokeswoman Kate Allen said: "It's out of control and costing hundreds of thousands of lives every year. The UK has a real chance to do something about it when the UN meets in June."
Comment: Does the U.S. government story sound believeable to you? That they sent 200,000 AK47s to the Iraqi military and they somehow went missing? Is it really believeable that the US government and its corporate agencies would employ such sloppy tracking of arms and the money that was used to buy them? Let's get REAL here. The mention of Bosnia as a stopover for the arms on the way to Iraq is very interesting given that the US government employed teams of armed mercenaries in the Bosnian conflict during the 1990's to manufacture ethnic conflict and further their geopolitical goals. These goals included, as always, the massive income that war (under the aegis of US-controlled NATO) generates for American defence contractors and their political friends and the establishment of US bases (reference above article) and all the control and influence in the region these provide.
The most likely explanation for where these arms ended up is where they were meant to end up - in the hands of similar mercenaries from Russian, Eastern Europe and elsewhere who are now stationed in Iraq and who operate under the command of Israeli and American military intelligence. These guns are currently being used by these mercenaries to murder the approximately 1,000 Iraqi Sunni and Shia civilians every month in an effort to "Iraqize" the conflict and turn the agressive and illegal American invasion of that country into an internal sectarian conflict.
Other aims of the manufacturing of "civil war" or the appearance of civil war, include distracting and demoralising the real Iraqi resistance and thereby reducing the number of attacks on American troops, the provison of evidence that "al-Qaeda" is still a threat and operating in Iraq (inexplicably killing Iraqi civilians) and ultimately that the international community will decide that Iraq is ungovernable as one country and must be split into three separate, more easily controllable, states.
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At least 39 killed in continuing Iraq violence
Reuters
10/05/2006
The following are security and political developments in Iraq on Wednesday as of 0845 GMT.
Iraq is trying to form a government of national unity to combat a mostly Sunni Arab insurgency. Sectarian tensions have run high since the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra in February, which unleashed a wave of reprisal attacks.
TAL AFAR - A suicide bomber killed 24 people and wounded 35 on Tuesday when he blew his car up in a market in the northern city of Tal Afar, police said on Wednesday, raising the death toll from 17. A hospital source said the casualties included civilians and Iraqi police and troops.
The U.S. military said on Wednesday the explosion killed at least 16 Iraqi civilians and wounded 134 other people.
BAQUBA - Gunmen killed 11 people while they were heading to their work at an electrical equipment factory near Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, Lieutenant Colonel Salman al-Dahlagi of the Iraqi police said.
Police had earlier given a different version of the incident, saying seven people were killed when a booby-trapped car exploded. Dahlagi said the initial report was based on an erroneous witness statement.
BAQUBA - Gunmen killed Lieutenant Colonel Kanan Hasan, an aide to the head of Baquba's Criminal Intelligence Directorate, along with two body guards, while he was heading to his work in the city, police said.
BAQUBA - A policeman and a civilian were wounded when a roadside bomb went off near a police patrol in Baquba, police said.
BAGHDAD - Gunmen shot dead an employee of the Ministry of Defence in southwestern Baghdad, police said.
HAWIJA - An army major and two soldiers were seriously wounded when a roadside bomb went off near their patrol in Hawija, 70 km southwest of Kirkuk, police said.
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Alarmed by Raids, Neighbors Stand Guard in Iraq
New York Times
May 10, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 9 - It was almost 3 a.m. in Zubaida Square in central Baghdad last week when headlights signaled one flash, then two, then one again.
From the darkness, someone signaled back. The watchers were there.
As evidence mounts that Shiite police commandos are carrying out secret killings, Sunni Arab neighborhoods across Baghdad have begun forming citizen groups to keep the paramilitary forces out of their areas entirely. In large swaths of western Baghdad, and in at least six majority Sunni areas in its center, young men take turns standing in streets after the 11 p.m. curfew, to send out signals by flashlights and cellphones if strangers approach.
In some cases, the Sunnis have set up barricades and have taken up arms against Shiite-led commando raids into their neighborhoods. In other cases, residents have tipped off Sunni insurgents. Watch groups have been assembled in other mixed areas, including Baquba to the north and Mahmudiya to the south, residents and officials said.
Three years after the American invasion, the war has settled here, in the quiet of neighborhoods, streets and Iraqis' backyards. Dozens of bodies surface daily. People are taken from their homes and executed. Assassinations are routine. But instead of looking to the government for protection, ordinary Sunni Arabs are taking up arms against it, perhaps the most vivid illustration of the depth of Sunni mistrust of the American backed, Shiite-led security forces. "There is no bridge of confidence between the government and the Iraqi people," said Tarik al-Hashimy, a vice president of Iraq who is a Sunni Arab.
The groups, informal networks of neighbors, are not tracked by the authorities, and so are difficult to count. The Iraqi Army's battalions responsible for the northern and central portions of eastern Baghdad touched base with groups in Fadhel, Qaera, Waziriya and Adhamiya last Monday night. Many more neighborhoods, including Khudra, Jihad and Ghazaliya, in heavily Sunni western Baghdad, report similar organization. The residents emerge after dark, and are encountered by Iraqi Army night patrols who check in on them.
The groups - with intricate webs of cellphones, mosque loudspeakers, flashlight codes and handheld radios - mushroomed after the February bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra that sparked several days of killing of Sunnis by Shiite militias.
"Samarra is the turning point in the security file," Mr. Hashimy said.
In March, the Baghdad morgue received 1,294 bodies, more than double the 596 received in March 2005. In April, the figure was up by 88 percent from the previous April. Nearly 90 percent died violently, most by gunfire, according to the morgue.
"The killing, you can't imagine the killing," said Yusra Abdul Aziz, 47, a teacher, whose block, in Adhamiya, organized its watch group in March, after four neighbors were shot dead over several days. "Without any reason. Cars come and shoot us. We run to the hospital and get our wounded. We live in a nightmare, actually."
On her block, seven men, Sunnis and Shiites, stand on rooftops and street corners from midnight to 6 a.m., stopping suspicious cars. Palm tree trunks and pieces of trash are used to block roads. Still, she is so afraid of nighttime raids by both the special police and marauding criminals dressed like police officers that she sleeps in her clothes.
As a counterweight to sectarian extremism, neighborhood watch groups often cross sectarian lines, with Sunni and Shiite neighbors standing guard together. Sunnis have even helped to protect Shiite neighbors from Sunni militias.
Many Sunnis say that despite their terror of the Iraqi special police, they tolerate the Iraqi Army, which they consider more professional and less partisan. They say soldiers sometimes turn a blind eye to their weapons, which are illegal outside the house. Some neighborhood watchers interviewed said they had cellphone numbers of army commanders in their speed-dial lists.
"Sometimes they talk to us," said a neighborhood guard. "They say, 'Don't let us see your weapons.' "
The army has even protected Sunni residents from the Shiite police. Col. Ghassan Ali Thamir of the Third Battalion said he stopped several Ministry of the Interior sport utility vehicles from entering Adhamiya last year, infuriating the ministry, which sent a memo demanding an explanation.
"The MOI says Colonel Ghassan cooperates with the terrorists," he said, sitting in his office in a former palace of Saddam Hussein in Adhamiya. "I don't want anyone taking anyone without a list. If they come for one, O.K., take one. But not more."
Sunnis also say they feel safer if Americans accompany Iraqis. "The Americans will not let the Iraqi forces kill us," one Ghazaliya resident put it bluntly.
American commanders say that the watch groups are benign, and that the Iraqi Army does not permit them to patrol with weapons.
"You will see them - a guy standing on the street corner," said Lt. Col. Paul Finken, of the 506th Regimental Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division, whose area of control includes Adhamiya. "They are there, and it's no issue for U.S. Army forces."
Still, to some Iraqi soldiers, the neighborhood patrols seem indistinguishable, in the end, from the Iraqi insurgency. A soldier who patrols in Adhamiya lifted up his sleeve to show scars from a hand grenade that had been thrown at him in the area.
"They show themselves as liking the army, but it's not true," said Second Lt. Ali Khadham of the Iraqi Army's Second Battalion, which patrols Adhamiya. "There's a very big hate inside them for government forces."
Sunnis say they have organized purely out of self-protection, to defend their turf in a city where more and more areas have become no-go zones. In the darkness of Zubaida Square, a guard, Adel Kareem, 38, said he has given up work as a taxi driver because leaving his neighborhood with his Sunni ID meant risking arrest and execution, a fear echoed in many other Sunni areas.
"I can't go to Kadhimiya, Shuala, Sadr City, Shaab," he said, ticking off the city's Shiite neighborhoods. "I would disappear."
Sunni neighborhoods are just as dangerous for Shiites, in part because of neighborhood watch patrols.
Shiites have also organized neighborhood patrols, but their trust in the police is high, and guards are few. Lieutenant Khadham said that in his majority Shiite neighborhood, Ur, about 15 neighbors guard an area of about 400 houses, far less than in Adhamiya, where dozens of guards keep watch on each block.
Shiite areas breathe more easily at night. In Greyat, a riverside Shiite enclave just north of Adhamiya, families with children were out walking at midnight recently. Tea shops overflowed with guests, bakeries exuded inviting smells and men sat talking in outdoor restaurants. In contrast, just several blocks away in the largely Sunni Arab neighborhood of Slekh, lights were out and blocks appeared vacant.
In the darkness of a quiet block in the largely Sunni district of Waziriya in central Baghdad on Monday night, Ali Salah Mahdi, a gangly, 21-year-old Sunni Arab, said his group had heard through its network that extremists intended to attack a neighbor who was working as a translator for American troops. They warned the man, who quickly fled with his family. Shortly after, Mr. Mahdi said, attackers strafed the man's house.
Paramilitary raids in the city appear to have eased in recent months, and Sunni residents attribute the drop to neighborhood patrols obstructing them. The evidence, they say, is that killers are now striking targets at their workplaces, in the hospitals and while they commute.
A recent example is the killing of 14 young men from Slekh last month. The men, who commuted together in a minivan from their shops in Sinek, another area, were returning home on April 15 when their vehicle was stopped and they were led away. Their bodies, some with drill holes, surfaced in the morgue several days later. Residents blame the Interior Ministry, though with no survivors from the van, no witnesses remain.
The incident only hardened residents' resolve for self-defense.
"I am dizzy from going to funerals," said a guard at the Najib mosque, where neighbors came to mourn the men two weeks ago.
And in a more violent, and perhaps more telling, episode, on the night of April 17, uncontrolled gun battles raged in Adhamiya for more than seven hours. Four men, who identified themselves as local guards, said in interviews that shooting broke out after dozens of Interior Ministry cars drove into Adhamiya, though no one acknowledged actually seeing such a car.
Colonel Thamir said Sunni insurgents started rumors that the police had come to arrest people, setting off the battle. Five people were killed and many more were wounded.
Similar battles were reported in Khudra and in Shuhada in western Baghdad, during the days of sectarian rioting in February.
Insurgents started the fight, said Second Lt. Ahmed Majeed of the Iraqi Army's First Battalion Delta Force.
"The civilians started to shoot," he said, looking frustrated. "What should we do?"
The problem, he said, is ultimately one of trust.
"Everyone has a gun," he said. "When I say, 'I'm here to protect you,' they say, 'I'm not sure.'
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Money and Immigration
Gold Rises to 26-Year High as Funds Buy for Inflation Hedge
May 11 2006
Bloomberg
Gold climbed to a 26-year high in London after the U.S. Federal Reserve signaled concern about rising prices, spurring investors to buy bullion as a hedge against inflation. Platinum advanced to a record.
The Fed yesterday raised the target rate for overnight loans between banks and said higher energy prices and raw material consumption "have the potential to add to inflation pressures.'' Inflation erodes the value of assets such as bonds, making precious metals more attractive as a hedge. Gold has gained 37 percent this year.
"You can't ignore a doubling and tripling of raw materials prices over a long period of time,'' said Wolfgang Wrzesniok- Rossbach, head of metals trading at Heraeus Holding in Hanau, Germany. "Inflation is a topic, and it's one of the factors supporting gold prices.''
Gold for immediate delivery rose as much as $5.60, or 0.8 percent, to $713.50 an ounce in London, the highest since it traded at $717 an ounce on Jan. 24, 1980. It traded at $708.98 as of 11:57 a.m. local time. [...]
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April Tax Revenue 2nd-Highest in History
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
AP Economics Writer
May 10, 2006
WASHINGTON - A flood of income tax payments pushed up government receipts to the second-highest level in history in April, giving the country a sizable surplus for the month.
In its monthly accounting of the government's books, the Treasury Department said Wednesday that revenue for the month totaled $315.1 billion as Americans filed their tax returns by the April deadline. The gusher of tax revenue pushed total receipts up by 13.4 percent from April 2005.
It marked the largest one-month receipt total since the government collected $332 billion in revenue in April 2001, reflecting a boom in capital gains from stock investors lucky enough to cash out their investments before the bursting of the stock market bubble in early 2000.
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House Passes Tax Cuts for Investors
By ANDREW TAYLOR
Associated Press Writer
May 10, 2006
WASHINGTON - The House on Wednesday passed a bill sought by President Bush to deliver tax cuts worth $70 billion to investors and to keep 15 million taxpayers from being hit by the alternative minimum tax
The House vote was 244-185. The Senate was expected to clear the bill for Bush's signature Thursday.
The bill provides a two-year extension of the reduced 15 percent tax rate for capital gains and dividends, currently set to expire at the end of 2008.
It also would extend, for this year, recent changes to the alternative minimum tax - originally aimed at making sure the wealthy pay at least some taxes - to prevent it from hitting more upper middle-income families.
The debate divided starkly along partisan lines, with Republicans crediting the tax cuts, first enacted in 2003, with a surging economy, millions of new jobs and surging tax revenues. Democrats countered that the deficit-financed tax cuts are tilted in favor of wealthy investors and that the economic benefits are not as great as advertised.
"Our tax relief sparked this economic growth," said House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. "And by extending key provisions of that tax relief, today's legislation adds just another spark to the already booming economy."
Added Treasury Secretary John Snow: "It sends a terrific message to the markets that we're going to continue to have low rates on capital."
Critics, including most Democrats, attacked the tax rate reductions on dividends and capital gains as being skewed in favor of the rich. They noted that it was the second half of a GOP budget package that began with $39 billion in benefit cuts over five years, many of which came from programs for the poor such as Medicaid.
Democrats also cited a joint study by the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution that shows taxpayers with incomes greater than $1 million per year winning tax cuts of $42,000 under the bill while families with incomes of $50,000 a year would average a $46 tax cut.
"The Republican Party ... is sending all the millionaires on an all- expenses-paid vacation _ for $41,000 a year," said Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash. "The rest of America is being forced to choose between filling the gas tank or stocking the refrigerator."
Added Richard Neal, D-Mass: "You cut taxes for Wall Street at the expense of Main Street."
Just 15 Democrats joined all but two Republicans in voting for the bill.
Passage of the bill is the first step of a two-track strategy for advancing the GOP's election-year tax cut agenda.
The first, $70 billion tax bill focused on investor tax breaks and alternative minimum tax relief and it can advance under special rules blocking Senate Democrats from filibustering it to death. Another bill that contains $30 billion in tax breaks backed by both Republicans and Democrats, will advance later.
Those widely supported tax breaks include preserving tax deductions for state and local sales taxes, a tuition tax deduction, a tax break for teachers who buy their own school supplies and a research and development tax credit for businesses.
Under the bill passed Wednesday, wealthier people would be allowed to transfer retirement savings into Roth IRAs. This would provide a shorter-term revenue boost, and therefore helped lawmakers fit more measures into the bill. That's because money moved from traditional IRAs into Roth accounts is taxed immediately, instead of later, when taxpayers withdraw their invested money.
Opponents say the Roth plan would help the Treasury now but shortchange the government in future years because money saved in a Roth IRA grows tax free.
The bill also would extend for two years provisions sought by small businesses to let them write off up to $100,000 in investments in equipment.
"What we do today protects jobs, protects the incomes of our people, strengthens America's economy and protects our future," said Rep. Nancy Johnson, R-Conn.
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Energy crisis? Venezuela gas is cheaper than water
By Brian Ellsworth
Reuters
Wed May 10, 2006
CARACAS, Venezuela - Taxi driver Jaime Tinoco works the streets of Caracas in a 1976 Chevy Nova that guzzles 19 gallons (72 liters) of gas a day. But he doesn't worry about fuel efficiency -- filling his tank costs just $2.30.
While U.S. consumers struggle with soaring energy prices, Venezuela's gas is now the world's cheapest at 12 cents a gallon and Washington's regional foe, President Hugo Chavez, vows to maintain subsidies that keep fuel dirt-cheap.
"Those gringos have everything -- so why does their gas cost so much?" asked Tinoco between chuckles as he navigated a midday traffic jam. "Don't they have oil reserves?"
Chavez, a self-proclaimed socialist and critic of President Bush, has even begun subsidizing fuel for poor U.S. neighborhoods as U.S. consumers brace for average summer gas prices of $2.71 a gallon -- 34 cents higher than last summer.
In Venezuela, the world's No. 5 oil exporter, drivers fill their tanks for less than the price of a cheap breakfast, and love to point out that gasoline costs less than mineral water.
The nation's gasoline is now the world's cheapest, according to an International Monetary Fund report released in April that shows Venezuelan gas prices as about a third of those in oil-producing giant Saudi Arabia.
Shiny SUVs and rusty 1970s-era sedans share the streets of Venezuelan cities as drivers shrug off fuel costs.
Low-priced fuel is considered a birthright in Venezuela, which sells 1.2 million barrels per day of oil to the United States -- the world's biggest gas guzzler.
"Gasoline should stay cheap the way it is, that's why we have oil in Venezuela," said Maria Rosa Pinero, 55, a housewife, filling up a Volkswagen Gol at a gas station in eastern Caracas.
Chavez has extended Venezuela's fuel subsidy to poor Americans through a well-publicized jab at the U.S. government that offers 40 percent discounts on heating oil distributed by Venezuelan-owned refiner Citgo.
Flush with cash from high oil revenues, Chavez has also shored up regional alliances by providing low-priced fuel to Central American and Caribbean nations he says have been snubbed by the United States.
'HOOD ROBIN' SUBSIDY
Venezuela's gas subsidy is the subject of endless grumbling by economists who say it promotes consumer waste and costs the state billions of dollars in lost revenue.
Critics say the subsidy largely benefits middle and upper-class vehicle owners at the expense of government income that could be spent on the poor.
"They call it the 'Hood Robin' subsidy," said Jose Luis Cordeiro, a petroleum engineer who writes about energy issues. "Instead of stealing from the rich to give to the poor, it's the opposite."
He estimates Venezuela would have taken in at least an additional $8 billion last year -- almost 8 percent of the nation's GDP -- if Venezuelans had paid market rates for fuel.
The subsidy also encourages rampant fuel smuggling to neighboring Colombia and leads to huge lines of Brazilian drivers waiting to fill up along the southern border.
But past efforts to raise gas prices have not gone well. Authorities in 1989 raised fuel prices at the height of a recession, leading to three days of rioting during which at least 300 people were killed. Human rights groups say troops may have killed several thousand people.
The event marked a turning point in Venezuelan history, and served as inspiration for Chavez -- at the time a young army officer -- to lead a coup attempt three years later. The coup failed but helped propel Chavez into the presidency in 1998.
Chavez has maintained popularity by channeling oil revenues toward social programs for the poor, and has often criticized U.S. dependence on cheap gasoline. Washington says he is using his oil wealth to threaten regional democracy.
At Venezuelan gas stations, however, there are few complaints about low-cost fuel or fuel efficiency.
"People buy a car because it's comfortable or because it's big," said Isidro Rodriguez, 30, an accountant, as he filled up a new 4-wheel-drive Ford in southern Caracas. "It's not for the price of fuel, because that's never been a problem."
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Bolivian president defends oil industry nationalization
www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-11 20:58:51
VIENNA, May 11 (Xinhua) -- Bolivia's President Evo Morales defended his decision to nationalize the oil and gas industry in his country.
"Any president has the sovereign right to defend strategic resources of the country," Morales told a press conference prior to the EU-Latin Summit in Vienna on Thursday.
He said his decision was merely to "exercise our ownership of our national resources."
However, Morales said he welcomed foreign companies to cooperate with Bolivia in exploring oil and gas resources, but the companies couldn't have the ownership.
"What we are looking for are partners not bosses that exploit our oil resources. We are not chasing out anyone. But they cannot have ownership," he said.
Last week, Morales announced the nationalization of Bolivia's gas industry, grabbing world-wide attention, especially from Europe and Brazil, which have companies involved in oil and gas fields in the country.
As of May 1, Bolivia took control of the country's oil and gas fields and gave foreign energy companies operating in the country 180 days to agree to new contracts with the government.
Morales also told the briefing that oil companies including Brazil's Petroleo Brasileiro SA and Spain's Repsol YPF SA wouldn't be compensated.
"There is no reason to indemnify them," he said.
According to Morales, 70% of the contracts signed by foreign petroleum companies had not yet been ratified by the Bolivian parliament, so they were "unconstitutional" and "illegal."
As some European companies, Spanish ones in particular, are affected by Morales's nationalization drive, energy is widely expected to be a hot issue at the three-day EU-Latin summit.
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Cingular Pulls Offensive Ringtone
The Associated Press
Tuesday, May 9, 2006; 10:48 PM
BROWNSVILLE, Texas -- Cingular Wireless LLC pulled a ringtone from its Web site Tuesday after learning that it carried a message the company called "blatantly offensive."
The cell phone company became aware of the ringtone, which uses mixed English and Spanish and threatens deportation, after an inquiry from a reporter for The Brownsville Herald.
The newspaper reported in its online edition Tuesday that the ringtone started with a siren, followed by a male voice saying in a Southern drawl, "This is la Migra," a slang term for the Border Patrol.
"Por favor, put the oranges down and step away from the cell phone. I repeat-o, put the oranges down and step away from the telephone-o. I'm deporting you back home-o," the voice continued.
Hispanic activists called the product racist.
"It's horribly offensive and a disgusting thing," Brent Wilkes, national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, told the newspaper.
Cingular removed the $2.49 ringtone, among thousands available for downloading from its Web site, Tuesday afternoon, said company spokesman Mark Siegel.
"Needless to say, we deeply regret and apologize for it ever being there in the first place. The ringtone is blatantly offensive," he said.
The ringtone became available between late February or early March and was downloaded eight times, Siegel said. It was developed by Barrio Mobile, Siegel said. Barrio Mobile is a brand owned by Lagardere Active North American, the U.S. division of a French media company.
Cingular officials were reviewing the process used to screen ringtones, which are developed by several other companies, he said.
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School Fires Teacher After Alleged Racist Remarks
CBS 2 Chicago
May 10, 2006
CHICAGO - An art teacher at a charter middle school on Chicago's Northwest Side has been fired.
The punishment came after an emotional meeting Wednesday night at the Aspira Haugen Middle School in Albany Park.
CBS 2's Rafael Romo reports the teacher was accused of making racist remarks to her students.
"She was going at it. She was yelling at us. She was saying that we were criminals, that the march was a waste of time," said student Yaritza Perez. "And I told her: 'You shouldn't say that to us because we're kids.'"
The kids who were in the classroom when the incident happened last week say their art teacher made racial comments during class for no apparent reason.
"And then she said that she doesn't know what we're doing here, that we were born only to clean floors and bathrooms and that she wants everybody to go back to their country," said student Jeanette Reyes.
On Wednesday night, officials announced that the teacher has been fired during a meeting with parents.
Many parents demanded the teacher's dismissal and were anxiously waiting for swift action.
"No one, no one, no one in this world needs ... has the right to make such a statement about any race, any race. So, I think the situation was solved," said parent Maria Torres-Glaister.
The president of the school board says the decision took a few days because they needed to do a thorough investigation.
On the advice of their lawyers, the board decided Wednesday their only option was termination.
"This is really an unfortunate situation. It's unfortunate for the staff, it's unfortunate for the students, the morale of the school. It's very unfortunate for the teacher involved," said Sonia Sanchez with ASPIRA of Illinois.
Some students didn't come to school for the last few days in protest of the incident.
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Big Mama Ain't Happy
Beijing suffers worst drought in 50 years
www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-11 20:09:57
BEIJING, May 11 (Xinhua) -- China's capital Beijing is suffering its worst drought in 50 years, with only 17 millimeters of rainfall reported this year, down 63 percent from the same period last year.
The lack of rain is already challenging the city's water supply, said experts at a meeting on flood control and drought prevention.
The city's 16 large and medium-sized reservoirs presently hold 1.31 billion cubic meters of water. Beijing's water supply bureau said consumption totaled 3.45 billion cubic meters last year, including 1.49 billion cubic meters of drinking water.
The city is home to 15.36 million permanent residents and over four million transients.
Most of Beijing's surface water resources are stored in reservoirs but even the Miyun Reservoir -- the largest storage facility in North China -- holds only 992 million cubic meters of water this year.
The reservoir, with a capacity of 4.375 billion cubic meters, provides two thirds of the drinking water for the Beijingers and needs at least one billion cubic meters to maintain supplies, said Jiao Zhizhong, director of Beijing water supply bureau.
Drought prevention officials say Beijing will maximize storage at reservoirs, rivers and lakes and will take every opportunity to create artificial rainfall in reservoir areas.
Meanwhile, meteorologists have predicted the drought will ease, but have warned of torrential rain and mud-rock flows to come over the next three months.
Beijing's flood control and drought prevention headquarters has dispatched teams to monitor reservoirs, lakes, riverbanks and residential areas in downtown Beijing.
Before the end of June, the city will set up rainfall surveillance stations at major Olympic facilities under construction to monitor the volume of rain.
Beijing has suffered drought for seven consecutive years. The Beijing News reported the average annual rainfall between 1999 and 2005 was only 70 percent of the annual average since records began.
Throughout 1999, the city had only 349 millimeters of rainfall, about 58.7 percent of the annual average, it said.
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US officials again urge storm-weary Americans to brace for hurricane season
AFP
Wed May 10, 6:26 PM ET
FORT LAUDERDALE, United States - With just weeks to go to the start of what could be another deadly Atlantic hurricane season, US officials urged residents of storm-prone areas to brace for the worst and hope for the best.
Experts said they could not rule out another disaster like last year's Hurricane Katrina, though forecasters say they can't tell at this stage whether major hurricanes would again pound the US Gulf and Atlantic coasts this year.
"Is it worth your life, your family's life not to have a plan?" asked Craig Fugate, who heads Florida's Emergency Management Division.
"The message is you get ready every year, because there is no certainty your home will not receive the full force a major landfalling hurricane," he said at a conference on hurricane preparations.
Fugate said that taking into account today's demographics, a hurricane similar to the one that killed 372 people in Miami in 1926 would be far more devastating if it hit today, and would cause about 100 billion dollars in damage.
Florida officials are particularly worried about the possibility a hurricane could smash an aging levee that rings the 1,800-square-kilometer (700-square-mile) Lake Okeechobee, in central Florida, which provides drinking water to millions of people.
A recent official report shows there is a 50 percent chance the dike could break within the next four years.
"If there is a breach in Lake Okeechobee it would be ugly," said Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who hosted the conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
He said he discussed the issue with his brother, US
President George W. Bush, and stressed federal aid would be needed to reinforce the levee and to prepare for a possible evacuation of the 40,000 people who live around the lake if a major hurricane threatens the area.
"I think it's appropriate not to have people panic, but this needs to be a high priority in Washington, and I intend to lobby to make sure that it is," the governor said.
Should a major hurricane pound the area, Florida officials could face the formidable challenge of evacuating residents from both the Atlantic and the Gulf coasts of Florida, as well as those who live around the lake.
But officials insisted that people not in an immediate danger zone should batten down at home rather than join an exodus that could easily clog highways.
"The nightmare scenario would be having people stuck in gridlock when a major hurricane makes landfall ... people would drown, cars would flip over as trees come falling down," said Max Mayfield, who heads the Miami-based
National Hurricane Center.
Making matters worse, some 100,000 people displaced by the hurricanes that slammed parts of the US Gulf coast and southeast Florida last year are still living in temporary shelters, mostly trailers and mobile homes that offer little protection from the killer storms.
In addition, thousands of home owners have yet to fix roof damage caused by last year's hurricanes.
Researchers at the University of Colorado say they expect nine hurricanes, five of them particularly intense, to form in the Atlantic basin during the season, which officially runs from June 1 to the end of November.
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Evacuation as Indonesia volcano rumbles
May 11 2006 at 11:23AM
Jakarta - Mount Merapi in Indonesia's densely populated central Java is spewing molten lava as far as 1,500 metres from its crater, prompting the country's vice president Thursday to urge an immediate evacuation of people living on the slopes.
After a helicopter inspection of the active volcano, Vice President Jusuf Kalla called central Java's government authorities to evacuate residents living in danger zones to makeshift shelters.
"We shouldn't wait until the alert status is raised into the highest level, because volcanologists had says (Merapi) may erupt any day," Kalla said after he held a meeting with local government officials at nearby district town of Magelang.
Kalla urged that all residents living at a radius of 12km from Merapi's crater to leave immediately.
While volcanologists said the red-hot lava sliding down Merapi's west side towards Krasak river is a new development, they added that the 1 500-metre long flow is still far away from any inhabited areas.
Triyani, an expert at Yogyakarta's Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that molten lava was also flowing 200m down the south side of Merapi.
"Looking into this new phenomenon, we feared that the molten lava may flow from Merapi's crater to all direction should the volcano erupt," Triyani said.
Merapi, about 450km south-east of Jakarta, began heating up a month ago and volcanologists upgraded the alert status to level three on April 12.
Though volcanologists have not raised the alert status to the highest level of four, which would require a mandatory evacuation for those living on the slopes, Kalla said, "It's time now to evacuate residents in the danger zones."
Volcano watchers have warned that a new dome of lava on Merapi's peak, which has been growing rapidly in the last two weeks, could cause superheated streams of gas to travel down the mountain sides should it collapse.
"It's very unlikely that Merapi will have a vertical eruption," said another volcanologist Subandriyo. "But the danger is with heat clouds and ash."
During the last eruption in 1994 hot gas clouds, locally called "shaggy goats," travelled at fast speed several kilometres down from the summit and killed at least 66 people, mostly from horrific burns.
Only over 5 000 of about 30 000 residents have already been evacuated to temporary shelters, but many thousands of others have been reluctant to leave the mountain, preferring to take the advice of local mystics who believe Merapi will only erupt after certain omens come, including mysterious beams of light shining over its steep flanks.
The mountain has spiritual significance for many Javanese and is one of only four places where the royal palaces of Yogyakarta and Solo make offerings to placate the ancient Javanese spirits.
The 2 968-metre-high Merapi is one of 65 volcanoes listed as dangerous in Indonesia. The volcano's most deadly eruption took place in 1930, when 1,370 people were killed.
Indonesia has the world's highest density of volcanoes, with 500 located in a so-called "Ring of Fire," along the 5 000km wide archipelago nation. Of these, 128 are active. - Sapa-dpa
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Tornadoes Tear Through N. Texas, Killing 3
By PAUL J. WEBER
Associated Press
Wed May 10, 2006
WESTMINSTER, Texas - One survivor said it was like a thunderstorm that "went crazy" as twisters ripped through rural North Texas, reducing homes to concrete slabs and killing three people, including a teenager cowering in the stairwell of his home.
At least 26 homes were destroyed in the storms that hit late Tuesday and early Wednesday. Ten people were hospitalized and dozens of others were treated at the scene for minor injuries.
A couple in their 80s were found dead in a destroyed mobile home in Westminster, about 45 miles northeast of Dallas, Collin County Fire Marshal Steve Deffibaugh said. A 14-year-old boy was killed in neighboring Grayson County when a chimney collapsed on the stairwell where he had taken shelter, authorities said.
"It sounded like a regular thunderstorm, then it went crazy," said Cathy Dotson, who huddled on the floor of her Westminster home with her grandchildren when the tornado hit Tuesday night. "I could actually feel my house move."
Christy Adame, who lives a half-mile from the home where the elderly couple died, took shelter in a closet with her husband and two sons.
When they emerged, she found her horse barn gone, one of her horses dead in a tree and the smell of propane so strong - and the risk of an explosion so high - that officials would not let a neighbor shoot his suffering cow, which had been impaled on a two-by-four.
"Now I know what an earthquake feels like," Adame said.
Collin County spokeswoman Leigh Hornsby said crews went door-to-door checking homes early Wednesday to make sure there were no more victims, and believe everyone was accounted for. The dead were identified as Paul Harris Newsom, 82; his wife, Mary Ellen, 80; and Colson Owens, 14.
Deffibaugh said the twisters took Westminster's residents "by surprise, totally unaware." The community of about 420 has no sirens, and the tornadoes hit too fast for the county's emergency telephone-notification system to respond, he said.
National Weather Service meteorologist Alan Moller said at least two tornadoes hit. "I think it was the first tornado that killed three people," he said. "Then there was a larger tornado after that that probably did extensive damage."
The damage track was estimated at a half-mile wide and 6 to 7 miles long.
Storms also raked Arkansas early Wednesday, toppling trees, damaging roofs and downing power lines. Students at a Little Rock junior high school were evacuated to a high school next door after a tree fell near fuel tanks. A FedEx truck was blown into the median of Interstate 530.
In western Kentucky, flooding caused by heavy rains forced at least nine homes to evacuate and several people had to be rescued from the tops of their cars, said Melissa Rowland, emergency management director in Carlisle County.
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Quake could break Californian levees
By Lisa M. Krieger
Mercury News
Even a moderate earthquake could cause California's aging levee system to collapse, flooding 400,000 homes and sending brine into the drinking water of homes across Northern California.
According to a computer-generated study presented Wednesday at Stanford University, a 6.5 magnitude quake in the area of Antioch and Rio Vista could trigger the breaching of as many as 50 levees in the southwestern regions of the Sacramento Delta.
"Your levees are not seismically safe. They're just piles of dirt," said retired Brig. Gen. Gerald Galloway of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Drinking water and farm water exports to Santa Clara County from the Delta would halt immediately. Damage could cause the aqueducts that carry water to the Bay Area from the Sierra Nevada to fail.
Two-thirds of Californians depend on the Delta for at least some of their drinking water. While Santa Clara County could rely on its reservoirs for a while, they are insufficient to serve the entire population indefinitely, said Martin McCann Jr., a consulting professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford.
McCann helped lead the study, which the California Department of Water Resources launched after Hurricane Katrina. The goal was to help the state calculate the effect of a major earthquake or winter flooding in the Delta region.
In the hypothetical disaster scenario presented Wednesday, seismic waves would trigger the collapse of the earthen levees, causing waves of salt water from San Pablo Bay to rush into the Delta.
An earthquake this size has a relatively low probability of occurrence -- a 6.8 percent chance in 50 years. "That seems remote, but not given the size of events that would transpire,'' Galloway said at a news conference.
"A realistic look at the Sacramento Delta will make us wise and more aware,'' McCann said. "Once we understand the risk, we can decide how to design, build and operate a levee system. The public can decide what the investment should be.''
The study uses a mathematical modeling system of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to identify which regions would be breached and flooded. The model takes into account the Delta region's normal flows, barrier operations, control gates and other structures.
There are 1,100 to 1,600 miles of levees in the Delta and Suisun marshes.
While winter flooding is an ongoing concern, an earthquake would be far more catastrophic, according to scientists at the Stanford conference.
The foundations of the state's levees, old and poorly maintained, are built on sandy and silty soil, scientists said. In an earthquake, the soil could liquefy and collapse.
And large waves could form in the flooded Delta, eroding more levees, the study predicts.
The most immediate danger would be to the 400,000 people who live in the Delta region, McCann said.
"There is no warning for the people who live in the region, no opportunity for evaluation. There are just moments to get out," he said.
It would also affect businesses and an estimated 85,000 acres of farmlands. About $400 billion of the state's annual economy is dependent, either directly or indirectly, on the Delta, McCann said.
Galloway urged the state to invest in levee improvements. "You can't not do it and think you're protected," he said.
Said McCann: "It is a wake-up call for California and the nation about the level of protection provided by levees, and the exposure we have in the event of a failure."
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5.1-magnitude earthquake hits Taiwan
May 10, 2006
TAIPEI, Taiwan --A moderate earthquake shook eastern Taiwan on Wednesday, the Central Weather Bureau said. No injuries or damage were reported.
The 5.1-magnitude quake was centered 11.6 miles south of Hualien, the weather bureau said.
Hualien lies on Taiwan's east coast, about 60 miles southeast of the capital, Taipei.
Quakes frequently rattle Taiwan, but most are minor and cause little or no damage. However, a 7.6-magnitude earthquake in central Taiwan in September 1999 killed more than 2,300 people.
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Big meteorite creates big mysteries
By Bjorn Carey
SPACE.com
May 10, 2006
Scientists have discovered a beach ball-sized meteorite a half-mile below a giant crater in South Africa.
The 145-million-year-old meteorite, found in the Morokweng crater, has a chemical composition unlike any known meteorite.
It is also an unusual find because it was largely unaltered by the extreme heat from the impact.
The study is detailed in the May 11 issue of the journal Nature.
Oddball meteorite
Scientists have collected thousands of various meteorites over the years and tell them all apart by their various structural, chemical, and mineralogical compositions. The specific concentrations of platinum group elements in the newfound 10-inch (25 centimeter) meteorite place it in the "LL-ordinary chondrite" group of meteorites.
But other characteristics set it apart from the group, such as having silicate and sulfide minerals rich in iron, but no metallic iron-nickel phase.
"So it is 'another kind' of LL-ordinary chondrite that we do not have in our collections," said study co-author Alexander Shukolyukov of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of California, San Diego.
A potential implication of this odd meteorite, he said, is that the bombardment of meteorites 145 million years ago was different than those crashing into Earth more recently.
The researchers can't say for sure why this fragment is preserved. Current models indicate that no unaltered fragments can survive large impacts, which, Shukolyukov suggests, implies the models are incomplete.
Just a remnant
It is also clear that it was much, much larger than 10 inches in diameter when it smacked the surface.
An 820-foot-diameter (250 meters) meteorite would slam into the planet and release energy on the order of about 1,000 megatons-about 66,000 times the strength of the 15-kiloton bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The impact would create a crater 3 miles (5 kilometers) across, Shukolyukov told SPACE.com.
In contrast, the Morokweng crater is a whopping 43 miles across (70 kilometers), so the meteorite that created it must have been substantially bigger than 820 feet.
The raw energy produced by the impact also generates a lot of heat - 3,100 to 24,700 degrees Fahrenheit (1700 to 13,700 Celsius) - so it's surprising that anything remains of the rock at all, and even more so that it is unaltered. Generally the heat completely melts or vaporizes meteorites, and if anything is left, it doesn't resemble its original state.
"It may be that this fragment was just a separate small meteorite that accompanied a 'big guy," Shukolyukov said.
However, according to the models, a trailing object would have completely melted.
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Bird Flu and Beyond
Two-week U.S. Northern Command exercises for pandemic flu outbreak
American Forces Press Service
May 10, 2006
WASHINGTON - More than 5,000 U.S. and Canadian servicemembers are working with authorities in five U.S. states and two Canadian provinces to test their response capabilities to crises ranging from a major hurricane to a terrorist attack to a pandemic flu outbreak.
Ardent Sentry 2006, a two-week U.S. Northern Command exercise, kicked off May 8 to test military support to federal, provincial, state and local authorities while continuing to support the Defense Department's homeland defense mission, according to Air Force Lt. Col. Eric Butterbaugh, a NORTHCOM and North American Aerospace Defense Command spokesman. The Canadian part of the exercise began May 1 and continues through May 12.
The goal is to give these players an opportunity to sharpen their ability to respond quickly and in a coordinated way to national crises, Butterbaugh said.
Already, active-duty, National Guard and Reserve participants operating in Colorado, Michigan, Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, the Canadian provinces of Ontario and New Brunswick and adjacent waters have gotten plenty of opportunity to do so, said Mike Kucharek, another NORTHCOM and NORAD spokesman.
They've confronted incidents in Michigan and Ontario, faced activity on the south border and are tracking a potential threat to a DoD computer system, he said. At the same time, they're monitoring a suspicious incident in the northeastern United States that's affected utility and energy supplies. Kucharek declined to share too many specifics that might tip off exercise participants to what's coming or interfere with its realism.
"We're feeling every bit of it," Kucharek said of the exercise, affirming the promise Navy Adm. Timothy J. Keating, NORTHCOM commander, made last week of a "very aggressive" Ardent Sentry scenario.
"It is not an open-book test," Keating told reporters during a May 4 media day at NORTHCOM's Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., headquarters. "It will be very challenging for us, and that's the point."
Just as in real-life crises, NORTHCOM is playing a supporting role to first responders during the exercise, as spelled out in the National Response Plan. "We're not the lead," Kucharek said. "We may only be monitoring, or we may send support as requested."
No large-scale troop movements are planned, but military units involved will conduct field training at Selfridge Air National Guard Base, Mich.; Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla.; and an abandoned mining town in Playas, N.M., now owned by the Department of Homeland Security, he said.
While testing the military's interagency coordination, the exercise also focuses on its ability to operate with the Canadian government and the newly established Canada Command, NORTHCOM's Canadian counterpart, Kucharek said.
"This is the first major exercise which will allow Canada Command to train with federal and provincial departments and agencies," said Gordon O'Connor, Canada's national defense minister. "Exercises such as Ardent Sentry 2006 help ensure we respond to domestic threats and natural disasters in a coordinated manner." It also will promote "cross-border information sharing" between Canada Command and NORTHCOM, he said.
Ardent Sentry builds on lessons learned during Hurricane Katrina, which Keating called NORTHCOM's "first real acid test" since its establishment in October 2002 to provide command and control of DoD homeland defense efforts and to coordinate military assistance to civil authorities.
"We learned a lot, and we observed much," Keating told reporters last week. "We're working really hard to take lessons observed and make sure they are lessons learned and mistakes not repeated."
New procedures introduced since Katrina will reduce NORTHCOM's response time and improve communications and damage assessment, he said. They'll reduce the time it takes to get assets where they're needed and help tailor the type of assistance provided to the specific need.
In addition, a new cell phone tower will improve communications among first responders, particularly in areas where existing communication lines are down.
Keating said he's confident NORTHCOM is prepared to face whatever natural or manmade disaster it faces, including the hurricane season that begins June 1.
"I can't imagine anything else we could do or should do," he told reporters last week. "We are fully operational, we are as ready as we can be for this upcoming hurricane season, as well as our response to any other natural or manmade disaster."
Comment: In the year, months, weeks and days before 9/11 and on the day itself, exercises were staged, some of which simulated terror attacks using airliners. Leaving out "coincidence", which generally does not exist in politics, we are left with the probability that when the US military stages exercises for a specific purpose, it is to test the water for the real thing which they KNOW is coming in the near future.
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French bird flu vaccine clears first test hurdle
PARIS, May 11, 2006 (AFP)
A prototype French vaccine against H5N1 bird flu has been found to be safe and effective in initial tests on several hundred volunteers, according to a study published online Thursday by the British journal The Lancet.
The Sanofi Pasteur vaccine, based on a modified strain of the virus, produced protective antibodies in a phase I trial involving 300 healthy volunteers, and was well tolerated with only a few cases of severe reactions, it said.
New vaccines and medications generally undergo three test phases of increasing scope to see whether they work and have any side effects.
The trial vaccine is administered in two doses and requires a booster shot.
Thirty-one vaccines against bird flu are currently being tested on humans, 22 of them against the H5N1 strain. Eight vaccines will have undergone Phase II trials by the year's end.
The big fear is that the H5N1 virus, which at present circulates among poultry, could acquire genes that could make it highly contagious among humans.
As this has not yet happened, the present prototype vaccines are configured on the avian strain that, according to an official World Health Organisation (WHO) toll dating from May 8, has killed 115 humans through transmission from birds.
The hope is that these vaccines, if stockpiled, may provide some protection against a pandemic strain and help brake an outbreak. They could also be swiftly adjusted to cope with the pandemic strain once it is identified, it is hoped.
In a commentary also carried out by The Lancet, two US flu experts, Suryaprakash Sambhara and Gregory Poland, cautioned that no-one knows for sure whether the pre-pandemic vaccines will provide any shield.
And, they noted, the Sanofi Pasteur vaccine has a drawback because it is a two-dose formula. This limits the number of doses that can be stockpiled because of the constraints on global manufacturing capacity.
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Migrating Birds Didn't Carry Flu
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
New York Times
May 11, 2006
ROME, May 10 - Defying the dire predictions of health officials, the flocks of migratory birds that flew south to Africa last fall, then back over Europe in recent weeks did not carry the deadly bird flu virus or spread it during their annual journey, scientists have concluded.
International health officials had feared that the disease was likely to spread to Africa during the southward migration and return to Europe with a vengeance during the reverse migration this spring. That has not happened - a significant finding for Europe, because it is far easier to monitor a virus that exists domestically on farms but not in the wild. "It is quiet now in terms of cases, which is contrary to what many people had expected," said Ward Hagemeijer, a bird flu specialist with Wetlands International, an environmental group based in the Netherlands that studies migratory birds.
In thousands of samples collected in Africa this winter, the bird flu virus, A(H5N1), was not detected in a single wild bird, health officials and scientists said. In Europe, only a few cases have been detected in wild birds since April 1, at the height of the migration north.
The number of cases in Europe has fallen off so steeply compared with February, when dozens of new cases were found daily, that specialists contend that the northward spring migration played no role. The flu was found in one grebe in Denmark on April 28 - the last case discovered - and a falcon in Germany and a few swans in France, said the World Organization for Animal Health, based in Paris.
In response to the good news, agriculture officials in many European countries are lifting restrictions intended to protect valuable poultry from infected wild birds.
Last week, the Netherlands and Switzerland rescinded mandates that poultry be kept indoors. Austria has loosened similar regulations, and France is considering doing so. The cases in Europe in February were attributed to infected wild birds that traveled west to avoid severe cold in Russia and Central Asia but apparently never carried the virus to Africa. The international scientists who had issued the earlier warnings are perplexed, unsure if their precautions - like intensive surveillance and eliminating contact between poultry and wild birds - helped defuse a time bomb or if nature simply granted a reprieve.
"Is it like Y2K, where also nothing happened?" asked Juan Lubroth, a senior veterinary official at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, referring to the expected computer failures that did not materialize as 1999 turned to 2000. "Perhaps it is because it was not as bad as we feared, or perhaps it is because people took the right measures."
Still, he and others say, the lack of wild bird cases in Europe only underscores how little is understood about the virus. And scientists warn that it could return to Europe.
"Maybe we will be lucky and this virus will just die out in the wild," Mr. Lubroth said. "But maybe it will come back strong next year. We just don't have the answers."
The feared A(H5N1) bird flu virus does not now spread among humans, although scientists are worried it may acquire that ability through natural processes, setting off a worldwide pandemic. The less bird flu is present in nature and domestically on farms, the less likely it is for such an evolution to occur, they say.
Worldwide, bird flu has killed about 200 humans, almost all of whom were in extremely close contact with sick birds.
Specialists from Wetlands International, who were deputized by the Food and Agriculture Organization, sampled 7,500 African wild birds last winter in a search for the disease. They found no A(H5N1), Mr. Hagemeijer said, so it is not surprising that it did not return to Europe with the spring migration.
While bird flu has become a huge problem in poultry on farms in a few African countries, including Egypt, Nigeria and Sudan, specialists increasingly suspect that it was introduced in those countries through imported infected poultry and poultry products. Mr. Hagemeijer said the strength of the virus among wild birds possibly weakened as the southward migration season progressed, a trait he said was common in less dangerous bird flu viruses. That probably limited its spread in Africa, he said.
A(H5N1) is the most deadly of a large family of bird flu viruses, most of which produce only minor illness in birds.
Many bird flu viruses are picked up by migratory birds in their nesting places in northern lakes during the summer and fall breeding season. As the months pass, the viruses show a decreasing pattern of spread and contamination.
"So it tends to be mostly a north-to-south spread, and then it wanes," Mr. Hagemeijer said.
Still, this means that the cycle could start again this summer, if the virus - which can live for long periods in water - has persisted in those breeding areas. Many bird specialists contend that a small number of wetland lakes in Central Asia and Russia may harbor the virus all the time, serving as the origin of European and Central Asian infections.
Scientists still do not know which birds carry the virus silently and which die from it quickly, or how it typically spreads from wild bird to wild bird, or between wild birds and poultry.
Farm-based outbreaks of bird flu still occur constantly in a number of countries, although not in Europe. Ivory Coast had its first outbreak of bird flu, on a farm, last week.
But other countries, like Turkey, have made substantial progress in containing the disease among poultry, Mr. Lubroth said. He added that he hoped that quick measures to limit outbreaks had reduced the virus's spread in Africa.
After the virus was found on farms in Nigeria in January, many specialists expected it to spread rapidly among farms and into wild birds in the region. Apparently, it did not.
"Why didn't it sweep up the coast from Niger, to Benin and Senegal and back up through Europe? Why didn't it hit Africa's big lakes?" Mr. Lubroth asked.
"All we have are a few snapshots of the virus. What we need is a movie of its life cycle."
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'Superbugs' spread fear far and wide
5/11/2006
USA TODAY
On Christmas night, 14-month-old Bryce Smith came down with pneumonia caused by a drug-resistant staph infection called MRSA. His father, Scott Smith, says Bryce's pediatrician told him and his wife, Katie, that the baby had a cold and that they shouldn't worry.
By the time they took Bryce to the hospital a week later, the infection had eaten a hole in his lung, and doctors warned the parents that they were not certain he'd live.
Bryce, back at home and healthy again after 55 days in the hospital, is one of thousands of children and adults who have been infected by MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a bug once found only in hospitals or nursing homes. They are victims of a dangerous newer strain of MRSA that is raging across the country, spreading through communities.
It is causing infections from abscesses to deadly blood poisoning, bone infections and pneumonia, often in the young and the fit, including professional football players, high school athletes and previously healthy children.
Whether it spread from the hospital into the community or developed as a separate strain outside the hospital is a mystery, says John McGowan, professor of epidemiology at Emory University. But recent genome studies suggest the MRSA strain circulating in the community is significantly different from the strains that are typically found in hospitals.
"There are differences in the sequence of the community strain that may make it more virulent, more able to affect people with (healthy immune systems), and with biological differences that make it spread readily," he says.
MRSA has become so common that in many hospitals more than half of all staph infections tested are drug-resistant. That's changing the way doctors treat these common infections.
"When a patient comes in with a staph infection, we assume it's resistant until proven otherwise," says pediatrician Sheldon Kaplan of Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, where MRSA rates have gone from 33% of all staph tested in 2000 to 75%.
Drug-resistant bugs, including MRSA and several others that are emerging in hospitals, are more difficult to treat, requiring stronger antibiotics that are more costly and in some cases have to be given intravenously.
Few new drugs on the way
Few major pharmaceutical companies have new medicines in the pipeline that target the drug-resistant organisms, says George Talbot of the Infectious Diseases Society of America's task force on anti-microbial availability.
"In a number of these companies, there were active decisions taken that antibiotic research was not going to be profitable enough to meet their obligation to shareholders," says Talbot, an infectious-disease specialist and consultant to drug companies. "So they decided to go for drugs that would be taken for a lifetime - drugs for diabetes or high blood pressure - rather than drugs to be taken for a week."
Jumping into the breach are smaller biotech companies that are doing the basic research to identify promising new drugs, he says, "but it's not clear yet that these smaller companies will have the development expertise or financial wherewithal to bring them to market."
In some cases, small companies form partnerships with larger, wealthier drug companies that underwrite the costs of large-scale studies and marketing, he says, "but those deals have to be done in areas where the larger companies perceive an economic benefit."
MRSA, for instance, offers a large market because it is affecting so many people and several antibiotics can be used against it. For lesser-known drug-resistant germs, the treatment options are fewer.
MRSA has been known in hospitals since the 1970s, but in recent years, new strains, which doctors call community-acquired MRSA, have infected people outside health care settings. One of these strains, known as USA300, was identified in 2000 and has been found in at least 21 states.
"What we're seeing is the emergence of a new epidemic strain of the MRSA in the community," says Daniel Jernigan, medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The CDC has reported on the new community strain since 2000, and it reported in March that the strain had caused outbreaks in hospital nurseries in Chicago and Los Angeles. Nine of the 22 infected babies required hospitalization. Other studies have reported longer hospital stays and higher death rates in MRSA-infected patients.
Staph aureus is the most common cause of the estimated 12 million skin infections each year in the USA, Jernigan says. A study in 2003 found that about one-third of people carry staph in their noses and just under 1% of people carry MRSA. Most carry the bacteria without becoming ill.
"We think the number of people carrying MRSA is increasing," Jernigan says, but the new studies are not yet completed.
It's not certain how common MRSA infections are. A CDC study based on hospital discharge data estimates that in 1999-2000, nearly 126,000 people were hospitalized each year for MRSA infections, a rate of nearly 4 per 1,000 hospital discharges.
Another study of 11 emergency rooms across the country found that almost 60% of skin abscesses tested were caused by MRSA, Jernigan says.
The new super-strain of MRSA has been concentrated in geographic regions, including California, Texas and Georgia, but Kaplan says that is changing. "It's in Pittsburgh, Memphis, St. Louis, Omaha. It's becoming more common on the East Coast now. It's literally all over the country."
University of California researchers who sequenced the genome of USA300 reported in the March 4 issue of The Lancet that the strain contains genes that make it hardy and able to cause "unusually invasive disease" such as severe blood infections and necrotizing pneumonia, in which lung tissue is destroyed.
Community-acquired MRSA has sidelined athletes, including players with the Washington Redskins, St. Louis Rams and San Francisco 49ers, as well as dozens of high school and college football players, wrestlers and basketball players. It has broken out in prisons, military bases and day care centers, anywhere there is crowding, poor hygiene and broken skin.
You don't have to be in a gym or a jail to be at risk. "You just have to be living," Kaplan says.
"This is not a superbug from a locker room; it's just out in the community," Kaplan says. "We've got 1,700 kids coming into our hospital with staph infections. They're not playing football. They're babies. Why this has been happening over the last 10 years vs. 20 years ago, we don't know."
Barriers breaking down
Strains of MRSA that have been known in hospitals for decades still account for most of the cases. Until a few years ago, says CDC epidemiologist John Jernigan (no relation to Daniel Jernigan), "MRSA was almost exclusively associated with hospitals." The types in the community are genetically different from those found in hospitals, he says, but that line is blurring.
"There used to be this very sharp distinction. However, we have the sense that more and more those strains associated with the community are finding their way into the hospital and causing health care-associated infections."
MRSA spreads through skin-to-skin contact and can be passed by using shared objects, such as razors or towels. It frequently hits more than one person in a family, and researchers in Canada have found that pets and their human owners can pass it back and forth.
"We're seeing transmission of MRSA from people to pets and pets to people," says researcher Scott Weese of the Ontario Veterinary College at the University of Guelph. "It raises the question: Can animals be a reservoir and play a role in this ping-ponging in households?"
He says dogs, cats, rabbits and ferrets have been found carrying the USA300 strain. As in people, it can cause serious skin infections and other illnesses.
"It shows pets are mimicking what's going on in the human situation," Weese says. "We're seeing more transmission in households than in the past."
Until their son was diagnosed, Bryce's parents had never heard of MRSA.
"Never heard of it, never even thought a little bacteria could do something like this," says Scott Smith, who owns a machine shop near their home in Santee, Calif., outside San Diego.
It's unclear how Bryce caught the bug, but his parents believe he may have picked it up while they were out Christmas shopping.
The family's ordeal started with a simple cold. Bryce was having sniffles a couple of days before Christmas, but on Christmas night, his parents saw he was breathing rapidly, and they worried that he might have asthma.
They called their pediatrician, who saw them two days later, dismissed the ailment as a simple viral infection and told the parents, "I've seen this a million times."
But as the days passed, the baby's condition worsened. The parents called the doctor two more times. "He said, 'You guys are new parents,' " and he told them not to worry so much.
Finally, in the early hours of New Year's Day, "we looked at him, and I said, 'I'm afraid if I go to sleep he won't be alive in the morning,' " Smith says. "We rushed him to the hospital."
At Children's Hospital of San Diego, "it was almost like a movie script," he says. A nurse tested Bryce's blood oxygen level, and "within 30 seconds they had 10 people on him."
'Just eating away' at him
Doctors said the infection had solidified in Bryce's right lung, and surgery was needed right away to clear the lung. "They had five chest tubes in him, because the infection was not only inside the lungs but outside the lungs and just eating away at his chest."
For 12 days, the Smiths didn't know whether Bryce would make it.
Then he was put on a breathing machine. He was put into a drug-induced coma and given intravenous vancomycin, a drug that is known as the last line of defense against MRSA.
The drug is "like fire going through the veins," Smith says. "With Bryce, at that point they had him asleep, and he was asleep for six weeks, so I feel lucky that he didn't have to feel the pain of vancomycin."
Today, Bryce is almost back to normal, but Smith says he and his wife won't let anyone touch him without washing their hands first.
"I felt so guilty," he says. "What keeps going through my mind is that as my son laid there at the house, we were literally watching him die and we didn't know."
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Stepped up genetic testing in Britain sparks debate
Last Updated Wed, 10 May 2006 22:03:10 EDT
CBC News
Britain has expanded the number of genetic tests parents can do on fetuses, a move that has renewed ethical concerns surrounding use of the technology.
The British Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority decided Wednesday to extend screening in fertility clinics to include three types of cancer. Until now, embryos were only tested for inherited diseases such as cystic fibrosis.
The authority and its supporters insist the change doesn't open the door to wholesale genetic testing in Britain.
The authority and its supporters insist the change doesn't open the door to wholesale genetic testing in Britain.
"It is not going to be offered for some trivial things such as eye colour, hair colour," said Paul Serhal, a fertility expert at University College London.
In the Cohn family, cancer was a like a genetic time bomb exploding in succeeding generations. Ovarian cancer killed Betsy, then her daughter Ester. The gene was passed to Pat, another breast cancer survivor.
The risk of cancer was so great that Pat's daughter, Karen, had a double mastectomy, and next year her ovaries will be removed.
"I've got a four-year-old and I want to see her grow up," said Karen Cohn. "I felt I had no choice because the odds were stacked against me."
Her daughter, Sophie, carries the cancer gene and has a 50-50 chance of developing it. Embryo screening would ensure the gene isn't passed on.
Pushing the boundaries?
But critics such as Dr. David King of Human Genetics Alert fear the boundaries of what's acceptable are being pushed back regularly.
"I do see it as a continual pressure towards liberalization," said King. "Really a consumer-driven eugenics in which parents will be allowed complete carte blanche to choose the minutest characteristics of their children, which I do think will be disastrous for society."
His fears are shared by Emma Kearns, a breast cancer survivor. Kearns said she's glad her mother wasn't screened.
Given advances in cancer treatment, "things can kind of turn around, and you can live with cancer, and in many cases, people can get better," said Kearns.
Canada, like several other countries, permits pre-implantation genetic diagnosis for inherited diseases.
Unlike Britain, there is no national authority in Canada to oversee the practice or set boundaries.
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Odds 'n Ends
Humans cleared of killing off woolly mammoths
Last Updated Wed, 10 May 2006 14:13:18 EDT
CBC News
Climate shifts, not over-hunting, killed off the woolly mammoth and wild horse, a carbon-dating study suggests.
What caused the animals to become extinct at the end of the last Ice Age more than 10,000 years ago has been one of prehistory's greatest whodunits. Biologists have often pointed the finger at over-hunting by expanding populations of humans.
But new radiocarbon dates give a more precise account of what happened at the time of the mass extinctions, and shift the focus to global warming.
Paleobiologist Dale Guthrie analyzed bone samples from bison, moose and humans, which lived through the extinction period, and from wild horse and mammoth, which did not survive. The more than 600 samples were recovered in Alaska and the Yukon. He also studied preserved samples of pollen from the period.
He found that by the time Homo sapiens started pushing into the region around 12,300 years ago, the wild horse had already died out and woolly mammoth were in decline.
Meanwhile, populations of bison, moose and white-rumped elk called wapiti were increasing, said Guthrie, professor emeritus with the Institute of Arctic Biology at University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
By analyzing pollen samples, he concluded that a naturally occurring shift in climate caused the animals to change their diet.
Like their modern cousins, the wild horses and the woolly mammoth of the past had a large intestinal pouch, or caecum, suited to feeding on low-quality forage on the steppe.
But as the frozen landscape thawed, higher-quality grasses started to grow. Those grasses were favoured by the bison and wapiti but were indigestible to the mammoth, Guthrie suggested.
His results were published in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature.
Comment: Many scientists have trouble making sense of the data on the extinction of the wooly mammoth because they are not willing to entertain the hypothesis that the earth is subjected to cyclic cataclysmes. The verdict of global warming does not explain the mechanism behind the flash freezing of mammoths who have been found with vegetal matter still in their mouths and digestive tracks. Not does it explain the sites where bones from hundreds of these creatures were found.
For more on this topic, see Laura Knight-Jadczyk's Secret History of the World where she discusses the issue at length.
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Neptune Might Have Captured Triton
By Sara Goudarzi
Staff Writer
posted: 10 May 2006
01:06 pm ET
Neptune's largest moon, Triton, was originally a member of a duo orbiting the Sun but was kidnapped during a close encounter with Neptune, a new model suggests.
Triton is unique among large moons in that it orbits Neptune in a direction opposite to the planet's rotation, which long ago led scientists to speculate that the moon originally orbited the Sun. But until now, no convincing theory for how Triton paired with Neptune existed.
Gravity might have pulled Triton away from its companion to make it an orbiting satellite of Neptune, researchers report in a new study published in the May 11 issue of journal Nature.
"We've found a likely solution to the long-standing problem of how Triton arrived in its peculiar orbit," said Craig Agnor, a researcher from the University of California, Santa Cruz. "In addition, this mechanism introduces a new pathway for the capture of satellites by planets that may be relevant to other objects in the solar system."
The new model predicts that Triton came from a binary setup much like Pluto and its moon, Charon.
"It's not so much that Charon orbits Pluto, but rather both move around their mutual center of mass, which lies between the two objects," Agnor said.
Binary systems can be pulled apart by gravitation when they encounter large planets like Neptune. The orbital motion of the binary system causes one member to move slower than the other, which can disrupt the system and permanently change the orbital companion.
This mechanism, known as an exchange reaction, could have delivered Triton to any of a variety of different orbits around Neptune, Agnor said.
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Ark's Quantum Quirks
Ark
Signs of the Times
May 11, 2006
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