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Editorial: New Estimate of Venezuela's Total Oil Reserves Makes It the Grandest of Grand Prizes for US
by Stephen Lendman
I just finished reading an important new book the author's publisher sent me, which I'll shortly be reviewing for publication. The book is investigative journalist (and in his words "forensic economist") Greg Palast's latest foray into exposing the hidden from view crimes and wrongdoings of the Bush administration. I'm very familiar with Palast's important work and can only wish many others of his profession did the same sort of it he does - his job. Sadly most don't, but luckily we have some who do, and we should pay close heed to what they tell us. They're our window to the dangerous world around us, and the information they provide is our protection from it.
Palast's book is almost encyclopedic in detail, but I only want to focus here on one part of it that relates to Venezuela. In it Palast provides information showing the country may be of far greater strategic importance to the US than we likely realized. It all relates to a somewhat arcane theory called Hubbert's peak that many readers may not know about or understand well if they do. Before reading Greg's book, I knew about it but didn't understand it as well as I do now.
M. King Hubbert was a well-respected geologist of his time who on March 7, 1956 published a research paper explaining his notion of "peak oil," the amount of total reserves likely to be available, when production would peak, and when we would likely exhaust a finite supply. Ever since his report came out, it's been held up as gospel by many who follow the oil market. The essence of the Hubbert theory, whether we accept it or not, was that "peak oil" would be reached around this year. However, in fact, production rose every year since Hubbert's prediction and new discoveries of oil have so far kept pace.
A New Interpretation of "Hubbert's Peak"
M. King Hubbert may have been a fine geologist deserving of the his reputation. But today we know much more than Hubbert did in his time, and it's currently believed by some savvy analysts that we're nowhere near peaking or running out of oil. Palast sides with that view and concludes that we have enough oil left untapped to last many decades into the future. Why? Because there's oil and then there's oil - there's the easy to find and refine kind called "light sweet" like what's abundant in the Middle East, and there's also the harder to find, more expensive to refine so-called "heavy crude" and oil available from tar sands. When the latter two categories are added in, the amount of total oil available skyrockets to off-the-chart numbers.
Palast makes a key point related to the price of crude. At $10 a barrel the supply is low because only the easy to extract and refine kind are economically feasible. But at $70 a barrel it's a whole new oil market. The heavy stuff and tar sands then become economical to extract and refine, and a new far higher finite supply is realized almost magically. In short, it's just a question of supply and demand and how the price of a commodity depends on how much of it consumers want. Too little demand and the price is low, but when it's high like now and rising, then so does the price.
How This Relates to Venezuela
From what we know for sure plus what we think we may know about Venezuelan "total" oil reserves, I suggest the reader first take a seat and buckle up. In previous articles, I reported Venezuela may have reserves of about 350 billion barrels if all their known heavy and light crude are counted. That total is far more than is now officially recognized by OPEC which means unofficially the country has greater reserves than Saudi Arabia by that number alone.
But wait, there's more, a lot more. Palast reports a US Energy Department expert believes Venezuela holds 90% of the world's super-heavy tar oil reserves - an estimated total of 1,360,000,000,000 (1.36 trillion) barrels. Let me repeat that - 1.36 trillion barrels. That alone is more oil than Hubbert believed 50 years ago lay under the entire planet.
Again, back to the key issue. Whatever the true highest estimate of reserves is from all varieties of oil, those reserves are only available at a price. If it ever gets too low again, which looks unlikely, those heavy reserves and tar sands oil will again go off the charts and be uncounted. However, with today's heavy demand and the likelihood of it continuing to grow in the future, the price of oil may continue to rise and all reserves from all sources may be needed and used to supply the market.
So with a report like this coming from an apparent credible source (according to Palast) in the US Energy Department, it takes little imagination for VHeadline readers to understand more than ever that Venezuela is likely viewed by any US administration as the world's most important source of future oil supply. And to readers who understand US imperial intentions, it takes even less insight to realize the Bush administration intends to go all out to get its hands on it even if it takes a war to do it. The US goal isn't access to the oil. It's control of the supply and its price, what countries get it and how much and which ones don't, what companies profit from it, and overall how this ocean of oil can be used as a strategic resource and weapon. Beyond question, the stakes are enormous, and the battle lines are now drawn more clearly than ever.
I've reported before on VHeadline that the US is now planning a fourth attempt to oust Hugo Chavez by whatever means it has in mind. I think the wheels of its plan are now in motion, but we won't know what will unfold until the fireworks begin. With the information now available and published here, I feel more certain than ever that US instigated serious trouble is heading toward Venezuela and maybe harsher than we might expect. Venezuela's likely total oil reserves are potentially so great that the country has to be the grandest of grand prizes for the US. It's a virtual certainty the US will do anything it takes to try to seize and control it. For those of us who respect the sovereign rights of all nations and the obligation their leaders have above all else to serve the needs of their people, we can only hope Hugo Chavez is prepared for what he knows is coming and will again succeed in deterring it.
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: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
By Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain
Their film records what was probably history's shortest-lived coup d'état. It's a unique document about political muscle and an extraordinary portrait of the man The Wall Street Journal credits with making Venezuela "Washington's biggest Latin American headache after the old standby, Cuba."
Chavez, elected president of Venezuela in 1988, is a colorful folk hero, beloved by his nation's working class and a tough-as-nails, quixotic opponent to the power structure that would see him deposed. Two independent filmmakers were inside the presidential palace on April 11, 2002, when he was forcibly removed from office [in an apparently CIA-sponsored coup]. They were also present 48 hours later when, remarkably, he returned to power amid cheering aides.
Running Time: 1 Hour 15 Minutes
[Click here to watch]
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Editorial: Inflated Terrorism - Propaganda Lies
By Peter Phillips
5/21/06
Vice President Dick Cheney's keynote address at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference March 7, 2006 is a telling example of neo-conservative global dominance thought in the current administration. Here are his exact words, "Israel, and the United States, and all civilized nations will win the war on terror. To prevail in this fight, we must understand the nature of the enemy. As America experienced on September 11th, 2001, the terrorist enemy is brutal and heartless. This enemy wears no uniform, has no regard for the rules of warfare, and is unconstrained by any standard of decency or morality. The terrorists want to end all American and Western influence in the Middle East. Their goal in that region is to seize control of a country, so they have a base from which to launch attacks and wage war against governments that do not meet their demands, and ultimately to establish a totalitarian empire that encompasses a region from Spain, across North Africa, through the Middle East and South Asia, all the way around to Indonesia."
Cheney claims that evil terrorists everywhere are plotting for the ruin of "civilized" nations. In order to stop them we must militarily control all the regions they are threatening in a permanent global war. Cheney's military empire, set to prevail over the totalitarian terrorists, will inevitably expand global resistance to US domination. Large coalitions of freedom fighters, fundamentalists, patriots, religious zealots, nationalists, and ideologues of various beliefs will emerge from within the regions the US occupies.
Widespread resistance is exactly what is happening in Iraq. Le Monde Diplomatique on May 2, 2006 described the Iraq insurgents (terrorists to Cheney) as "armed opposition often divided into a set of wholly independent categories which apparently do not have much in common. The categories include the patriotic former army officers, the foreign terrorists, the Sunni Arabs determined to regain power, the Muslims opposed to any kind of foreign occupation, the tribal factions pursuing their own specific vendettas, the die-hard Ba'athists - and the 'pissed-off' Iraqis (in coalition soldier jargon, POIs) who are simply sick of the foreign forces occupying their country."
For Cheney and other global dominance neo-conservatives, the terrorist label is so broad that it can be applied to any individual, group, or nation that resists US military occupations, US threats, or US corporate interests anywhere in the world. In reality, the US military is the world's foremost totalitarian force.
Three years ago I met a Dutch journalist, Willem Oltman, at the International Campaign Against US Aggression on Iraq in Cairo, Egypt. Oltman described his teen years during World War II in the Dutch resistance movement. "The Nazi's called us terrorists," he exclaimed. "Now as the US invades and occupies other countries you do the same thing," he added.
Maintaining an US military global police force enriches defense contractors and enflames resistance. There is no worldwide terrorism threat other than the one we create when we make war on other peoples. Addressing world poverty, sickness, and environmental issues will go much further in preventing single acts of terrorism inside the United States than any military actions we can muster. It is time to challenge the neo-conservative global dominance agenda and stand up for human rights and the traditional American values of grass-roots democracy, due process, governmental transparency, and individual freedoms for ourselves and the rest of the world.
Peter Phillips is a professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and director of Project Censored a media research group. www.projectcensored.org. He is co-editor with Dennis Loo of the forthcoming book, Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney, from Seven Stories Press, summer 2006.
Original
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Editorial: Slaves to the "Free Market" Unite
By Jason Miller
5/22/06
As some of my readers have aptly pointed out, America and its White Christian patriarchy do not have a historical monopoly on abuse of power or exploitation of "lesser people". It is also true that Anglos have been victimized at various points in history. Yet the United States exists and thrives almost solely because it obscenely exploited Africans to attain economic power and committed genocide against North America's indigenous people to obtain and expand its territory.
While other nations and races have committed similar atrocities throughout history, Anglos have suffered persecution, and slavery and the Native American genocide are in the past, the actions of the United States and its White patriarchal society were still morally reprehensible. Furthermore, many of the beneficiaries and descendents of the perpetrators remain unrepentant. Recent polls and events also indicate that about a third of Americans still support an entrenched American power structure which flourishes by practicing exploitation and conquest.
The United States is not the only nation currently committing brutalities and injustices, yet Washington is home to a government which claims to be the ultimate moral authority on the globe. While invading and occupying nations which posed no threat to them, slaughtering innocent civilians, and torturing suspected enemies, the United States continues to mouth empty platitudes about spreading freedom and democracy, pompously lecture other nations on human rights, and hypocritically determine which nations are too "evil" to be trusted with nuclear technology.
In his recent book, Overthrow, Stephen Kinzer wrote:
There is no stronger or more persistent strain in the American character than the belief that the United States is a nation uniquely endowed with virtue.....This view is driven by a profound conviction that the American form of government, based on capitalism and individual political choice, is, as President Bush asserted, "right and true for every person in every society."
Time and again the United States has acted on this pathological belief, almost always spreading suffering and misery rather than democracy and freedom.
Little deters them
Despite remarkable strides toward social justice achieved by powerful leaders like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eugene Debs, and Martin Luther King, Jr., the advent of international humanitarian laws like the Geneva Conventions, and the addition of amendments to the US Constitution expanding civil rights, the relentlessly acquisitive individuals manning the bulwarks of the Corporatocracy at Wall Street, Capitol Hill, Langley, and 1600 Pennsylvania Ave have continued to find myriad means to advance their malignant agenda on both the foreign and domestic fronts.
They are employing direct intervention through invasion and occupation in Iraq as I write. Indirect intervention by the CIA has brought many ruthless dictators to power because they were friendly to corporate America's interests. Multi-national corporations devastate weaker nations by grossly exploiting labor and resources. The World Bank and IMF enable the ruling elite of the United States to enslave developing nations economically. Nuclear intimidation rounds out the vast array of weapons at the disposal of the power mongers at the helm of the United States.
Consolidating power into the Executive Branch, nullifying several Constitutional Amendments with the Patriot Act, packing the courts with "their people", and conducting pseudo-elections are currently at the forefront of the domestic arsenal of America's ruling elite.
Tell me lies....tell me sweet little lies
Utilizing the corporate domination of the mainstream media and educational textbook producers, the patrician class of the United States continues to white-wash history and current events to perpetrate one of the biggest hoaxes in the history of mankind. They have managed to convince many of their plebs of the virtuous, benevolent, and "democratic" nature of America, to the degree that some violently reject the truth when confronted with it.
The under-funded No Child Left Behind legislation ensures that educators lack the resources they need to prepare their students for mandatory tests which emphasize rote memorization and basic skills. Teaching critical thinking, history, literature, and politics falls by the wayside in the mad scramble to prepare students to pass government-mandated exams. Wouldn't it be wonderful for those atop the food chain in the American Empire if they could virtually eliminate domestic dissent without resorting to mass arrests or torture?
Despite the widening wealth gap, the Wal-Martization of the economy, Katrina, Iraq, stolen elections, an $8 trillion national debt, tax cuts for the wealthy, and increasingly rapacious acts by corporations, many Americans are still oblivious to our descent into fascism. Sucking on the pacifier of conspicuous consumption, they "shop til they drop", lining Corporate America's pockets and freeing the ruling elite to pursue world domination, as outlined in the Project for the New American Century and the Bush Doctrine.
Certainly there are some decent human beings who hold great wealth or positions of power in the United States, but their voices and actions are readily neutralized by the far more numerous spiritually hollow individuals whose existence is predicated on attempting to fulfill their insatiable lust for money and domination of other people.
Slaves to "human nature" we are not
Some argue that avarice, hatred, cruelty, territorial instinct, and deceit are inescapable aspects of "human nature" and define the human condition. Large scale human-inflicted injustice, misery, and suffering would indeed be inevitable if one accepted the notion that we are slaves to "human nature", our ids, and our Shadows.
I refuse to accept this hypothesis for several reasons. Human beings possess highly developed frontal lobes and opposable thumbs so that we can problem solve and avoid subjugation to our animal impulses. As Scott Peck astutely observed in The Road Less Traveled, it defies human nature to use a toilet or a toothbrush, yet most people learn to do both.
I spent some time acting on the dark side of my nature in the past, yet I managed to undergo a profound moral transformation over the last thirteen years, choosing to live a life based on basic human decency, dignity, non-violent assertiveness, and compassion. My life is full of family and friends who share similar values. While it is impossible to completely deny one's id or Shadow, it is possible to manage them and live a reasonably ethical life.
There are also numerous examples of extraordinary people like Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama who achieved the peak of human moral development.
The masters' kingdom would collapse without the slaves
One of the wealthy ruling elite's most poignant victories against progressive, humane forces has been their crushing blow to working people around the globe. Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the birth of the prevailing virulent form of Capitalism, the working class has been a festering thorn in the side of their masters, motivating them to devote a great deal of energy to keep them subdued.
Representing a necessary evil, workers in America and abroad are the engine of the Corporatocracy, as both the producers and consumers who power the Capitalist economy. While monstrous men like Henry Kissinger would move to shrink their numbers through starvation (or perhaps carpet bombing) if permitted, they still recognize that these "beasts of burden" are indispensable.
Not surprisingly, political ideologies which seek to empower the poor and working class have been heavily vilified by those who hold a vested interest in keeping wealth and power in the hands of a few. Americans are inculcated with the belief that men like Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Salvador Allende, and Evo Morales are (or were) our enemies. It is anathema, we are taught, to our "free market system" and "democracy" when leaders of other sovereign nations end the persistent grip of an entrenched oligarchy and raise a majority of their people out of abject poverty. With such beliefs, perhaps America's moral deficit exceeds its fiscal one.
Can I interest you in selling Amway?
American Capitalism is the ultimate Ponzi scheme. For each of the four remaining Walton heirs to enjoy their billions, millions of human beings have to suffer abysmal poverty. Certainly, there are the occasional members of the Proletariat who infiltrate the exclusive world of the Bourgeoise, but they are so few and far between that they pose little threat to the dominance of the filthy rich resting at the pinnacle of the pyramid. Besides, thanks to Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy and the inevitable repeal of the inheritance tax, America's wealthy elite will be further insulated from threats to their virtual monopoly on excessive wealth.
As a member of the working class, I am weighing in against the status quo multi-level marketing scheme. Despite my lower middle class upbringing and opportunity to obtain a college education, I went through hard times and quit school. For the next six years, I faced under-employment, unemployment and serious economic struggles. Intermittently working as an unskilled laborer in various manufacturing and service jobs, I received wages as low as $5 per hour, had limited or no benefits, endured miserable conditions, and suffered severe burns on my legs in an industrial accident. I experienced life in the lower stratus of the pyramid of American Capitalism first-hand. In a nation as wealthy as ours, it is a travesty that some people remain trapped in such wretched circumstances throughout their lives.
Today my wife and I are fortunate enough to generate a middle class income together, enabling our family to live a modest lifestyle and for me to engage in my avocation of researching, writing dissident essays, and publishing my blog. However, as members of the middle class, we are part of a dying breed in America, balancing precariously on the edge of an economic abyss.
Ethics, laws, justice? Who cares...
Consider three examples of the fates of laborers who dared to defy the primary beneficiaries of America's predatory economic system.
During a peaceful pro-labor rally in May of 1886, anarchists were exposing the recent Chicago police slaying of two laborers striking against McCormick Harvesting. An unidentified individual detonated a bomb in the midst of the crowd, killing eight police officers and three demonstrators. In an effort to turn public opinion against the labor movement, the Land of the Free committed state-sponsored murder against four of the anarchists, publicly hanging them. The Illinois governor later concluded the executed men were innocent, the Haymarket Martyr's Monument was raised in their honor, and wide speculation emerged that the bomber was a corporate agent provocateur.
In 1894, when workers became fed up with rail car manufacturer George Pullman's "welfare capitalism" (a euphemism for indentured servitude), they went on strike. Eugene Debs led a sympathy strike amongst thousands of railroad employees, whose refusal to handle Pullman cars seriously interfered with national rail traffic. President Grover Cleveland broke the strike with US Marshals and the military, leaving thirteen strikers dead and Debs in prison.
It is small wonder that so many of America's elite genuflect to Ronald Reagan and want to see his countenance emblazoned on the ten dollar bill. Reagan dropped a nuke on labor in the ongoing class war when he fired the PATCO air traffic controllers in 1981. When Reagan took office, union membership was 23%, down from its 35% peak in the 1950's. However, his withering blow greatly accelerated the precipitous decline of organized labor in the United States. By 2005 only 8% of America's private sector workforce was unionized.
Brute force, propaganda, illegal firings, and state-sponsored murder imposed by the ruling class in the United States were not enough to deter the American labor movement from its diligent efforts to improve the lot of the working class. We can thank them for the eight hour work day, an end to child labor, increased safety in the work place, higher wages, and health and retirement benefits.
Since the majority of the population is a part of the working class, a majority of people benefited from labor's gains. Sounds like a logical outcome in a nation which espouses democratic values. However, the minority in the ruling plutocracy was not pleased. Determined as they were to protect their interests, the modern day Money Changers discovered new ways to impose their economic brutality. (Imagine what Jesus would do on the floors of the stock exchanges).
Welcome to McDonald's! Would you like fries with that?
Arguing that American workers are overpaid, corporate elites have slashed pay, health benefits, and pensions. They contend that to stay competitive in the new "global economy", they need to cut labor costs. Working people are to sacrifice with a smile since it is in their best interest to enable their masters to stay in business. Throughout the 80's and 90's, massive layoffs pushed millions of middle class blue collar workers into service sector jobs which cut their incomes in half. According to Louis Uchitelle of the New York Times, 30 million Americans were laid off between 1984 and 2004.
Starting in 2000, Silicon Valley and the telecom companies began a trend of massive white collar layoffs. Other industries have followed suit. In short, "overpaid" front line American workers have become highly expendable.
Corporate America doesn't care what color your collar is. Human beings are commodities to them, and if an employee's existence is too costly, they eliminate them. Illegally firing employees who try to unionize, hiring temps to replace full-time employees (to eliminate paying those damn benefits), replacing seasoned employees with fresh college grads, and "off shoring" American jobs to exploit cheap labor in other nations exemplify the new paradigm in American business. While corporate profits soar at an annual clip of 30%, employee wages crawl upward at an average of 2%. Meanwhile, CEO's earn an average of over 400 times that of their employees.
While American workers struggle, multinational corporations, which are often guided by American executives and extremely wealthy share-holders, have introduced human beings in developing nations to the profound misery of Dickensonian Capitalism. When laws in the United States began making it prohibitive for the Social Darwinists to exploit employees and the environment to the extent that it engorged their bank accounts, they began moving their operations to countries which did not have these "harsh constraints".
It is time for labor to unite on behalf of humanity
In a 1978 letter of resignation from his position of president of the UAW, Douglas Fraser wrote:
I believe leaders of the business community, with few exceptions, have chosen to wage a one-sided class war today in our country --a war against working people, the unemployed, the poor, the minorities, the very young and the very old, and even many in the middle class of our society....I would rather sit with the rural poor, the desperate children of urban blight, the victims of racism, and working people seeking a better life than with those whose religion is the status quo, whose goal is profit and whose hearts are cold. We intend to reforge the links with those who believe in struggle: the kind of people who sat down in the factories in the 1930's and who marched in Selma in the 1960's.
Unfortunately, Fraser's inspiring words have gone largely unheeded. The two party American Duopoly continues to represent the interests of their wealthy and corporate benefactors. Grass roots mobilization and efforts to advance the interests of social and economic justice for the poor and working class have virtually fallen from the radar screen of organized labor. The larger labor unions continue their close ties with the Democratic Party, apparently believing the fiction that Democrats have the spine or the will to advance the interests of the working class.
In July 2005, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) president Andy Stern took his 1.8 million members and broke ties with the AFL-CIO, an organization which has achieved few tangible advances for labor or the working class in recent years. A former social worker and present activist for social causes, Stern was recently profiled on 60 Minutes. Organizing workers, many of whom are minorities and women, in previously under-unionized industries such as day care and janitorial, Stern has created an agenda of global worker cooperation to end the disturbing trend of corporate exploitation.
Stern and his followers have set out to rectify the gross economic injustices facing the working class and humanity in general. They recognize that collectively, the working class wields great power. Unionizing, strikes, and boycotts are the potent weapons they employ against the seemingly overwhelming forces of Capitalist domination.
Last week, I asked SEIU's online campaign manager, Anders Schneiderman, to share his thoughts on labor taking the lead in advancing the causes of social and economic justice.
He responded:
SEIU members believe that the only way we can build a better world for all of us is if we unite with workers across the globe. When corporations move around the world looking for opportunities to maximize their profits by driving down pay and benefits standards, no one is safe unless we work together. That's why school bus drivers, are joining together on both sides of the Atlantic to hold First Service accountable, and why on June 15 janitors from around the world will be celebrating International Justice Day and discussing where their campaigns to raise standards should go next.
While the ruling elite have done an exceptional job of employing the concept of divide and conquer in human society (gay vs. straight, pro-life vs. pro-choice, red state vs. blue state, Christianity vs. Islam), a majority of the global population shares at least one common interest. Almost all of us need to trade our labor for our means of sustenance. A global unification of working people of all stripes is what we of the poor and middle classes need to overcome the tyranny of the moneyed ruling class. These modern day monarchs thrive by keeping their peasants in a perpetual state of unnecessary poverty, ignorance, war, and human suffering.
Contrary to the lies of the elite, human nature does not doom us to high degrees of injustice and misery. Human beings are blessed with free will. As individuals, and ultimately collectively, we can choose to act in mostly reasoned, honest and just ways. We can avoid resorting to impulsive, reactionary responses to primal emotions like fear, lust, and anger (feelings propagandists love to trigger and manipulate). No one will make reasoned, fair choices all of the time, but I know from my own experience that through conscious effort, it is possible to do so much of the time.
A revitalized labor movement on a global scale could very well be our means to snatch victory from the pitbull-like jaws of Capitalist Imperialism and to forge a reasonably just and humane society.
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Big Mama Cleans House
Powerful earthquake rocks Russia's Far East region
www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-23 17:02:20
MOSCOW, May 23 (Xinhua) -- An earthquake measuring over 7 on the Richter scale rocked the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia's Far East region on Monday night, cutting off local power and water supplies, authorities said Tuesday.
The epicenter of the earthquake was near Mount Chyornaya, Viktor Bondarev, chief of the Olyutorsky district administration, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.
The power and water supplies to the local village of Tilichiki were cut off. No casualties were reported yet.
Local authorities ordered urgent measures to restore power and water supplies to the area.
A strong earthquake hit the village of Tilichiki in April, forcing more than 1,200 people to be evacuated to Palana, Ossora and the Kamchatka region.
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Russia's Eastern Siberia Is Hit by Earthquake of Magnitude 6.2
May 23 (Bloomberg)
An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.2 struck the Koryakia region on Russia's eastern Kamchatka peninsula in Siberia at 2:08 local time today, the U.S. Geological Survey said. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
The earthquake's epicenter was 145 kilometers (90 miles) north of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, the survey said in an e- mailed statement. The quake struck at a depth of 13 kilometers, the statement said.
There were no immediate reports of damage or injury. Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy has a population of 196,000, according to the USGS e-mail.
The quake was the biggest of 5 tremors of magnitude 4.8 or bigger after a 6.6 earthquake struck in the region at about 12 minutes past midnight today, the USGS said. The main shock was revised from a magnitude of 6.2, itself a revision from an initial measure of 6.7.
The area has experienced strong aftershocks since a magnitude 7.7 earthquake hit Kamchatka on April 21. That earthquake hurt several people and destroyed a school, a hospital and power lines in the village of Tilichiki, as well as damaging an airport in nearby Korf.
Kamchatka lies in a zone where the Eurasian and Pacific plates meet and occasionally shift, causing earthquakes. Quakes of magnitude 5.0 or more can cause considerable damage, depending on their depth.
The 6.6 shock just after midnight wasn't strong enough to generate a tsunami warning to California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia or Alaska, the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center said in an e-mailed statement, citing historical earthquake and tsunami data. Some of those areas may have experienced "small sea level changes,'' the statement said.
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Strong Earthquake Strikes Indonesia
Tuesday May 23, 2006 3:31 AM
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - A strong earthquake struck in eastern Indonesian waters early Tuesday, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage, meteorological officials said.
The epicenter of the 6.0-magnitude quake was 6 miles beneath the Banda Sea, and around 115 miles southwest of Ambon, the capital of Maluku province, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
Arief Akhir, an official at the Meteorological and Geophysics Agency in Jakarta, said that no damage or casualties were reported.
Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago, is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire,'' an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.
A 9.1-magnitude earthquake on Dec. 26, 2004, off the coast of Sumatra Island triggered a tsunami that killed more than 131,000 people in nearby Aceh province, and more than 100,000 others in nearly a dozen other countries.
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Thai flash floods, mudslides kill 10; dozens missing
Reuters
May 23, 2006
BANGKOK - Heavy monsoon rains unleashed flash floods and mudslides in northern Thailand which killed at least 10 people, left 47 missing and thousands homeless, officials said on Tuesday.
Unusually heavy rain at the start of the monsoon lashed deforested hills, causing flash floods -- some of them three meters (10 ft) deep -- which swept into cities and towns in four provinces, they said.
All rail traffic between Bangkok and the north was canceled after four trains, carrying about 1,000 passengers, were stranded in Uttaradit, 500 km (310 miles) north of the capital.
Some passengers climbed onto carriage roofs in fear of rising waters, state rail spokeswoman Monthakarn Srivilasa said.
The rain started at the weekend and was expected to continue until Friday.
In the Laplae district of Uttaradit province, 330 mm (13 inches) of rain fell in the 24 hours to 0000 GMT on Tuesday, causing mudslides which buried 10 houses and killed six people, officials said.
Four others died in nearby Sukhothai and Prae provinces.
The region is not a key farming area for Thailand, the world's biggest exporter of rice, tapioca and rubber.
"This is typical monsoon rain, which has come a little bit earlier and heavier than usual this year," Bangkok meteorologist Janjira Pornsri told Reuters.
The monsoon season in tropical Thailand usually lasts until October.
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Unrelenting rain raises flooding fears in soggy southeastern B.C.
Last Updated Tue, 23 May 2006 06:19:04 EDT
CBC News
Hundreds of people in southeastern British Columbia might have to leave their homes in the next few days to escape rising waters and firefighters are on standby with a quarter-million sandbags to hold the floods back.
Already 53 homes in Passmore and Slocan Park have been evacuated due to rising rivers caused by heavy rain and melting snowpacks. Hundreds more in the West Kootenay area have been told to be ready to leave on short notice.
As much as 25 millimetres of rain was expected Monday evening, and perhaps 20 mm more is being forecast for Tuesday. Rain is in the forecast for the rest of the week.
The Slocan River is higher than many locals can recall.
"In the summer, I would say every other year I could walk across it.," said Don Munro, who lives within 100 metres of the Little Slocan, a tributary of the now-raging Slocan. "That's our island over there, so we can actually walk across the river. Now it would be, oh, 10 feet [three metres] deep."
Munro and his family are on evacuation alert, so they could be told to leave within an hour.
Unusually high temperatures that have melted snow in the mountains have combined with the recent heavy rainfall to cause flooding in the valleys.
"When the rains hit them [the snowpacks] they just melt, they just bring everything down," said Terry Warren, the local emergency response co-ordinator. "So it's really heavily soaked wet snow hanging on the mountains."
Emergency officials say they are well-prepared with sandbags and manpower if the coming rain brings down the rest of the snow.
And officials in Nelson, worried about water contamination, have warned people to restrict their use of sewage and septic tank systems.
The province has advised residents to be aware of the taste, colour and smell of the water they are drinking and to boil it should it appear irregular.
On the weekend, a man was swept away after falling into a creek in Penticton.
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Wall of water strikes giant ferry
By Simon de Bruxelles
The Sunday Times
May 23, 2006
A FREAK wave smashed into one of the world's largest ferries in the Bay of Biscay, terrifying passengers and forcing the ship to divert to a French harbour.
The wave, estimated at between 40ft (12m) and 50ft high, crashed into the Pont-Aven, the flagship of the Brittany Ferries fleet, at 10.25pm on Sunday, smashing windows and injuring at least six people. Cabins more than 50ft above the waterline were flooded.
Passengers described seeing a wall of water, followed by an explosion and then seeing people running around covered in blood after being hit by glass.
The 41,000-tonne Pont-Aven, which was sailing from Plymouth to Santander in northern Spain, was forced to pull into the French port of Roscoff for emergency repairs.
The 1,150 passengers on board were offered a refund and told that they could return to England on another ship or make their own way to Spain. Some complained that they had been left stranded with no way to continue their journey.
The wave struck at the height of a Force 9 gale that had caused the cancellation of dozens of crossings in the Channel. The £100 million Pont-Aven, the largest and most modern vessel in the fleet, was being buffeted by heavy seas when the wave struck.
Among the passengers were the owners of 19 classic cars who were heading for a rally in Barcelona. Richard Lloyd, of Brackley, Northamptonshire, said: "It had been pretty rough the night before as we headed down the Channel.
"During dinner, bottles were tipping over and things sliding about but, when we turned the corner into the Bay of Biscay, it really got bad. I have never seen seas like it. I saw a huge wave, a wall of water roaring past, and there was a loud noise like an explosion when it hit.
"Minutes later people were running around the ship very frightened. Some had what looked like shrapnel wounds and others were covered in blood." Mr Lloyd, 60, a motor racing entrepreneur, had been on his way to the car rally with his wife, Phillipa, and 18 other competitors.
He said that they would now have to drive their ageing vehicles an extra 600 miles and might miss the start of the rally. So many entrants were on the boat that the organisers have shortened the event by a day to compensate.
Dave French and his partner, Val Bostock, from Bolton, were on their way to Alicante with their motorcycle.
Ms Bostock said: "We woke up to find water in the cabin and we were on Deck 6, well above the sea. The alarm sounded and we were told to go to the restaurant.
"We knew conditions were getting bad the night before when the magician had to cancel his act because his table kept sliding off the stage." She said that they were given another cabin on the eighth deck.
"They have said we will get our £400 ticket money back," she said, "and they did dry out all our wet clothes for us. But we now have to spend another day or two on our journey."
The ship, which docked at 5am, is expected to be out of action until the week's end.
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It will rain fish 'n frogs
By JOHN TROUP
BRITAIN is set for a summer downpour of FROGS and FISH, scientists said yesterday.
Recent changeable weather conditions such as storms, droughts and sudden downpours have vastly increased the chance of objects falling from the sky.
Experts say the most likely spot for a BFO - "bizarre falling object" - is the Norfolk resort of Great Yarmouth.
The phenomenon is highlighted in a British Weather Services report.
Past recorded BFOs include jellyfish, frogs, crabs, fish and coal.
BWS senior meteorologist Jim Dale said the phenomenon can be caused by heat and air pressure coupled with atmospheric instability.
He said: "Converging cold air off the North Sea and warm air off the land make for the necessary conditions."
Other BFO hotspots include east Manchester and Ipswich.
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'Very active' hurricane season ahead
Last Updated Mon, 22 May 2006 12:30:34 EDT
CBC News
This year's north Atlantic hurricane season will be "very active," spawning eight to 10 hurricanes, the U.S.-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday.
NOAA's outlook, published on its website, predicts:
- There will likely be 13 to 16 named storms, including tropical storms and hurricanes, compared with the 11 named storms seen in an average season.
- Eight to 10 of this year's named storms will become hurricanes, meaning they will have sustained winds of at least 119 km/h, compared with the annual average of six.
- Four to six of the hurricanes will reach an intensity of at least Category 3, with sustained winds of at least 178 km/h, though on average each season experiences only two.
The 2006 North Atlantic hurricane season begins on June 1.
"Whether we face an active hurricane season, like this year, or a below-normal season, the crucial message for every person is the same: prepare, prepare, prepare," Max Mayfield, director of the administration's National Hurricane Center, said on the organization's website.
"One hurricane hitting where you live is enough to make it a bad season."
2005 update more accurate than early outlook
Last year's early hurricane season forecast from NOAA failed to foresee that 2005 would be one of the most intense hurricane seasons ever. However, an update issued in mid-August was much more accurate.
It warned that a high number of powerful storms would develop in the Caribbean and along the eastern coast of North America.
"The forecasts that we're seeing are calling for numbers that are about double the average of the past 50 years," Steve Miller of the Canadian Hurricane Centre told CBC News at the time.
"Normally we'd get about 10. This year, the forecast is averaging 20 or even higher."
New Orleans still vulnerable to direct hit
Two weeks later, hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi as a Category 4 storm, sending flood waters gushing over entire neighbourhoods of New Orleans.
The disaster was one of the worst in decades for the United States, killing at least 1,747 people as of last week, when more deaths were added to the toll.
Even now, recently repaired levees are not strong enough to protect New Orleans from a direct hit by a Category 3 storm, a team of academics warned in a new report released Monday.
The Independent Levee Investigation Team found fault with how levee repairs were funded leading up to Katrina, and said a piecemeal approach to managing emergency protection was still a problem.
So many storms in 2006, names ran out
Predictions of more storms than usual in 2005 were dead-on. Forecasters ran out of names for the tropical storms and hurricanes, having to dip into the Greek alphabet when the standard alphabetic list of 21 names was exhausted.
At the end of the day, the 2005 North Atlantic season included 28 storms, seven more than the previous record of 21 storms in 1933.
Four of them - Emily, Katrina, Rita and Wilma - reached Category 5, the top level of intensity, with sustained winds of at least 250 km/h at some point in their existence.
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Scientists note stunning loss of Arctic ice, snow
Last Updated Fri, 19 May 2006 13:36:09 EDT
CBC News
Climatologists studying satellite weather maps say they're amazed and alarmed by how quickly spring is coming to the Arctic this year.
Record warm temperatures have significantly reduced ice cover in Canada's Arctic waters and snow cover on land.
"I've never seen it so wide open this time of year," said Environment Canada's David Phillips, referring to the body of water between Baffin Island and mainland Quebec. "It's just blue, blue as the bluest sky."
Phillips said snow cover is also fast disappearing across Nunavut. In Cape Dorset, there is typically 50 centimetres of snow on the ground in May. Now there's just two centimetres. And in Iqaluit, bare ground is exposed everywhere, when there would normally still be 20 centimetres of snow cover.
Phillips, a senior climatologist with the federal weather agency, says temperatures were four to five degrees warmer than usual this past winter. The higher temperatures come on the heels of dramatic losses in sea ice last summer, Phillips says, and so the natural cycle hasn't had a chance to recover.
"There has been no rebounding back," he said. "The ice just hasn't had a chance to bounce back, to grow during the winter, during the cold season of the year.
"Essentially what's happening is there's been so much warm weather, week after week, month after month, season after season, the environment is just not behaving the way it should," said Phillips.
Ice cover has now dropped to a record low for the winter period, attracting the attention of Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.
Serreze said April is generally the month with the maximum ice cover over the Arctic Ocean, and the loss this year is shocking.
"If we compare this April with all previous Aprils, there's hundreds of thousands of square kilometres less ice," he said.
Climatologists, biologists and people living in the area fear the shifting ice patterns are a sign of even deeper changes that will disrupt age-old cycles of plant and animal life, and even global weather patterns.
Serreze says researchers will be watching ice cover data carefully this summer, and many are already predicting the shrinkage in September will largely surpass last year's record high.
Serreze says sea ice loss has been the greatest along the coasts of Siberia and Alaska. This winter a ship could have travelled northeast from London along Russia's Arctic Ocean coastline and down through the Bering Strait between Siberia and Alaska to Tokyo, he says.
Meanwhile, Phillips says people in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories can expect the balmy weather to continue through the summer.
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Low volcanic activity may hide real danger
10:30, May 23, 2006
Government observers warned yesterday that Indonesia's Mount Merapi remained a danger to villagers living on its slopes despite an easing of volcanic activity at the mountain.
Merapi was still spitting lava, gas and clouds of ash as thousands of farmers left government shelters to tend crops, milk cows and feed livestock.
The 3,000-metre volcano has been rocked by a series of spectacular eruptions since May 13, but residents have complained of poor conditions at shelters.
Sugiono, one of the government observers watching Merapi around the clock, said that its crater continued to ooze glowing lava and spew ash up to 900 metres into the air.
"Merapi is still a danger and the avalanches of hot clouds remain a threat," said Sugiono, who uses only one name.
Yesterday morning, as many as 2,600 people "left the shelters to get milk from their cows and then feed them," Sugiono said. "Generally, they come back again in the afternoon."
Multiple hot gas and lava avalanches tumbled down the mountain slopes as ash blasted nearly a kilometre skyward. Repeated volcanic tremors also shook the area.
Authorities said they have no plans to lift the evacuation order put in place last week that saw more than 5,000 people leave villages closest to the crater.
Many others ignored the order, or have since returned home, saying they are bored with life in evacuation centres.
"Even though we have reports that Merapi activity has declined a bit, we call on people to stay in the safe zone," said Mardiyanto, the Central Java provincial governor.
On Sunday the mountain spewed a total of 170 visible lava outflows and 44 heat clouds.
The heat clouds, which geologists have warned were the primary threat posed by the volcano, travelled as far as 3.5 kilometres down its slopes yesterday. The nearest village is at least six kilometres from the peak.
On Sunday the mountain spewed a total of 170 visible lava outflows and 44 heat clouds.
The heat clouds, which geologists have warned were the primary threat posed by the volcano, travelled as far as 3.5 kilometres down its slopes yesterday. The nearest village is at least six kilometres from the peak.
In 1994, 60 people were killed by a searing gas cloud while in 1930, more than a dozen villages were incinerated, leaving 1,300 dead.
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Amerika: The Battle Continues
Police Given "Emergency" Powers
Associated Press
Mon May 22
The Supreme Court reaffirmed Monday that police can enter homes in emergencies without knocking or announcing their presence.
Justices said four Brigham City, Utah, police officers were justified in entering a home after peeking through a window and seeing a fight between a teenager and adults.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the unanimous court, said that officers had a reasonable basis for going inside to stop violence.
The decision overturned a ruling by Utah's Supreme Court that said a trial judge was correct to throw out charges stemming from the police search. The trial judge had ruled that police had violated the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches by failing to knock before entering the house.
Comment: Skipping merrily towards overt fascism in the U.S. Remember, keep smiling, even when they come to drag you away to a stockade for being a "disgruntled citizen":
Mr Ridge announced a tightening of controls at airports, railways and ports, as well as around nuclear and chemical plants, the White House, and monuments and landmarks across the nation. New York's mayor Michael Bloomberg fleshed out the city's own plan, Operation Atlas, including a significantly increased police presence and the use of radiation sensors on Manhattan streets.
Setting out the thinking behind Liberty Shield, Mr Ridge said al-Qaida remained the "principal threat," but said "Iraqi state agents" or even just "disgruntled individuals may use this time period to conduct terrorist attacks against the United States and our interests".
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Passengers Restrain 80-year-old Man on Airline Flight
AP
May 23, 2006
LOS ANGELES -- An elderly man on an American Airlines flight was restrained by passengers, including television's "Dr. 90210," after he got out of his seat and shoved a flight attendant late Monday, officials said.
The jetliner landed safely in Los Angeles and police took the 80-year-old man, who did not speak English, to a hospital for a 72-hour mental observation, airport spokeswoman Nancy Castles said.
"He evidently started to panic about 15 minutes before landing, when everyone is supposed to be buckled into seats," Castles said.
None of the five crew members or 122 passengers aboard the MD-80 plane from Austin, Texas, reported injuries, American Airlines spokesman Billy Sanez said.
The man hopped out of his seat in coach and marched into first class, Sanez said.
Dr. Robert Rey, a plastic surgeon who practices martial arts, told The Associated Press he got out of his seat and intervened when he heard the man make a "big noise" as he pushed a female flight attendant toward the cockpit.
"When you get a black belt, at that stage your brain just clicks into action," the doctor said. "I restrained this gentleman in a very aggressive way without hurting him."
Another passenger helped as the man kicked and screamed, Rey said. The doctor said he also checked the man's vital signs and determined he was not having a medical emergency.
The flight attendant "was shook up but not hurt," Rey said.
Flight crew members described the man as "very frail," Sanez said. He had been scheduled to board a connecting flight in Singapore after landing in Los Angeles.
Rey, who stars on the E! Network reality show "Dr. 90210" about a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, was returning home after taping a segment for "The Insider."
Rey also appears as himself on a Carl's Jr. commercial in which he advises a chicken to undergo breast augmentation surgery.
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Gates of Eden
By Chris Floyd
May 19, 2006
Earlier this month, the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London released its annual World Prison Population List. And there, standing proudly at the head of the line, towering far above all others, is that shining city on the hill, the United States of America.
Beneath the thunder of the mighty cataclysms unleashed by the Bush administration -- the war crime in Iraq, the global torture gulag, the epic corruption, the gutting of the U.S. Constitution, the open embrace of presidential tyranny -- a quieter degradation of American society has continued apace. And this slow descent into barbarism didn't begin with President George W. Bush, although his illicit regime certainly represents the apotheosis of the dark forces driving the decay.
With the world's attention diverted by the latest scandals and shameless posturings of the Bush faction -- domestic spying, bribes and hookers at the CIA, military units roaring down to the border to scare unarmed poor people looking for work -- few noticed a small story that cast a harsh, penetrating light on the corrosion of the national character.
Earlier this month, the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London released its annual World Prison Population List. And there, standing proudly at the head of the line, towering far above all others, is that shining city on the hill, the United States of America. But strangely enough, the Bush gang and its media sycophants failed to celebrate -- or even note -- yet another instance where a triumphant America leads the world. Where are the cheering hordes shouting "U.S.A! U.S.A!" at the news that the land of the free imprisons more people than any other country in the world, both in raw numbers and as a percentage of its population?
Yes, the world's greatest democracy now has more than 2 million of its citizens locked up in iron cages, an incarceration rate of 714 per 100,000 of the national population. The only countries within shouting distance are such bastions of penological enlightenment as China (1.55 million prisoners, plus some unsorted "administrative detainees"), Russia (a wimpy 763,000) and Brazil (330,000), whose exemplary prison management has been on such prominent display this week.
But although the U.S. prison population has soared to record-breaking heights during Bush's presidency, America's status as the most punitive nation on earth is by no means solely his doing. Bush is merely standing on the shoulders of giants -- such as former President Bill Clinton, who once created 50 new federal offenses in a single draconian measure. In fact, like the great cathedrals of old, the building of Fortress America has been the work of decades, with an entire society yoked to the common task. At each step, the promulgation of ever-more draconian punishments for ever-lesser offenses, and the criminalization of ever-broader swathes of human behavior, have been greeted with hosannahs from a public and press who seem to be insatiable gluttons for punishment -- someone else's punishment, that is, and preferably someone of dusky hue.
The main engine of this mass incarceration has been the 35-year "war on drugs," a spurious battle against an abstract noun that provides an endless fount of profits, payoffs and power for the well-connected while only worsening the problem it purports to address -- just like the "war on terror." The war on drugs has in fact been the most effective assault on an underclass since Stalin's campaign against the kulaks.
It was launched by Richard Nixon in 1971, after urban unrest had shaken major U.S. cities during those famous "long, hot summers" of the '60s. Yet even as the crackdowns began, America's inner cities were being flooded with heroin, much of it originating in Southeast Asia, where the CIA and its hired warlords ran well-funded black ops in and around Vietnam. At home, gangs reaped staggering riches from the criminalization of the natural, if often unhealthy, human craving for intoxication. President Ronald Reagan upped the ante in the 1980s with a rash of "mandatory sentencing" laws that put even first-time, small-time offenders away for years. His term also saw a new flood -- crack cocaine -- devastating the inner cities, even as his covert operators used drug money to fund the terrorist Contra army in Nicaragua and run illegal weapons to Iran, while the downtown druglords grew more powerful. The U.S. underclass was caught in a classic pincer movement, attacked by both the state and the gangs. There were no more long, hot summers of protest against injustice; there was simply the struggle to survive.
Under Reagan, Bush Sr. and Clinton, the feverish privatization of the prison system added a new impetus for detention. Politically wired corporations needed to keep those profit-making cells filled, and the politicians they greased were happy to oblige with "tougher" sentences and new crimes to prosecute. Now Bush Jr. is readying another front in the war on the underclass, promising this week to build 4,000 new cells for immigrant detainees -- having prudently handed Halliburton a $385 million "contingency" contract back in February to build, lo and behold, "immigrant detention centers" should the need for them arise, The New York Times reports.
Like the war on drugs, the equally ill-conceived war on immigrants will be directed at the poorest and most vulnerable, not the "coyote" gangs who profit from human trafficking -- and certainly not the U.S. businesses and wealthy homelanders who love the dirt-cheap labor of the illegals. Those for-profit prisons will soon be filled to bursting with this new harvest.
A nation's true values can be measured in how it treats the poor, the weak, the damaged, the unconnected. For more than 30 years, the answer of the U.S. power structure has been clear: You lock them up, shut them up, grind them down -- and make big bucks in the process.
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McCain's heckler: I'm sorry
BY JORDAN LITE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
May 23, 2006
A New School student apologized to Sen. John McCain for hijacking his commencement address, but said her controversial speech was "what my conscience called for."
"I said, 'I'm really sorry I had to do that.' And he said, 'Oh, it's all right, I understand,'" Jean Sara Rohe told the Daily News yesterday.
Rohe, 21, said she was unprepared for the angry response she got from McCain's camp after she spoke out against his support of the Iraq war and her fellow graduates heckled and booed him.
The Republican senator from Arizona, who is widely expected to make a bid for the presidency in 2008, said the New School students "could learn a lesson in courtesy." One of his aides called Rohe "an idiot."
"It took no courage to do what you did, Ms. Rohe. It was an act of vanity and nothing more," Mark Salter wrote on the HuffingtonPost blog.
"None of this was disrespectful. It was in keeping with his value of self-expression," countered Rohe, who was selected to deliver remarks on behalf of the graduates.
An angry Salter tried to downplay his comments yesterday, describing the Brooklyn grad as "a supercilious young lady with slightly unfair things to say."
"We're not at war with Jean Sara Rohe. I'm sure we don't particularly care," he sniffed.
New School President Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator who invited McCain to speak, praised Rohe for her bravery Friday.
Comment: You see, to the pathocrats, telling the truth is shameful vanity and idiocy, and must be crushed at all costs. Telling lies and waging illegal, preemptive wars is "bravery".
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Country radio nixes Dixie Chicks
UPI
May 22, 2006
NASHVILLLE, Tenn. -- It appears the war U.S. country radio stations mounted against the politically outspoken Dixie Chicks has not abated in the least.
The band is promoting "Taking the Long Way," its first album since Natalie Maines told a London audience in 2003 she was ashamed to be from the same state as U.S. President George Bush. The comment sparked a radio boycott of the group's music.
Although the album hits stores Tuesday, the first two singles from the album are not getting widespread airplay, Billboard.com reported Monday.
The first single, "Not Ready to Make Nice," only peaked at No. 36 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart and the second single, "Everybody Knows," is moving downward after its peak at No. 48.
WKIS FM in Miami reported it pulled "Not Ready to Make Nice" due to listener complaints after only one week.
The program director at KUBL/KKAT in Salt Lake City told Billboard he was angered by its "self-indulgent and selfish lyrics."
Neither the Chicks or their label, Columbia Records, would speak to Billboard for its article.
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Hezbollah may be planning U.S. attack
UPI
May 22, 2006
WASHINGTON -- As concerns rise over Iran's nuclear program, U.S. security agents reportedly fear the Hezbollah terror group may be planning to attack U.S. cities.
The New York Post, quoting sources, said the Lebanon-based fundamentalist Islamic group may be planning to activate sleeper cells in New York or other big cities. The investigation is being carried out by the FBI and the Justice Department.
Quoting law-enforcement and intelligence officials, the newspaper said about a dozen hard-core supporters of Hezbollah have been identified in recent weeks as operating in the New York area. The Iranian Mission to the United Nations also is being watched.
But U.S. officials also told the newspaper there is no intelligence information pointing to an imminent attack by Hezbollah.
The stepped up security activity comes after reports that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had met with leaders of Hezbollah and other terror groups during a visit to Syria, the report said
Comment: Remember, the only attacks that have taken place against American targets in America in the past 15 years have been carried out by the U.S. government itself, and Israel of course. Any future attack is likely therefore to come from the same sources.
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Malvo Testimony Looms in Sniper Trial
Tuesday May 23, 2006 10:16 AM
By MATTHEW BARAKAT
Associated Press Writer
ROCKVILLE, Md. (AP) - Prosecutors in the second trial of convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad prepared a dramatic conclusion to their case Tuesday with expected testimony from their star witness: Muhammad's teenage accomplice in their 2002 killing spree, Lee Boyd Malvo.
A person close to the case said Malvo is expected to strike a deal with prosecutors and testify against Muhammad, whom Malvo once viewed as a father figure. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the trial is still underway.
Both Muhammad, 45, and Malvo, now 21, were already convicted in Virginia for a sniper murder there. Muhammad received a death sentence while Malvo was given a life term. The October 2002 sniper spree left 10 people dead and three wounded in the national capital area.
Prosecutors in Maryland have said they are pursuing a second trial in case the Virginia conviction is overturned on appeal and to provide justice in Montgomery County, where six of the 10 killings occurred. Malvo is likely to plead guilty to the same six murders Muhammad faces.
If Malvo does take the witness stand, nobody knows exactly what he will say. Shortly after the pair was arrested on Oct. 24, 2002, Malvo confessed to being the triggerman in all the shootings. But he later recanted and told mental health experts hired by his lawyers that Muhammad, 45, was the shooter in nearly all the deaths.
The pair also is suspected of earlier shootings in Maryland, Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana and Washington state.
Malvo's lawyers contended Muhammad brainwashed the teenager and turned him into a killer. They also said that well after the arrest, Malvo never fully detached himself from Muhammad despite deep anger toward him.
Malvo's testimony could take an even more compelling twist because he would be cross-examined by Muhammad, who has been acting as his own lawyer. Muhammad continues to refer to Malvo as "my son'' and told jurors in the trial's opening statements that he intends to prove Malvo's innocence as well as his own.
Darren Popkin, chief deputy for the Montgomery County sheriff's office, confirmed that Malvo will be brought to the courthouse Tuesday, though Malvo's presence does not guarantee he will testify. Malvo was called as a witness in Muhammad's first trial but refused to testify, invoking his constitutional right against self-incrimination.
On Monday, Muhammad complained to Circuit Judge James Ryan that he was not getting a fair trial and that prosecutors were trying to limit his defense by quashing his subpoena of a witness.
If the state continues interfering with his defense, Muhammad told Ryan, "You don't need me. You can send me the verdict in the mail. The way it's going, that might as well happen.''
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Zogby Poll: Over 70 Million American Adults Support New 9/11 Investigation
PRWEB
May 22, 2006
Although the Bush administration continues to exploit September 11 to justify domestic spying, unprecedented spending and a permanent state of war, a new Zogby poll reveals that less than half of the American public trusts the official 9/11 story or believes the attacks were adequately investigated.
911Truth.org Urges 2006 Reform Candidates to Recognize a Powerful New Constituency
The poll is the first scientific survey of Americans' belief in a 9/11 cover up or the need to investigate possible US government complicity, and was commissioned to inform deliberations at the June 2~4 "9/11: Revealing the Truth, Reclaiming Our Future" conference in Chicago. Poll results indicate 42% believe there has indeed been a cover up (with 10% unsure) and 45% think "Congress or an International Tribunal should re-investigate the attacks, including whether any US government officials consciously allowed or helped facilitate their success" (with 8% unsure). The poll of American residents was conducted from Friday, May 12 through Tuesday, May 16, 2004. Overall results have a margin of sampling error of +/- 2.9. All inquiries about questions, responses and demographics should be directed to Zogby International.
According to Janice Matthews, executive director of 911truth.org, "To those who have followed the mounting evidence for US government involvement in 9/11, these results are both heartening and frankly quite amazing, given the mainstream media's ongoing refusal to cover the most critical questions of that day. Our August 2004 Zogby poll of New Yorkers showed nearly half believe certain US officials 'consciously' allowed the attacks to happen and 66% want a fresh investigation, but these were people closest to the tragedy and most familiar with facts refuting the official account. This revelation that so many millions nationwide now also recognize a 9/11 cover up and the need for a new inquiry should be a wake up call for all 2006 political candidates hoping to turn this country around. We think it also indicates Americans are awakening to the larger pattern of deceit that led us into Constitutional twilight and endless war, and that our independent media may have finally come of age."
Poll co-author, W. David Kubiak concurs, saying: "Despite years of relentless media promotion, whitewash and 9/11 Commission propaganda, the official 9/11 story still can't even muster 50% popular support. Since this myth has been the administration's primary source of political and war-making power, this level of distrust has revolutionary implications for everyone working for peace, justice and civil liberties. If we ever hope to reclaim this country, end aggression and restore international respect, we all must finally scrutinize that day when things started to go so terribly wrong. The media and movement leaders ignore this call at their peril, because tens of millions are clearly telling us here they are ready for 9/11 truth."
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War Whore Rice Greeted by Protests, Applause at Boston College
By BRANDIE M. JEFFERSON
Associated Press
May 22, 2006
BOSTON - A few students turned their backs but more stood to applaud as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice received an honorary degree and addressed graduates at Boston College on Monday.
After weeks of turmoil and anti-war protests over Rice's invitation to address the Catholic school, Rice told graduates that their education comes with responsibilities.
She drew scattered applause when she discussed what she called a "commitment to reason," or an obligation to test and challenge their own views.
"There is nothing wrong with holding an opinion and holding it passionately," Rice said, "but at those times when you are absolutely sure you're right, go find someone who disagrees."
About 50 students stood with their backs toward the stage as Rice was introduced to give her commencement speech, but they were quickly drowned out by a standing ovation.
A half-dozen signs that said "Not in my name" were held in the air by students, who sat down by the time Rice started to speak. One banner that said "BC honors lies and torture" was held on the side of the stadium, away from where the students were sitting.
Other students cheered Rice, and an Internet broadcast of the ceremony included a shot of a student, talking on his cell phone, with an "I Like Condi" button pinned to his graduation cap.
Earlier Monday, Rice said she understands why students and faculty planned to protest, and she embraced their right to object even as she defended the war in Iraq.
"People have the right to protest, but I hope when they protest they realize also that people now have a right to protest in Baghdad and Kabul, and that's a very big breakthrough for the international community," Rice said Monday before the BC commencement.
"I think it's just fine for people to protest as long as they do so in a way that doesn't try to have a monopoly on the conversation," Rice told WBZ-AM in an interview. "Others have right to say what they think as well."
Ever since Boston College announced earlier this month that Rice would speak at the school's graduation and receive an honorary degree, reaction has ranged from outrage to enthusiasm.
"We are very concerned as Catholics that Boston College has invited Condoleezza Rice, who is an architect of this foreign policy and war. ... That is hardly something to honor," said Brayton Shanley, a BC alumnus and co-founder of Agape, a lay Catholic organization that has been working with students to organize the protests.
At the ceremony Monday, demonstrators planned to wear black armbands and turn their backs when Rice is awarded an honorary law degree. Students also will hand out leaflets and stickers with messages, including "Not in my name" and "No honorary degree."
University spokesman Jack Dunn told the student newspaper, The Heights, that all have agreed to keep their protests respectful and not disrupt the ceremonies.
University officials also expect protests off-campus.
A letter written by two theology professors, and signed by more than 10 percent of the faculty, kicked off the opposition to Rice.
"On the levels of both moral principle and practical moral judgment, Secretary Rice's approach to international affairs is in fundamental conflict with Boston College's commitment to the values of the Catholic and Jesuit traditions and is inconsistent with the humanistic values that inspire the university's work," the letter said.
The Rev. David Hollenbach, one of the letter writers, has said he has no objection to Rice speaking, but said she doesn't deserve an honorary degree.
Steve Almond, an adjunct writing professor, resigned from his post over the matter.
"I think Americans have lost sight of the idea of sacrifice," he said. "This is a relatively small sacrifice for me."
Rice said the use of force in Iraq was "the right thing."
"I'm not surprised that there was controversy, but my understanding is that there are views on both sides of the issue," she said Sunday at meeting with a small group of reporters.
Comment: "...at those times when you are absolutely sure you're right, go find someone who disagrees."
It's too bad Condi doesn't take her own advice when she's working at the White House.
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Big Money
Latin America, the European Union and the US: The New Polarities
By James Petras
05/22/06
A new and complex series of social and national polarities in the Western Hemisphere have dominated political life over the past few years. At the beginning of the new millennium the national confrontation was between Cuba and the US/EU, and the social confrontations between the rural/indian and urban/unemployed movements and a continent-wide collection of neo-liberal regimes. This polarization resulted brom the previous 25 years (between 1975-2000), the "Golden Age" of imperial pillage. Massive legal and illegal transfersof property, wealth, profits, interest and royalty payments flowed from Latin America to the US and the EU. The most lucrative public enterprises valued at more than $350 billion dollars were privatized without any of the constitutional niceties and eventually ended up in the hands of US, Spanish and other European multi-national corporations and banks. Presidential decrees by-passed congress and the electorate and dictated privileged place for foreign capital. Protests by Congress, the electorate, and national auditors were ignored. The "Golden Age" of multinational capital coincided with the reign of kleptocratic electoral regimes hailed in European and North American political circles and echoed in the mass media as the era of "Democracy and Free Markets". The US/EU MNCs and Banks' unmitigated plunder between 1975 and 2005 was worth over $950 billion dollars.
Plunder without development inevitably led to a general socio-economic crisis and near collapse of the imperial-centered model of capitalist accumulation in Argentina (1998-2002), Ecuador (1996-2006) Bolivia (2002-2005), and Brazil (1998-2005). Beginning in the early 1990's massive extra-parliamentary socio-political movements emerged throughout most of Latin America and were accompanied by large-scale popular uprisings, deposing ten incumbent neo-liberal client "Presidents" of the US/EU: Three in Ecuador and Argentina, two in Bolivia, one each in Venezuela and Brazil.
In retrospect, it is clear that the new wave of potentially revolutionary socio-political movements reached their pinnacle of power by 2002. With massive support, widespread legitimacy, facing a corrupt, discredited and an internally divided bourgeois political class and crisis-ridden economies, the socio-political movements were in a strong position to initiate comprehensive structural changes, if they could transform social power into state power.
But the mass movements faltered, their leaders stopped at the gates of the Executive palace. Instead they looked upward toward new and recycled "center-left" electoral politicians to replace the old, discredited parties and leaders of the neo-liberal right. By 2003, the massive social movements began to ebb, as many leaders were co-opted by the new wave of self-described "center-left" politicians. The promises of "social transformations" were reduced to patronage, subsidies and orthodox macro-economic policies following the same neo-liberal dogma. Yet, in some countries, the mass struggles of the 1990's/2002 led to new political regimes, which were neither US clients nor free of neo-liberal influence,namely,Venezuela and
Bolivia. By 2006 a new complex configuration emerged in which national polarizations to a significant extent overshadowed social class divisions. The new international divide found the EU and the US on one side and Cube, Venezuela and Bolivia on the other. This primary polarization finds expression in Latin America between, on the one hand, a "New Right" neo-liberal pole of ex-leftists and pseudo-populist Central and South American clients, and, on the other hand, of national-populists in Bolivia-Venezuela. In between are a large group of countries, which can move in either direction. The "New Right-Free Market" advocates include the Lula regime in Brazil, the outgoing President Fox in Mexico, 5 Central American regimes, the Vazquez government in Uruguay, the Uribe "State Terrorist" regime in Colombia, the Bachelet and soon-to-depart Toledo governments in Chile and Peru.
"In between" is the Kirchner government in Argentina reflecting a desire to deepen commercial ties with Venezuela, neutralize internal nationalist-populist pressures and promote a mixed national-foreign capitalist alliance with the US, EU and China. Ecuador, the Caribbean countries, Nicaragua and possibly Peru are sites of competition. Because of petroleum subsidies, the entire Caribbean (with the exception of the Dominican Republic) has refused to politically support the EU/US against Venezuela/Bolivia, even as they seek to promote market access to northern markets. Outside of Europe and North America, in the non-aligned movement, China, Russia, Iran and some of the Arab oil producing states have taken overtly or discretely the side of the Cuban-Venezuelan-Bolivian nationalist alliance.
I intersecting with the nationalist divisions are class polarizations, The strongest points of inflexion are found in Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Costa Rico, Mexico, Bolivian Paraguay and more recently Brazil. In Ecuador, CONAIE has rebuilt its mass base (after the debacle of supporting pseudo-populist Gutierrez for president in 2002) and in alliance with mass urban trade unions has been effective in defeating the US-backed free trade agreement (ALCA) and canceling oil contracts with Occidental Petroleum, a US oil company. In Venezuela, there is a dual polarization: on the one hand between the working class and urban poor against the pro-US local landowners, business and media elite, and, on the other hand, within the broad spectrum of Chavez supporters, between wealthy state directors, elite bureaucrats, "national" business people and National Guard Generals and trade unions, landless farmers, urban slum-dwellers and underemployed "informal workers". In Bolivia, the class contradictions remain mostly latent because of the 'national polarization", but find expression in the conflict between orthodox macro-economic policies of the Morales regime and the paltry pay increases given to low-paid educational, health and other public sector workers.
In countries where the polarization between Latin American nationalism and EU/US imperialism is strongest, the class struggle, at least temporarily, is subdued. In other words: the nationalist struggle subsumes the class struggle with the promise that greater national control will result in increased state resources and subsequently to redistributive measures.
In Brazil, class conflict has declined as a result of the subordination of the traditional trade union confederation (CUT) and to a certain extent, the MST (Rural Landless Workers Movement), to the neo-liberal Lula regime. Nevertheless, because of Lula's savage reduction of public employees pensions and opposition to substantial wage and minimum wage increases, the trade unions representing public employees, metal workers and civil construction workers founded a new dynamic labor confederation CONLUTA in May (5-7) 2006. With over 2700 delegates from 22 states representing nearly 1.8 million workers, CONLUTA represents an alternative social pole for the tens of millions of Brazilian workers and poor abandoned by Lula's embrace of bankers, agro-business and foreign MNCs. CONLUTA has adopted a social-movement type of organization including employed and unemployed workers organizations, neighborhood and rural workers movements, students, women, ecology and landless workers organizations within its operating structure. Representation at the Congress was based on direct elections from democratic assemblies. The emergence of a new mass-based labor confederation represents the first major break within the neo-liberal "center-left" Lula regime. As such it portends a revitalization of working class politics and poses a real alternative to the receding power of the pro-regime confederation .
Realities and Myths of International Tensions
There are great many misunderstandings and confusion both on the Right and Left regarding the nature of the conflicts between Latin American nationalists and US/EU states and multi-national corporations. The first point of clarification is over the nature of the nationalist measures adopted by President Chavez of Venezuela and President Morales of Bolivia. Both regimes have not abolished most of the essential elements of capitalist production, namely private profits, foreign ownership, profit repatriation, market access or supply of gas, energy or other primary goods, nor have they outlawed future foreign investments.
In fact Venezuela's huge Orinoco heavy oil fields, the richest reserves of oil in the world, are still owned by foreign capital. The controversy over President Chavez' radical economic measures revolves around a tax and royalty increase from less than 15% to 33% - a rate which is still below what is paid by oil companies in Canada, the Middle East and Africa. What produced the stream of vitriolic froth from the US and British media (Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, etc) was not a comparative analysis of contemporary tax and royalty rates, but a retrospective comparison to the virtually tax-free past. In fact Chavez and Morales are merely modernizing and updating petrol-nation state relations to present world standards; in a sense they are normalizing regulatory relations in the face of exceptional or windfall profits, resulting from corrupt agreements with complicit state executive officials. The harsh reaction of the US and EU governments and their energy MNCs is a result of having become habituated to thinking that exceptional privileges were the norm of 'capitalist development' rather than the result of venal officials. As a result they resisted the normalization of capitalist relations in Venezuela and Bolivia in which state-private joint ventures and profit sharing , common to most other countries. It is not surprising that the president of Royal Dutch Shell, Jeroen van der Veer, advised his oil colleagues that the nationalist position of oil rich countries and their redrawing of contracts is a "new reality" that international energy companies have to accept. Van der Veer, the realist, puts the nationalist reforms in perspective: "In Venezuela we were one of the first to renegotiate. Under the circumstances we are quite satisfied we can work our future there. We have harmony with the government, which is very important. In Bolivia, I assume we will come to a solution" (Financial Times, May 13, 2006 page 9). Likewise Pan Andean Resources (PAR), an Irish gas and energy company stated it could successfully operate in Bolivia following Morales "nationalization" declaration. David Horgan, President of PAR, in justifying a joint venture in gas with the Bolivians, stated, "We don't really care what precedents it (PAR's gas agreement with the Bolivian state) sets. What the majors (big oil companies) see as a problem, we see as an opportunity" (Financial Times, May 13, 2006, page 9).
In fact in Bolivia on May 29, 2006, the Morales government will announce the winning bid to the world's biggest private mining companies competing to exploit state-owned Mutun with 40 billion tons of iron ore. The new terms of the Bolivian government as outlined by its principle ideologue, Vice President Linera, provides judicial and stable guarantees for all investments, in exchange for a profit sharing and joint management schemes. Clearly the big mining corporations are part of the "realist" school of reaping big profits of strategic high-prices raw materials in exchange for paying higher taxes and including Bolivian technocrats in their management team.
The major points of conflict are not capitalism's aversion to socialism, nor even private ownership versus nationalization of property, let alone social revolution leading to an egalitarian society. The major conflicts are over:
1) Increases in taxation, prices and royalty payments,
2) the conversion of firms to joint ventures,
3) representation on corporate boards of directors,
4) distribution of shareholdings between foreign appointed and state-appointed executives,
5) the legal right to revise contracts,
6) compensation payments for presumed assets
7) management of distribution and export sales.
These proposed regulations and reforms may increase state reserves and influence but none of these points of conflict involve a revolutionary transformation of property or social relations of production. The proposed changes are reforms, which resonate with the policies undertaken by European social democratic parties between 1946-1960's and by most of the worlds oil producing countries in the 1970's, including Arab monarchies and Islamic and secular republics. In fact earlier political regimes in both Venezuela (1976) and Bolivia (1952 and 1968) took far more radical measures in nationalizing petroleum and other mining sectors.
Venezuela has increased royalty and tax payments of international petroleum companies because they were far below global levels. Except for a few smaller operations which refused the new rules of the game and were expropriated, none of the biggest firms were seized, nor were worker-employer relations altered in the (PVDSA) state firm or in any of the foreign companies. Their conventional vertical structures remain intact as many rank and file trade unionists complain. Over the past 3 years all the major US/EU petrol firms operating in Venezuela have been earning record profits exceeding their historical highs by several billion (Euros or dollars). Bolivarian revolutionary discourses not withstanding none of the oil majors have indicated any intention of abandoning their lucrative arrangements with the Venezuelan state, despite the heated rhetorical ejaculations emanating from Washington or Brussels.
The US and EU conflict with Venezuela is over politics and ideology as much as it is over the power and profits of their oil companies. They object that Venezuela's mixed economy, higher tax model will replace the de-regulated, low tax, privatization and denationalization model prevalent in Latin America since the 1970's and currently bring promoted elsewhere (Libya, Iraq, Indonesia, Brazil and Mexico). The key problem is that President Chavez, operating from a strong national economic and political base, resulting from the added oil resources, has argued for greater regional integration - free of US/EU domination. This has provoked the ire of Washington and Brussels, as they fear that greater Latin American integration may limit future market and investment penetration. In world politics Chavez' embrace and defense of self-determination of all nations, has put him in opposition to the US military intervention in Iraq, US/EU occupation of Afghanistan and their joint war threats against Iran. Chavez position is in part due to US involvement in a failed military coup in his country in 2002.
In summary the conflict is between democratically elected nationalist leaders supporting a mixed economy to finance social welfare against the US and EU empire building, interventionist policies intent on preserving the "Golden Age" of pillage of unregulated privatized economies and their privileged excessively low tax payments in exploiting energy resources.
The burgeoning international conflict between Bolivia-Brazil, Spain/Argentina and their backers in the US/EU follows a similar pattern to Venezuela's conflict with the US. First the attempt by the propagandists of the foreign oil corporations to picture President Morales as a "disciple" or "follower" of Chavez, and his nationalist policies as merely a genuflection of Chavez's projections of power. There is no basis for claims of external machinations. Opposition and general strikes occurred throughout Bolivia during the very privatization process in 1996, two years before Chavez was elected. Opposition to the private gas agreements intensified in 2003 via a popular uprising that overthrew the President (Sanchez de Losada) calling for the nationalization of gas and oil. In 2004 a referendum was approved by 80% of the electorate, which called for an increase in tax and royalty payments and state control. Unlike Venezuela, Morales faces intense pressure internally from all the trade unions and mass organizations to follow up his electoral promises. President Morales' entire socio-economic reform programs and the political stability and legitimacy of his regime depends on securing additional tax revenues from the MNCs. Given the fact that he inherited a very large budget deficit and a substantial foreign debt (which he feels obligated to pay) and is committed to an IMF style austerity program, his only solution is more oil and gas revenue. Most important of all, given that Morales was elected on the basis of "bringing dignity to the Indian people" he can not ignore the arrogance with which the petrol and gas companies defiantly shunted aside his initial proposals to negotiate new tax rates and joint ventures. With the financial and political backing of oil rich Venezuela, Morales declared the "nationalization" as a pressure tactic to force the companies to negotiate. Just as President Chavez' socio-economic policies were radicalized by the US supported military coup and executive elites oil lockout, Morales radicalized his tactics to secure economic concessions and serious negotiations from the gas and oil MNCs. The goal of Morales is to negotiate in good faith and to secure some type of profit sharing and tax increases. Continued intransigence from oil and gas companies, an "all or nothing" policy could radicalize the electoral base of his regime. "Those who make reforms impossible, make revolution inevitable". Of course, Bolivia under Morales is very far from adopting a revolutionary anti-capitalist program. Even the increase in tax revenue to 82% is a "transitory" measure to be negotiated. Yet he has demonstrated a willingness to mobilize the state and extend its influence over the operations of the corporations. He has clearly established that the existing oil contracts are unconsititutional. By the second week of May, the major gas and oil companies still failed to recognize that they have more to gain from negotiating with Morales than heating up the social movements. At most negotiations will likely result in an increase of tax and royalty revenues - probably to 50%. The purchase price of gas would rise modestly, and some sort of joint state-private management accords would be signed. The Brazilian and EU political leaders and energy executives could move from "confrontation" to "negotiations" and co-optation.Instead Morales proposed joint ventures and mixed economy faces pressures from the IMF, Solbes, Spanish Finance Minister and Amorin, Brazil's Foreign Minister, to pay market value for any shares - potentially bankrupting the state. Threats of judicial and diplomatic ruptures continue to be used to limit any effective state control over the gas enterprises. Meanwhile, Zapatero, Spanish Prime Minister and President Da Silva of Brazil, relying on negotiations, 'insider' pressure and state aid play the role of "good cop" in watering down even further Morales' reforms.
Whatever the overall settlement, the key will be in the details: More specifically in the specific operational procedures, control over information, production and commercialization processes, where it can be expected that the incumbents executives will do every thing possible to undermine effective state control. While political and economic polarizations at the international level intensifies, an internal crisis is building up within the US. The military debacle in Iraq has led to two-options: a withdrawal to rebuild imperial power and plans for a new aerial war against Iran, to reclaim imperial power. A coalition led by the major pro-Israel organizations, the civilian Pentagon militarists, the majority of the mass media and a minority of the general public support a military attack. In opposition stand a large proportion of retired military officials, leaders of the oil industry, the majority of Christin and Muslim organizations and a majority of the US public.
The multiple Middle East and South Asian wars and the rising internal discontent with the costs of war have substantially weakened the capacity of the US to engage in a full-scale intervention in Latin America. Instead it is forced to rely on its Latin American client regimes and European "allies" to isolate and weaken the nationalist Chavez and Morales governments and to contain the rising popular and electoral opposition in Mexico, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Brazil. The problem for Washington is that the current Latin American client presidents are weak or on the way out of office. By the end of 2006, almost all of Washington's most servile client Presidents will be out of office. In some cases they will be replaced by political clones but in others the newly elected leaders may be less given to provoking conflict with their nationalist neighbors.
Contrary to the euphoria of the US and Western European left, the new nationalist governments and Cuba face serious internal challenges from their very own supporters. While successfully countering imperialist pressures and increasing their tax revenues from foreign capital, they have neglected to implement social reforms of the utmost urgency to their supporters. Both Venezuela and Cuba, despite government promises, lag far behind in meeting the huge housing and transport deficit, and the efforts to diversify their economies lag far behind goals particularly in agro-industries (sugar to ethanol and local food production in Cuba; meat, poultry, fish and grains in Venezuela), manufacturing (especially arms, durables, IT and electronics) and processing of minerals. Moreover in Venezuela there are large sectors, perhaps 50%, of the labor force with improved access to free social services but which are employed in the low-paid "informal sector". In Bolivia, Morales has announced a land reform program, which will be based on expropriating underutilized land, excluding the large profitable productive agro-business estates in Santa Cruz's fertile plains. Instead he emphasizes distributing less fertile state lands far from markets and roads. The key to the success of agrarian reform will depend on the procedure of implementation and adjudication and the availability of credit and technical assistance. Moreover Morales's salary and incomes policy is only marginally better than his liberal predecessors: wage and salary increases for teachers and other public sector workers are less than 5% over the rate of inflation. His promise to double the minimum wage from $50 to $100 dollars a month has been repudiated in favor of a $6 dollar raise. In other words, if the international polarization is not backed by internal redistributive policies affecting wealth and assets of the very rich, both in Venezuela and Bolivia, strategically important popular sectors necessary for support in any serious international confrontations could be alienated. Grandiose international gestures, humanitarian solidarity and anti-imperialist policies are no substitute for deepening internal structural changes and meeting essential domestic demands for housing, jobs and higher salaries
Class and Regional Polarization and Crisis in Bolivia
If, as we have argued, the emerging polarization in Latin America is between imperial-centered neo-liberal regimes and reformist nationalist populists, it follows that the successful resolution of this conflict depends in part on the premises of the reformist strategists - their belief that socio-economic reforms are compatible with national capitalist development. In the case of President Morales, I would argue that his electoral-programmatic political strategy dictated his political and socio-economic analysis. The premises of Morales reform policies were dictated by several dubious premises:
1) the belief that "productive" capital can be separated from "unproductive" capital, and hence that a land reform confined to and affecting only "unexploited land" or "land without a socio-economic function" would not generate elite opposition and would be compatible with a multi-class electoral coalition. This has proven incorrect: the large "productive" landowners vehemently oppose the land reform and are supported by business and banking elites, especially in Santa Cruz, because they have diverse investment holdings which cross sectoral boundaries (including banks, industry, productive land for exports and unproductive lands held for speculation).
The second false premise of President Morales reform strategy is based on a mistaken diagnosis of the "dichotomy" between foreign and national capital. President Morales believes that by "nationalizing" or more precisely converting foreign-owned petrol and gas companies into joint state-private enterprises, he could finance national capitalist development thus securing their support. This "analysis" totally underestimated the economic and political links between large and medium-sized enterprises and foreign-owned enterprises. Many Bolivian firms are suppliers, subcontractors and importers dependent on foreign markets, credit and financing from foreign MNCs and regimes. It is not surprising that both the political opposition in Congress and the major Bolivian business groups have opposed Morales national reforms - despite the fact that they are the promised beneficiaries.
The third false premise of President Morales reformist-nationalist strategy is the idea that the so-called "center-left" regimes in Brazil, Argentina and Spain would be willing to negotiate and accept modifications in the exploitation contracts of their multi-nationals and accept modest increases in the prices of gas purchases. Morales overestimated the effectiveness of his "personal diplomacy" and ideological affinity with Lula in Brazil, Kirchner in Argentina and Zapatero in Spain and completely underestimated their powerful and durable ties to their MNCs. As a result, Lula's regime has rejected all of Morales proposals, including his offer to negotiate a two-dollar increase in gas prices, let alone his proposal of a joint venture with Petrobras. Likewise Kirchner's regime in Argentina has postponed several meetings to discuss a similar price increase in gas, and his representative has set no new date to even discuss the proposal. Zapatero, backed by the IMF, has insisted that any Spanish holdings (REPSOL oil and gas, BBV) be fully and promptly compensated, an impossible task given Bolivia's budgetary constraints.
It is the greatest irony that while "center-left" Presidents - Kirchner, Lula and Zapatero) reject Morales proposals to increase Bolivia's tax revenues on their MNCs, the reactionary US Congress approved legislation to increase the government's share of oil profits by $20 billion dollars (Financial Times p 3, May 20/21, 2006). Moreover while the US pays $6 dollars per thousand cubic feet of gas, Lula and Kirchner object to Morales proposal to increase the price to $5 dollars per thousand cubic feet. With "friends of the Bolivian people" like these, who needs imperialists to exploit the poorest country in Latin America?
In summary, all of Morales political assumptions were based on "imagined facts" which do not correspond to the economic and political realities in which they are projected. The absence of a serious empirical analysis of structural realities has resulted in imposing an electoral strategy based on a multi-class political alliance onto a class/imperial polarized world. Morales' reformist ideology "created" a illusory vision of the political world in which he would unite "productive capitalists", friendly center-left regimes, workers and peasants against "unproductive landowners" and corrupt MNCs, in pursuit of a mixed economy, a balanced budget and incremental social reforms.
The current impasse facing Morales,imposed by his unwilling "partners", poses a serious dilemma for his regime and his international allies (Venezuela and Cuba): If the reformist program is not viable, should he further dilute his "nationalist" agenda and retain the semblance of a "progressive regime" or should he radicalize his program, drawing on the support of his international allies in a deeper continental confrontation.?
James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50 year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in brazil and argentina and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed). His new book with Henry Veltmeyer, Social Movements and the State: Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina, will be published in October 2005. He can be reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu
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US covert operations underway in Somalia; resource conflict escalates over Horn of Africa
By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor
May 22, 2006
According to a May 16 report in the Washington Post, US analysts of Africa policy and officials of Somalia's interim government say that the Bush administration is secretly supporting secular Somali warlords, whose groups are battling Islamic groups for
control of Mogadishu.
While the Bush administration has continued to dodge questions about what appear
to be “classic” covert operations (similar to those taking place in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Colombia, etc.), Somali government spokesman
Abdirahman Dinari has unequivocally declared “the US government funded the
warlords in the recent battle in Mogadishu, there is no doubt about that. This
cooperation . . . only fuels further civil war.”
Somalia is considered a "terrorist haven," as well as a potential “hotbed of al
Qaeda activity.” It is no surprise that in recent press conferences, new White
House spokesman and propaganda mouthpiece (former Fox News pundit) Tony Snow
repeatedly referred to “al Qaeda terrorists.”
A senior US intelligence official quoted in the Washington
Post article (who asked not to be named) says that Somalia presents “a
classic ‘enemy of our enemy’ situation” (but “not an al Qaeda safe haven yet”),
while former Clinton administration Africa specialist John Prendergast (now a
senior advisor for the George Soros-funded International Crisis
Group think tank) notes that “the US relies on buying intelligence
from warlords and other participants in the Somali conflict, and hoping that
the strongest of the warlords can snatch a live suspect or two" [for
interrogation or rendition-LC].”
Competing
Geostrategic and Energy Interests in Somalia
Somalia is of geostrategic
interest to the Bush administration, and the focus of operations and
policy since 2001. This focus is a
continuation of long-term policies of both the Clinton administration and the
George H.W. Bush administrations. Somalia’s resources have been eyed by Western
powers since the days of the British Empire.
According to the US Energy Information
Administration, Somalia currently has no proven oil reserves, and
only 200 billion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves, and no hydrocarbon
production. But this has not dimmed continuing interest in Somalia’s untapped
and unexplored potential, and the possibility of an energy bonanza following
any resolution of the country’s “internal security problems.” The Somalian
regime currently welcomes oil interests.
Conoco, Agip, Amoco, Chevron, and Phillips held concessions in the area. Of
more immediate logistical and military interest, Somalia is situated on a key
corridor between the Middle East and Africa, strategically located on the coast
of the Arabian Sea, a short distance from Yemen.
As laid bare in the January 1993 report by Mark Fineman of
the Los Angeles Times, "The
Oil Factor in Somalia," US oil companies, including Conoco, Amoco,
Chevron and Phillips were positioned to exploit Somalia’s rich oil reserves
during the reign of pro-US President Mohammed Siad Barre. These companies had
secured billion-dollar concessions to explore and drill in large portions of
the Somali countryside prior to the coup led by warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid
that toppled Barre. The US Somalia envoy at the time was CIA operative Robert
Oakley, a chief “counter-terrorism” officer during the George H.W. Bush
presidency, and veteran of the Afghanistan and Iran-Contra operations of the
1980s. Conoco’s Mogadishu office housed the US embassy and military
headquarters.
The infamous Somalia military operation of 1993, popularly
depicted in the Philadelphia Inquirer series (and subsequent Hollywood
film) "Blackhawk
Down," was not a humanitarian mission, but an undeclared UN/US war
launched by the George H.W. Bush adminstration, and inherited by the Clinton presidency.
The operation was spearheaded by Deputy National Security Adviser Jonathan Howe
(who remained in charge of the UN operation after Clinton took office), and
approved by Colin Powell, then head of the Joint Chiefs.
The current Bush administration’s escalation in Somalia is a
trip “back to the future.” As noted by William Engdahl, “Yemen fits nicely as an ‘emerging
target’ with the other target nearby, Somalia,” both of which are important
geostrategic “choke points”:
“Washington’s
choice of Somalia and Yemen is a matched pair, as a look at a Middle East/Horn
of Africa map will confirm. Yemen sits at the oil transit chokepoint of Bab
el-Mandap, the narrow point controlling oil flow connecting the Red Sea with
the Indian Ocean. Yemen also has oil, although no one yet knows just how much.
It could be huge. A US firm, Hunt Oil Co. is pumping 200, 000 barrels a day
from there but that is likely only the tip of the find.
“A new US
cleansing of Somalian ‘tyranny’ would open the door for these US oil companies
to map and develop the possibly huge oil potential in Somalia. Yemen and
Somalia are two flanks of the same geological configuration, which holds large
potential petroleum deposits, as well as being the flanks of the oil chokepoint
from the Red Sea.”
The US, and US-affiliated oil interests, must, at the very
least, find ways to head off the aggressive oil and gas-related operations on
the part of China and its oil companies throughout the Horn of
Africa region, Kenya,
and Ethiopia,
and West
Africa.
The intense uproar
over genocide in Darfur, and shrill calls for military intervention, masks
intense geostrategic resource conflict being waged between competing
superpowers.
As Engdahl notes, “Sudan, as noted, has become a major
oil supplier to China whose national oil company has invested more than $3
billion since 1999, building oil pipelines from the south to the Red Sea port.
The coincidence of this fact with the escalating concern in Washington about
genocide and humanitarian disaster in oil-rich Darfur in southern Sudan, is not
lost on Beijing. China threatened a UN veto against any intervention against
Sudan. The first act of a re-elected [sic] Dick Cheney late last year was to
fill his vice presidential jet with UN Security Council members to fly to
Nairobi to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, an eerie reminder of
Defense Secretary Cheney’s ‘humanitarian’ concern over Somalia in 1991.”
Recently, exploration teams from Australia
have been hunting for oil in Somalia’s Puntland. Canadian
lawyer Jay Park, “one of the world’s top oil and gas lawyers,” is working with
the Somalian government to create
a "credible petroleum regime". According to Park, "(Somalia)
is one of the poorest countries in the world, but it may be sitting on some of
the greatest oil and gas treasures.”
With
the world facing Peak Oil and Gas, the world’s superpowers are racing to secure
every last drop of oil and natural gas from every remaining inch of the planet,
with the African continent quickly becoming the stage for new violence and
warfare. It is no surprise that Anglo-American oil interests, and the Bush
administration’s covert operatives, are working Somalia, and the region, for
all it is worth.
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French, Brazilian firms selected to explore offshore oil fields in Angola
www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-23 15:15:30
LUANDA, May 23 (Xinhua) -- French and Brazilian oil companies have been selected to explore two offshore oil fields in Angola respectively, local media reported on Tuesday.
However, the largest stakes in the two blocs are to be held by SSI, a joint venture between Angolan state-owned oil company Sonangol and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., or Sinopec.
Carlos Saturnino, director of Sonangol, said on Monday that France's Total is to head exploration in a deepwater field called Bloc 17.
In Bloc 18, Brazil's Petrobras was granted a 30 percent share, with SSI taking 40 percent and Sonangol 20 percent, he said.
Under the tenders, Total is to pay Angola 670 million U.S. dollars and Petrobras 310 million dollars in "signature bonuses'', a one-time cash payment made upon signing a contract, Saturnino said.
Angola is the second-largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africaafter Nigeria with 1.3 million barrels a day. The Oil Ministry predicts daily output will rise to 2 million barrels a day by 2008.
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Russia Ready to Be Europe's Leading Oil and Gas Supplier - Presidential Aide
Created: 23.05.2006 11:18 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 11:43 MSK
MosNews
Russia is ready to assume a leadership role in providing Europe with oil and gas, but it won't use its energy resources as an instrument of political pressure, presidential aide Igor Shuvalov said on Tuesday, May 23.
"We are ready to provide Europe with oil and gas in a long-term perspective, and we will assume a role of the leader," he said in an interview with Nezavisimaya gazeta (Independent gazette) published on Tuesday.
President Putin's aide went on to say that Russia will continue its expansion further, regardless of whether its European partners like it or not. "If they want to - we can do it together with the European energy companies. But we will lead the way, that is already clear," he said.
"We are saying to Europe: you lead in one thing. We have taken up a leadership role in another and we are doing it with a share of risk for ourselves, but so far we are doing it successfully," Shuvalov added. He went on to say that Russia won't use oil and gas as a political instrument of blackmail. "We don't want a situation in which we will say that the market will be this way and not another. We have not used and have no plans to use oil and gas as a political instrument of blackmail," he said.
Igor Shuvalov added that in his view it is completely normal that Russia wants to diversify its sales markets, while Europe is striving for diversification of energy sources. "We are saying to them: if you do not agree with our concept of energy security, we will behave in the same way as you do. If you continue to search for other contacts to buy energy sources from third countries, then we will look for other markets, such as building a pipeline to China," the presidential aide said.
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France accused of paying for hostages' freedom
LONDON, May 22, 2006 (AFP)
France, Germany and Italy paid some US $45 million (EUR 35 million) to obtain the release of hostages kidnapped in Iraq, despite denying it in public, The Times newspaper reported Monday.
Britain has not handed out any money to kidnap gangs, the paper added, basing its report on "documents seen by The Times".
France on Monday denied the allegations. "As the French authorities indicated when the hostages were freed, there was no ransom paid," said foreign ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei.
The Times said its evidence came from security officials in Baghdad who played a role in the hostage negotiations.
The list of payments has also been seen by Western diplomats, who are angered at the behaviour of the three governments, arguing that it encourages organised crime gangs to grab more foreign captives, the paper said.
"In theory we stand together in not rewarding kidnappers, but in practice it seems some administrations have parted with cash and so it puts other foreign nationals at risk from gangs who are confident that some governments do pay," one senior envoy in the Iraqi capital was quoted as saying.
Several other governments, including Jordan, Romania, Sweden and Turkey, were also said to have paid for their hostages to be freed, along with some US companies with lucrative reconstruction contracts in Iraq.
While Britain has never paid to free its citizens, it is understood to have paid intermediaries 'expenses' for their efforts to make contact with the kidnappers, The Times reported.
France, Italy and Germany have all publicly denied paying any ransom money. "But according to the documents, held by security officials in Baghdad who have played a crucial role in hostage negotiations, sums from US $2.5 million to US $10 million per person have been paid over the past 21 months," the paper said.
According to the report, France paid out a combined US $25 million for the release of Georges Malbrunot in December 2004 and Florence Aubenas in June 2005.
Italy handed over a total of US $11 million for the freedom of Simona Pari, Simona Torretta and Giuliana Sgrena in 2004 and 2005, again according to the report, while Germany was said to have given kidnappers US $ 8 million to secure the release of three hostages, including Rene Braeunlich and Thomas Nitzschke who were freed earlier this month.
The Italian daily Repubblica cited an official report according to which Rome handed over several million dollars in ransom for Iraq hostages.
Germany's national broadcaster, ARD, earlier reported that a 10-million-dollar ransom had been paid out for Braeunlich and Nitzschke, a claim the government in Berlin has consistently denied.
Britain paid out no money to the kidnappers of Britons Kenneth Bigley and Margaret Hassan, both of whom were killed after being seized in late 2004, but the authorities here were criticised for allowing the kidnappers of fellow Briton Norman Kember to flee before launching a rescue operation in March.
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Caught With Cold Cash
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
It's time for the members of the U.S. House of Representatives to get to work. Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., said he's not going to resign from office, even after court documents unsealed Sunday showed FBI agents found $90,000 in cash hidden in the freezer of his Washington home last year.
Jefferson's activities have been captured on videotape, and his actions are so outlandish that the House should immediately begin the expulsion process.
There's nothing wrong with keeping cash -- cold cash -- in the freezer, of course. But the serial numbers match those in a stack of a thousand $100 bills given to Jefferson during a July meeting.
The meeting was secretly recorded by the FBI; the bureau was working with a witness who came forward last year with evidence of bribery connected with Jefferson.
Four days after the July meeting, the FBI searched Jefferson's Washington home and recovered $90,000 of the marked money.
Court documents also said investigators have linked Jefferson to at least seven other attempts to seek out valuables in return for official acts. Those documents were unsealed over the weekend after the FBI made an unprecedented search of his Capitol Hill offices that lasted from early Saturday evening until Sunday afternoon.
Last week, amid growing rumblings of Jefferson's involvement in bribery and arm twisting to steer "consulting fees" to companies owned by his family, the House Ethics Committee opened an investigation on Jefferson.
Two businessmen already have pleaded guilty to bribing Jefferson. Vernon Jackson, owner of the Kentucky-based iGate communications company, said Jefferson was helping his company win contracts with federal agencies as well as promoting the company in Africa. Jackson said the bribes to Jefferson included more than $400,000 in payments, company stock and profits.
Brett Pfeffer, the president of an investment firm and a former Jefferson aide, pleaded guilty to abetting the bribery of a public official. He is scheduled to be sentenced this week.
Court documents indicate that Jefferson would attempt to deflect direct involvement in bribery when meeting with the FBI's cooperating witness. At one point, Jefferson tells the wired informant that the money should be paid to a company run by his children: "I make a deal for my children. It wouldn't be me." (Interestingly, Jefferson said last week -- before the weekend story broke -- that he was innocent and had never sought anything for himself or for members of his family in return for favors.)
At another point in the conversation, the informant asked Jefferson about his political future: "I'm gonna get your deal out of the way . . . and I probably won't last long after that."
The House Ethics Committee should make sure his prophecy comes true.
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Seven former National Century execs indicted
Mon May 22, 2006
Reuters
NEW YORK - A federal grand jury has indicted the former chief executive and six others at National Century Financial Enterprises, a bankrupt health-care finance company, for engineering a $3 billion fraud, prosecutors said on Monday.
The 60-count indictment accuses the defendants, including former Chief Executive Lance Poulsen, of lying to investors about how their funds would be used. The charges include conspiracy, fraud and promotion of money laundering.
"Executives bilked investors by building a financial house of cards with deception, sleight-of-hand financing and accounting misdeeds," said Gregory Lockhart, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, in a statement.
The criminal charges were filed five months after a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission civil lawsuit against three National Century executives.
Others indicted include Rebecca Parrett, a former vice chairman, and Donald Ayers, a former chief operating officer.
Ayers, Parrett and Poulsen are also defendants in the SEC lawsuit.
Other executives facing criminal charges include Roger Faulkenberry, once director of securitizations; Randolph Speer, a former chief financial officer; James Dierker, a former vice president in charge of client development, and Jon Beacham, a former vice president of securitizations.
Each money laundering and money laundering conspiracy charge carries a maximum 20-year prison term and $500,000 fine. The fraud counts carry maximum prison terms of five years or 20 years. Prosecutors are also seeking the forfeiture of $2 billion of property.
The indictment was filed on Friday, and unsealed on Monday, court records show.
National Century filed for protection from creditors in November 2002 with more than $3 billion in debt after it failed to give investors audited financial statements and lenders stopped advancing it money.
The company's founders built a multibillion-dollar business out of buying patients' bills from health-care providers and packaging them into bonds for investors.
According to the indictment, the former executives diverted investors' funds into other companies, and advanced money to clients and others without getting medical bills in exchange.
Comment: The American political-corporate complex is clearly rotten to the core and staffed by people who lack any sense of conscience.
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Science and Health
Google users promised artificial intelligence
Richard Wray
Tuesday May 23, 2006
The Guardian
A search engine that knows exactly what you are looking for, that can understand the question you are asking even better than you do, and find exactly the right information for you, instantly - that was the future predicted by Google yesterday.
Speaking at a conference for Google's European partners, entitled Zeitgeist '06, on the outskirts of London last night Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and co-founder Larry Page gave an insight into perhaps the most ambitious project the Californian business is undertaking - artificial intelligence (AI).
"The ultimate search engine would understand everything in the world. It would understand everything that you asked it and give you back the exact right thing instantly," Mr Page told an audience of the digerati representing firms from Warner Music and AOL to BSkyB and the BBC. "You could ask 'what should I ask Larry?' and it would tell you."
Speaking after what was tabled an end of day 'fireside chat', Mr Page said one thing that he had learned since Google launched eight years ago was that technology can change faster than expected, and that AI could be a reality within a few years.
Certainly in that short period of time, Google has gone from a start-up in Mountain View to one of the most recognised brands in the world. As evidence of its meteoric rise, the Hertfordshire hotel in which the conference took place was also home to the England football team. The post-conference press roundtable was briefly interrupted by assistant manager Steve McLaren who had evidently got the wrong room.
Google's executives were also forced to defend their tactics. While suggesting the business could one day capture a 20% share of the $800bn (£424bn) global advertising market, Mr Schmidt explained that the apparently scatter-gun approach to research that lets engineers spend a fifth of their time working on pet projects, also allows the company to innovate faster than any rival.
While this has created some products (such as shopping service Froogle) that have not been a great success, it also led to the Gmail email service which despite still being only in test form is rapidly catching up with market leaders such as Hotmail.
But Mr Schmidt admitted that the company is spending more energy than perhaps it has in the past on integrating some of these seemingly random ventures back into its core revenue-generating search tool, something that could be seen as a sea change within the business, though Google executives maintain it is not going through a major consolidation phase.
But the lack of a visible pipeline of development from Google - which never gives a clear indication of what it is working on until it is released - infuriates some of its stockholders, who would rather it concentrated on a few lucrative services.
"We are very clear and I want to be clear and on the record," said Mr Schmidt. "We run the company for the benefit of our end-users globally."
Looking at the current court case in Houston where Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, former executives of collapsed energy giant Enron, await the outcome of their trial for fraud, he added: "Speaking as an American company chief executive, when the management team starts focusing on the stock price rather than focusing on its business and customers you get a really bad outcome. We are focused on doing the right thing for the long-term"
Mr Schmidt also attacked suggestions from some major US cable companies that providers of capacity-hungry internet services - such as video and TV - should be charged to run their services over the web. This presents a challenge to what is generally seen as the internet's neutrality, that everyone should be able to get on to it.
"We believe this violates one of the founding principles that built the internet today and it could stifle the next wave of innovation," he said.
In fact Google is currently working on its own video tool. While adamant that the company is not looking to get into the provision of content itself, it is looking to produce a video tool that will allow broadband TV viewers to find the shows they want from the hundreds that are available across the world. It is looking for media partners interested in using such a tool.
Mr Schmidt also had a few consoling words for the traditional media business which sees its profitability being utterly eroded by online rivals. He said usage of traditional media placed online is rising rapidly, but circulations - the revenue generator - are declining. "You don't have a lack of audience problem, you have a business model problem," he said.
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Entire Mammoth Skeleton Found in Russia
Created: 23.05.2006 10:50 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 10:50 MSK
MosNews
A whole mammoth skeleton has been found in Russia's southern Krasnoyarsk Region, Itar-Tass said Tuesday.
Local fishermen found the practically intact skeleton on the shore of a dam lake when the flood waters retreated, archeologist Alexander Kerzhayev said.
"The find has retained a backbone, a skull with teeth and a tusk and other anatomic details," Kerzhayev said.
"It was an adult mammoth, judging by the size of bones it was at least 50 years old."
The archeologist said the animal had probably died of an illness.
A whole mammoth skeleton is a rare and valuable find, but the Krasnoyarsk skeleton is likely to be lost again. To preserve the bones, affected by water, a complicated technical procedure is required. Since the archeological community cannot afford it, most of the skeleton will be lost, except for several parts that will go on display in the local museum.
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Slovak doctor says solar flares could raise strokes
May 22, 2006 — By Matt Reynolds
BRATISLAVA (Reuters) - Human beings may be at higher risk of strokes in years when the explosions on the sun peak, according to a neurologist who studied the records of 6,100 patients in Slovakia.
Dr. Michal Kovac said he found a spike in strokes and brain hemorrhages in the town of Nove Zamky in southern Slovakia in years when solar flares - bursts of energy stronger than a million nuclear bombs combined - are most abundant.
Kovac says his work, recently published in the Bratislava Medical Journal, builds on studies that show parts of the human body respond to fluctuations in the earth's geomagnetic field caused by sun storms.
He also found patients suffered fewer strokes when the moon was farthest from earth.
"We see a correlation between the human body and lunar and solar phenomena, even if we don't know exactly what explains the connection," he told Reuters.
Coronal mass ejections, which peak roughly every 11 years, send hot gas toward earth that cause radio blackouts and satellite malfunctions, illuminate skies around the north and south poles and are believed to impair the navigational ability of pigeons.
Despite skepticism from astronomers, Kovac and colleagues in the U.S. and Japan think fluctuations in the earth's magnetic field caused by the ejections may disturb the electro-chemical reactions that make human bodies work.
He began his research in the 1980s after observing unexplained increases in stroke patients on certain days, weeks, months and years.
"I'd be getting a lot of patients, and I'd talk to heart doctors and they'd say the same thing," he said.
Solar flares and coronal ejections last peaked in 2000 and 2001, Kovac said.
"That means we have four more years in the cycle," he said with a sigh. "Then we'll be busy again."
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Bird Flu: Thousands quarantined in Bucharest
News24.com
22/05/2006
Bucharest - About 13,000 people were quarantined in the Romanian capital on Monday as troops and police sealed off streets in response to the city's second bird-flu outbreak, said officials.
The mayor of the southern fourth district, Adrian Inimaroiu, said residents would be cut off and all businesses in the area would be closed during the quarantine period of up to three weeks.
The move came after the agriculture ministry earlier on Monday confirmed the presence of the H5 bird-flu virus in dead chickens found in the neighbourhood, the latest of dozens of outbreaks of avian flu in Romania this spring.
Inimaroiu said, urging residents to stay calm, that "about 40 streets have been blocked" in the Luica quarter.
He said the quarantine would last for "a period of a week to 21 days and all the institutions in this quarter will be closed".
"About 2 500 birds from this area will be slaughtered as rapidly as possible," said the mayor.
A neighbourhood on the northern outskirts of the capital was put under quarantine on Sunday evening with fences blocking a dozen streets and police preventing anyone from going in or out, except for medical emergencies.
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Birds, apes can plan ahead, studies show
Last Updated Fri, 19 May 2006 13:36:26 EDT
CBC News
Experiments on orangutans and scrub jays suggest humans aren't the only animals who can think ahead, scientists say.
Orangutans and bonobos - small apes closely related to chimpanzees - have shown that they can remember which tools they need to retrieve a treat.
And scrub jays have shown that they will hide their food a second time if a rival bird saw them store it the first time.
"Planning for future needs is not uniquely human," Thomas Suddendorf of the University of Queensland in Australia wrote in a commentary accompanying the two studies, published Friday in the journal Science.
Carefully planned experiments
Many animals such as squirrels hide their food, and some, such as chimpanzees and crows, have been shown to use tools to retrieve food, but the two carefully planned experiments show that animals can plan for the future, as well.
In one study, Nicholas Mulcahy and Josep Call of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany tested orangutans and bonobos at the zoo in Leipzig.
They set up a series of experiments that required the apes to remember a complex method for retrieving a treat using tools the researchers provided.
In one experiment, they inserted a piece of uncooked spaghetti into a metal cylinder and hung bunches of grapes from the ends of the spaghetti.
"To obtain the reward subjects had to break the spaghetti by inserting a plastic tube through the top hole over the cylinder. That caused the grapes to fall down and hang in front of the bottom holes thus allowing subjects access to them," the researchers wrote.
In another experiment, the apes had to use a metal hook to retrieve a bottle of grape juice. To pass the test, the subjects had to pick which tool was needed to get the juice and remember to bring it back with them some time later.
Passed tests
Both orangutans and bonobos passed the tests several times, the scientists said.
In the other set of studies, Joanna Dally of the University of Cambridge in the U.K. and colleagues studied the food-hiding behaviour of captive scrub jays. The birds are members of the corvid family, which includes jays, crows and ravens, and considered the smartest group of birds.
They found that if a bird dominant to the jays saw them store their food, the jays would come back later and move the food when the dominant bird wasn't there.
However, if the bird that watched the food being hidden was a subordinate or a mate, the jay didn't move their food cache. The researchers said the birds could fight off a subordinate bird that tried to steal the food.
"These results suggest scrub jays remember who observed them make specific caches," Dally's research team wrote.
The ape researchers said the two studies show that not only humans can plan for future needs.
"Together with recent evidence from scrub jays, our results suggest that future planning is not a uniquely human ability, thus contradicting the notion that it emerged in hominids only with the past 2.5 to 1.6 million years," wrote Mulcahy and Call.
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Russia
US proposes European shield against Iranian missiles: report
www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-22 22:14:39
WASHINGTON, May 22 (Xinhua) -- The Bush administration is moving to establish a new antimissile site in Europe that would be designed to stop attacks by Iran against the United States and its allies, The New York Times reported Monday.
The proposal, which comes amid rising concerns about Iran's suspected program to developed nuclear weapons, calls for installing 10 anti-missile interceptors at a European sit by 2011.
Poland and the Czech Republic are among the nations under consideration.
A recommendation on a European site is expected to be made this summer to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Pentagon officials were quoted as saying.
The Pentagon has Congress for 56 million U.S. dollars to begin initial work on the long-envisioned antimissile site, a request that has run into some opposition in Congress, the report said.
The final cost, including the interceptors themselves, is estimated at 1.6 billion dollars.
The establishment of an antimissile base in Eastern Europe would have enormous political implications. The deployment of interceptors in Poland, for example, would create the first permanent American military presence on that nation's soil and further solidify the close ties between the defense establishments of the two countries.
The plan, which has received relatively little attention in the United States, is a subject of lively discussion in Poland and has prompted Russian charges that Washington's hidden agenda is to expand the Americans presence in the former Warsaw Pact nation, according to the report.
The proposed antimissile site is the latest development in the U.S. missile defense program, which began with former President Ronald Reagan's expansive vision of a space-based anti-missile shield.
President George W. Bush made the program a top priority after taking office in 2001 and cleared the way for antimissile deployments by withdrawing from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty with Russia.
Nine interceptors have already been installed at Fort Greely, Alaska, and two at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, as part of a broader, multilayered system planned by the Pentagon.
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Russia Troubled by U.S. Plans to Establish 'Star Wars' Bases in Europe
Created: 23.05.2006 13:32 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 13:32 MSK
MosNews
Russian senior officials voice concern about U.S. plans to build an anti-missile defense system in central Europe. Washington claims that anti-missile site in Europe is needed to stop a ballistic missile threat from Iran, while Moscow charges U.S. with intension to expand it's presence in the ex-Warsaw Pact nation.
"Go ahead and build that shield. You have to think, though, what will fall on your heads afterwards. I do not foresee a nuclear conflict between Russia and the West. We do not have such plans," Russian general Yuri Baluyevsky is quoted by The EU Observer.
About the intension of the Bush Administration to establish so-called 'Star Wars' bases reported Tuesday The EU Observer. The new scheme is the latest chapter in the 20 year-old U.S. missile defense program, referred to as "Star Wars", and is intended to thwart a potential attack from the Middle-East.
A recommendation on a European site is expected to be made this summer to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Pentagon officials say. The Pentagon has asked Congress for $56 million to begin work on the long-envisioned anti-missile site, a request that has some opposition in Congress. The final cost is estimated at $1.6 billion, The Washington Post reported Monday.
Poland and the Czech Republic have been singled out as possible sites for the missile interceptors, with strongly pro-U.S. Poland already expressing a will to sign a contract with Washington, it would be the first permanent U.S. military presence on that nation's soil. The Czech Republic has avoided public discussion of the US project, out of fears it could become an issue in parliamentary elections next month.
A Russian general, Yuri Baluyevsky, warned that the anti-missile site could draw Poland into the U.S.' far-flung military adventures. "However, it is understandable that countries that are part of such a shield increase their risk", he added.
Russian experts from "Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie" newspaper (Independent military survey) are also concerned about the possible deployment of American missiles in Europe. They believe that anti-missile site in Europe is planned not against any possible threats from the Middle East. "Star Wars" bases would give the U.S. possibility to control the entire territory of Russia, concludes the author.
Nine interceptors already have been installed at Fort Greely, Alaska, and two at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County as part of a multilayered system planned by the Pentagon. The Fort Greely and Vandenberg sites are primarily oriented against potential threats from North Korea.
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U.S. Should Press Russia on Democracy - Rice
Created: 22.05.2006 12:00 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 12:00 MSK
MosNews
Russia should be pressed on democratic reforms, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview, adding that Moscow should not intimidate its neighbors, the AFP news agency reported.
"We still have a good relationship with Russia. We work together on all kinds of issues," Rice said. "We've come a long, long way from when there was a hammer and sickle above the Kremlin," Rice said in an interview published Sunday in the newspaper of Boston College, where she was to speak Monday.
U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said on May 4 in Vilnius that Russia was using energy as a weapon against former republics of the Soviet Union and meddling in their politics. Days later Russian President Vladimir Putin referred to the United States as a wolf with a limited point of view.
"These are things we've been saying and talking about for some time," Rice said. "They perhaps got put together in the vice president's speech, but these have been issues with the Russians and we've been vocal about them," she said.
"There are some protections for individual freedoms, but we have to worry that the kind of institutionalization of democracy that is so important - with a free press, with a judiciary that's independent, with a legislature that is a real legislature. That is what has not taken place and indeed where there have been some reversals in Russia. And so we have to speak the truth as we know it," Rice said.
"It's also important for Russia not to intimidate its neighbors. The small states around Russia that used to be part of the Soviet Union are now independent and they have to be respected as such," she said.
"Finally, if Russia is to be a reliable energy supplier in the energy markets, which is extremely important these days, Russia has to behave in a way that its customers are to believe that these really will be matters of commerce and not matters of politics. So it was important to speak up on it," Rice said.
"Yet as the President (George W. Bush) said, nobody's going to give up on Russia. We know that it's not the Soviet Union."
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Russia, Saudi Arabia to Fight Terrorism Together - FM
Created: 22.05.2006 15:17 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 15:17 MSK
MosNews
At the Russian Foreign Minister's talks with the Saudi leadership the sides reached an agreement on the creation of a joint working group for issues of fighting against international terrorism, ITAR-TASS news agency reported Monday. "I hope that this structure will hold its first meeting soon," Sergei Lavrov said.
Earlier today Russian President Vladimir Putin called for Russian-Saudi cooperation in the response to terrorism and for international security and stability, with particular regard to the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov handed over Putin's message to Saudi King Abdallah bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud on May 21, the Kremlin press service representative told Interfax.
"The message lauded successful bilateral relations in trade, economy, investment, energy and other spheres, and stressed the mutual wish to promote peace and international security and stability," the press service representative said. He added that increased interaction, including the joint response to international terrorism, will strengthen the Russian-Saudi partnership.
The Russian minister is in Saudi Arabia for the first time as part of a Persian Gulf tour that will take him to Kuwait on Monday. It is expected that Lavrov will discuss the situation in Iraq and the Iranian nuclear problem with the Kuwaiti leadership.
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Israel vs. Palestine
Audio Interview: Palestinian Children in Israeli Jails
Stefan Christoff, The Electronic Intifada, 20 May 2006
Listen to an interview with Ayed Abu Eqtaish, a child rights activist from Defense for Children International [Palestine Section] and Adam Hanieh of Sumoud, a political prisoner solidarity group based in Toronto. This interview was recorded during the April/May 2006 second annual Free Palestinian Political Prisoners speaking tour organized by Sumoud, which focused on the realities facing Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, specifically child prisoners.
Defense for Children International, is a Palestinian NGO 'dedicated to promoting and protecting the rights of Palestinian children in the West Bank and Gaza Strip - as articulated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child'. Today massive numbers of Palestinian children are being arrested and detained by Israeli forces. In the first quarter of 2006 alone, some 350 children were arrested compared to around 700 child arrests in the whole of 2005.
8,000 Palestinian prisoners are currently detained by Israeli authorities, in prisons which major human rights organizations throughout the world. According to a 2006 report from Amnesty International, many Palestinian prisoners 'face medical negligence, routine beatings, position torture and strip searches by Israeli prison authorities'. According to recent figures the Palestinian prison population includes 400 children and 100 women detainees.
To listen to/download the interview click here [MP3 format, 22.2MB].
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Israeli military captures top West Bank Palestinian militant leader
03:58:36 EDT May 23, 2006
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - The West Bank commander of the Hamas military wing surrendered to Israeli soldiers Tuesday after they surrounded his hideout and threatening to demolish it with him inside, witnesses said.
Ibrahim Hamed emerged from the building before dawn and soldiers told him over loudspeaker to strip to his underwear, the witnesses said. Hamed complied, was cuffed and taken to a nearby building. The army said Hamed, 41, masterminded attacks that killed more than 60 Israelis and wounded hundreds.
Hamed has been on Israel's wanted list since 1998, frequently evading capture.
Before dawn Tuesday, a dozen jeeps and two armoured personnel carriers surrounded his hideout, an apartment building in downtown Ramallah, just 200 meters from the home of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
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The incredible shrinking Palestine
By Sandy Tolan, SANDY TOLAN'S most recent book is "The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East."
May 21, 2006
THE HISTORY of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be glimpsed through a series of maps.
First is the sepia-toned map of Palestine under the British Mandate, circa 1936. On its surface it suggests one unified country where Arab and Jew can live together between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. This is the map that some Palestinians still place on their walls: A whole Palestine, representing the dream of an independent, secular, democratic and Arab-majority state. Many Israelis still see this map as representing their dreams too: Eretz Yisrael, the whole Jewish homeland.
Second is the United Nations partition map of November 1947, which divided Palestine into two states - one for Arabs (who were to get 44% of the territory) and one for Jews (who were given 54.5%), with Jerusalem and Bethlehem under international stewardship. For Zionists, it was a triumph born of the Holocaust and the belief in much of the world that Jews needed and deserved a haven.
For Arabs, who were the majority population, it was a disaster. Why, they asked, should their homeland become the solution to the Jewish tragedy in Europe? They fought the partition, and in the 1948 war that followed, 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven out and became refugees.
After Israel's 1948 War of Independence, a third map emerged, based on additional territory captured by Israel. Palestinians lived in the West Bank and Gaza, under Jordanian and Egyptian rule, on 22% of old Palestine - or outside of the historic territory entirely, often in U.N. refugee camps set up in neighboring Arab countries.
The fourth map was drawn after Israel's stunning victory in the 1967 Middle East War. It showed yet more territory - the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and the Sinai peninsula - under Israeli occupation. Soon dozens of little dots, representing Israeli settlements, would be added to each of these areas. (In the early 1980s, Israel withdrew from the Sinai, and last year from Gaza.)
Now comes the new Israeli prime minister to Washington, carrying yet another map. When Ehud Olmert meets with President Bush on Tuesday, he will present a new page for the Middle East atlas, in which, according to recent reports, Israel will have pulled up stakes from some of the occupied West Bank but will still control large portions of it. Palestinians would end up with less than 20% of their original dream for the whole of Palestine.
Olmert will try to convince the White House that in the absence of a "partner for peace," this Israeli plan to draw its final borders, and to wall off his people from the Palestinians, is in the best interests of peace and stability in the region.
Yet the implementation of Olmert's unilateral "convergence" plan could have the opposite effect. By annexing West Bank lands (including the giant, densely populated settlements in Palestinian territory outside Jerusalem), claiming Jerusalem's Old City and its holy sites exclusively as Israel's own, drawing a new "security border" along the Jordan Valley and, according to David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, keeping the military occupation in place in the West Bank at least for the time being, convergence would essentially kill the Palestinian dream of self-determination. Given the history of the last six decades, this plan is unlikely to lead to peace or stability.
U.S. officials should be especially careful not to embrace a unilateral and incendiary "solution," especially at a moment when it is too early to be sure which direction the Hamas-run Palestinian government will take. Many observers hope that the more moderate elements in the government of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh will prevail, that talks can be restarted and that Hamas may ultimately accept Israel's right to exist.
In a May 4 speech to the Israeli Knesset, Olmert presented his plan as a compromise of the historic Zionist dream to possess the entirety of a Jewish homeland. Part of the convergence plan calls for dismantling Israeli settlements where about a quarter of the 240,000 West Bank settlers live. "Only a person in whose soul Eretz Yisrael burns knows the pain of letting go of our ancestral heritage," Olmert declared in presenting his Cabinet to the parliament.
Yet "convergence" doesn't just represent the end of the dream of Eretz Yisrael; it also represents an abandonment of what for nearly four decades has been the central hope for many Palestinians and Israelis seeking coexistence: U.N. Resolution 242, which was adopted in 1967 after the Six-Day War and called for Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in the war in exchange for, essentially, Arab recognition of Israel. This became the basis for the "two-state solution."
For Yasser Arafat, the late Palestine Liberation Organization leader, accepting the existence of Israel , and the 78% of historic Palestine that it held, was a monumental compromise. But convergence would leave the Palestinians with less land yet again - certainly less than in any deal based on Resolution 242 and the 1993 Oslo peace accords.
Under convergence, according to a report by Makovsky, Israel would retain 8% of the West Bank for expansion of three large settlement blocs, and more land for a "security border" in the Jordan Valley. At least 60,000 settlers would be removed from more remote settlements in the occupied territories to the large settlement blocs on the other side of the "security barrier" that Israel has been building (but still on the West Bank). Palestinians in the remaining portion of the West Bank would live between the "security border" and the "security barrier."
The convergence plan also would deny the Palestinians' dream of having East Jerusalem, including the Old City's Haram al Sharif, the third holiest site in Islam, as the capital of their state. Although returning some parts of East Jerusalem to Arab ownership, a fixed border along Olmert's lines would divide neighborhoods and families, and Israel would retain control over the Old City, including its holy sites. These are red lines for both Palestinians and Muslims worldwide and a central reason for the collapse of the talks at Camp David.
Given its details, it is hard to understand how convergence could lead to long-term peace and stability, to say nothing of fairness. Western diplomats have already begun expressing concerns that a unilateral solution will not last. "The Israelis want to build a wall and imagine that there are no people behind it," Marc Otte, the European Union's special representative for the Mideast peace process, told the Israeli paper Haaretz. "That is an illusion. Everything will come back to them. You cannot lock the door and throw away the key." Even Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has frequently criticized Hamas, has warned that convergence would lead to war within a decade.
U.S. backing would be essential to implementing Olmert's plan, and essential to that would be Olmert's ability to convince the American government that he has "no partner for peace." This claim has proved convenient for Olmert as he seeks to draw his own map unilaterally. But U.S. officials should not be lulled into accepting a unilateral "solution" that seems destined to prolong the conflict.
Comment: Israel has no right to Palestinian land, save the "right" given by a fictional biblical "god".
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Middle East Madness
Afghans' uranium levels spark alert
Alex Kirby, BBC
May 22, 2006
A small sample of Afghan civilians have shown "astonishing" levels of uranium in their urine, an independent scientist says.
He said they had the same symptoms as some veterans of the 1991 Gulf war.
But he found no trace of the depleted uranium (DU) some scientists believe is implicated in Gulf War syndrome.
Other researchers suggest new types of radioactive weapons may have been used in Afghanistan.
The scientist is Dr Asaf Durakovic, of the Uranium Medical Research Center (UMRC), based in Canada.
Dr Durakovic, a former US army adviser who is now a professor of medicine, said in 2000 he had found "significant" DU levels in two-thirds of the 17 Gulf veterans he had tested.
In May 2002, he sent a team to Afghanistan to interview and examine civilians there.
The UMRC says: "Independent monitoring of the weapon types and delivery systems indicate that radioactive, toxic uranium alloys and hard-target uranium warheads were being used by the coalition forces." There is no official support for its claims, or backing from other scientists.
Shock results
It says Nangarhar province was a strategic target zone during the Afghan conflict for the deployment of a new generation of deep-penetrating "cave-busting" and seismic shock warheads.
The UMRC says its team identified several hundred people suffering from illnesses and conditions similar to those of Gulf veterans, probably because they had inhaled uranium dust.
To test its hypothesis that some form of uranium weapon had been used, the UMRC sent urine specimens from 17 Afghans for analysis at an independent UK laboratory.
It says: "Without exception, every person donating urine specimens tested positive for uranium internal contamination.
"The results were astounding: the donors presented concentrations of toxic and radioactive uranium isotopes between 100 and 400 times greater than in the Gulf veterans tested in 1999.
"If UMRC's Nangarhar findings are corroborated in other communities across Afghanistan, the country faces a severe public health disaster... Every subsequent generation is at risk."
It says troops who fought in Afghanistan and the staff of aid agencies based in Afghanistan are also at risk.
Scientific acceptance
Dr Durakovic's team used as a control group three Afghans who showed no signs of contamination. They averaged 9.4 nanograms of uranium per litre of urine.
The average for his 17 "randomly selected" patients was 315.5 nanograms, he said. Some were from Jalalabad, and others from Kabul, Tora Bora, and Mazar-e-Sharif. A 12-year-old boy living near Kabul had 2,031 nanograms.
The maximum permissible level for members of the public in the US was 12 nanograms per litre, Dr Durakovic said.
A second UMRC visit to Afghanistan in September 2002 found "a potentially much broader area and larger population of contamination". It collected 25 more urine samples, which bore out the findings from the earlier group.
Dr Durakovic said he was "stunned" by the results he had found, which are to be published shortly in several scientific journals.
Identical outcome
He told BBC News Online: "In Afghanistan there were no oil fires, no pesticides, nobody had been vaccinated - all explanations suggested for the Gulf veterans' condition.
"But people had exactly the same symptoms. I'm certainly not saying Afghanistan was a vast experiment with new uranium weapons. But use your common sense."
The UK Defence Ministry says it used no DU weapons in Afghanistan, nor any others containing uranium in any form.
A spokesman for the US Department of Defense told BBC News Online the US had not used DU weapons there.
He could not comment on Dr Durakovic's findings of elevated uranium levels in Afghan civilians.
Comment: "Mission Accomplished" in Afghanistan.
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14 Iraqis killed in attacks in Baghdad and outside the capital
05:23:32 EDT May 23, 2006
BAGHDAD (AP) - Drive-by shootings killed seven Iraqis and wounded eight Tuesday as they headed to work as day labourers or ironsmiths in provinces north of Baghdad.
The two attacks came one day after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that Iraqi security forces would start assuming full responsibility for some provinces and cities next month, beginning a process leading to the eventual withdrawal of all coalition forces.
They said "responsibility for much of Iraq's territorial security should have been transferred to Iraqi control" by December. At that point, al-Maliki said, two of Iraq's most violent provinces, Baghdad and Anbar, may be the last where coalition forces maintain control.
But Tuesday's violence north of Baghdad showed that goal may not be easy to achieve.
Gunmen riding in an Opel sedan car shot and killed four ironsmiths and wounded one as they were riding a pickup truck to work in Mosul, the capital of Ninevah province, said police Brig. Abdul-Hamid Khalaf.
A drive-by shooting at a minibus killed three Iraqi day labourers and wounded four as they drove to work at a farm near Baqouba. Police said the casualties, all majority Shiites, appeared to be the latest victims of sectarian attacks by minority Sunni Arabs in Diyala province.
On Jan. 31, a U.S. Embassy report had found security "critical" in Anbar province, the Sunni-dominated region west of Baghdad that includes Ramadi and Fallujah. The report also said the security situation was considered serious in the provinces of Baghdad, Basra, Ninevah, Tamim, Salahuddin and Diyala - all of them religiously mixed.
In Baghdad, gunmen in a speeding car killed one of the many vendors who sell cigarettes from small wooden stands on the side of streets in the capital.
Elsewhere, according to police, a car bomb exploded in New Baghdad, an eastern part of the capital, killing five and wounding eight, while a high school teacher on his way to work near Kirkuk was killed in a drive-by shooting.
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Troop pull-out from Iraq to be speeded up
Will Woodward in Baghdad and Ewen MacAskill
Tuesday May 23, 2006
The Guardian
George Bush and Tony Blair are to discuss in Washington this week a programme of troop withdrawals from Iraq that will be much faster and more ambitious than originally planned.
In a phased pullout in which the two countries will act in tandem, Britain is to begin with a handover to Iraqi security forces in Muthanna province in July and the Americans will follow suit in Najaf, the Shia holy city.
Other withdrawals will quickly follow over the remainder of the year. Officials in both administrations hope that Britain's 8,000 forces in Iraq can be down to 5,000 by the end of the year and that the American forces will be reduced from 133,000 to about 100,000.
Yesterday Nuri al-Maliki, the new Iraqi prime minister, told a joint press conference with Mr Blair in Baghdad that Iraqi forces could take over from the US-led coalition in 16 of the country's 18 provinces by the end of the year.
Mr Blair and Mr Maliki said the "process of transition" would start in some provinces in the coming months, and that "by the end of this year responsibility for much of Iraq's territorial security should have been transferred to Iraqi control".
Mr Blair, in his fifth visit to Iraq since the invasion, flew to Baghdad to become the first leader to greet the new Iraqi government, which was inaugurated on Saturday. Mr Blair is investing his hopes of salvaging his legacy in the new Iraqi prime minister and described the government as "a new beginning" after three years of hard struggle.
President Bush echoed him yesterday, saying that the new government was "the beginning of something new constitutional democracy at the heart of the Middle East". Mr Bush acknowledged that there had been mistakes in Iraq, but said repeatedly that there had been "incremental" progress.
Mr Maliki surprised Mr Blair's team at the press conference by saying the UK handover to Iraqi forces could begin in June. British officials later corrected this, saying that the planned date was actually July.
Mr Blair preferred not to put an explicit timetable on it, saying that such a move depended on conditions on the ground, and the government's most optimistic public timetable has Iraq taking full control of security within a four-year period. But a joint statement issued by Mr Blair and Mr Maliki acknowledged their agreement to make an early start.
The statement said the new Iraqi government would "in the weeks ahead work with the MNF [multinational force] on the details of transition to Iraqi control".
Britain has responsibility for four provinces in Iraq. After Muthanna, the next province for handover to Iraqi forces by Britain is Maysan. But Basra, where most of the 7,200 British forces are stationed, is - the two prime ministers admitted yesterday - a serious problem, and the new government is to send a delegation there soon.
The fate of Dhi Qar, which is in the British sector but is run in effect by 2,600 Italian forces, is uncertain, since the new Italian prime minister, Romano Prodi, says he wants a speedy withdrawal.
Mr Maliki denied that the country was in the midst of a civil war. "The multinational forces did let us improve the capability of our forces but the Iraqi forces still need more," he told reporters. "Iraq's forces still need more backing, more training and more armaments in order for the Iraq security forces to take over the security fully. We will start in the provinces and we will do them in turn."
His total of 263,000 Iraqi police and army is still short of the 325,000 target, although this is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
Mr Blair stayed overnight in Kuwait and then travelled into Baghdad's high-security green zone by Chinook helicopter. After meeting the prime minister, Mr Blair saw the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, who hailed him as "a great friend to the people of Iraq".
The British prime minister said after the meeting: "What we want to see is a sovereign independent nation in theory and in practice."
Mr Blair's official spokesman denied that talk of a "new beginning" offered a hostage to fortune, arguing that a cabinet formed from Shia, Sunni and Kurd leaders after a successful election involving more than 12 million people was proof of the significance of the weekend's landmark cabinet settlement. But both Mr Blair and Mr Bush risk the remark rebounding on them severely as Sunni and Shia insurgents continue to bomb the multinational force - and themselves.
"Troop withdrawal comes after the process of Iraqi-isation, not the other way round," the prime minister's spokesman said. The Americans have drafted in a further 650 forces from Kuwait to help "stabilise", amid fear of violence after the formation of the new cabinet.
A senior British official predicted that a full handover of security could be achieved within the four-year term of the new Iraqi government. "The aim is to take Iraq to a position where the multinational force is able to withdraw during its [the new government's] period in office," said the official, who was accompanying Mr Blair into Baghdad.
"During the four years, the present role and structure of the multinational force will change and come to an end."
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Security: 328, Human Rights: 0
Powerful nations putting security ahead of human rights: Global watchdog
06:07:43 EDT May 23, 2006
DANIKA KIRKA
LONDON (AP) - The relentless pursuit of security by the world's powerful nations had undermined human rights, draining energy and attention from crises afflicting the poor and underprivileged, Amnesty International said in a report released Tuesday.
In its 2006 annual report, the human rights watchdog condemned countries such as the United States, China and Russia for focusing on narrowly defined interests, diluting efforts to solve conflicts elsewhere - such as Sudan's Darfur region.
"Governments collectively and individually paralyzed international institutions and squandered public resources in pursuit of narrow security interests, sacrificed principles in the name of the 'war on terror' and turned a blind eye to massive human rights abuses," Amnesty's Secretary-General Irene Khan said in a statement accompanying the report.
It urged the United Nations to address abuses in Darfur, where violence has killed more than 180,000 people and displaced 2.5 million since 2003. Many of the atrocities are blamed on the so-called Janjaweed, a disparate group of Arab militiamen allegedly backed by the Sudanese government.
"Intermittent attention and feeble action by the United Nations and the African Union fell pathetically short of what was needed in Darfur," Khan said.
Amnesty also urged Washington to close the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and for full disclosure on prisoners implicated elsewhere in the "war on terror." It also asked for the UN Human Rights Council to insist on equal standards "whether in Darfur, Guantanamo, Chechnya or China."
It appealed for a change of strategy in Iraq, which it described as having sunk into "a vortex of sectarian violence."
"When the powerful are too arrogant to review and reassess their strategies, the heaviest price is paid by the poor and powerless - in this case ordinary Iraqi women, men and children," Khan said.
Amnesty has criticized U.S. President George W. Bush's approach to tackling international terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, complaining that hard-won human rights and civil liberties are being sacrificed in the name of stepped-up security.
Along with cases of abuse of prisoners in U.S. detention, the assault on rights makes it harder for Western countries to press other governments to clean up their rights record, Amnesty said. Countries such as Colombia and Uzbekistan used counterterrorism to justify the repression of opponents, the report said.
The increasing brutality of terrorist and militant attacks is a "bitter reminder that the 'war on terror' is failing and will continue to fail until human rights and human security are given precedence over narrow national security interests," Kahn said.
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New security cards will suit both countries, Bush says
Last Updated Mon, 22 May 2006 18:43:24 EDT
CBC News
U.S. President George W. Bush says American officials are working with Canada to ensure that proposed security requirements at the border do not interfere with trade and the movement of legitimate travellers.
Bush says he still supports the plan to require a passport or another secure document for everyone crossing into the United States. But he said it's important to ensure that security measures suit the needs of both countries.
Canada remains a friend and a neighbour, Bush said after a speech in Chicago on Monday, adding that he is well aware that Canada has reservations about the new security system.
"We're working with your government to make [sure] that the identification cards that will be used between our two borders are compatible, not only with our needs but your needs," Bush told a Canadian in the audience. "We're working on it to make sure that whatever documents are needed will not be restrictive, but nevertheless (provide) information, I guess is the best way to put it."
Times have changed
New security arrangements were introduced in 2004 after the 2001 terrorist attack on the United States. U.S. security officials have since come up with a proposal for high-tech identification cards that are scheduled for introduction on Jan. 1, 2008.
"I hope you can understand [why] our nation reacted the way we did after 9/11," Bush said. "We analyzed all aspects of our security. We said we were going to do everything we can within the law to protect ourselves."
Canada and several northeastern states have objected to the proposed security measures, saying they will hurt tourism, slow the flow of people and goods across the border and damage the economy of the border states.
Bush acknowledged that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has reservations about the plan. But he said Washington has different concerns about the Canadian border than it does about Mexico, where the U.S. intends to station National Guard troops starting in June.
Some observers said Bush's comments Monday were encouraging and could indicate the White House doesn't plan to stand in the way of whatever changes may be made by Congress, where several legislators are planning various amendments to the law.
Last week, the Senate passed an amendment to the law that would postpone the program until June 1, 2009, but officials on both sides of the border say it's far from certain whether that law will pass. In the meantime, both countries are working to the original deadline.
And Bush has considered modifying the regulations to permit use of normal passports, drivers' licences or birth certificates. But they would require extensive upgrades to include a technological marker like a fingerprint.
But while it's positive that Bush is focusing on the issue, deciding on what kind of ID will be acceptable is only part of the problem, said Scotty Greenwood, executive director of the Canadian American Business Council.
"It's how you implement the requirements. That's the bigger challenge," Greenwood said. "You need sufficient resources, staffing and technological infrastructure. Our busiest border crossings now are potential choke points. Until the law is changed or there's a plan to implement it, there's a problem."
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Studs Terkel sues over phone records
Monday, May 22, 2006; Posted: 5:23 p.m. EDT (21:23 GMT)
CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- A lawsuit filed Monday on behalf of author Studs Terkel and others seeks to stop AT&T from giving customer phone records to the National Security Agency without a court order.
The plaintiffs, who also include a doctor and a state lawmaker, said they rely on confidentiality in their work and are worried their clients will be less likely to phone them if they think the government collects lists of the numbers they are calling.
USA Today reported on May 11 that AT&T and other phone companies complied with an NSA request for the phone records of millions of ordinary Americans after the Sept. 11 attacks.
AT&T, based in San Antonio, Texas, said Monday it is obliged to assist government agencies responsible for protecting the public, as allowed within the law.
The six plaintiffs, whose legal team includes lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union, claim the telephone giant violated the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which prevents phone companies from releasing records to the government unless there is an emergency.
The lawsuit, filed in federal district court, seeks to include all Illinois AT&T customers as plaintiffs in a class action. The plaintiffs are not seeking monetary damages.
"Having been blacklisted from working in television during the McCarthy era, I know the harm of government using private corporations to intrude into the lives of innocent Americans," Terkel said in a statement. "When government uses the telephone companies to create massive databases of all our phone calls it has gone too far."
Harvey Grossman of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois said the NSA program could interfere with the ability of lawyers to deal with their clients and doctors to communicate with patients.
The plaintiffs besides Terkel are Democratic Illinois state lawmaker Barbara Flynn Currie; Rabbi Gary Gerson of Temple B'nai Abraham Zion in Oak Park; Diane Geraghty, a Loyola University law professor; attorney James Montgomery, former corporation counsel for the City of Chicago; and Dr. Quinten Young, a doctor and advocate for health care reform.
The action follows similar lawsuits filed in other U.S. states.
The Bush administration has urged a judge to dismiss a similar case, saying it threatens to divulge state secrets and jeopardize national security. The government argued in briefs that the courts cannot decide the constitutionality of the president's asserted wartime powers to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants.
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Last But Not Least
Eight-year-old boy charged after school bus hits, kills girl in New York
05:38:15 EDT May 23, 2006
NEW YORK (AP) - An eight-year-old boy was arrested on homicide charges after he sneaked onto an empty school bus which then rolled forward and fatally struck a second-grader, police said Tuesday.
The boy was to be charged with criminally negligent homicide, Officer Doris Garcia said. Police were withholding his name because of his age, she said. Amber Sadiq was crossing the street near her school when she was struck by the bus in the Brooklyn neighbourhood of Crown Heights. Police believe the boy was alone on the bus, Garcia said.
Investigators believe the driver got off the bus and secured it but the boy may have got inside through the back door, an emergency exit that cannot be locked, and caused the bus to move, police spokeswoman Detective Theresa Farello said.
"She tried to run but the garbage can was in the way," said 12-year-old Kassandra Polanco, who saw the bus bearing down on the girl.
Deli worker Sam Ahmad said he saw the girl under the bus and called the emergency services. He said he and about a dozen other men tried to lift the yellow bus to free her but it was too heavy.
Police said the girl was eight years old, while the Department of Education said she was seven.
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Theft vexes veterans
Marsha Sills
Local veterans, shocked that the personal information of 26.5 million veterans was stolen from a Veterans Affairs employee, had more questions about why an employee was allowed to take such sensitive information home.
On Monday, the Department of Veterans Affairs said that sometime this month, data including the names, Social Security numbers and birthdates of veterans discharged since 1975, was stolen when an employee's home was burglarized.
"I just feel like there needs to be more control before disseminating personal information or people having to access to it," said Karen Fontenot, a Vietnam War veteran who served in Southeast Asia as a nurse with the Air Force.
Veterans' personal information is far too private for an employee to take it out of a secure area, Fontenot said.
"That's too sensitive. That's government property," she said. "We have to have the assurance that our medical records and personal information will be held safe."
So far, no illegal activity related to the data has been detected, but VA officials urged veterans to pay close attention to their bank and credit card statements. But canceling accounts isn't necessary, according to officials.
"We have a full-scale investigation," said Veteran Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson. "I want to emphasize there was no medical records of any veteran and no financial information of any veteran that's been compromised."
Nonetheless, the news was a shock for local veterans who weren't aware of the situation Monday afternoon.
Joseph Fruge, a Marine veteran who served from 1984-88 and then in the Reserves from 1989-90, said he'll keep an eye out for any abnormal transactions.
"Basically, there's nothing that I know that I can do about it now but look at statements and make sure that everything is as usual," Fruge said.
The local VA office hadn't received any releases about the official announcement as of 2:30 p.m. Monday, according to John Hansen, veterans assistance counselor. A call from The Daily Advertiser was the only notice Hansen said he had received about the situation.
"So far, we haven't had anyone approach us with questions about this," Hansen said. "If (veterans) do contact us, we'll learn together."
Nicholson told The Associated Press that it's unclear if the burglars who stole computer disks with the information from the employee's home in suburban Maryland are aware that they have the information. The Associated Press reported that the employee had taken the disks home to work on a department project but did not have authorization to take the data home.
Veterans will receive individual letters advising them of the situation.
The President's Identity Theft Task Force, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission are investigating the breach.
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Sex Charges Leveled Against Boston Priest
By MARK JEWELL
Associated Press
Mon May 22, 2006
BOSTON - The head of a Catholic-run hospital system faced new allegations of sexual harassment Monday, following complaints of unwanted hugging and kissing of female employees.
Cardinal Sean O'Malley, head of the Boston Archdiocese, asked the governing board of Caritas Christi Health Care to meet again Wednesday to reconsider its response to the allegations against Dr. Robert M. Haddad, who had been reprimanded.
"New complaints of misconduct involving Dr. Robert Haddad have been received and are being investigated," the archdiocese said in a statement.
Haddad, 52, who is of Lebanese descent, said Monday that a cultural misunderstanding was to blame.
"In my Lebanese culture, hugs and kisses among men and women are not only expected, but warmly given and received," Haddad said.
He said he was "stunned to learn that some of my actions may have been misinterpreted; at no time was I aware of making anyone uncomfortable."
Helen Drinan, Caritas' executive vice president for human resources, said that her office had received several new accusations Monday from female employees.
The decision not to fire Haddad has been harshly criticized by Drinan - who took the initial complaints - and others who compare the situation to the archdiocese's initial response to reports of sexual abuse of children by priests.
Haddad was directed to undergo sexual harassment sensitivity training and was told he would be fired in the event of another credible harassment complaint, the archdiocese said.
O'Malley was installed as Boston's bishop in 2003 to help the archdiocese heal after a widespread clergy sexual abuse scandal.
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Teacher With 'Superhuman Strength' Arrested By Cops
WFTV.com
May 22, 2006
ORLANDO, Fla. -- A high school physical education teacher was relieved of duty Monday after police arrested him over the weekend for allegedly creating a scene outside of a downtown bar and fighting several officers who tried to arrest him.
Police first saw David McCann, 30, standing in front of a bar Saturday at 2 a.m., shirt unbuttoned and yelling he was "Luke Skywalker" at passers-by, according to the incident report. An officer asked him to leave after McCann allegedly got into a verbal confrontation with two women.
McCann then allegedly charged the officer, who sprayed him in the face with an irritant. Two officers tried unsuccessfully to handcuff him as McCann wildly swung his fists, the report says.
The incident further escalated, with McCann continuing to allegedly attack officers after he was repeatedly kicked and struck with a baton. Officers also used a stun gun to attempt to subdue him.
"He continued to attack with super human strength and made no attempt to escape," according to the report.
McCann was finally brought under control when two responding officers struck him three times with a Taser and another hit him four more times with a baton, according to the report.
He was arrested on charges of battery on a law enforcement officer, resisting arrest with violence and disorderly conduct. Three officers received bruises and other minor injuries, the incident report said.
The Orange County School District said McCann had worked there for two years, but the district already decided before the arrest not to renew his annual contract for next year.
Comment: "Superhuman strength", eh? One possibility is that McCann was incredibly strong because he really IS Luke Skywalker, and the force is with him. Far more likely is the possibility that after tasering the man three times and beating the crap out of him, the officers couldn't very well just say, "He resisted arrest".
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Ark's Quantum Quirks
Ark
Signs of the Times
May 23, 2006
Adidas in Paris
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